Inflection 04 – NEW ORDER

Permanence

JOURNAL OF THE MELBOURNE SCHOOL OF DESIGN

Features: Elizabeth Diller Dan Hill Casey Mack Christof Mayer of raumlabor Tod Williams & Billie Tsien

Vol 04 November 2017

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PERMANENCE

Inflection Journal Volume 04 - Permanence November 2017

Inflection is published annually by the Melbourne School of Design at the University of Melbourne and AADR: Art Architecture Design Research.

Editors: Dominic On, Jessica Wood, Nina Tory-Henderson and Stephen Yuen Deputy Editors: Catherine Woo and Olivia Potter Academic Advisor: Dr. AnnMarie Brennan Academic Advisory Board: Dr. AnnMarie Brennan Prof. Alan Pert Prof. Gini Lee Acknowledgements: The editors would like to thank all those involved in the production of this journal for their generous assistance and support.

For all enquiries please contact: editorial@inflectionjournal.com inflectionjournal.com facebook.com/inflectionjournal/ instagram.com/inflectionjournal/ © Copyright 2017 ISSN 2199-8094 ISBN 978-3-88778-520-8 AADR – Art, Architecture and Design Research publishes research with an emphasis on the relationship between critical theory and creative practice.

AADR Curatorial Editor: Rochus Urban Hinkel, Stockholm Production: pth-mediaberatung GmbH, Würzburg Publication © by Spurbuchverlag 1. Print run 2017 Am Eichenhügel 4, 96148 Baunach, Germany.

Graphic design in collaboration with Büro North Interdisciplinary Design No part of the work must in any mode (print, photocopy, microfilm, CD or any other process) be reproduced nor – by application of electronic systems – processed, manifolded nor broadcast without approval of the copyright holder.

The opinions expressed in Inflection are those of the authors and are not endorsed by the University of Melbourne.

Cover Image:

Wrecking the Seat of Learning Argus Newspaper Collection of Photographs, State Library of Victoria

CONTRIBUTORS

Aki Ishida Aki Ishida is an Assistant Professor of Architecture at Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University. She founded Aki Ishida Architect PLLC in ~ oly New York City, and prior to that, worked at the offices of Rafael Vin Architects, James Carpenter Design Associates and I.M. Pei Architect.

In 2016, she was recognised nationally as one of the 25 Most Admired Educators by DesignIntelligence.

Christine Bjerke Christine Bjerke is an architect, designer and educator based in Copenhagen, Denmark. She holds a Diploma of Architecture from the Bartlett School of Architecture and a Bachelors of Architecture from the Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts. In 2015 she co-founded the interdisciplinary collective In-Between Economies and she is the editor of the multifaceted website and publication project, www.thefxbeauties. club. She is currently teaching the Urbanism & Societal Change Masters Programme at the Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts.

Amelyn Ng Amelyn is a recent graduate of the Melbourne School of Design. She is now a graduate architect at Fieldwork and an independent writer whose work has been published across a variety of digital and print Australian media.

She recently presented papers on civic agency and socially responsive infrastructures at conferences in Philadelphia, USA and Nicosia, Cyprus.

Amelyn will be moving to New York City later this year for further study in architectural criticism at Columbia University.

Christof Mayer Christof Mayer studied architecture in Berlin and London. He graduated in 1998 from the Technical University of Berlin. In 1999, he founded the architecture collective raumlaborberlin with Andrea Hofmann, Jan Liesegang and Markus Bader. In 2000, he became a member of the Chamber of Architects Berlin and started the Büro für Architektur und Städtebau. He has since taught in Germany, Switzerland, Norway, Greece and Australia. In 2014, he held a residency at Monash University in Melbourne. Since 2017, he has held a professorship at the Bergen Architecture School in Norway.

Barnaby Bennett Barnaby Bennett is a publisher and co-founder of Freerange Press. He is an award-winning designer, and is currently completing a PhD examining the political characteristics of temporary architecture in post-quake Christchurch. Barnaby has been widely published and teaches architectural theory and design at universities in Australia and New Zealand.

Dan Hill Dan Hill is an Associate Director at Arup, the global design and engineering firm. He is Head of Arup Digital Studio, a multidisciplinary strategic design, service design and interaction design team. Dan is uniquely positioned at the intersection of design, urbanism and technology, and is recognised globally as a key thinker, leader and practitioner in this field. Dan is an adjunct professor at RMIT University and UTS and a visiting professor at the Bartlett School of Architecture.

Casey Mack Casey Mack is an architect and the director of Brooklyn-based Popular Architecture, an office devoted to combining simplicity with versatility in work across multiple scales. With the support of the Graham Foundation, Mack is currently writing Digesting Metabolism: Artificial Land in Japan 1954–2202, a forthcoming book from Princeton Architectural Press on built housing by the Metabolists and their associates inspired by Le Corbusier’s unbuilt designs for Algiers. Mack's work has been published in Domus China, CLOG, The Avery Review, Bracket and OASE.

Eleni Bastéa Eleni Bastéa was born and grew up in Thessaloniki, Greece. She holds a BA in art history from Bryn Mawr College, and a Master of Architecture and a PhD in architectural history, both from the University of California at Berkeley. At the University of New Mexico, where she has taught since 2001, she is Regents' Professor of Architecture and director of the International Studies Institute. The recipient of several grants and awards, she lectures internationally on memory and architecture, cities and literature, and on modern Greece and Turkey.

Elizabeth Diller Elizabeth Diller is a founding partner of Diller Scofidio + Renfro (DS+R), an interdisciplinary design studio that works at the intersection of architecture, the visual arts and the performing arts. DS+R focuses on projects of civic importance: rethinking the future of the city, the changing role of institutions and the increasing dominance of technology in society.

She is also a Professor of Architecture at Princeton University.

Sean Anderson Sean Anderson is the Associate Curator for the Department of Architecture and Design at the Museum of Modern Art in New York. Prior to his work at MoMA, Anderson served as the undergraduate program director and senior lecturer of design and history at the University of Sydney from 2012. His research focused on Italian modernism and its effect upon colonial and post-colonial architecture across multiple geographical contexts.

Jessica Wood Jessica Wood is an editor of Inflection Journal and a Master of Architecture student at the Melbourne School of Design. She holds a Bachelor of Interior Design from RMIT University, where she also teaches Design Studio.

In 2014 she was awarded the Australian German Association’s Travel Fellowship.

Tanja Beer Dr. Tanja Beer is an award-winning ecoscenographer and an Academic Fellow in Performance Design and Sustainability at the Melbourne School of Design. She has more than 15 years professional experience, including creating ephemeral designs for projects in Melbourne, Sydney, Brisbane, New York, London, Cardiff, Glasgow, Vienna and Tokyo.

Kaylene Tan Kaylene is a PhD student at the Melbourne School of Design, focusing on food heritage interpretation. With a background in heritage engagement, Kaylene has worked as a writer and producer for film, audio, theatre and site-specific performances for cultural organisations and historical sites in Singapore and Malaysia.

Toby Dean Toby Dean graduated from the University of Melbourne in 2017 with a Master of Architecture and now teaches in the Bachelor of Environments.

He is interested in the intersection of contemporary culture with tradition and in seeking alternative methods of architectural practice and exhibition for the future. He believes in design as a form of empowerment and hopes to continue the discourse on the implications of architecture upon complex environmental and social systems.

Morgan Hickinbotham Morgan graduated from the Victorian College of the Arts in 2012 with a Bachelor of Fine Arts, majoring in photography. His photography work spans the fashion, design, architecture and commercial spheres. Seeing and thinking in sound and vision, he also makes music and video art.

Tod Williams and Billie Tsien Tod Williams and Billie Tsien began working together in 1977 and co-founded their eponymous architectural practice in 1986. Located in Midtown Manhattan, their studio focuses on work for institutions including schools, museums and not-for-profits—organisations and people that value issues of aspiration and meaning, timelessness and beauty.

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CONTENTS

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Editorial

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Christine Bjerke Dual-Living: The Digitalisation of Domestic Space

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Elizabeth Diller On Obsolescence

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Tod Williams and Billie Tsien On Slowness

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Aki Ishida Metabolic Impermanence: The Nakagin Capsule Tower

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Eleni BastĂŠa The Memory of Loss

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Kaylene Tan Unfinished: Brutalist Heritage in the Making

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Tanja Beer* The Aesthetics of Impermanence

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Casey Mack Future Stock

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Toby Dean The Reassembled Town Hall

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Dan Hill On Systems

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Jessica Wood MPavilion: Catalyst or Cat's Paw?

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Amelyn Ng Illusions of Freedom

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Sean Anderson On Imagined Placelessness

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Barnaby Bennett Breaking and Making Temporality

Christof Mayer Cui Bono? The City as a Product of Societal Negotiation

*denotes articles that have been formally peer-reviewed

EDITORIAL Dominic On, Jessica Wood, Nina Tory-Henderson and Stephen Yuen Permanence has long been prescribed as an essential virtue of architecture, associated with the Vitruvian definition of firmitas: mass and solidity crafted to endure. Yet, to think about architectural permanence in the Vitruvian sense today produces a schism: absolutism in a culture of relativism.

