PHOOEY Architects are a young, enthusiastic and progressive design practice from Melbourne, Australia.

Their portfolio extends from large scale master planning to small scale furniture design. They explore architecture which advocates for environmental, social and cultural awareness and consideration. PHOOEY Architects genuinely and actively explore the use of recycled materials while minimising consumption waste.

Directed by Peter Ho and Emma Young, PHOOEY Architects are currently producing a diversity of innovative projects including an education centre, multi-storey commercial complex & multiple dwellings.

Peter Ho has lectured in Australia and abroad. He has taught at the university of Melbourne and RMIT university. Peter is currently a judge on ‘the Renovators’. Hosted by Network 10, contestants are required to transform 6 houses into real estate gold. The renovations take place across the suburbs of Sydney.

PHOOEY Architects Headquarters – Image Source [1,2]

Interviews Peter Ho from PHOOEY Architects

AN: 1. Which of your projects has been the most rewarding and why?

PH: The Port Phillip EcoCentre on the corner of the St Kilda Botanic Gardens was our first completed project in private practice. We started to ask questions about what role architecture might play in the discourse of a sustainable future including aiming to create zero waste by reusing the rubbish produced by design & what it might look like.

Port Philip EcoCentre – Image Source [1]

AN: 2. You are currently one of three judges on network TEN’s ‘the Renovators’, what have you learnt from hosting the show and what can the public learn by watching?

PH: I love the idea that architecture & design can help people do what they do in their lives better. As an architect & designer I’m learning to communicate in a mainstream language. The renovators viewers can learn home renovation tips about real estate, architectural design, landscape design, building & style.

‘The Renovators’ – Image Source [1,2]

AN: 3. How do you think architecture will change in the next 50 years?

PH: I think architecture will help society by communicating diverse identities about resilence & adaptation to climate change … preferably in an entertaining manner.

AN: 4. What changes would you like to see in the Architectural profession?

PH: I would like to see architecture become culturally & economically more accessible to mainstream Australia.

AN: 5.Do you think that architecture tends to be trendy today?

PH: It seems to work for Art Vandelay (aka George Costanza).

AN: 6. What would students learn from reviewing the body of projects you have completed?

PH: I’m not sure what they will learn … but they are likely to see some strategies & representations that aim to create zero waste. They may play with these strategies & develop other ways of doing & seeing. I advise students that there is no right or wrong answer. There is always just a better & more appropriate solution.

AN: 7. What are you most proud of in your career or any aspect of life?

PH: I am fortunate to share my life with Emma Young who is a strong, beautiful & clever woman who is mother of our children, Co-Director of PHOOEY Architects & inspiration.

AN: 8. Who do you think is the most overrated architect, and who do you think deserves more credit/recognition?

PH: I think Peter Ho is the most overrated architect. Honestly, he’s a bit of a one hit wonder. However he also deserves more credit/ recognition because he is trying to work out how architecture & design can take responsibility for rubbish produced by the design process i.e rather than pass it on to someone else to deal with.

AN: 9. What aspect of Architecture do you find most important?

PH: Understanding the aspirations of the people we are creating architecture for. Fundamental to our practice and design process is the exploration of diverse opinions & ideas.

AN: 10. What inspired you to become involved in Architecture?

PH: In Grade 4, I got caught up building the detail into a scaled model of a house. Right now I am inspired by other peoples stories & dreams.

AN: 11. What other interests do you have?

PH: Kung Fu. My favourite place in the world is the Middle of the d’Entrecasteaux Channel in Tasmania. Favourite book is Missing Forms by Collective Effort Press and favourite Music is TISM.

AN: 12. What is your favourite time of the day, and why?

PH: The silence & light at daybreak.

AN: 13. What would be your ultimate design project?

PH: A Borg Cube

AN: 14. Other than the Renovators, What are you doing at the moment?

PH: Recharging my batteries under the sun.

AN: 15. Who would you most like to work with on a project?

PH: I’d like to work with Heston Blumenthal & Nick Cave.

Children’s Activity Centre – Image Source [1]

The carpet couch 02 – Image Source [1]

Templestowe Reserve Sporting Pavilion – Image Source [1]

Prahran House – Image Source [1]

I’d like to thank Peter for participating in the interview, it was a pleasure. If you’re interested in getting in touch or finding out more about PHOOEY Architects, visit their website. You can also follow Peter or ‘the Renovators’ on twitter.

If you are interested in being interviewed and featured on Archi-Ninja, please contact me.

Not long after writing the architecture and anarchy essay, I decided to put some small scale performances into action on the unsuspecting streets of Sydney! Inspired by the ethics of punk; the performances are cheap, replicable by anyone, and seek to create an instant moment of disruption accessible to all. They do not seek to draw conclusions but seek to formulate a series of questions relevant to architecture and criticism:

Does the city become more meaningful by supporting individual experience? Can a moment of disruption change the perception of social acceptance? Can the visible and invisible conventions and structures of the city be confused? Is it possible to re-write the historical meaning associated with place? How is it possible to unveil hidden facets of society and urban life? To what extent does the architect affect the individual, society and its institutions? Can we reduce (or gain) the control over a particular space or environment by creating spatial uses which was unintended? Can we change what a particular space means and represents to the community which uses it?

It is important to understand that architecture makes a significant contribution to the corporate market; when architects accept commissions from corporations that affect public life they are in fact committed to supporting various political systems.

Architecture contributes to these political systems, firstly, by creating physical devices. The architect for example designs the supermarket similar to a passage of narrative text, often forcing the user to pass from the beginning to the end. The architect designs the isles rounded so that you never be averted from the stock. Supermarket architect Ronald Smith describes this as a technique which endures the maximisation of time spent in store and also as a way to capitalise on impulse buying.

Secondly, architecture contributes by manipulating and encouraging an emotional response. Buildings are designed to affect human behaviour. The tiles on the Woolworth’s floor in Bondi Junction, Sydney, for example, reduce in size as you approach the more expensive items, causing the wheels on your trolley to click faster and therefore subconsciously make the user slow down.

