Factory Squared: Project Design Journal

Social Production and its Discontents.

Design Journal.

Glenn Mckerracher rooms+cities

“We

no longer have simply the means of production on the one hand, and the worker on the other, but all the conditions of labour, on the one hand and the worker, which labours, on the other; labour and labour-power opposed one to the other and both united within capital”

Mario Tronti, Factory and Society.

PROJECT ORIGINS

WHAT IS THE SOCIAL FACTORY?

This interpretation of the Social Factory looks to create an X-ray of the capitalist metropolis, depicting a factory obsessed with the production of the generic. This vision of the city seeks to provide a theory of societal organisation in the form of an architectural project. Not a proposal for change but a scenario set out to highlight the reality of our urban landscape.

Three factories take their influence from three separate readings, these three factories in their totality can be described as a Social Factory. The productive output of the Social Factory is the generic self, a modern reboot of Georg Simmels blase attitude, described in the metropolis and mental life.

The worker serves as a metaphor for all inhabitants of the metropolis in its most extreme conditions.

Factory

The Social Factory typical building cells

self

Civilisation and its Discontents

Sigmund Freud

The Social Factory the mental

Edu Factory

the generic self product the technological

S,M,L,XL

Rem Koolhaas the built Typology Factory

Data Factory

Surveillance Capitalism

Shoshana Zuboff

TEXT BASED REFERENCES AS

Key References

Diagraming the use and relevance of the key references used within the project and depicting them in relation to the three key themes this project sets out to explore.

Whatever

Rem Koolhaas

Ville Spatial

Yona Friedman

Investigations in Collective Form

Fumihiko Maki

Junkspace Rem Koolhaas Supports Nicholas Haabracken

The Generic City

Rem Koolhaas

Privacy is Power

Carissa Veliz

Surveillance Capitalism Shoshana Zuboff

Metropolisarchitecture

Architecture + Utopia

Manfredo Tafuri

A Simple Heart

DOGMA

Ludwig Hilberseimer

Metropolis and Mental Life

Civilisation and its Discontents

Sigmund Freud

Politics + Pastoralism

Sam Kwintor

Georg Simmel

The Ego + the ID

Sigmund Freud

The Mirror Stage

JacquesLacan

Andreas Gursky

German Photographer

Google N-gram

TEXT BASED REFERENCE

Key References

Diagraming the use and relevance of the key references used within the project and depicting them in relation to the three key themes this project sets out to explore.

Junkspace

Rem Koolhaas

Whatever happened to urbanism?

Rem Koolhaas

Nicholas Haabracken

Green Archipelago

O M Ungers

Typical Plan

Rem Koolhaas

Ville Spatial

Yona Friedman

Investigations in Collective Form

Fumihiko Maki

Introduction to the Big Other

Jacques Lacan

The Generic City

Rem Koolhaas

Humanise

Thomas Heatherwick

X Urbanism

Mario Gandelsonas

Architecture + Utopia

Manfredo Tafuri

A Simple Heart

DOGMA

Twelve Cautionary Tales

Superstudio

Metropolisarchitecture

Factory and Society

Mario Tronti

Surveillance Capitalism

Shoshana Zuboff

Ludwig Hilberseimer

Metropolis and Mental Life

Georg Simmel

Civilisation and its Discontents

Sigmund Freud

Project of Autonomy

Pier Vitorro Aurelli

Sphere and Labyrinth

Privacy is Power

Carissa Veliz

Politics + Pastoralism

Sam Kwintor

The Mirror Stage

The Ego + the ID

Sigmund Freud

Manfredo Tafuri

Andreas Gursky

German Photographer

Google N-gram

JacquesLacan

On Touching

Jacques Derrida

PROJECT DESIGN REFERENCES

Hochausstadt

Ludwig Hilberseimer

A Simple Heart Dogma

Galatresse Housing

Aldo Rossi

Lloyds Building

Richard Rodgers

Barbican Chamberlain, Powell and Bonn

Clemens Gritl

No-Stop City

Archizoom

Milstein Hall OMA

Rozzol Melara Complex

Unite d’Habitation

Le Corbusier

PROJECT MAPPING

The below flowchart understands the project and its references at a key interim review on 24/01.

Project Summary

“Identity centralises”

“What is left when identity is stripped? The Generic?” Rem Koolhaas “The Generic City is the city liberated from the captivity of centre, from the straightjacket of identity.”

The Generic City

The Generic Self The Built Influence

A 21st Century reeboot A new Blase Attitude

The Metropolis and Mental Life

Georg Simmel

The blase attitude

The emotionless reaction to “overcome the shock of the city”

Data collection of “human experience” in order to sell it back to society

Surveillance Capitalism Shoshana Zuboff

Supports: An alternative to Mass Housing Nicholas Habraken

Suburbia. Developer led mass housing

What is the Architecture?