Speculative development, volatile real estate markets, international warfare, mass migration, a changing climate and throw-away attitudes prioritising quick and temporary fixes for ongoing problems have repositioned the value placed on the material durability of architecture. How do we focus our thoughts and efforts in a culture of obsolescence, when the very essence of architecture—to build—has endurance at the centre of its logic?

This logic frames the architectural project as complete the moment it is built, but a building is an ongoing series of processes; it changes over time through occupation, inhabitation and developing technologies. From the enduringly incomplete Tower of Babel to the temporary urbanism of today, practitioners and theorists have been negotiating and reinterpreting the definition and value of architectural permanence, and it is in this milieu that this edition of Inflection is positioned.

In opposition to the commonplace acceptance of architectural timelessness, this journal presents alternative practices that interrogate the relationships of architecture and design with solidity and time. Through examining a series of temporary architectural interventions in post-quake Christchurch, Barnaby Bennett proposes an ecological understanding of architectural timescales. He argues that buildings should not be understood as inert edifices, but as ‘living’ things that respond to flows, shifts, events and activities as they move through time. In rebuttal to the scrap-and-build culture in Japan, Casey Mack's study of 'artificial land' projects by structural engineer Toshihiko Kimura underscores the importance of cultivating new attitudes toward existing built stock in order to project them into the future, finding 06

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a middle ground between permanence and change. Christof Mayer of raumlaborberlin takes post-Wall Berlin as a case study to illustrate how temporary projects can democratise spaces, diversify a city and contribute to long-term urban developments. A thesis project by Toby Dean from the Melbourne School of Design explores the reclamation of public space through more permanent means. Dean proposes the Reassembled Town Hall as a tool with which to resist a culture where the worth of architecture is reduced to economic capital alone. Conversely, in the fields of scenography and performance design, the transience of the event typically takes precedence over the fixity and sustainability of the set and costumes. Tanja Beer’s research considers the social and environmental ripples that resound long after the curtain falls and the set is demolished.

Our contemporary world is one in-flux; new technologies allow business models, governments and social structures to morph with unprecedented speed. How then, does the relatively slow and fixed practice of building position itself in this global condition of temporal, social and technological instability? Amelyn Ng responds to this question through a critique of the rise in freelance and precarious work, made possible by contemporary conditions of globalisation, digitalisation and fluctuating economies. In exploring the spatial implications of our changing work life, she puts forth a sharp commentary on the now ubiquitous hotdesk environment. In a hive of infinite connectivity and productivity, our work life is increasingly held in a state of temporality and placelessness, resulting in a nostalgia for permanence. Christine Bjerke examines the digitalisation of the home and the subsequent effects of destabilisation: breaking down perceived boundaries of domesticity and privacy. Whilst technologies have transformed the social space of the domestic, she posits that the physical space of the home remains largely unaffected, and subsequently questions how the materiality of the home might respond.

An enquiry into architectural permanence is not only an exploration of physical and material endurance, but also of cultural and symbolic persistence. It prompts an investigation into what our architecture says about our collective psychology across time and cultures. Never intended to be permanent, initially considered irreparably ugly and out of character in its romantic surroundings, the Eiffel Tower has since come to define the ‘concept’ of Paris. But of the 18,000 iron members which make up the tower, each has been replaced at least once. The Eiffel Tower as it stands today is a facsimile both of itself and of the culture it has come to represent. So when it comes to architectural heritage, do we seek to preserve the buildings themselves or rather the ideals, souls and epochs by whom they were conceived? As creatures with imperfect memories, perhaps the practice of designing, building and restoring enables us to convert urgent shortterm phenomena into physical recollections thereby cheating our fated collective anterograde amnesia.

Taking Brutalism as a case study, Kaylene Tan uses a movement in a kind of architectural limbo, neither contemporary nor solidified in the past, to question the role of heritage protections. How do we decide what to preserve when our definition of ‘heritage’ changes from person to person, from age to age? Heritage should be considered a verb rather than a noun. If undertaken merely as a formal exercise concerned with hermetic histories and aesthetics, heritage fails to serve modernity. Rather a building’s ‘permanence must be earned rather than merely assumed’ through continual use and appreciation. In a close reading of the current situation surrounding Kisho Kurokawa’s Nakagin Capsule Tower, Aki Ishida delves into the broader cultural and historical beginnings of Metabolism to find answers to the Tower’s preservation conundrum as a building designed to evolve. In The Memory of Loss, Eleni Bastéa poetically explores the symbiotic relationship between buildings and memory. Physical reference points act as a backdrop for the recollection of one’s life, and so these buildings in Vol 04 Permanence

Vol 03 New Order

our memory maintain a legacy and life form after their demolition. Only when physical heritage fails and buildings are wiped away is permanence ultimately achieved. Like our ancestors, buildings are untouchable in death.

Preservation through memory is not confined to introspection. Often, the decision to demolish a building provokes a social and political commentary which can continue well after the dust settles. A tension exists between the need to develop and the need to value cultural history.

The 2014 demolition of the 15-year-old American Folk Art Museum in New York is one such example which has sparked a polemical discourse amongst the architectural community and the greater public. To this day, the lingering effects of MoMA’s decision are still at work as the institution continues their plans for expansion. The journal presents a multivocal view on the situation. In an interview with the architects of the Folk Art Museum, Tod Williams and Billie Tsien, they expound upon their design approach which involves a deliberate slowing down in a world which prioritises speed and efficiency. Elizabeth Diller from interdisciplinary design studio Diller Scofidio + Renfro, chosen to lead the development and expansion of MoMA, provides an alternative perspective, acknowledging our contemporary culture of obsolescence.

Through these voices, Inflection Vol. 4 extrapolates the permanent and the temporary as a spectrum to be navigated at each stage of architecture’s unfolding narrative. Through each of the responses presented in this year’s edition, Permanence provides a critical voice as architecture continually seeks an enduring foothold in an ever evolving landscape.

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Cedric Price, Re:CP, ed. Hans-Ulrich Obrist (Basel: Birkhauser Verlag AG, 2003), 11.

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Photograph by Mark Strizik.

Pictures Collection, State Library of Victoria

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BREAKING AND MAKING TEMPORALITY TIME AND TEMPORARY ARCHITECTURE IN POST-QUAKE CHRISTCHURCH Barnaby Bennett

What makes one thing permanent and another temporary?

Can objects, buildings, or landscapes be understood through other forms of temporal status? And how might these different forms affect our experience of the objects? This essay seeks to answer these questions by complicating the normally tidy division between the permanent and the temporary by articulating an ecological understanding of time that encompasses a broader range of temporal conditions.

The difference between temporary and permanent things appears self-evident: the former exists for a discrete and measurable amount of time, whilst the latter extends into the future. This is one of the binary divisions we use to understand the status of objects in the world, and we build relationships with things based on these assumptions.

This essay is based on information gathered whilst living in Christchurch between 2012 and 2015. Assumptions of permanence and temporariness were particularly evident when dealing with the built environment after the earthquakes in 2010 and 2011. At 12:51 p.m. on 22 February 2011, a large earthquake shook Christchurch, New Zealand's second largest city.

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Between September 2010 and the end of 2012, over 13,000 earthquakes jolted the city of 342,000 people, but the February 2011 quake was different. The city was devastated— buildings and infrastructure were damaged and 185 people were killed.1 A national state of emergency was declared the following day: the core of the city was shut down and cordoned off as a public exclusion zone. It would be over two years before citizens could return freely to the shattered city centre. In this context, the temporary became necessary and the permanent visions of the city a topic of controversy and debate.

In his 1997 essay ‘Trains of Thought’ Bruno Latour compares the experiences of two twins.2 The first is moving slowly through the jungle. Latour says ‘She will remember it because each centimetre has been won through a complicated negotiation with other entities, branches, snakes and sticks that were proceeding in other directions and had other ends and goals.’3 A second twin is travelling on a fast TGV train from Paris to Switzerland. ‘… he will remember little else except having travelled by train instead of plane. Only the articles he read in the newspaper might be briefly recalled …

No negotiation along the way, no event, hence no memory of anything worth mentioning.’4 Latour uses these examples to contrast experiences—to show the sweat, exertion and Breaking & Making Temporality

Aerial photograph of Christchurch, 2013.

Photograph by Becker Fraser Photography

suffering of establishing a new path through the jungle against the ease and relaxation of sitting on a train. The infrastructure of the train—the tracks, signals, workers, tunnels and so on—enables the second twin to focus and develop thoughts away from the work being done to carry him. Hers is an experience of effort and his, ease.

It follows from this that a multiplicity of temporalities can be created by different kinds of material assemblages.

The two most common types of time in architecture are temporary and permanent, but a closer look at a project like Agropolis (discussed later in this essay) offers a range of other typologies.