Lastly, the ‘creative authority’ of the architect further diminishes the possibility for social encounter and individual freedom. Architects design buildings from a spatial vision, and in order for that space to function the users are typically controlled though various architectural strategies including program and circulation. Their renders, plans and photography typically show architectural space without people or disruptions; their vision is withdrawn from social and political responsibility.

Architects typically understand their role as the creator or visionary, but it’s also possible to understand their role as someone who produces nothing more or less than a physical and social order designed by the corporations who hold political authority and power.

Within this understanding of political systems the performances aim to in some way interrogate the role of architecture (and the architect), including its contribution to physical, physiological and social boundaries and acceptances. They aim to investigate various possibilities with regard to the individual, society and its institutions.

My interest in the performances lies in the possibility of being able to explore methods for manipulating the physicality of corporate structures within the city. The performances hope to in some way question, invade or confuse urban space and by allowing pranks, performances, objects and fakes the opportunity to provide a forum to unveil the hidden facets of urban life.

Performance 01 – Motionless Performance on George Street, Sydney

Summary: The Motionless Performance was comprised of ten people. Nine actors froze in the street for six minutes. Each froze while doing seemingly natural activities; some froze for example, while in mid conversation, tying their shoe lace, on the phone or drinking a coffee. Actors stood as still as possible and did not talk or make eye contact with passing pedestrians. The performance was conducted between 412 & 414 George Street, Sydney. (Outside the Strand Arcade)

The footpath is primarily a transitory space lined with commercial and retail activities, the motionless performance investigates the concept of urban play in a manner that disrupts pedestrian movement.

Performance 02 – Conversation Performance on Martin Place, Sydney

Summary: The Conversation Performance was comprised of six people. Actors began a conversation while standing approximately 1 metre apart. Every 3-5 minutes they stepped back approximately 1 metre. At the end of the performance they were approximately 7 metres apart. The performance was conducted out the front of No. 1 Martin Place, Sydney. (Corner of George Street)

The individual functions to acceptable, comfortable and often invisible codes of conduct. The conversation performance begins to investigate perceptions and boundaries of private and public space.

Performance 03 – Expanding Group Performance in ANZ, Sydney

Summary: The Expanding Group Performance was comprised of ten people. The performance began with one actor entering ANZ, every couple of minutes another person enters the building and begins to talk with the 1st actor. This continues until we are removed from the building. The performance was conducted at No. 20 Martin Place, Sydney. (ANZ Building),

There are a number rules which indicate the acceptable use of public space. The Expanding Group Performance begins to investigate at what point spatial acceptance become unacceptable and at what point does something normal such as talking become spatial disruption.

Analysis:

Spatial Response and Implications:

The performances encouraged a variety of spatial interpretations. The motionless performance affected the use of the footpath by disrupting the typical user/pedestrian flow of traffic, this frustrated and also confused many users. It is likely that their frustration is the result of not being able to easily escape the situation. The performance was infact an invasion of personal space – the actors in the motionless performance physically provided barriers in the face of user movement, pedestrians began to bump into each other as their eye was drawn away from focus.

The conversation performance in a similar manner disrupted user/pedestrian flow of traffic, users chose to either walk through or around the group of actors depending on their perception of private and public space, most users paused and considered the situation before making a decision. The performance begins to recognise different perceptions of individual space. Robert Sommors in ‘Personal Space – The Behavioral Basis of Design’ recognises that introverted and extroverted personality types as well as cultural differences affect the manner in which users perceive personal space.

The expanding group performance did not affect the use of space for banking customers. It did however make the banking staff uncomfortable. The performance begins to raise the question of when acceptable behavior such as talking becomes unacceptable based on a particular set of conditions. Did the group for example become a danger to the bank?

During the expanding group performance the actors were placed near the entry of ANZ, and within 7 minutes they were noticed by ANZ staff. If the actors were sitting down among customers then perhaps they would have taken longer to identify as their behavior would appear more common.

The location of the performances had a significant impact on the way they were understood and interpreted by users. While it is possible to reconsider the location of the performances locally, it is also important to recognise larger cultural interpretations and possibilities. Anthropologist Edward Hall describes how people from different countries interpret the language of space. What Australians consider crowded for example may be considered spacious in Hong Kong.

The conversation performance remained a private space while actors stood no further than two metres apart. If the performance however, was located on the footpath it is likely more people would push though the space as they have little option to walk around. Spatial perception is therefore affected by the speed in which people maneuver through space and also by the number of possibilities which they may be presented with. Their perception of what space implies is also important, users associate the footpath as a transitory space and often get quite annoyed when it is used in ways which are not expected – this was obvious during the motionless performance.

The performances provoked participation from users in a manner which was unexpected. A user froze for the entire motionless performance along with the actors – I did not expect anyone to do this! Bill Hillier of University College, London focuses on spatial ‘rules of interaction’. He describes the ‘visual language of space’ and the line of sight as fundamental to encouraging interaction and participation. Users understand space differently if activity is in direct line of sight. The man who froze in the motionless performance is parallel to Hillier’s description of participation as an immediate response to spatial excitement and the desire to feel a ‘sense of belonging’. (Earls, M., 2007) The below image circles the man participating in the performance.

Three skateboarders also participated in the conversation performance. They assumed their position, contributed to conversation and took a number of steps backward when the group moved apart. Skateboarders are often understood as anti-social yet their participation in the performance actively sought to engage in a social activity with strangers. The below images are extracted in sequence from the video documentation, the last 2 frames show the 3 skateboarders joining the performance.

I have always been very interested in the way skateboarders understand the built environment. They interpret urban space not as something which controls them but as their playground. They seek out architectural objects based on their own objectives and use them exactly they as please.

After the motionless performance many people up to me to ask what we were doing and I explained my objectives. One lady was very interested in participating in the other performances also.