“the city involves scales of intervention, two cycles of production and consumption” Manfredo Tafuri

The Social Factory

Production of the Generic Self

“the city as a social factory”

The Ego and the ID + Civilisation and its Discontents Sigmund Freud

The image a person has of themselves influenced by the external world i.e. other people

DOGMA

The Mental Generic

Student / Inhabitant Variation

Large Urban Areas SmallTowns

Underg raduate Student Enrolments

Large Urban Areas

Settlements of over 125,000 people

Other Urban Areas

Settlements of 10,000 to 125,000 people

RuralAreas

Small Towns

Settlements of between 3,000 and 10,000 people

Rural

Settlements of less than 3,000 people

Number of produced homes

% of keyword in Google's sample of books

Local Authority New Build

DESIGN CONSIDERATIONS

Orientation

The flow of factory production takes it’s orientation from the three closest towns and cities to Cumbernauld with a population greater than 50,000. Production flows in a linear fashion in the direction of these locations. In the case of Cumbernauld it takes orientation from Glasgow, Hamilton and Livingston.

Data

Orientation

Typology

Three factories

A factory inhabits each line with it’s own type.

The Edu Factory taking the orientation from Glasgow.

The Data Factory taking the orientation from Livingston.

The Typology Factory taking the orientation from Hamilton

The wall as a datum

An inhabited wall acts as a frame through which we can view society in this manner. The wall acts as a datum upon the hill which Cumbernauld exists. The point at which it is closest to the ground is 3m and the farthest point 35m

The wall as a datum

Transport Stops

A metropolitan transit system known to residents as “the belt” transports workers and raw materials of the social factory between buildings. With the expansion of the social factory to other towns and cities this network will travel between the various centres.

Sharpening distinctions

The inhabited wall sharpens the definition between factory and society, placing factory within centre of the lens and society outwith.

Sharpening distinctions

Connected expansion

The future expansion of the central belt to other towns and cities with a population larger than 50,000

THE FLOW OF SOCIAL PRODUCTION

The Social Factory looks to follow methods of Fordist production in order to create an efficient work machine. Initially determining the methods of car production to form the framework that the Social Factory could follow. A number of these processes happen out with the walls of the factory and are reliant on transport and delivery.

The car assembly line was used to determine key stages in the production of commodities. This then served as a base to which the functions of the Social Factory could be aligned with.

All tasks and interactions a person has can be shown using these steps. All tasks and interactions a process of production.

The import of loose material to supply production.

The import of loose material to supply production. The import of loose material to supply production.

The import of loose material to supply production. The import of loose material to supply production.

Edu Factory Structure

Concrete column and beam structure at 10m centres with a typical 3.5m floor to floor height Elevation Elevation Plan

Axonometric

Typology

Making use of a concrete portal frame structure in all typology factory buildings.

Elevation

Elevation

Axonometric

Data Factory Structure

A concrete waffle slab spanning peripheral columns, the free plan 38 storeys in total

Typical Floor Worms Eye Axo

REUSE OF A MEGASTRUCTURE

Concrete, with its significant carbon footprint and difficulty in recycling, presents a major concern in the construction industry. With this project looking to use a high volume of concrete in its construction, reuse of concrete where possible is essential.

Traditional methods involve crushing demolished concrete structures into aggregate material, but the quality of secondary aggregates is often inadequate.

Sika has developed the reCO2ver process, which utilizes chemical-mechanical treatment to improve the quality of recycled aggregates.

The process produces cement-free aggregates suitable for various applications. This technology not only enhances the quality of recycled concrete but also reduces water and cement usage while sequestering CO2 emissions.

sources: Concrete Recycling Is Already a Reality

Sika Group

sika recycling method

MODELS

1 : 1000

Steel MDF Acrylic

Constructing the frame

Testing Cast Building Pieces

Testing methods of joining

Testing Cast Building Pieces

1 : 2500 3D Printed ABS MDF

MAPPING IDENTITY

“Identity centralizes; it insists on an essence, a point.”

Rem Koolhaas The Generic City

800m

1 : 20, 000

The following study examines the identity of towns and cities of the central belt with a population larger that fifty thousand. Taking a 800m square section of each centre and periphery to provide a snapshot of place. The outcome of this is to determine whether or not “identity centralizes” as told by Rem Koolhaas in his essay “The Generic City”. The central and peripheral squares can be read in conjunction with each other as a series of city typologies which can be inhabited through the design project.

GLASGOW

Centre

Periphery

Periphery

EAST KILBRIDE

Centre

Periphery

Centre

Periphery

PAISLEY

Centre

Periphery

Periphery

HAMILTON

Periphery

CUMBERNAULD

Periphery

COMPARING LANDSCAPES

Comparing peripheral landscape strips at the same scale with the centres aligned allows for an analysis of the identity of cities. It is clear that more often than not we can draw similarities between the peripheries of large scale towns and cities. Their centres however draw on a range of designs, some with a rigid grid, held within a single building and some with historic winding streets. This task has looked to prove the suggestion of Koolhaas that “identity centralises”.