The experience of each twin is defined by the length of their travel and the number of entities supporting them. The twin cutting her way through the jungle has few allies—she is part of a small gathering of objects. The twin on the train has a huge array of supporters and helpers that participate in an assemblage linking large parts of Europe together. Latour uses this story to argue that a different temporality, a different type of time is being brought into being in each case. For Latour, ‘time is not a general framework but a provisional result of the connection amongst entities.’5 In this way, time is produced or performed by different types of assemblages and networks. In relation to designed things, temporality is a consequence of the labour involved with coordinating objects into certain assemblages and arrangements.

Performing Permanence It is almost a cliché to state that one of the dominant characteristics of architecture is the quest for permanence.

Architecture is meant to persist, to be durable. The term ‘permanent architecture’ does not exist because the idea of permanence is central to its logic.

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Various authors have pointed out problems with the assumption of permanence. Mohsen Mostafavi and David Leatherbarrow state the obvious but often overlooked fact that ‘No building stands forever.’6 Even the greatest buildings and cities will one day fall into ruin, become redundant or be replaced. Mostafavi and Leatherbarrow identify a contradiction in which ‘buildings persist in time. Yet they do not.’7 The language we use to describe architecture often conceals the fact that nothing, in the end, lasts forever. In this sense, permanence is an imagined ideal that we collectively sustain.

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Long lifespans are only achieved through the procedures of maintenance and care. Nigel Thrift writes that repair and maintenance are the ‘means by which the constant decay of the world is held off.’8 The deserted and vegetative town of Varosha on the island of Cyprus and the Demilitarised Zone between North and South Korea illustrate how so-called permanent objects quickly fail when no one is present to maintain them.9 The famous image of a decaying Villa Savoye evidences the tension between the essence of a finished work and the deleterious effects of time and weathering. Stewart Brand writes that ‘Architecture, we imagine, is permanent.

And so our buildings thwart us.’10 The status of buildings as durable objects, like the twin’s travel on the train to Switzerland, is only sustained by an array of other devices and labour that continuously care and protect. The often overlooked labour of cleaning, repair and maintenance is the invisible work that creates the effect of permanence.

Permanent buildings are a result of large assemblages of different things working together to keep them standing: foundations, windows and ceilings make buildings stable and keep the weather outside; various institutions and organisations pay cleaners, caretakers and maintenance crews to maintain and repair its different parts; financial institutions such as banks and insurance companies provide capital to upgrade, rebuild and repair as time goes by. This creates a particular experience of use, and like the twin on the train, this enables other kinds of behaviour and activity to be focused on. Permanence is a kind of performance, but it is one we benefit from participating in. The permanence of architecture is a beneficial illusion that helps to sustain the institutions and organisations we want to have as stable markers of our society—courts, houses, great landmarks, universities, commercial centres, parliaments and civic spaces.

Performing Temporariness What then of the temporary? Temporary architecture is a minor tradition that requires naming in a way that permanent architecture does not. Temporary projects have a beginning and an end. Permanent architecture is finished when it opens—this is its final state. A temporary project is finished when it disappears and ceases to be.

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After the earthquakes in Christchurch, temporary projects proliferated with hundreds spreading across the damaged city. Agropolis was one such project initiated by Jessica Halliday, director of the Festival of Transitional Architecture (FESTA) and Bailey Perryman, a local food activist. It was developed as part of a larger collaboration that included local residents, businesses, chefs and artists. Launched at FESTA in 2013, the project was located on a vacant central site, one of thousands in the central city in which 80 percent of the area was demolished.

Agropolis consisted of around 12 large planter boxes, many of which were constructed from demolished houses, a large four-part composting facility and a tool shed made of earth.

The project worked with local cafés to gather their green waste for composting and growing vegetables to sell back to the shops. Agropolis was temporary, it evolved at its first site over two years and then moved to another in 2015 before integrating with a larger urban farm project in 2016.

Authors of the 2012 book The Temporary City, Peter Bishop and Lesley Williams, define temporary projects in relation to intention.11 For them a project is temporary when the people that make and use it understand that it will not last. This kind of temporary use can be liberating: experiments and investigations can be made without the risk of permanent and expensive failure; different materials can be introduced and arranged into dynamic forms; members of the public and students can participate in the design and making of places with little fear of consequence; a larger and more radical variety of activities can be performed in public such as film screenings, bathing, dancing, shopping, eating and the growing of food. Examples of temporary projects internationally range from protests such as Occupy to community gardens and commercial pop-up spaces and are produced by a variety of designers, architects, retailers, activists, artists and community groups. Agropolis was an experiment in building systems of exchange and an alternative economy of food and waste based on freely given expertise and hundreds of volunteer hours.

Bringing things together—materials, organisations, people, practices—for a temporary period of time changes the relationship people have with the project or place.

Experiences of provisionality, experimentation and uncertainty characterise temporary projects. Agropolis’ temporary condition produced a heightened sense of commitment and engagement. Bailey Perryman comments “You know every day of these projects is unique.”12

Breaking & Making Temporality

Agropolis during FESTA 2014 Photograph by Annelies Zwaan

An important aspect of temporary projects is that the systems and assemblages required to bring them into being are often not as well integrated into the fabric of a place.

Formal organisations such as councils and contractors, and integration with complex infrastructures of power, phone and water are frequently avoided by temporary projects, and instead ad hoc, improvised solutions are preferred. Often this means a more public display of making and developing projects and systems. In this way, the things involved with making, maintaining and unmaking of the projects are foregrounded. In contrast to more permanent architectures, in temporary projects such as Agropolis, maintenance and repair were public and visible activities, and through these different practices were brought to public view. In October 2013, Agropolis was launched with an event in the garden and the public was invited to help mix the mud for the earth shed with their feet. Many events, meetings, tours, festivals and working bees took place over its lifetime to sustain the farm and to offer people experiences and new knowledge about building and planting. These were experiences of a temporary project, but other forms of temporality were also being created and experienced at the same time.

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Both permanent and temporary architecture can be framed as a performance of invisible and public entities working together to produce effects that are experienced by people.

This framing suggests that different types of assembling and gathering may create other types of temporal experience.

Event Times Event time is a sharp and focused form of temporality characterised by festivals and carnivals. In the 1970s and ‘80s, Bernard Tschumi argued that architecture can only be understood through the event, that space makes no sense without considering the things that happen within it.13 At its broadest, this argument arranges the programme and intent of the space as being a critical part of its imagining. In relation to the Agropolis project, festivals and events brought into the site include temporary restaurants, tours, talks, construction processes and installations.

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A vision of Tempelhof Freiheit. Š raumlaborberlin

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With the turn of the millennium came a gradual change.

Berlin’s ethereal and improvised sense of spirit began to vanish. The city’s former embrace of life was replaced by an ever-growing compulsion for security. This trend has accelerated significantly since the 2008 financial crisis. The resistance to this trend expressed itself not only in protests, but also in the ever more strategic formulation of alternative economic models and the establishment of new alliances.

Wir sind hier nicht zum Spass9 The planned closure of Tempelhof Airport and its replacement on a different site was part of a treaty conceived of at the end of the 1990s—a time when the common belief was that Berlin, as Germany’s restored capital, would undergo rapid growth and increased prosperity. Whilst that transformation would not to take place until almost 20 years later, the decision to close Tempelhof was upheld, and a master plan for its transformation was developed by the city.

A rare instance of vast open space located in the heart of a city, Tempelhof was a tabula rasa on valuable land. The master plan stipulated re-zoning for the entire airport site, mostly as residential. However, prior to its planned closure, it became clear that due to a weakened real estate market, the existing master plan could not be implemented in the short term without private investment from outside the government. This caused concern for the affordability of such housing developments. The pending cessation of operations and a looming election created considerable political pressure against the site being used for commercial development, triggering a desperate search by the sitting government for alternative visions and models for the Tempelhofer Feld, an area roughly 365,000 square metres. In 2006, the Senate Department for Urban Development and Housing commissioned a study by Ideenwerkstatt Tempelhof— Idea Workshop Tempelhof. The group, formed especially for this project, was an agglomeration of spatial activists and practitioners working in Berlin comprised of mbup, Urban Catalyst and raumlaborberlin.

In parallel to the top-down master planning program, the Ideenwerkstatt Tempelhof study seized on Berlin’s existing expertise in informal planning, employing a bottomup approach of activation through use. As the Senate’s master plan could not be re-routed at this point, the study assumed an incremental and adaptable approach to its implementation. Whilst the master-plan thought in terms of the overall and indelible design for the airfield, the Ideenwerkstatt concept concentrated on the initial five years after its closure.

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As an alternative model of land use to standard development, the project speculated that sustainable urban development could instead rely financially on long-term leasehold agreements with various groups. The aim was to factor greater cultural, social and symbolic capital into the process, allowing all actors to share in the success and value creation of the collective achievement. Through a varied and adaptive approach, the study could run as a series of experiments, testing ideas that could later be accepted or rejected depending on their relative success. This allowed for a level of flexibility and fitness not afforded by the master-plan, and has since become an approach employed by raumlabor in many projects.

