21XThings ThingsIILearned Learnedin in"FUTURE "FUTUREPRACTICE" PRACTICE"
Rory RoryHyde Hyde
Content Foreword. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3 Edge . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5 Design & Leadership . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7 Decentralisation. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9 First Principle VS Analogy. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11 Boundaries: "Double agency". . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13 "Dark matter" . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15 Vision design Public . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 17 Work with the Contract . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 19 "Fractional AI". . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 21 Strategic Design. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 23 Architects & Management consultants. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 25 Hardware & Software. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 27 "Open design". . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 29 "Magnifying glass". . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 31 Writing & Architecture . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 33 Independent designer . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 35 Programmers & Architects . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 37 "O-design". . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 39
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Foreword
FUTURE Future is based on our understanding and respond and efforts other than the speculation based on "current data". "As warren ellis says, ‘prediction is always just science fiction’s side effect’. So for us the future isn’t what happens when we imagine it and make images of it; the future happens when someone reads it, responds to it and wants to start to make it" - Liam Young
感
动
应
ARCHITECTURE Crisis: marginalisation/relevance "We complain of marginalisation from the process of real decision-making; of being treated like cake decorators only interested in styling; of being undervalued financially; of being over regulated; of being too exposed to the instability of the market, and more." - Rory Hyde
PRACTICE The big idea of Architecture is using spatial intelligence to shape the world, which are not always achieved through the buildings, especially for the modern society. "Buildings are not why cities exist; they are simply a side-effect of cities." - Rory Hyde "The best solution to an architectural problem may not necessarily be a building." - Cedric Price
"The Architect's New Atlas" by Martti Kalliala and Hans Park.
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Edge Through taking these pieces together, we are can improve our awareness about the role of architecture in the large context so that we are able to better response and initiate the future of architecture "The disruptive power of an edge must be reckoned with" "Edges may also ... have directional qualities." "Edges are often paths as well." - Kevin Lynch
#Internal force
#Shifting force
#Outer force
THE CIVIC ENTREPRENEUR
THE WHOLE-EARTH ARCHITECT
THE MASSIVE CHANGER
THE HISTORIAN OF THE PRESENT
THE URBAN ACTIVIST
THE STRATEGIC DESIGNER
THE NEAR FUTURE INVENTOR
Indy Johar
00:/
Bruce Mau
Reinier de Greaaf & Laura Baird AMO
THE DOUBLE AGENT Mel Dodd muf_aus
THE CONTRACTUAL INNOVATOR
Wouter Vanstiphout
Crimson
Camila Bustamante
Steve Ashton ARM
THE NEW AMSTERDAM SCHOOL DUS Architects
THE PROFESSIONAL GENERALIST Jeanne Gang Studio Gang
THE ARCHITECT AS PUBLIC INTELLECTUAL
Bryan Boyer
Helsinki Design Lab
Matt Webb BERG
THE MANAGEMENT THINKERS
THE COMMUNITY ENABLER
THE EDITOR OF THE BEYOND
THE ENVIRONMENTAL MEDIC
Todd Reisz on consultants
Marcus Westbury Renew Newcastle
Conrad Hamann on Robin Boyd
THE EDUCATOR OF EXCESS Liam Young
Unknown Fields
Arjen Oosterman & Lilet Breddels Volume
Natalie Jeremijenko xClinic
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Design & Leadership Through associating the design with leadship, we gain a better understanding about our role and abilities need to be improved. "Design is about imagining the future and systematically working to execute that future. Well, if you look up 'leadership' in the dictionary it's going to say something like that, that's what leadership is." “That's the challenge of our new era: synthesise incredibly complex inputs and reconcile those inputs into one coherent way of proceeding.� - Bruce Mau
Massive change network
Publication
Uni course
Institute
24HRS2MC design principles
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Decentralisation Leave aside the idea of Enlightenment model, we need to consider both the pros and cons of the complexity in real life. The complexity, on one hand, equals to the diverse social capital which can be synthesized to create a per formative impact; on the other hand, it encourage us to build a decentralised system to engage these social capital. "...that dichotomy of doing a real building or not is part of the problem." “The idea that we can disassociate one aspect from another aspect is an illusion. It's an illusion of a 17th-century Enlightenment model...that in vitro modelling of the world isn't able to cope with the complexity.� - Indy Johar 00:/
00:/
Scale-Free School
Wiki House
Hub Westminister
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First Principle VS Analogy Analogy: experience + precedents First Principle: focus on facts rather than opinions Analogy helps us learn about the strange field quickly, but it will be a trap somehow. Different from analogy, the first principle view the problem based on facts and through various perspective by knowledge inside and outside the major. "...By approaching it from first principles, we can relearn the problem as a way of coming up with our own solution.� - Laura Baird AMO
AMO
The research studio and think -tank of OMA
Roadmap 2050 project • "Demonstrates another advantage of liberating architecture from the obligation to construct..."