It is also important to consider at what point the performance and agenda may become lost. The conversation performance for example depending on where the actors were placed either went unnoticed or became a spectacle. This was also affected by the weather on the day of the performance. However, if the actors continued to step out and talk louder to the point of yelling, would it make people respond in a different manner? Would shop assistants for example, complain to security or would pedestrians tell us to be quiet? Likewise, if we walked into the bank with balaclava’s I assume customers and bank staff would be immediately alarmed.

Behavioral Disruption:

The motionless performance successfully disrupted pedestrian movement. At one point a crowd of people gathered in the entrance space to the strand building. People began to converse to their friends about the performance. American journalist, Tom Vanderbilt acknowledges that perceptions of space are affected depending upon whether we associate it with positive or negative experiences. He recognises it has the possibility to affect both your mood and your outlook on the world. (UXPod 2007) The footpath as a transitory space was compromised and this frustrated many users.

During the performance new spatial orders were developed as the frozen actors began to block the footpath. Generally, two lanes were devised for users moving in either direction. When users broke the code of conduct they would step to the side while another user passed the actor and so on. This was done without instruction but voluntarily and in order to keep the space functioning in a manner that was as regular as possible.

The conversation performance began with a close conversation, users chose to walk around rather than through the group. It provided a perceived spatial constraint as users interpreted the space as private. As the distance between actors grew users chose to walk through the group, rather than around.

By contrast, the expanding group performance provided very little disruption, users of the bank were capable of doing their business. In all instances there is a relationship between scale and the manner in which it disrupted behaviour.

It was documented in each of the performances that users appeared to typically follow the transitory line of the person in front. This was most obvious in the motionless and conversation performances. At one point, a lady followed the person in front as she walked through the conversation performance. Once she realised she was in the middle of a group conversation she appeared visibly uncomfortable. It is possible if no one was in front of her, she may have chose to walk around the group. She was also looking down to the others persons feet as she was approaching so did not realise what she was doing. Author, Mark Earls describes the behaviour of following movement as a way to blend in with perceived normality. It can be observed in the same manner by underage kids who enter a bar, they will act just like everyone else around them in order to not draw attention to themselves. (Earls, M., 2007)

The performances were often unnoticed by children up to the age of approximately ten. It is important to then question at what age people begin to develop spatial and behavioral conventions? Elements which appeared strange and out of place for adults appeared either normal or went unnoticed by a child. It is also possible they are less aware of what is considered socially normal or strange behavior.

The performances also documented differences between individual and group responses. When in a group people were more engaged, when not in a group people were more observant. During the conversation performance, the skateboarders who participated where in a group. A group of three people also approached the performance to ask what we were doing and why. During the expanding group performance people interacted with the camera when in pairs. However individuals appeared more observant and they looked around more frequently. It is important to then consider a person’s behavior and their receptiveness to space dependent upon their social surroundings.

User Rationalisation:

Welsh neurologist and psychoanlayst Ernest Jones describes the user as a rationaliser whose behavior is governed by “the necessity of providing an explanation.” Users construct a formal model of rationalisation. In the model a decision maker selects the best feasible alternative (accord­ing to our preferences) from among the possible explanations. (Cherepanov, V. 2009 )

While filming the motionless performance many assumed we were doing an advertisement. They associated the performance with abnormal behavior and therefore separated it from reality.

Cultural theorist and urbanist Paul Virilio recognises that the growth of technology, namely television, separates us directly from the events of real space and real time. We lose wisdom and lose sight of our immediate horizon and resort to the indirect horizon of our dissimulated environment. It has been at least forty years since Virilio introduced such concepts and is it now possible to consider the loss of real space occurring within real time. Did users assume the motionless performance was an advertisement to in some way withdraw from the real space which surrounds them? and therefore what relevance the time have to space? The users assumed the behavior of the performance to be unreal.

During the conversation performance many assumed the actors were a group of drama students doing an assignment. Due to the rain the performance became more of a spectacle and users of cause wondered why we were standing in the rain.

The expanding group performance was undetected by those who saw the camera, many turned around to see what was happening but did not notice the actors within ANZ because they appeared to do normal activities. Two girls assumed I was filming for the news.

In all instances, users were compelled to explain or justify the performances in order to classify and feel comfortable about its presence. Being able to recognise the purpose of something often neutralizes the possibility of perceived strangeness or threat.

In most case assumptions are influenced by something – either through history, media, values or myths. Assumptions also begin to formulate invisible spatial controls. The design of buildings are also influenced by assumptions including from the council, the client, the architect, and the user. How can we confuse these assumptions by using spaces or objects in manners which are unintended?

Private, Public and Hybrid Spaces:

The ANZ building appears to be public, it is however limited in use, during the expanding group performance we were asked to leave the building simply because we were not ANZ bank customers. The expanding group performance explored how an institution might control hybrid public space by accepting a user behavior only under particular conditions or circumstances. Talking and gathering was acceptable when only with 4 persons, however at 9 persons we were asked to leave. Our intention was unclear and we could have proposed a threat. The below images are extracted in sequence from the video documentation, they show the expanding group prior to being removed from the building.

The footpath, where the conversation and motionless performances took place appears to be on public property. However, each of the institutions and shops which line the footpath have an invested interest in the way in which the footpath is used. Shop security of the strand building came to observe the performance when he realised that people were gathering outside the strand. He appeared concerned, if we were entirely blocking the entry for example, we would have be removed from the footpath? Legally, we did not have the right loiter or restrict the possibility of users from entering the shops.

The city of Sydney Council seeks un­obstructed use on public foot-ways, conditions for council approval for most major venues are required to the sign a document ensuring “Security officers to move-on any persons loitering or congregating on the foot-way or any adjoining area within 50 metres of the entrance to the premise, so as to maintain unobstructed pedestrian access.” (City of Sydney. 2010)

Users are often not aware of the rules and conventions which govern public space. Public space recognised as ‘social space’ is reducing in size. By contrast work and home spaces are increasing. Urban sociologist Ray Oldenburg states that social life in most societies will rest on three elements: home, work, and the “third place” that is neither, and when we mindlessly destroy the third place (or the public space) — the beer garden, the piazza, the soda fountain or sidewalk cafe — we end up expecting home and work to fill the gaping hole.