The most important actors were the so-called Raumpioniere (Urban Pioneers) who consisted of various cultural entrepreneurs, initiatives, individuals and associations. Their approach involved exploring and activating terrain, triggering a process of open negotiation and urbanisation. Some Raumpioniere were temporary users, whilst others became involved in the long-term development of the former airport.

Actors participated by proposing uses for designated areas on the airfield in which to test their ideas and desires, thereby activating the site as a series of spatial laboratories. Proposals included a bicycle workshop, a skate park and timber workshops. The most successful project was the Allmende Kontor, an urban gardening project with over 2,000 members, which still exists today.

In a politically motivated response to the Ideenwerkstatt Tempelhof, strategic organisational structures were proposed by the State of Berlin and the Senate of Urban Development, which reflected the insights gained from local activities by the Raumpioniere and which were supposed to provide support as the official master plan was implemented. In practice though, the invitation of groups like Ideenwerkstatt Tempelhof and the Raumpioniere to supplement the master-plan suffered at the outset from a lack of mutual trust between administration representatives and the actors of the informal urban development. As the dialogue that was originally sought never transpired on equal footing, the recommendations of the study were only implemented half-heartedly by the Senate. As a result, raumlabor learnt that empowering people to meaningfully impact their own urban environment would necessitate seeking out pockets of space within the city that are unimportant enough in the eyes of the Senate to fly under the radar of political bureaucracy.

Cui Bono?

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Eventually in 2010, the Raumpioniere were essential in realising the citizens’ initiative which proposed to retain the entire former airport grounds as public space.10 The decision was finally ratified in 2014 following a city-wide referendum.

The rejection of the existing planning framework amounted to a popular vote by Berliners on development rights to the city. Tempelhofer Feld was to remain open for public use and all forms of development became prohibited. raumlabor used this referendum as an opportunity to turn a once-temporary neighbourhood centre, the JuniPark, into a long-term project for the purpose of implementing the strategy they had developed under Ideenwerkstatt Tempelhof.11 The resulting Coop Campus is an initiative of Kulturhaus Schlesische 27 and raumlabor. In cooperation with the owners of the land, Evangelischer Friedhofsverband Berlin Mitte, the project continues to develop and examine models for incremental urban transformation of a former cemetery’s terrain vague into a vibrant and diverse urban neighbourhood. The project is made up of sub-projects like Die Gärtnerei Berlin.12

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A response to Germany’s burgeoning refugee situation, Die Gärtnerei examines integration, inter-cultural sharing, housing and urban production through the operation of commercial flower gardens, free language classes and neighbourhood gatherings open to new and long-term residents alike. It is a space that facilitates the integration of ever more diverse actors and stakeholder groups into the incremental enrichment of life in their new city. It descends from the initial aim of Ideenwerkstatt except that it now operates outside the cumbersome and rigid planning mandates of any government body. Projects like this at once circumvent and complement the methods of planning ordinarily employed by government bodies. They require fewer resources and thus entail less risk; more experiments and visions can be tested, thereby creating an inherently flexible planning method. By flipping the traditional value system for built form projects, in these small and experimental approaches to city making there is no really no such thing as failure, merely learning.

Cui Bono?

Berlin liebt dich13 In the past ten years, a number of initiatives and projects have been launched that consider Berlin’s shifting economic and political conditions. Some seek new forms of communal living and working as well as conceptualising alternative forms of project development. Many projects focus on new commons, areas beyond market and state in which people are directly involved in the design of their living environments.

Prinzessinnengarten is an urban community garden established in 2009 as a temporary-use initiative operated by Nomadisch Grün, a non-profit limited liability company. This area of 6,000 square metres once barren land in the middle of the city, is now used to cultivate flowers and vegetables.

The plot, owned by the Berlin state government, was and continues to be at risk of privatisation. With the initial lease agreement limited to one year with the option for one-year extensions, the entire garden was conceived as a nomadic operation, exclusively using raised beds made from crates and sacks. Following public pressure via petition, the lease agreement has since been amended to increase the extension term from one to five years. But the Prinzessinnengarten is more than just a space for vegetable crops in the city; it has created a space for a wide spectrum of activities. The potential for cooperation and open workshops along with the garden café and cultural events have made the Prinzessinnengarten a

vibrant meeting point. It has also become a beacon beyond its neighbourhood of what can be achieved with collective action in Berlin following its post-reunification privatisation and relative neoliberalisation.

In terms of communal housing, Germany’s healthy culture of Baugruppen (building cooperatives) have made important contributions to the development of new models for urban cohabitation globally. What began as a social model for building and living on the fringe of development tactics, is now gaining recognition in today’s neoliberal landscape as a genuine alternative to the conventional business model of building, for owners and architects alike. There are positive social outcomes for inhabitants and the surroundings whilst owner-occupiers are necessarily invested as active participants in meaningful neighbourhood development.

A successful example in Berlin is the Spreefeld project, located on the bank of the Spree river. The building and housing cooperative founded in 2009, ‘saw its purpose as the creation of housing for cross-generational, socially mixed and neighbourly forms of working and living with sustainable means and to the benefit of its members.’14 The building cooperative and three participating architecture firms sought to build a community, as a community.

Left: Spreefeld balconies.

Photograph by © Andrea Kroth Middle: Spreefeld,Optionsraum.

Photograph by © Andrea Kroth Right: Spreefeld, viewed from Spree River.

Photograph by © Andrea Kroth Page 39, top: Tempelhof Freiheit in use Photography by © Tempelhof Projekt GmbH, Andreas Labes Page 39, bottom: JuniPark, Photograph by © Stefanie Schulz

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Cui Bono?

As a building Spreefeld is a political statement advocating for a socially conscious organisation of housing, where private and public are spatially intertwined. This resulted in deliberate decisions to democratise access to a technically private piece of prime Berlin real estate. Berliners out for a stroll can still reach the bank of the River Spree at any time through Spreefeld’s site. Anyone can apply to use the Optionsraume ¨ (optional spaces) on the ground floor regardless of whether they live at Spreefeld or not. These spaces can be used temporarily as exhibition rooms, auditoriums or for workshops, so long as they contribute to the cooperative with programmatic input that is not principally profit-oriented.

Living at Spreefeld carries the requisite of participation in the cooperative which governs the apartments and shared spaces.

Residents are expected to invest their time, opinions and expertise rather than capital. As a result, rents at Spreefeld are kept at the same level as public housing for those with low incomes, offering a level of security and permanence difficult to find in the conventional rental market.

A more radical approach has been employed by the Mietshäuser Syndikat (apartment-house syndicate), which has been active in Berlin since 2003. The syndicate is a cooperative and non-commercial holding company for the joint purchasing of blocks of rental flats to extract them from the real estate market and provide long-term affordable housing. The syndicate has its origins in the political left as well as the cooperative housing and squatter scenes, and attempts to realistically implement approaches to the socially responsible and ecologically minded handling of money and land. Mietshäuser Syndikat supports and advises projects in financial and legal matters, yet contributes no capital of its own. To date, it has assisted in the acquisition process of 125 apartment buildings (17 of which are in Berlin) equating to approximately 22,500 square meters of living space for 600 people. Adhering to the dominant economic order, this model of activism uses a combination of collective action and capital to liberate capital.

In 2010, raumlabor realised PenthouseBerlin, a project in cooperation with artist Christian von Borries which explored yet another path to alternative housing. After being forced to switch studios several times due to a lease termination and multiple increases in rent, von Borries resolved to invest his money in real estate, but in such a way as to question current notions of housing by constructing it himself.

Aside from the limited budget, finding a suitable space was another considerable challenge. Not only did the space need to fulfil the necessary legal stipulations of building codes, it also had to be available for long-term lease. Von Borries found a rooftop site which was beyond any use to a developer, and whose owner was open to the idea of his experiment. The brief to raumlabor was for an architectural framework that guaranteed maximum flexibility in order for the artist to implement his own visions. In addition, the client wanted to construct as much of the studio as possible himself, which greatly determined choice of materials and the level of detailing. In the end, raumlabor employed an off-the-shelf greenhouse system that proved highly flexible in tackling the challenging conditions of the site.15 Re-framing the luxury status of the penthouse, PenthouseBerlin is an inventive example of individual living and working space achieved with modest financial means, utilising space outside the developer’s purview.