MAPPING THE CENTRAL BELT

The tasks concluded to provide the final central belt drawing mapping the future expansion of the project across the studied sites.

The centres are determined by the centralised identity of a place mapping the journey from centre to periphery; identity to generic.

CUMBERNAULD PHOTOGRAPHY

WELCOME TO THE SOCIAL FACTORY

06 11 23

The beginning of November seen a transition from the sole focus of groupwork to a hybrid of groupwork and individual research project. The initial proposal looked at developing a generic landscape of housing towers within Cumbernauld inspired by Corbusier. Spanning between the towers was a space frame suspended in the air and housing the functions of the town centre.

The theme of generic has stayed with the project from the origin.

iHome: AN INITIAL NARRATIVE

The Dwelling.

Users will venture to the central library in a journey to purchase their dwelling, with the ability to select from endless combinations of components from the central library database. Dwellings come in S - the dwelling for the individual, M - the dwelling for the couple, L - the family dwelling and XL - the extended family dwelling.

Autonomy.

All Dwellings be equipped with visual and audio monitoring technology to give users the ultimate sense of satisfaction.

The Installation.

Dwellings will be fixed into tower blocks in a modular manner this will enable the tower block to be completely transient. The generic city is so due to its ultimate adaptable nature and this aspect will help to facilitate that.

Capacity.

The capacity of the apartment blocks will always be 90% of the maximum available space. This space will be left for the unique.. The trojan horse. The naked boxer eating oysters. The Ubermensch. The function of these spaces are ubsurd and unaccounted for as they do not belong within the plan of the generic and cannot be influenced by its factors.

The Mat.

The neighbourhood mat will span between towers providing the needs of a community, these needs will be identified and also will be produced in the town centre “typology factory”. The aim of these is also to be transient as the generic city has no permanent centre therefore it is important that centre and periphery are interchangeable components.

Apple conquered the telephone market creating a product and a brand built upon the ideas of giving control to the user over use giving the flexibility to download and customise ones own ‘home screen’ etc in essence letting the user select from a kit of components which they manage over all. Ultimately selling the same “generic” product to all of its customers and allowing some elements of adaptability giving some sort of identity to the user but the product at its core is the same. As technology has developed Apple now has the ability to predict movements through the tracking of data which can be used as commodity. This is best understood to us through clicking “I accept” on every terms and conditions box which appears on our computer screen. But what are we agreeing to? And how

iHome looks to build upon the same ideas incorporated by Apple to give a product to the housing market which will enable users to select their home through a kit of component parts. With the terms and conditions comes the element of surveillance which looks to give the user a more autonomous method of living creating a true “machine for living” by tracking the regular behaviour patterns of the inhabitant and providing for them before the conscious mind is aware of its needs.

Plan

92 unit spaces per floor with centralised circulation.

Circulation

Typical Block

Typical Block

Elevation

Amenity mat suspended at 20m between flats. 10% of the block left for the ungeneric.

10% excess space

Amenity Mat

The Dwelling of the Modern Metropolis

DESIGN DIAGRAMS

Cloud Conscious.

Let the cloud think for you with cloud consciousness

Love thyself as thy Neighbour.

Homes on the move. Live with people just like you!

Sublime impermanence! Don’t like where you live, moving is easy

ORGANISING SPACES

1 bedroom apartment 1-2 persons. M

2 bedroom apartment 2-3 persons. 12000 L

3 bedroom apartment 3-4 persons. XL

4 bedroom apartment 4- 5 persons.

09 11 23

The next week saw a development in the ideas of production and consumption within the city. Generating the idea of a central areas for production which was a theme that continued in the project.

This also was the stage in which the ideas of “the generic self” began to come through in the project. Combining surveillance capitalism, the urban landscape and the idea of freuds psyche in a diagram which would later be reinterpreted as “the generic self”.

23 11 23

A series of generic landscapes were analysed at this stage taking Ville Contemporaine and Hochhausstadt and montaging them into Cumbernauld. These projects were then manipulated to show a series of conditions within the landscape, removing elements based on Cumbernauld neighbourhoods and the relationship to the megastructure.

1 : 20,000

1 : 20,000

1 : 20,000

TOWERLESS VILLE CONTEMPORAINE TOWERS INTO CUMBERNAULD

1 : 20,000

1 : 20,000

CUMBERNAULD MONTAGED INTO VILLE CONTEMPORAINE

HOCHHAUSSTADT INTO CUMBERNAULD

1 : 20,000

HOCHHAUSSTADT INTO CUMBERNAULD NEIGHBOURHOODS

1 : 20,000

12 01 24

This stage seen the greatest development in the project to date. The idea of incorporating three factories and a square wall as a boundary. At this moment the boundary wall had no real programmatic function other than to retain the factory inside.