Manipulating Corporate Structures:

Architects use physical materials and various techniques to manipulate and encourage an emotional user response. The city functions as a productive system which supports productivity and consumer spending and our spatial behavioral patterns are monitored in order to aid governments and businesses.

The motionless performance recognizes the footpath as a transitory space lined with shop fronts to encourage consumer spending. The speed in which users walk on footpaths are generally relative to the users around them. Footpaths are faster than country, open or recreation spaces. The motionless performance created physical barriers which forced the speed in which users walked on the footpath to be disrupted. Users had difficulty looking into the shop fronts which were blocked partially by motionless actors. In such a manner it provides the possibility to break down corporate efficiencies.

Research indicates that you are most likely to turn right when entering a shop. This is where retail outlets place products with good prices that ensure the consumer does not leave the store. It is possible through disruption that we could force customers to turn left (instead of right). If distracted by an actor, users will most likely behave in a manner which is non predictable and therefore difficult to manipulate and control.

The performance also introduces the concept of play in urban life which in many instances took the user by surprise. It manipulates the manner in which they navigate through urban space.

The conversation performance was located in Martin Place which in a similar manner to the footpath functions as a transitory space. The conversation performance distracted the user and became a spectacle which has the possibility of distracting the users from the commercial activities associated with place. The below images show a number of people interacting with or participating in the performance.

The expanding group performance begins to manipulate corporate space by establishing at what point normal human behavior becomes unacceptable. And can it therefore reveal hidden codes of conduct which are not established through rules or law but through circumstance?

The performances manipulate the use of corporate structures by encouraging a spatial use or behavior which is unintended and is then possible to understand how various installations and performances may break down the control over a particular space by creating a different acceptable behaviors, spatial history and interpretation?

The performances could be varied in a number of ways to encourage different activities which hold promise for confusing the existing system by creating a pattern of human behavior which is no longer predicable. If similar things were done by everyone and everywhere and apparently without purpose, there would be no way to locate the disruptions.

Challenging Architectures Role:

Urban space is controlled by various people including government, institutions and the architect. Architects design space in a manner which encourages specific patterns of behaviour. Fountains are typically placed in shopping centers at the furthest rational point from the toilets. Therefore encouraging people to walk the longest distance and past all the shop fronts in their search for facilities.

The performances have possibility to challenge role of the architect and planner by designing and manipulating urban space without regulation or license. It is therefore possible that designers or individuals explore emotion as a way in which to break down such techniques? Or to use new techniques with more meaningful agendas?

Architects are often concerned with theory and aesthetics – they rarely think about the way the space might be manipulated and adapted after their job is done – it appears secondary to their spatial vision. And therefore should architects place greater consideration into the ordinary use of space? The manner in which architects manipulate the built environment affects human behavior and social and political conventions.

By simple methods of disruption the performances contribute to the significance, mood and meaning of space, and so if applied to the role of the architect how might space become more meaningful?

The architect usually designs free space described as ‘multi-purpose space’, this however does not complete the architects task. Robert Sommor’s in Personal Space – The Behavioral Basis of Design states “Most of the concern with functionalism has been focused upon form rather than function. It is as if the structure itself – harmony with the site, the integrity of the materials, the cohesiveness of the separate unite, has become the function. Relatively little emphasis is placed on the activities taking place inside the structure” (Sommer, R., 1969) Sommers makes reference to conceptual considerations of functionalism. As such the architect perhaps needs to consider spatial function in a manner which also shows the users how to interpret it.

The performances put forward different ways to use public and hybrid public space in a manner that opens up new behavioural possibilities for the user. Under such design, spaces like the lobby is open for interpretation, play, recreation and confrontation.

Architects have the possibility to create unique spaces, with reference to Daniel Burnham’s understanding of the city, lies architectures possibility to make a difference to the quality of life. By his definition it is the individual, combined with the work of other individuals that create memories, moments and confusions.

The design of public space can be seen as devoted to public use, however it is only designed with specific uses in mind. The school for example, is an institution devoted to learning but designed for a particular model of teaching (sit and learn). Custodians upon spatial arrangements in architecture are evident throughout the built environment.

Architecture creates social and physical boundaries and acceptances. We not only have a physical impact upon society but also one with is emotional. As such are designers shaping people as well as buildings? Sommors describes this to such an extent that “the long-range question is not so much what sort of environment we want, but what sort of man we want” (Sommer, R., 1969)

Users are capable of adapting to anything and that is where I believe architects, designers and users of space can begin to explore exciting possibilities. Similar to the implications of the performances, can architects began to develop methods which break down or expose hierarchies that exist in the individual, society or its institutions?

Conclusion:

My interest in investigating disruption is influenced by the thinking of the Situationalists and Marxist theorist Guy Debord. Much of the explorations respond to Debords idea of the spectacle. Defining the spectacle is infact no easy task – the spectacle is society itself, it is part of society and of the instrument to dominate society. It is about the success of economy and the law and all other facets of life, including human life. Its first prerequisite is passivity and it aims to isolate the individual where reality itself becomes replaced by images of it. Debord wrote, “there can be no freedom apart from activity, and within the spectacle everything is banned.” (Gavin, F., 2007) Architecture itself, is a component of the spectacle described by Debord.

The performances are grounded by the desire to encourage and reclaim principles of freedom and social culture which is suppressed under the control of government and corporation.

I am intrigued in finding various relationships between architecture and to life which inhabits its framework. In a similar manner to the Dadaist collage the explorations seek to take an element and reassemble, modify or reinforce a different meaning. Should architects consider urban disturbance and provide opportunity through non-intervention in a manner which intervenes?

I am interested in this idea because it places messages in the heart of the everyday. Can moments of disruption and surprise hold promise for confusing the existing system by creating and encouraging a pattern of human behavior which is no longer predicable – forcing the user to become alert and to interact differently with the world around them.