ExRotaprint is a work location promoting cooperation and exchange where commercial enterprises, social institutions and creatives operate their business. It is a private non-profit founded in 2007 with the goal of reinvigorating the site of a former printing press manufacturer, Rotaprint, a state-owned property located in the Berlin’s Wedding. Negotiations with state and district governments lasted three years before the property was effectively purchased through a leasehold agreement. ExRotaprint strives to be an active participant in the ongoing development of its urban district in flux, yet (contrary to classic studio buildings) it does so by embracing a mixed-use philosophy comprising manual crafts, studios and social institutions at various levels. ExRotaprint is an urban interface. The goal of creating a long-term location for heterogeneous use is supported by a project space rented out to individual users when necessary. Furthermore, a public cafeteria attracts many customers not necessarily affiliated with ExRotaprint, and has become a popular venue for locals. In place of the traditional workplace monoculture, ExRotaprint offers a macro-social environment: ‘it is a reality initiated by artists and created from the viewpoint of art. A realm of possibility has emerged here, one that is non-profit, non-ideological and marked by solidarity, yet contingent upon agreements and consensus. ExRotaprint forsakes the prospect of profits through ownership in favour of stability and participation whilst balancing a heterogeneous array of interests. The profit of the project lies in its durability and its spheres of interaction.’16

Opposite: PenthausBerlin, Photographs by © Frank Hülsbömer

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METABOLIC IMPERMANENCE THE NAKAGIN CAPSULE TOWER Aki Ishida

When a building is designed with intentional impermanence, its historic preservation presents a paradox. First completed in 1972, the Nakagin Capsule Tower by Kisho Kurokawa is such a structure. As The New York Times critic Nicolai Ouroussoff wrote in 2009, ‘The Capsule Tower is not only gorgeous architecture; like all great buildings, it is the crystallisation of a far-reaching cultural ideal. Its existence also stands as a powerful reminder of paths not taken, of the possibility of worlds shaped by different sets of values.’1 In the Metabolist spirit of continual growth, the architect designed the capsule living units to be replaced every 25 to 35 years, whilst the concrete cores were estimated to last over 60 years.2 The shorter lifespan of the capsules was intended to reflect anticipated societal change, rather than

material aging.3 However, in the 45 years since its completion no replacement has taken place. Today, the tower faces the alternatives of preservation, alteration or demolition.

If the design’s central idea has not been executed half a century later, how do we justify its future, either through restoration as a cultural monument, or demolition to make way for new structures and ideologies? Moreover, when a work of architecture is built upon principles of growth and transformation over time, what are the implications for its preservation?

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Nakagin Capsule Tower, Axonometric.

Drawing by © KISHO KUROKAWA architect & associates Opposite: Nakagin Capsule Tower, level 5 floor plan.

Drawing by © KISHO KUROKAWA architect & associates Following page: Under construction.

Photograph by Tomio Ohashi © KISHO KUROKAWA architect & associates

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Nakagin Capsule Tower Kurokawa’s Nakagin Tower consists of two reinforced concrete and steel frame cores, to which 140 capsule units are attached with high-tensile steel bolts.4 Prefabricated by a railroad car manufacturer, each module consists of a bathroom unit, circular window, built-in furniture and appliances. Each capsule is individually anchored to the concrete shaft, so that it might be replaced without affecting the others.5 The small living spaces, designed primarily for lounging and sleeping, are minimally equipped with a bed, bathroom, refrigerator and sink.6 The entire construction took only one year, with all 140 units sold by the time of completion.7 The units were originally owned by companies who used them as temporary housing for travelling employees, as business offices or investments.

Kurokawa’s Metabolist philosophy was motivated by his criticism of Japan’s pre-war modernisation: westernisation based on industrialisation. The two pillars of the Metabolist movement were to resist the course of cultural evolution based on Western values and to seek out a contemporary language for architecture specific to Japanese culture.8 Kurokawa criticised those who tried to resuscitate and imitate ancient Japanese structures during World War I colonisation and the period following World War II. He argued for defining the present, not the past, as the backbone of Japanese culture.9 Foundations of Metabolist Philosophy A building designed with intentional impermanence requires an understanding of the life-death cycle that is specific to the culture of its place. The Metabolist philosophy is founded in Japanese thinking, both ancient and modern, and the idea of constant renewal is deeply rooted in the Buddhist religion.

Kurokawa wrote extensively on the paradoxical Japanese practice of achieving permanence through impermanence, embodied in the predominantly light-weight timber construction used throughout Japan. He writes that because most important Japanese buildings are timber, they are accepting of their own entropy; buildings participate in the Buddhist idea of rinne—the on-going cycle of life and death.10 Moreover, the Buddhist idea of muso holds that ‘human beings should not become too attached to any one idea or place but should always remain aware of being in eternal time.’

young architect, including cities and architecture. Following the devastating losses in the war, Kurokawa continued to look to iconic buildings in traditional Japanese architecture studied by the imperialist architects of their fathers’ generation.

However, the Metabolists did so in ways which were fundamentally different from the previous generation.

The Metabolists were seeking modernity in philosophy, not in style. Unlike the visually dominant traditions of the West, they sought the invisible by looking to venerable architectural practices of the past such as the Ise Shrine (680 AD) and Katsura Palace (1620 AD). Here they found the notions of impermanence and prefabrication that they then transposed into their own practice.12 Kurokawa says, “We are talking about Ise as an invisible continuity: every 20 years the visible—the architecture—is rebuilt. We say the tradition has been maintained for 1,200 years, though the material is always new”.13 He writes, ‘… the Japanese have never felt that the materials themselves have a sense of eternity. On the contrary, they are and always have been conscious of the spirit and philosophy beyond the materials and regard the form as an intermediary conveying that spirit and philosophy of human beings.’14 Similarly, the Katsura was expanded twice over 150 years using different modules for each phase, and that at each stage it was considered a beauty, ‘perfect as a constantly changing process.’15 The Palace embodied metabolic ideas of cyclical growth over time which made it an apt precedent for the Metabolist manifesto. Where Western culture might retain the very blocks of stone with which ancient temples were built, Japanese culture views the permanence of an artefact as secondary to the process of craft passed on for generations.16 This attitude is even evidenced in the Japanese laws which protect cultural properties such as manners and customs, and in the designation of the title ‘National Living Treasure’ to a living person practicing a craft such as noh theatre or pottery. Thus, the question of preserving the Nakagin Capsule Tower demands a culturespecific examination of permanence.

Kurokawa’s position on impermanence also has a foundation in his youth spent in war-torn Japan. In a 2005 interview with Rem Koolhaas, Kurokawa recalled witnessing his hometown of Nagoya, a city of 1.5 million, destroyed overnight by hundreds of bombers.11 Witnessing his city vanish in an instant impressed the impermanence of all things upon the 34

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Top: Nakagin Tower in 1972. Photograph

by Tomio Ohashi © KISHO KUROKAWA architect & associates Opposite: Nakagin Tower façade today.

Photograph by Nicholas Coates

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FUTURE STOCK Casey Mack In his 1970 book 'Future Shock,' Alvin Toffler wrote that, due to rapid technological change, it does not make sense to make the permanent; transience and obsolescence are the inevitable necessity of accelerating innovation and competition.1 No housing culture shows this more than Japan’s, where houses, depreciating like cars and appliances, often lose their value after 15 years and are demolished at 25.2 Unsurprisingly, these short-lived houses are not built to last, demonstrating that ‘buildings are not demolished because they are in poor condition; buildings are in poor condition so that they can be demolished.’ They sublimate this reality made by a huge construction industry reliant on planned obsolescence into an aesthetic of weightless thinness, explained only at best by reference to Japan’s historic tectonics.3 This disposability supports the ‘continuous experimentation’ found in the countless idiosyncratic little Japanese houses celebrated daily in architectural media.4 But parallel to this photogenic parade is a less visible Japanese tradition in search of an alternative to the ‘scrap-and-build’ culture of replacement. One recent example of this is the Basic Act for Housing, passed by the Japanese parliament in 2006, whose central goal is a ‘stock’ based approach shifting ‘from quantity to quality in housing policy.’5 Contrary to Toffler’s assertion about building permanence, the ambition of this shadow tradition is a future stock: an inventory of durable urban housing designed to adapt, comparable in operation (if not typology or intention) to the canal houses of Amsterdam or the industrial loft buildings of Manhattan.

An attempt to make renovation the new normal, the typical approach to this goal is now known generically in Japan as ‘skeleton/infill’ or SI construction, a building system popularised in the 1990s where a flexible concrete frame allows for multiple changes in the infill of apartments over the lifetime of a building. By conserving the bulk of a building’s embodied economic and environmental costs represented by the primary structure and repositioning it as an appreciating investment, SI hopes to avert the negative 54

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impacts of scrap-and-build that are hard to photograph.

Essentially core-and-shell office construction applied to apartments, SI is often thoroughly banal in appearance, as seen in big condo projects by design-build companies such as the Haseko Corporation. Sadly but unsurprisingly, the corporate embrace of SI has jettisoned the concept’s capacity for difference. Instead, its flexibility is a feature serving long-term renovation plans by property managers rather than up-front participation by residents in the definition of their housing—the opportunity so graphically realised in the sprawl of tiny houses.