The New Normal: the postgraduate curriculum for Strelka Institute. • Multidisciplinary • "Product" take place the "degree"
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Boundaries: "Double agency" Boundaries between architecture; Boundaries between the design and the occupation; Boundaries between practitioner and interested parties; Boundary lead to social inequity. "...a bicycle shed is a building; Lincoln Cathedral is a piece of architecture...� - Nikolaus Pevsner "...there is an inevitable break between what is designed and how it is inhabited." "...looks at areas of disadvantage, and at social inequity as a spatial condition - but as an agenda for design, I notice it is in the minority." - Laura Baird AMO
muf_aus
Diorama Bench • "The is humble bench illustrates the role that a tiny physical structure can play in facilitating a larger civic agenda."
Barking Town Centre • "Extend the role beyond the final completion" • Intervention on occupation
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"Dark matter" Politics as one of the dark matter that real shape the city is hidden behind the physical building, Through deploying the tools of the historian, they could view these "context" from a distance, therefore give a real alternative, to have a real effect, to be visionary. "Through an examination of architecture's changing relationship to politics, power, economics and society, students are prepared to engage these forces of 'dark mater' in a more relevant and engaging way." - Wounter Vanstiphout Crimson
Crimson
Crimson • By associating the architecture with the historian, the architecture gain a wider perspective to see through the formation of the city.
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Vision
Amplifier
Design Bridge
Public
Through the minimal design intervention, the vision from experts can be informed to the public, at the same time, the public can easily access the vision with the help of design. Thus, certain changes are possible initiated in wide range and multiple level. "Design in this case really helped me to legitimise this imaginative scenario. I tried to be as official as possible, to make it look like a real map, to play with the idea of a future that never happened." - Camila Bustamante
Camila Bustamante Actions: What You Can Do With the City • 99 "actions" for intervening in public space Lima 2427 • "Lightweight media of stickers and posters to create a ripple of public awareness and political accountability that would ultimately influence the most substantial and concrete outcome: the resurrection of Lima's elevated metro lines, decades after construction had been suspended."
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Work with the Contract Contract is the system that guide different parties to achieve the design goal on time and on budget. If it not works, then it should be changed. "And did we ever look at the contract? No There's nothing to look at, we just focused on doing the project. We're not lawyers, we're just architects. What we know how to do is really good buildings, and that's what we should do." - Steve Ashton ARM
ARM
ARM • "ARM's oeuvre is a catalogue of audacity, quotation, criticality and even controversy."
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"Fractional AI" To move slightly into the near future that everyone want, we cannot just expect having one omnipotent AI, instead, we can gradually develop lots of "fractional AI" to empower individuals. These smarter gadgets will enable people contribute their own thoughts and efforts to push the present into the near future. "Invention is always for the world as it should be, and not for the world you are in...Design these products and you'll move the world just slightly in that direction." My belief is that we're going to have the same explosion with artificial intelligence. And we won't see it as it was depicted in films as controlling nuclear weapons(War Games), or controlling space ships(2001). fractional AI means that the tiny things around us will be smarter. - Matt Webb BERG
BERG
Availabot "A little model person connected to a computer via USB, who stands up straight when a particular friend comes online."