In a culture of architecture which is dominated by theory, the practical or the conceptual, the “real” physical world has to reassert its presence. The urban environment (including all components of architecture and space) presents opportunity to engage with the user. If architects, begin to design with greater consideration to ordinary and social spaces, they could renegotiate their political position and establish a new code of architectural ethics. Architecture, if responding to social and individual concerns rather than corporations could explore techniques and possibilities that are entirely different to existing professional normalities.

Further Reading:

Burnham, S., 2008, Droog Event 2: Urban Play, Routledge, London

Cherepanov, V. 2009, Rationalization, Department of Economics, University of Pennsylvania.

Earls, M., 2007, Herd: How to change mass behaviour by harnessing our true nature, John Wiley & Sons, N.Y.

Ehrlich, H., et.al., 1979, Reinventing Anarchy: What are Anarchists Thinking These Days?, Routledge & Kegan Hall Ltd, London

Gavin, F., 2007, Street Renegades: New Underground Art, Lauren King Publishing Ltd., London, U.K.

Sommer, R., 1969, Personal Space: The Behavioral Basis of Design, Prentice Hall, Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey.

Harvey, D. 2009, Capitalism and the City, Kasama Project. http://kasamaproject.org/2009/01/07/david-harvey-on-capital-accumulation-and-urban-struggle/.

UXPod 2007, podcast radio programme, Info Design, May. http://media.libsyn.com/media/uxpod/tomvanderbilt.mp3.

In preparation and to form part of my research agenda for the skateboarding and architecture essay I asked architecture writer, critic, and publicist Ian Volner to Interview Philip Nobel. Philip is an architecture writer and fixture in New York design circles. About a year ago Philip gave up New York for skateboarding. I wanted to talk about the appeal between architecture and skateboarding and how skateboarding relates to writing and architecture. Here’s what Ian found out:

IV: Why skateboarding, why you, why now?

PN: My girlfriend left me and my car died. I found myself living in this wonderful neighborhood [in Red Hook, Brooklyn] a million miles from anywhere useful. I had always wanted to skateboard as a kid, but was too much of a pussy. I bought my first skateboard by accident: I walked into this skate and surf shop on Long Island in 2007 and I had my first encounter with a long board. I fell in love – So I bought it.

IV: Why did you become so taken with the long board, rather than the conventional skateboard?

PN: Mostly what I needed was a way to get around the city. Skateboarders inhabit specific spaces—spaces that afford them opportunities to do specific things. So skateboarding happens within very fixed points in the city. In contrast to that, a long boarder is interested in the line between the two points: when the opportunity appears to take advantage of a particular linear feature—good paving on Fifth Avenue, no buses, a connecting bike lane—that’s the kind of thing you’re looking for. Of course, when skateboarders are good, there’s no urban impediment that can stop them, and they have a crazy beautiful way of moving through the city: they’ve assembled a repertoire of maneuvers that lets them get through urban space effortlessly. But most of the time it’s basically a bunch of guys hanging out behind a 7-11 working on the individual moves. Long boarding is more about the passage.

IV: How did long boarding change your experience of the city?

PN: Starting out on a the board, there’s a period of muscular adaptation where your front leg has to be stronger than it is when walking. Until then, every crack in the road is deadly. You become aware of the surface of the city in this incredibly intimate, fear-driven way. There was this plotting of safe routes until I got more confident. With the long board you start probing the city for linear opportunity, and your personal map is always growing: you start out with just a couple little lines through the city, and then they ramify, turning into a waffle, then a web.

IV: Does the social status of a long boarder in the city differ from that of a skateboarder?

PN: When you’re a skateboarder, you’re kind of a pirate, because you’re going around the city looking for another way to inhabit built form—but as you inhabit it you also fuck it up, scratch it, tag it. Long boarding, meanwhile, is just beginning to have a social presence—characters on TV shows, a paparazzi picture of Matthew McConaughey on a long board—it is just beginning to exist in the public imagination, so there’s no referent for the law or the cultural structure besides the classic figure of the urban skate-punk. Long boarders get ticketed under laws made for skateboarders. I’ve had this conversation with the police where they say, Hey, this place is posted ‘No skating’, and I say, Thanks, okay, but maybe you should open your mind to the possibility that this isn’t the same thing as what you’re looking for.

IV: Does this issue lead to any antagonism out there in the street between the long boarder and the skateborder?

PN: There used to be a sort of war between long and short boarders, but now that’s really changing. I was sitting on the Brooklyn Heights promenade the other day. Two kids were clattering along on the cobblestones on their skateboards; they saw my board and they’re like, Oh, cool, long board! So I said to one of the kids, you wanna try it? The kid was pretty good, he got on and just went flying down the promenade, over the same surface he was clattering over before. I could tell he was having fun. Then he’s doing all these really tight turns, smoothly even over the rough cobblestones. He comes back and says, It’s so smooth! Actually, that board, the board of mine he was on, had been specifically designed by a Brooklyn board-maker to win an outlaw race in the city.

IV: Outlaw race? That sounds pretty subversive for your meditative, passage-focused long boarder.

PN: Yeah! It’s called The Broadway Bomb. Kids gather at 116th St. and Broadway and go all the way down to Lower Manhattan. Takes about half an hour. The tagline is, “You Could Die.” There’s a backlash among the “I-travel-on-my-skateboard” skaters who pipe up and say, Hey, this crazy thing you do, this race of death, is screwing up the deal for the rest of us. It’s becoming a big issue.

IV: How is the city changing for the long boarder?

PN: The biggest thing is that now that there are bike paths everywhere. The New York City Department of Transportation is one of the most enlightened things ever, but the loose gravelly stuff they use in the new path margins are dangerous for long boarders. The routes are plainly designed for bikes. Still, you have your own light!