The conflict here is between corporate sameness and bottom-up difference, the durable and disposable, as well as a conflict between the urban densification corporate towers can afford and the sprawl created by the small homes owned by people who cannot. But SI is the descendant of a concept that emphatically engages these poles: ‘artificial land,’ a typological idea invented by Le Corbusier, and imported by his Japanese protégés in the 1950s as a solution to the country’s housing crisis. Whilst a fuller history of artificial land will take place elsewhere, Corbusier’s vision was to treat buildings as building sites, as platforms of plots for freestanding houses that would make a ‘vertical garden city’ fighting sprawl’s waste of resources.6 This essay explores the more ambitious ancestors of SI future-proofing found at the Harumi Apartments (1958) and the NEXT21 Experimental Housing (1993), two artificial land projects by the structural engineer Toshihiko Kimura (1926–2009). These projects articulate a challenging but alluring middle ground that seems more difficult to achieve than extremes. For if tiny houses lack economies of scale, and corporate SI towers lack imagination, then artificial land aims to deliver both.

Future Stock

Transitional typology Noboru Kawazoe, later a member of the Metabolists, wrote in a 1959 review of Harumi that ‘when a city is built of flimsy materials and can be easily rebuilt, no one feels much responsibility for the planning of the city. Concrete’s very resistance to change makes it necessary for people working with it to plan 10, 20, or a 100 years ahead.’7 The tallest apartment building in Japan at the time, Harumi’s 10 storeys of concrete were a total break from the country’s historically lightweight and flammable housing, with its design meant to inspire quality urban architecture.

Designed by the architect Kunio Maekawa, who worked with Le Corbusier in the early 1930s, the building’s owner and operator was the Japan Housing Corporation (JHC). Founded in 1955, the JHC was a public/private organisation chartered to provide middle-market housing. Located on Harumi Island in Tokyo Bay, the new building was intended as the JHC’s flagship, with its unprecedented scale responding to the huge influx of people moving to Tokyo and other major cities that was prolonging the postwar housing crisis.

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The JHC anticipated rising land prices in the future, so a highrise model seemed wise though more expensive. The budget was tight, and Kimura, at the time working within Maekawa’s office, was keenly aware that the structure would consume most of it, particularly due to the site’s soft ground. Driving piles and welding for concrete reinforcing was expensive, and this limitation provoked Kimura to propose what he called ‘major-structure’ and ‘minor-structure.’ Kimura’s language signals a recalibration of structure: by making fewer bigger elements of primary structure, he was able to reduce piling and welding costs. The resultant gridded frame of major-structure formed bays measuring 12 metres wide by 9 metres high, into which was built the minor-structure of apartments that only needed to support themselves through comparatively lightweight concrete. Liberated from resisting seismic forces and primary loads, the apartments could be freely defined within the three-story voids.

Harumi Apartments, Kunio Maekawa, Tokyo, 1958 Photograph by Richard Langendorf, 1961

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Top and bottom: Harumi Apartments major- and minorstructure diagram and section. Drawing by Popular Architecture Opposite: Harumi Apartments: 1997 'variability test'.

Urban Renaissance Agency

However, variation was hardly an initial condition. As built, the 170 units were early versions of the 2DK apartment, the minimum dwelling made infamous throughout Japan thanks to the JHC’s work during the 1960s. But the design team, which included Masato Otaka (soon to become one of the Metabolists like Kawazoe), saw the major/minor idea as an infrastructure enabling Japanese domesticity to transition from austerity to affluence. At Harumi and for following projects, a transitional typology was forming.8 Major- and minor-structure became a temporal strategy.

Over the following decades Japan did, in general, transition to affluence. What did not transition was Harumi. In 1997, the project was effectively destroyed by land prices, rendered financially obsolete due to being drastically under-built after the removal of height limits in 1970. But before demolition, the Housing and Urban Development Corporation (the JHC’s successor) conducted what it called in an internal report a ‘variability test.’ After decades lying latent, the hypothetically permanent skeleton was methodically excavated of infill, with a special team working like a functionalist Gordon Matta-Clark. The report reveals ghostly suggestions of lofts, duplexes, triplexes and sky gardens, by subtracting sequential layers to ultimately reveal the infrastructure of their potential. Crudely simulating for a moment the dream of the transitional typology made real, the minor-structure’s removal implied conversion to a spacious domesticity unheard of in Japanese housing in 1958.

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ILLUSIONS OF FREEDOM A CRITIQUE OF EPHEMERAL WORKPLACE CULTURES Amelyn Ng The advent of globalisation, digitisation and fluctuating economies have seen an unprecedented increase in highmobility working arrangements around the world. Counter to the static ladder-oriented professions of generations past, the ‘freelancing’ lifestyle has become an increasingly popular career path amongst entrepreneurial youth. Once an uneasy state of transition between jobs, freelancing connotes an aspirational freedom of working for oneself from virtually anywhere, thanks to the ubiquity of the Internet and its associated liberties.

Technology is considered a central benefactor of this freedom for making intellect portable, eliminating overheads, reconstituting time and revolutionising collaboration (to name a few). We’ve all seen some form of the freelance lifestyle in action: simply recall the last time you saw well-dressed individuals sitting at a café in some gentrified neighbourhood, transfixed by laptops and smartphones that sync seamlessly to a vast, invisible hive of productivity.

Somewhere in the crossroads of convenience, restlessness and indecision, we learned to network, self-promote and optimise efficiencies in various states of temporality; to manipulate flows of goods and services at unnatural speeds; to dissociate value from venue in generating wealth and brand. It is finally possible to circumvent space or time based constraints such as one’s geographic location or work schedule. There is nothing one cannot buy, sell, learn or share in a heartbeat.

Freelancing has since been warmly received as a benefit to the economy and financial enabler to the opportunistic everyperson; its core trait of impermanence flogged as the ultimate marketplace democracy.

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Off-Kilter Yet something seems off-kilter about the bucolic ephemeral workplace. If we are becoming less spatially dependent for work, why are sprawling corporate headquarters on the rise?

What is the relationship between precarious employment and the production of cosmetic indulgences and socio-economic prejudices? As hot-desking and freelancing become synonymous with progress, we should begin to question the changing role of physical office environments—from permanent to provisional, tangible to immaterial—and its critical effects on agency and freedom in this contemporary age.

The last six decades have seen radical shifts in what it means to ‘work:' from physical production, manual manufacture and distribution of material goods, to the near-instantaneous exchange of knowledge, data and services of global proportions on a global scale. The term immaterial labour refers to this creation of informational and cultural content for physical commodities, without being directly involved in their physical production; it is characteristic of today’s information age.1 With this dematerialisation comes a plethora of growing pains experienced most by knowledge workers who must grapple daily with hypervisibility, ubiquity, mass intellectuality, task-based competition and exploitation in the global gig economy.2 Career trajectories in sectors such as media, art, fashion and technology take on increasingly haphazard and non-linear narratives, and with them, fundamentally different relationships with co-workers, work rights and workplaces emerge. Consider the concept of a share-house where unrelated individuals of variable tenancy are assembled together in a pseudo-home, along with fluctuating rental rates, income streams and unquestioned contingency. Situated in a regulatory grey-area deprived of employer benefits and union support, the contemporary ‘gig worker’ is perhaps the most precarious operator in the chain of modern employment – much like the high-risk subletter who is not formally part of the tenancy agreement, where a handshake agreement is the only thing between her and sudden eviction.

Illusions of Freedom

Fit-Out-First One might argue that this position of unprecedented consumer power brings more liberation than ‘eviction.'

Whereas the industrial employees of yesteryear were largely producers, today’s freelancers are just as much a target audience and income generator for other disparate businesses as they are for themselves and their clients. As marketing becomes an intrinsic factor in the design of these workspaces, architecture must continually refashion itself through choice and stimulation to pique the flitting subscriber’s interest.

The profession is naturally delighted—after all, architects cannot all be involved in public work, academia or activism.

Most of us long to design something new, get paid for it, then move on to the next thing. And for this, the private sector’s arms are wide open. The architect’s relationship with the market is viewed here as reciprocal—the more ‘niche’ the business offering, the more one can charge, remain competitive and profit from targeted sales. However, be warned—in this game, tectonic investment and architectural innovation often hold only as long as is ultimately profitable.

Architectural services, including the self-fulfilling act of ‘designing’, are not exempt by virtue of a higher creative sacrifice, and inherently form part of the immaterial labour classification that encompasses precarious workers found in software development, 3D visualisation, fashion, publishing, retail, food delivery, hospitality. Peggy Deamer expounds on such issues of immaterial labour specific to the architecture industry, examining the systemic conditions that perpetuate ‘precarious’ knowledge work and the dangers of selfvalorisation, that is, the ‘gift economy’ of free creative labour.3 Job security and predictability have dissolved along with the old ways of working—perhaps the new metric of satisfaction is the sophistication of one’s consumption.

Architectural innovations often begin with good intentions.

But no matter how altruistic, open-source or intellectually rule-breaking one’s practice rhetoric is, architects of transient workplaces who piggyback the erratic economy Vol 04 Permanence

of consumerism may be pigeonholing themselves into an increasingly insular niche. More and more capital is required to push creative ideological boundaries and materialise architectural visions. What unfortunate irony, then, that ‘progressive’ maverick architectural labour without critical thinking remains beholden to ‘regressive’ market practice, doing little for the overall health of our profession than widening the wage gap and shrinking design services into a hyper-specialised corner.