Little Printer "Combines feed from your smart-phone to create personalised mini-newspapers."
Suwappu "Suwappu is a range of toys, animal characters that live in little digital worlds. The physical toys are canvasses upon which we can paint worlds, through a phone (or tablet) lens we can see into the narratives, games and media in which they live."
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Strategic Design Apart from finding opportunities within existing limitations, we can also revise the process of design by seeing the methods we use as the editable tool. Then we are able to play with these tools more effective and flexible. "If traditional design is about giving shape to objects or buildings, then Strategic Design is about giving shape to decisions...and there's a lot of decisions that come before the thing gets made, and there are a lot of decisions that the thing inflects after it enters the world." "...the diagram becomes a tool for the client presentation to win arguments as quickly and easily as possible." "In that sense my hope is that we see each method as tools rather than process dogma, and as a community we become more strategic about how, when and why we apply these specific tools." - Bryan Boyer Helsinki Design Lab
Helsinki Design Lab
Low2No A project lead by Sitra and HDL(Helsinki Design Lab) aiming to achieve carbon neutral Finland. • HDL revised the building code to allow the large-scale construction of timber buildings, which opens up a whole range of opportunities subsequently.
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Architects & Management consultants Different from engineer consultants who seeing the city as the machine, and economist who seeing the city as the speculative instrument, the planner is concern with life quality of citizen, which is closest to the aim of the city. We need to learn from strategies of the management consultant nowadays, for example, rethinking about the authorship obsession. "What the management consultant has been able to do is to show this spectrum of generalisation is something that works in understanding the complexity of a city, as opposed to how the architect has approached being a generalist. It's a question of scale for the architect, but for the management consultant it's a question of breadth of economic conditions for the city." "There's always room, for new consultants" - Todd Reisz
Todd Reisz
John Harris's master-plan for Dubai • The proposal asserts "how the modern needs to move into the pre-modern, and find ways of establishing relationships."
Bechtel's proposal for Jubail • "Production of infrastructure became everything."
McKinsey's "Economic City" - King Abdullah Economic City (KAEC). • Following the industrial cities, Mcinsey introduce the "Economic City" to make sure the infrastructure can be used to extract profit from the country's oil.
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Hardware & Software Besides physical infrastructure, certain rules like policies are as firm as the hard infrastructure, in order to bring more programs(software), we need to rethink how these rules respond to people who was not considered. "These rules are largely designed to constrain capital; to constrain people with too much money form behaving inappropriately in a way that exploits those around them...so in a lot of ways these rules address legitimate problems, but they also add an additional layer of cost and complexity which shuts out people who don't have capital." - Marcus Westbury Renew Newcastle
Renew Newcastle
Renew Newcastle • New short term tenancy agreement • Intermediary organisation providing security for other legal requirements
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"Open design" By acknowledging the complexity of individual and the world context, architects may shift their role into the mediator who give a prototype for change. Everyone can start from the template and develop their own buildings which involved their complexity. "And that's what open design is about, having a good designer giving some shape to the world, and the world can do whatever they want with it, even make it better." - Hans Vermeulen DUS Architects "The developer or housing corporation is a filter between the people and the architects, which makes the process very complex...so we developed what we call the 'DUS method', which is a way of communicating with and learning from the future owners." - Hedwig Heinsman DUS Architects
DUS Architects
Bucky Bar - a temporary installation in Rotterdam which attract pedestrians into a party. • "Aesthetic is important in engaging the public by making it more approachable." Gecekondu summerhouse - an illegal temporary summer house build up of typical plastic bags filled with sand. • One of the project showing DUS Architects' idea of "open design".