Also heavily referenced throughout the essay was a book titled ‘Godzilla vs. Skateboarders’. The book is based on an exhibition which investigates the culture and practice of skateboarding as a means of critique architecture, social spaces and the values constituted by those spaces. My friend Daniel Williams helped with the graphics for the essay submission (see below). Daniel is an illustrator, animator and cartoonist.

Thank you Daniel, Ian and Philip for helping my with my essay. I hope you enjoy reading.

Please feel free to leave your comments about the interview in section below. Id love to know your thoughts on the topic!

Over the last couple of months Tom Mallory co-founder of OpenBuildings.com and an author at the Huffington Post has been interviewing women to talk about their underrepresentation in the industry. I was lucky enough to share my opinion on the topic. The full interview can be found here and includes projects and opinions from prominent women including Shelley Freeman of MAKE architecture studio, Cary Bernstein of Cary Bernstein Architects and Deborah Berke of Deborah Berke & Partners.

I was also happy to share with the Huffington post the recently completed 1 Bligh St, located in Sydney. While employed at Architectus I worked on 1 Bligh Street from project inception to completion. Winner of the DEXUS/City of Sydney design competition, 1 Bligh Street is designed by Architectus and Ingenhoven Architects. 1 Bligh Street is Sydney’s highest green star rated building and features Australia’s first high rise double skin facade. The building also contains a full height naturally ventilated atrium, tri-generation system, specially formulated high strength concrete and on-site blackwater recycling.

Below I have posted my full responses to their interview questions:

Did you ever face more subtle or direct gender discrimination in architectural school? Do you think lecturers/ co-students regarded you and your work differently, because you’re a woman?

During my time at Architecture school, I did not face direct or indirect gender discrimination from co-students or lecturers. Through the process of intense study, I developed a close and supportive relationship with like-minded individuals.

I do not believe lecturers or co-students regarded my work differently because of my gender. They were supportive on the individual merit of ideas. The goal of the lecturer is to harvest the best work possible from their students irrespective of their gender.

Females represent 40% of Architecture students, therefore I did not feel out numbered by male co-students.

The male Architecture graduate receives on average salary $7000 higher than the equally qualified female graduate. This indicates that directly after graduation the male is perceived more valuable to the workplace than his female counterpart. In this case, I believe the organization assumes they will offer more to the company based on generalized male characteristics (assertive, business minded, confident and authoritative) which are highly valued in the Architecture industry.

In work, have you ever felt a particular attitude from co-workers/clients/employers because of your gender? Do you think women and men receive the same chances for professional development?

It is undeniable that the Architecture industry is top-heavy with males – less than 1% of directors in Architecture are female. I believe this leads to a core problem for females in the industy. Male employers tend to support and mentor other males (instead of females) because they are similar to themselves. Males tend to stick together based on their perceived gender specific interests and commonalities – as a female however, I ride dirt bikes, I love sport and I work on cars (I am currently building a 1971 Holden LJ Torana). I can definitely contribute to the conversation, yet despite this, most of the time it is my equally skilled male counterpart who is given the opportunity to dine with the client, attend important meetings or network at social events. It is this attitude which I believe makes it easier for young males to progress into better roles within the company. Typically, the female is not given the same opportunity for professional or personal development.

Male co-workers also tend to stick together. This is in evident through their ‘boys only’ soccer and run clubs. Clients are not as transparent – their goal is to have the project brief met and building occupied. Irrespective of gender, the client will be satisfied if the Architect does a good job.

Why do you think there is the large discrepancy between the number of female architecture graduates and practicing professionals? What happens to the other 38%?

It is evident that after graduation females choose to leave, work outside or move sideways within in the Architecture industry. The profession is task-disciplined – projects are completed over a duration of time. I worked for over 5 years on the same project (from competition to practical completion). I worked intensively for the duration of the task in order to prove my status and build a reputation. After completing the project I left the company in order to leverage my strong portfolio and move to a better position in another company. This means that when I begin my new job, I once again need to establish the same status and reputation.

It is this type of career building which males tend to leverage in order to obtain better pay and to secure positions of management, this however provides a challenge for women as they begin to raise a family. The industry is not well suited to family commitments – Long hours, intense competition, and generally low pay provides a slightly dysfunctional profession which is often incompatible with the demands of raising a family.

Because of this, approximately 70% of females in the profession will take extended time off or reject offers for career advancement. If the female is not in a position of management then it is likely the cost of child care will outweigh their income.

Additional to the large percentage of women who take time off (or leave altogether), I believe it is more likely for females to move sideways in the profession because it is more inline with their family requirements. Females are more likely than males to enter broader fields of architecture criticism, teaching or marketing because the structure, pay, and measurement of success and individual growth within these industries differ to that of the task-disciplined format of Architecture practice.

Is architecture a ‘Man’s World’?

I believe Architecture has always has been a ‘mans world’. When asked to name a successful female Architect aside from Zaha Hadid, many will struggle. However, to name a successful male Architect is easy – Le Corbusier, Frank Lloyd Wright, Meis Van der Rohe, Louis Khan or Frank Gehry to name a few. Each obtained the height of their fame in their 60’s or 70’s. With the average female Architect retiring at age 60 it is likely the female will never reach the super-star status of their male counterpart (regardless of their talent) because they simply retire too young!

Even when thinking of Architecture young-guns including Bjake Ingels or Andrew Maynard it is difficult to name a young-gun female Architect – don’t worry, I aim to change this! Males do however, have better odds of moving up the company structure and to then obtain a professional position where they can start their own successful organizations.

I believe that for these reasons the profession will continue to move forward for some time with female Architects who obtain success but will remain in the shadow or be forgotten when compared to their successful male counterparts.

How do you think the profession can change to encourage equality?

In order for the profession to encourage equality, I believe it needs to address a number of issues.

The profession needs to appeal more directly to the requirements of female Architects. The profession is task-disciplined and dysfunctional – it is both qualitative and quantitative. Employees are expected to work long hours, under intense pressure and receive a generally low income – I believe this leads to many employees feeling they are under-appreciated.