An early stage process cycle was developed with an understanding of the functions of each factory.

Scale at this point was a real unknown, the factories covered a large ground areas with little consideration for their operation.

SITE STRATEGY LAYOUT

The Built Generic - The ihome factory

The Mind Generic - The edufactory

The Technological Generic - The capitalist factory

Dogma Wall

Public SpaceTM (Junkspace)

Flow of Production

The Built Generic - The ihome factory

The Mind Generic - The edufactory

The Technological Generic - The capitalist factory

TYPICAL FACTORY PRODUCTION

The Social Factory

Three factories in a cycle of production and consumption

The Mind Generic The ‘Edufactory’

The Built Generic The ihome factory

The Technological Generic The Capitalist Factory

24 01 24

The work within this section details the pin up for the first interim review of the project. Time spent between the last tutorial and this review focussed on the spaces and how they may function along with streamlining the current idea for the project.

The wall acts as a form of processing for individuals manifesting to be as neutral as an airport, easy to understand the steps in processing. All remaining identity is left at the wall and can be reclaimed upon exit. Peripheral towns will empty as their inhabitants flood to the wall to wait in line for entry.

The Social Factory (Centre)

The Wall

The Typology Factory

Producing and testing a series of new typologies which will be rolled out across the central belt. Creating one singular design per typology produced on a fordist assembly line to minimise error and maximise profit for the Social Factory as a whole.

The Capitalist Factory

Data is gathered from the workers of the social factory and stored in the endless data server room. The information stored depicts the basic daily trends of society. Data can then be extracted for analysis by the workers of the Capitalist Factory in order to generate profit.

The Edufactory teaches a single generic course, students spend time in a lecture series developing an understanding of blase methods of design and production. The outcome is to teach all the same content.

The Blase Attitude

Lecture 01

Phasing of the Generic Centre

01.Demonisation of your town centre in the media.

02. Condemn your town centre

03. Demolish

04. Build a wall

05. Introduce built factory

06. Natural Growth

02 02 24

Acting on the feedback from the review, this work looked to remove the wall (a move which would later be reversed) as well as dealing with the internal spaces in the building. This moment suggested a strategy of designing in 10m x 10m modules and repeating this throughout the site.

The Social Factory - Service Spaces

09 02 24

This week seen the development to form three diagrammatic lines with a peripheral wall. Each line takes its orientation from the three closest towns with a population of over 50,000.

In addition to this model diagrams addressed possible ways of dealing with the sloped area as well as how the line may intersect with each other.

An early structural solution was explored here, created from steel this element would allow the steel to have primary and secondary structure intersect with a single unit. The module also allowed for the factories to build and dismantelled with ease.

Build Up

Walled Slope

Removed Intersections

Intersecting Lines with Towers

Intersecting Lines

Structural Node Development

15 02 24

The project began to develop as two separate elements now, the wall which houses and the factories which produce left internally.

The Wall began to develop a language in both plan and in elevation through a series of different drawings.

FLOW OF FACTORY PRODUCTION

PROJECT DIAGRAMS

SITE OBLIQUE DRAWING

Nuts,

INHABITED WALL INITIAL PLAN

INHABITED WALL

1,540 Flats per floor - Propostions taken from Unite d’Habitation

TAXONOMY OF SPACES

21 02 24

The wall was further developed to understand the height, the decision was made to ensure 50,000 people would inhabit the wall, matching the population that currently live in Cumbernauld.

The rail was introduced at this stage also, taking a position on how the rail could move through the landscape. The decision was later made to only have the rail above ground and not take it underground.

LAYOUT OF FLATS

100% of cumbernauld population

30% of cumbernauld existing population

15k People

Cumbernauld)

28 02 24

At this point the lines were broken down into a series of buildings instead of a singular linear block. The lines follow the flow of production and create a unique urban condition within the central landscape.

Initial structural strategies were proposed here which were further developed later down the line but followed the same initial principles set out here. The structural desicions helped to define form and type of each factory, towers, blocks and sheds.

Plans for the Data Factory were given a first attempt at this stage which was a first for the project to have an enitre factory plan and not just a snapshot.

Facade Study DATA TOWER FACADE STUDY

03 - Vertical Expression

02 - Vertical Louvres

01 - Horizontal Expression

Typical Structural Grid Typology Factory

Typical Structural Grid

Data Factory

07 03 24

As the project moved towards the final reviews draft perspectives were developed to provide a narrative and an idea of how the graphics would develop both in terms of drawing style and in terms of built aesthetics.

Glenn Mckerracher rooms+cities