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"Magnifying glass" Modern technologies and facilitates have enabled the architect to approach the site in various ways, in other words, it gives architects a "Magnifying glass" which may help us find more details than in the past. In the meantime, we need to consider the whole ecosystem instead of simply focusing on the human being. "We just have so much more access to a depth of information that wasn't visible before." "And that's not just 'OK, let's save the cute little animals', it's really the key to our own survival too, because we haven't yet discovered precisely what's needed to continue to support our healthy ecosystem that humans are a part of." - Jeanne Gang Studio Gang
Studio Gang
Aqua Tower • A piece of infrastructure instead of building objects • Bird-friendly (Biodiversity)
Lincoln Park Zoo • Putting relevant experts together helps to come up with a green infrastructure idea other than the original simple improvement on aesthetic of the site. • The infrastructure within the Zoo is designed for "exaggerating the habitats, and making the site super attractive to the animals".
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Writing & Architecture Writing may be one typical instrument to show the possibility that transforming our role from passive to active. Writing allow us to focus on the research and make them as the final products. It will also free part of our concerns from the current commissions from clients like corporations and governments. Therefore, we are able to fresh our view and develop self-initiated projects. "As a profession dependent upon the commissions of governments and corporations, such necessary outspokenness could be viewed as a conflict of interest." "If you want to be a public intellectual, you have to operate outside of - funnily enough - the universities and their publishing systems." - Conrad Hamann Robin Boyd
Robin Boyd
The Australian Ugliness • Enable public to see the surroundings with fresh eyes
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Independent designer There is no longer stable employment today, in order to adapt to the emerging world, we have to see the skills we learned as transferable instruments by which we are able to develop our own definition about architecture or go on to other position, rather than trapped by these tools or strategies which define the current architecture. "So often a school is caught up with ideas of what architects are supposed to be, without acknowledging how they actually have to operate in the world." "To just leave them to figure that our for themselves, and not allow them to test it within the freedom and experimental, supportive environment of an architectural school seems negligent." - Liam Young Unknown Fields
Liam Young
Unknown Fields • Giving students the real effect to help they understand and see the emerging world in fresh eyes.
TTT (Tomorrows Thoughts Today) • Speculation and research as products in themselves.
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Programmers & Architects Inspiring from the work of programmer, the reason why multidisciplinary practice still go slowly may is the obsession of authorship which indicates the boundary between disciplines. We have got used to separate the work with discipline we generally defined, rather than allocating the work based on the skills and problems. The discipline happened because we want to solve more and more specific problems. Now here comes the next dimension of problems - complex problems which need more than one discipline to be involved. Since we can against the complex only with the complex. We cannot limited by our major which is actually made up of certain practical skills. We can approach the problem through mixing various skills or intelligence, as a result, we start to build up a more complicated solution system to against the complex problems. "It's similar to what you see with younger offices nowadays who don't profile themselves by saying 'We're school builders or 'We're great with towers'. but they instead promote a degree of intelligence they can bring to a situation or their ability to collaborate. In a way this is also how we work." "Whereas coders can't say 'I was responsible for this product'; that would be ridiculous, because much of what they do is collaborative. So their pride and satisfaction is different; it's about a communal effort, the joy of making something change or happen or start, and that requires a very different mentality or attitude towards your own practice or role within society, but also has consequences for the way you operate." - Arjen Oosterman Volume
Volume
Volume • "Volume was created as a new vehicle for the exploration of architectural ideas 'beyond' practice and its limitations." • Content supported by Archis Publishers, OMA's research think-tank AMO and Columbia University's C-Lab
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"O-design" It's time to put some efforts on problems outside of commissions. The biggest challenge we are facing is framing the problem while not losing touch with the people who will real change the situation. "I call what I do 'x-design' - experimental design - but maybe it should be called '0-design', because it's very opportunistic in the sense that it's about framing the problem." "But the other good thing about using technology as a medium is that it's too complex, it has all these unintended consequences that I think can be seized as opportunities." - Natelie Jeremijenko xClinic
xClinic
Urban Space Station • "A symbiotic parasite providing food and clean air to high-rise buildings."
Flightpath • Explore the idea that turn the zipline to an alternate mode of transit.