Talented female Architects continue to reject directorate positions in organizations because the role requirements do not align with young family commitments. Organizations may need to reconsider the expectations and requirements which they place on their employees if they do not wish to discriminate against females in the industry.

The profession can further encourage equality through the introduction of mentoring and advisory programs which encourage females to interact with company directors, and vice versa. This would aim to give females equal opportunity to grow within a company and to extend their professional development, confidence and other skills.

For females who choose to leave the industry for an extended period of time in order to have children, the profession would benefit from workplace return to work programs in order to up-skill their knowledge of current practices.

Architecture is often represented to the public with male figure-heads. A more diverse and accurate representation of the profession to the public and school students would benefit the perception of the industry. This would provide females with a more accurate understanding of what the profession actually entails before they enter Architecture school. I believe this would help increase the retention rate of females in the industry because they enter Architecture school and the workplace with knowledge of the industry, their expectations and role requirements.

Full responses from the other women are posted on the OpenBuildings Blog.

I’d love to know what you think about the topic and my opinion in the post comments below!

TED Talks on Architecture

Following on from my previous post, highlighting the Speech to Harvard Architecture Graduates by TED’s curator Chris Anderson I thought it would be appropriate to highlight some of the most popular TED Talks on Architecture,

Here were some of Chris Anderson’s favouirte TED Talks on Architecture:

• Thomas Heatherwick – Building the Seed Cathedral
  A future more beautiful? Architect Thomas Heatherwick shows five recent projects featuring ingenious bio-inspired designs. Some are remakes of the ordinary: a bus, a bridge, a power station … And one is an extraordinary pavilion, the Seed Cathedral, a celebration of growth and light.
• Joshua Prince-Ramus: Building a theater that remakes itself
  Joshua Prince-Ramus believes that if architects re-engineer their design process, the results can be spectacular. Speaking at TEDxSMU, Dallas, he walks us through his fantastic re-creation of the local Wyly Theater as a giant “theatrical machine” that reconfigures itself at the touch of a button.
• Moshe Safdie on building uniqueness
  Looking back over his long career, architect Moshe Safdie delves into four of his design projects and explains how he labored to make each one truly unique for its site and its users.
• Liz Diller plays with Architecture
  In this engrossing EG talk, architect Liz Diller shares her firm DS+R’s more unusual work, including the Blur Building, whose walls are made of fog, and the revamped Alice Tully Hall, which is wrapped in glowing wooden skin.
• Bjarke Ingels: 3 warp-speed architecture tales
  Danish architect Bjarke Ingels rockets through photo/video-mingled stories of his eco-flashy designs. His buildings not only look like nature — they act like nature: blocking the wind, collecting solar energy — and creating stunning views. Read my Interview with Bjarke Ingels

Here are 10 more inspiring TED Talks:

1. Cameron Sinclair: TED Prize wish: Open-source architecture to house the world

Accepting his 2006 TED Prize, Cameron Sinclair demonstrates how passionate designers and architects can respond to world housing crises. He unveils his TED Prize wish for a network to improve global living standards through collaborative design.

More on Cameron Sinclair (follow Cameron on Twitter)

• Cameron Sinclair – Wikipedia.org
• Pragmatic Experimentation: An interview with Cameron Sinclair – EyeTeeth
• Architecture for Humanity – his non-profit design service firm focused on sustainable architecture and building.

2. Carlo Ratti: Architecture that senses and responds

With his team at SENSEable City Lab, MIT’s Carlo Ratti makes cool things by sensing the data we create. He pulls from passive data sets — like the calls we make, the garbage we throw away — to create surprising visualizations of city life. And he and his team create dazzling interactive environments from moving water and flying light, powered by simple gestures caught through sensors.

More on Carlo Ratti:

• Carlo Ratti – Wikipedia.org
• SENSEable City Lab – a new research initiative at MIT.
• Carlo Ratti Associati – a list of his projects on his firm’s website

3. Rogier van der Heide: Why light needs darkness

Lighting architect Rogier van der Heide offers a beautiful new way to look at the world — by paying attention to light (and to darkness). Examples from classic buildings illustrate a deeply thought-out vision of the play of light around us.

More on Dan Phillips:

• Rogier van der Heide – Wikipedia.org
• RvdH – Roger’s website and blog
• Dan Phillips builds Enchanting and Affordable Houses from Recycled Materials [Slideshow] – Inhabitat

4. Ellen Dunham-Jones: Retrofitting suburbia

Ellen Dunham-Jones fires the starting shot for the next 50 years’ big sustainable design project: retrofitting suburbia. To come: Dying malls rehabilitated, dead “big box” stores re-inhabited, parking lots transformed into thriving wetlands.

More on Ellen Dunham-Jones:

• Retrofitting Suburbia: Urban Design Solutions for Redesigning Suburbs – her book with more than 50 case studies on "underperforming ashphalt properties".
• Architect Ellen Dunham-Jones on the future of retail in the postsprawl era – Harvard Business Review

5. James Howard Kunstler: The tragedy of suburbia

In James Howard Kunstler’s view, public spaces should be inspired centers of civic life and the physical manifestation of the common good. Instead, he argues, what we have in America is a nation of places not worth caring about.

More on James Howard Kunstler:

• The Long Emergency: Surviving the End of Oil, Climate Change, and Other Converging Catastrophes of the Twenty-First Century – his book on climate change, and it’s implications on the future
• Clustfuck Nation – Kuntstler’s blog

6. Carolyn Steel: How food shapes our cities

Every day, in a city the size of London, 30 million meals are served. But where does all the food come from? Architect Carolyn Steel discusses the daily miracle of feeding a city, and shows how ancient food routes shaped the modern world.

More on Carolyn Steel (follow Carolyn Steel on twitter)

• Hungry City: How Food Shapes Our Lives – her book on the gargantuan effort needed to feed cities across the world on a daily basis.
• The Hungry City Blog – Carolyn’s blog

7. David Byrne: How architecture helped music evolve

As his career grew, David Byrne went from playing CBGB to Carnegie Hall. He asks: Does the venue make the music? From outdoor drumming to Wagnerian operas to arena rock, he explores how context has pushed musical innovation.