Architecture practices in the fast-paced business of commercial product often default to a ‘fit-out-first’ mantra, investing in tangible design outcomes that pay off, from novel forms and experiences, workflow optimisation and development of new technologies: ergonomic furniture, interactive workstations, cluster seating arrangements, thresholds for seamless programmatic transition. Our obsession with efficiency (albeit artistically considered) is palpable. Designers, being designers, have long been trained to manipulate material variables and present specific solutions in ways that produce tangible, and most likely recognisable, effects. Thus, the exercise of solving physical problems garners far more interest than active yet often intangible research into wicked problems so endemic of our time. Workplace flows and physical movements are meticulously studied and tested by R&D teams to find the perfect backrest angle or walking distance between meeting pods; yet there is far less progress in the research of the socio-political movements, employment interrelationships, local operations and global biases of temporary workforces themselves. The silenced revolts of wage-suppressed Chinese factory-workers, overnight plant closures due to ‘downsizing measures’ and subsequent mass redundancies in Mexican industrial labour only scratch the bubbling surface of temporary work culture.4 When designers speak of workplace diversity, they most likely do not refer to equitable infrastructures nor democratic access to amenities, but rather to the variety of themes and colours in a designated zone, or the range of postures with which one can hot-desk or break-out. Surely this cannot be 69

ON OBSOLESCENCE AN INTERVIEW WITH ELIZABETH DILLER

Elizabeth Diller is co-founder of New York based interdisciplinary studio Diller Scofidio + Renfro. DS+R integrate architecture, visual and performing arts, object and exhibition design in their practice, defying the conventional notions of what it means to build. ‘Their work explores how space functions in our culture and illustrates that architecture, when understood as the physical manifestation of social relationships, is everywhere, not just in buildings.’1 From beginnings in independent, theoretical and critical artbased architecture practice, they have since moved on to design some of the most prominent public projects in New York, such as the High Line and MoMA’s new expansion.

Inflection spoke with Diller about imagining permanence in a time of cultural obsolescence, autonomy and institutions, and the responsibility of the architect post-occupancy.

Elizabeth Diller, Photograph by Abe Morrell

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To begin broadly, we’re interested to hear any thoughts you have on our theme—how do you think about the idea of permanence in architecture?

As a society we typically think of architecture through life cycles—the longer a building lasts the better it is. If a piece of architecture is trendy and short lived, it’s considered to have less gravitas. That’s what is baked into our value system.

Our studio creates a wide body of work, some of which is intended to be transient and ephemeral, so we don’t exactly sit neatly within this value system. Architecture can span a whole range of time-frames. The transient work we do, we do a lot of, because it allows us to think very quickly, to get ideas out into the public realm, to experiment, and then to throw everything away (put it into landfill, burn it) and move on to other ideas. The process challenges us with a fast way of thinking about and producing work.

When it comes to more traditional architecture projects, it is a little more complicated. We know that our culture is changing very fast and in so many conventions of our everyday lives—from technology to our institutions to how we think about notions of domesticity and privacy. The question is, when programmes become obsolescent so quickly, and buildings are geo-fixed, how do we accommodate for this change? We are putting a lot of thought into this at the moment: How do you make a classic that doesn’t feel tired tomorrow, that can be re-purposed easily without being neutral? What actually is a classic? These are some of our thoughts around permanence in the discipline.

For example we’re currently working on a building called The Shed, a new cultural centre for artistic invention in New York. Initially, we asked ourselves: what will art look like in 10, 20, 30, 40 years? We don’t know. How do we make a building for a subject that is, by definition, transient and changing, where the building is dated from the moment you complete it? That’s the critical challenge for architecture. To imagine a permanence for a culture of obsolescence.

Here in Melbourne, your collaborative video work EXIT is currently being exhibited at the Ian Potter Museum, investigating the causes and effects of human migration. Going back to the discussion around DS+R’s temporary or immaterial work, would you say that these projects afford a higher degree of criticality which might be compromised on larger projects with higher stakes?

I actually don’t think of one as critical and the other a-critical. There are different media we use to explore different ideas and opportunities—each project we do has challenges of its own. This particular project, EXIT, was an opportunity to think about something we should all be concerned about: global migration. The work questions why people move for political, economic or environmental reasons, and interrogates this question through big data. The data is out there and is accessible, but how do you tell that story in an abstract way without using the conventions of narrative? This was a really interesting challenge, and not necessarily a spatial challenge. It’s a challenge of thinking about cities and the interrelationship between economics, environment and politics in a unique way. EXIT is unlike any project we’ve done, and probably unlike any project we will do.

We’re currently devoting a lot of intellectual energy to a project which explores the topic of the post-industrial city, through the medium of a large urban scale opera— one mile long. This kind of performance shifts the paradigm of how an audience experiences a piece, with both audience and performers scattered along, above and below the High Line. It puts us in the role of both creators and producers. We really like the challenge of pushing the agency of architecture much further than the typical inheritance of programme and tweaking of the appearance of things. We like to challenge what architects do in the first place.

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THE MEMORY OF LOSS Eleni Bastéa How do we define permanence in architecture and what might be the cost of that permanence? Is it the presence or the memory of a building that renders it permanent? Does the physical presence of a building erase the memory of what was there before? And what of the private, quotidian builtscapes that have marked our private lives? I will address these fairly open-ended questions by proposing positions and drawing examples from history, myth and personal memory.

First, at a fundamental level, permanence in architecture is born out of our own personal experience. As psychologists confirm, we forge our sense of identity during our childhood years.1 It is also at that time that we forge our sense of the built environment, our original ‘vocabulary of space’ that allows us to understand the built world around us.

Architecture is embedded in our body memory: we can find the door knobs and the light switches of our family home without thinking, just by moving through the rooms. But it is also this same memory of home, heightened by the tragedy of loss, that exiles and refugees carry with them for life. Others carry a softer, though still poignant memory of loss: a home that is not part of the family any more, a home in a different city, a home of departed parents.

Second, our experience of buildings is tied to the present.

As we walk down a street, we consider all the structures around us in a synchronous fashion. We do not categorise them chronologically, and except for architectural historians and town chroniclers, most of us do not wonder as to what might have been there before. But what of other peoples and other cultures who came before us? For those whose built landscapes have now long disappeared, been destroyed, or appropriated by others, permanence in architecture goes beyond the tangible experience of the present. Permanence resides in the heart and the spirit, in the memories and songs, in the stories and rituals, in the air we all breathe.

Third, reflecting on permanence and architecture, I have come to believe it is loss that sharpens our senses and desires. It is loss—loss of a beloved person, of a building, of a city—that renders its memory indelible, immeasurable and infinite. And it is loss that liberates the muse and gives shape and voice to our longings. I believe that it is only through loss that architecture achieves true permanence.

Opposite: Paris, Rue Estienne, de la rue Boucher.

Photograph by Charles Marville, 1862–1865

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First Impressions We changed neighbourhoods and moved from a house to an apartment the summer before I started third grade. In the late 1960s, Thessaloniki, like all of Greece, was consumed by construction fever. Grey, reinforced-concrete apartment buildings were rapidly replacing private homes with gardens.

The promise of modernisation, coupled with the tradition of dowry—providing daughters with their own home—fuelled this whole-scale destruction and rebuilding. Sprawling households were shoe-horned into new, tight apartments and gardens gave way to potted plants on narrow balconies.

Like most children, I had never thought about the possible destruction of another building, small or large, to make way for our new apartment building. When you are young, you think that history starts with you, or at least with your parents and grandparents. You do not wonder about what might have come before you. It was not until many years later, when studying architectural history at university, that I began wondering about our apartment building’s history. Was there a single-family home in its place? Did that home have a

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garden, with mulberry and almond trees and a chicken coop in one corner, as our old house used to have? Or was that area still open and undeveloped, a dusty paradise for kids playing soccer, touch ball or jump rope?

When we moved into our new, second-floor apartment, there were still several single-family homes around us. One was just to the right of our balcony, as we faced the street. It had a traditional tiled, hipped roof. The roof was an important detail, because in Greek lore you are supposed to throw your baby tooth over the roof, singing: “Mouse, take my tooth and give me an iron one, so that I can crunch the bread, whilst you eat it soaked [in water.]” Eventually, the house with the tiled roof was also torn down.

But it was the fate of another small house to the left of our balcony that has stayed in my mind. That was also a one-story house, but instead of the traditional hipped, tiled roof, it had a simple, flat concrete-slab. This was an ‘illegal’ or ‘arbitrary’ structure, as they are called in Greek, lacking proper building permits and typically constructed

The Memory of Loss

on someone else’s undeveloped property. One day, the city demolition crew arrived, ordering everyone out of the small house immediately. One by one, the family members came out, carrying their belongings out on the street. The bulldozer began breaking the concrete slab of the roof, one loud, violent crash after another. One of the women burst into tears. People gathered around to comfort her. By the end of the day, everyone had left, the house a heap of bricks and broken walls.

Eventually, all of that was cleared, new foundations were carved out of the earth and construction for the new building started. From our balcony, my brother and I watched the new concrete skeleton go up, then the brick walls, the windows and balcony doors, and all the other details that make each apartment look like a home. Even now that my parents have passed on, I think of our apartment building and the ones around it as solid and permanent parts of my own childhood.

Yet, the image of the bulldozer demolishing the roof of the small house has also stayed with me, destruction and permanence trading places in my memory.

New buildings, like new beginnings, carry with them the promise of hope. Architectural education and the profession of architecture are built upon that promise. But behind all the visible buildings around us lie the buildings that used to be and the stories of the people who had inhabited them, the people who left, the people who were forced to leave, the people who have now moved on. Theirs are the forgotten, little-known stories and silenced memories, shared by writers and historians, the chroniclers of every city. To understand permanence in architecture we need to encompass both the visible and invisible buildings—those surrounding us, and those destroyed, those remembered, and those forgotten.

Simonides and the Art of Memory If memory is the handmaiden of architecture, it is bound to supersede the life of a building, lingering long after its destruction. Historian Frances Yates began her seminal work, The Art of Memory (1966), with the story of Simonides, which comes down to us from Cicero’s De Oratore (55 BCE):

There is a story that Simonides was dining at the house of a wealthy nobleman named Scopas at Crannon in Thessaly, and chanted a lyric poem which he had composed in honour of his host, in which he followed the custom of the poets by including for decorative purposes a long passage referring to Castor and Pollux; whereupon Scopas with excessive meanness told him he would pay him half the fee agreed on for the poem, and if he liked he might apply for the balance to his sons of Tyndaraus, as they had gone halves in the panegyric.

The story runs that a little later a message was brought to Simonides to go outside, as two young men were standing at the door who earnestly requested him to come out; so he rose from his seat and went out, and could not see anybody; but in the interval of his absence the roof of the hall where Scopas was giving the banquet fell in, crushing Scopas himself and his relations underneath the ruins and killing them; and when their friends wanted to bury them but were altogether unable to know them apart as they had been completely crushed, the story goes that Simonides was enabled by his recollection of the place in which each of them had been reclining at table to identify them for separate interment; and that this circumstance suggested to him the discovery of the truth that the best aid to clearness of memory consists in orderly arrangement.2 The story of Simonides has been recounted as marking the beginnings of the art of memory, fixing an event within an architectural structure. But the story points also to the tragic confluence of memory, architecture, and death: architecture aiding the identification of the dead. We often focus on the formal and peaceful quest for the beginnings of architecture, going back to the prehistoric caves of Alta Mira and Lascaux, the architectural principles of Vitruvius (first century BCE)—firmness, commodity, and delight—and Marc-Antoine Laugier’s Primitive Hut (1753), constructed of four posts, four beams and a roof.3 We connect memory with pleasure and desire.4 But violence and destruction, displacement and occupation, rebuilding and adaptation are all part of architecture’s mythology and legacy. The banquet of Simonides marks one of architecture’s foundation stories.

As does the expulsion from the Garden Eden. And the Tower of Babel.

Opposite: Thessaloniki, Greece. Author’s neighbourhood, near Dimitrion Square [Plateia Dimitrion], 2004.

Representative example of the city’s multi-story apartment buildings, designed and built by contractors in the 1960s and 1970s. Photograph by Mark Forte

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affected by war, violence, starvation and climate change to name a few. But they are also stripped of the last of the individual rights—identity. Australia, for instance, numbers individuals in their offshore sites. Individuals are deprived not only of national identity but also of personal identity, of a name and place in the world.

Architecture can be one medium through which identities may figure closely with the building of secure, hospitable and long-term shelter. On one hand, you have an invisible geopolitical space (the border) that is being defined and understood as fixed.

In contrast, the refugee body is geopolitically defined as indeterminate, even if their identities are formalised as refugees. Multiple scales of erasure and border building occur simultaneously as a means to define the ‘place’ of the refugee and asylum seeker. Our understanding of the contemporary landscape and built environment is thus continually upended by those who represent challenges to how borders are constructed, dismantled and reconceptualised by the non-Stateless on a regular basis.

In exploring the refugee experience, you discuss how their precarious journeys in search of security are often “haunted by a dream of permanence, of shelter.” With rapidly increasing urban growth, do you think we are all haunted by the same dream for security in a world of obsolescence?

Yes. A dream of home may be located at a fixed location such as where your family resides, or it could also be a spectre of fixity within spaces that are mobile and ever-changing. It's a conflict between what is physical and constructed, what is emotional and intellectual. Each of us has to make a series of negotiations with the inherent conflicts of space and the city, and construct a sense of permanence with the tools you have.

Opposite: al-Za'atari Refugee Camp in Jordan. Photograph by US Department of State, 2013

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Russell Watkins, Zaatari refugee camp: "like living on the moon", image, https://flic.kr/p/fFJuSs. Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic License, http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/.

Accessed August 25 2017 Sean Anderson and Jennifer Ferng, "No Boat: Christmas Island and the Architecture of Detention," Architectural Theory Review 18 (2013): 212-26.

Sean Anderson, "Fugitive Borders," Fabrications 25 (2015): 344-75.

An Interview with Sean Anderson

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PERMANENCE AND HERITAGE A NEW RESEARCH CENTRE AT THE MELBOURNE SCHOOL OF DESIGN Gareth Wilson Historic architecture is a vital and much-valued element of our built environment. It acts as a tangible connection to the past and helps to define the character of our cities. It bears witness to technological advances and ever-changing social, political and cultural attitudes. In some cases it is simply a reminder of shifts in aesthetic taste and fashion. But historic architecture can also act on a more personal, intimate and subtle level by providing a link to the everyday domestic lives of previous generations.

The accumulated value we place on historic architecture– our recognition as a society of its importance to future generations–is termed ‘built heritage.’ The use of the term heritage in this context is purely arbitrary. Buildings do not innately have heritage value; it is something that we, as a community, bestow upon them to mark their perceived significance.

Heritage in a temporal sense has no fixed point, no anchoring to a particular era, event or time-frame. There is no such concept as ‘permanence’ when applied to heritage in a pure sense. Contemporary architecture is tomorrow’s heritage, but the point at which this occurs depends on an unpredictable interplay of elements–community attitudes change, common typologies become rarer, research identifies previously unrecognised significance.

Relevance and fragility Despite the seemingly permanent nature of these historic structures, they can be surprisingly fragile in the face of modern pressures. The impact of warfare, the accelerating influence of climate change and economic forces driving urban development are just some of the factors that represent an ongoing threat to our historic built environment.

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Effective management is further complicated by the dizzying array of typologies from the industrial to the domestic, and scale which encompasses individual buildings, cities and vast landscapes. Heritage also embraces the intangible, offering a deeper understanding of cultural practices associated with these places.

The need for greater understanding Society’s complicated and often conflicting relationship to historic architecture raises challenging questions around the ongoing role of heritage in the urban environment. A new research centre, based within the Melbourne School of Design, promotes a collaborative and cross-disciplinary approach to the critical research of architectural history, heritage conservation and digital, cultural, landscape and urban heritage and design.

The Australian Centre for Architectural History, Urban and Cultural Heritage (ACAHUCH) is the pre-eminent centre for the study of built environment history and heritage in Australia. ACAHUCH will play an important role in shaping the debate around policy and practice in the understanding, interpretation and conservation of important places, buildings and sites. By providing high-quality graduate training, ACAHUCH will increase interest and engagement in national and international built heritage, encouraging a more sensitive approach to the incorporation of historic architecture into contemporary design.

Our collective heritage is a constant reminder of how our relationship to the environment is constantly evolving in the face of changing social, cultural and political influences.

ACAHUCH will provide a timely forum for exploring approaches to balancing the historical and contemporary aspects of the built environment, helping to ensure that this vital aspect of our cultural identity is safeguarded for future generations.

Permanence and Heritage

Inflection is a student-run design journal based at the Melbourne School of Design, University of Melbourne. Born from a desire to stimulate debate and generate ideas, it advocates the discursive voice of students, academics and practitioners. Founded in 2013, Inflection is a home for provocative writing—a place to share ideas and engage with contemporary discourse.

Inflection: Journal of the Melbourne School of Design

Permanence as an architectural concept is no longer restricted to the Vitruvian virtue of firmitas. To think about it in this sense today produces a schism: absolutism in a world of relativism. The fourth volume of Inflection extrapolates the permanent and the temporary not as opposing forces, but as a spectrum to be navigated at each stage of architecture’s unfolding narrative. Through each of the responses presented in this year’s edition, Permanence provides a critical voice as architecture and design continually seek an enduring foothold in an inherently evolving landscape, physical or otherwise.

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