More on David Byrne

• Bicycle Diaries – David has been riding a bike since the early ’80s, and this book is a journal of his observations and insights as he has pedalled through the worlds major cities.
• The Hungry City Blog – Wikipedia.org

8. Michael Pawlyn: Using nature’s genius in architecture

How can architects build a new world of sustainable beauty? By learning from nature. At TEDSalon in London, Michael Pawlyn describes three habits of nature that could transform architecture and society: radical resource efficiency, closed loops, and drawing energy from the sun.

More on Michael Pawlyn:

• Exploration Architecture – a list of Michael’s projects on his firms website
• Michael Pawlyn at Google Zeitgeist Europe 2007 [video] – his architectural perspective on what we can do to tackle climate change.

9. Mitchell Joachim: Don’t build your home, grow it!

TED Fellow and urban designer Mitchell Joachim presents his vision for sustainable, organic architecture: eco-friendly abodes grown from plants and — wait for it — meat.

More on Mitchell Joachim:

• Terreform1 – Mitchell Joachim’s website
• Mitchell Joachim on the Colbert Report – talking about the cities of the future

10. Magnus Larsson: Turning dunes into architecture

Architecture student Magnus Larsson details his bold plan to transform the harsh Sahara desert using bacteria and a surprising construction material: the sand itself.

More on Magnus Larsson:

• MagnusLarsson.com – his studio’s website
• Sand/Stone – Geoff Manaugh’s article on Larsson’s ambitious landscape design project

What are your favourite TED talks on Architecture? or even more generally, which TED talks have you found most inspiring? Let me know in the comments below!

Having recently graduated, I found Chris Anderson’s speech to Harvard Architecture Graduates incredibly valuable. Anderson, is a former  magazine publisher and journalist from England. He founded the TED (Technology – Entertainment – Design) conferences in 2001 through a nonprofit foundation. TED aims to help solve global problems through media, technology, and entrepreneurship.

Anderson discussed three integral components of talent—imagination, innovation, and invention—that have made human progress possible. Anderson advises graduates to develop these components by not pursuing your passion directly. At least not yet. Instead … pursue the things that will empower you. Pursue knowledge. Be relentlessly curious. Listen, learn.

Image Source

His speech was too amazing for me to quote in parts, so here is the speech in it’s entirety: from Anderson’s posterous.

“First of all, I’m not sure if your organizers today were aware of this, but  I actually don’t give a lot of speeches. I’m usually the guy doing the inviting. Frankly, it’s a lot more comfortable that way.  But… I couldn’t pass up the chance to spend some time with a group of people who have so much to offer the world. Truly, it’s an honor to be here.

To begin with, a favor.  If you are one of the graduating class, I would like you please to stand up.  I want to see you properly.  Thank you. Congratulations. You made it.  And if you would, I would like you to hold your heads very still for just the next 10 seconds or so. Because, I  have an app on my ipad here that’s pretty cool. I’m not taking your picture. What I’m doing, if you don’t mind,  is just grabbing a download of the contents of each of your brains. Thank you. You may sit.

Now unfortunately, this app is still in, let’s say, pre-alpha mode. It doesn’t work that reliably. But if it did, I wonder what a read out would reveal. Of course today there would be all manner of emotions around the years you’ve spent here and the prospects ahead. Excitement, nostalgia, hope…  regret, panic. We’d no doubt uncover a few unexpected jealousies, embarrassing memories,  a complete record of everything that happened late at night over there in the trays.  (Don’t worry, it’s all 100% privacy protected, unless you forgot to check the box marked no public humiliation.) But along with all that, there would be something else in this data. We would be able to see an astonishing picture of…the future. Better than any crystal ball, or forecasting tool, we could see what our world will look like in a couple decades’ time.

Now I mean this quite literally and seriously. By getting this far in this place, you, the Harvard Graduate School of Design class of 2011, have proved that you possess a certain, incredible talent. It’s a talent that is unique to our species. And if you were to rank this talent among members of our species in general, I have no doubt you would all be in the top 1% of 1%. I’m not talking about intelligence, fine breeding, good looks, dress sense, or compelling social skills.  (Though I have no doubt you excel there too.)  I am talking about the talent which some would call… imagination or invention or innovation. It is the remarkable ability first of all to model some aspect of the external world inside our heads… and secondly to play with that mental model until suddenly… bingo… you find a a way to rearrange it so that it’s actually better.  This is the amazing engine that underpins both technology the T of TED, and Design the D of TED.  It is this skill that has made possible human progress of the last 50,000 years.

It’s really astonishing that we can do this. For almost the entire period of life on earth, the appearance of design has been driven differently. By random trial and error. Like a drunkard lumbering through a dark maze of passages, life has lurched its way forward. For every evolutionary step forward there have been countless dead ends. In a single lifetime, change was not detectable. It happened slowly, painfully over millions of years. Somehow in our species the light came on. We actually found a way to model the future before lumbering into it. That… changed… everything.

Viewed from a different perspective, you could say our brains became the ecosystems for a new kind of life, a life that replicated and transformed itself at a rate hitherto unknown in our corner of the universe. The thrilling life of the world of ideas. TED is devoted to nurturing this life form. And in a sense, you’re about to devote the rest of your life to that same mission. But whereas we at TED nurture ideas by putting free talks up on the Internet, you will be not just dreaming them but turning them into reality so that thousands or millions of other people will be impacted by them.

And that is why I’m so excited by this group brain scan I’m holding here in my hand. It’s the future right here.

Wait I think I can make out something, albeit it’s a little fuzzy. Espoused in a mind over here, I think I can just about make out… a gorgeous building, full of natural light whose bio-inspired curves evoke wonder and delight in everyone who sees it. Over there I can see a once barren industrial wasteland converted into a glorious city park where people gather, mill, walk, play and dream. And emanating from a mind on this side…  oh wow. Here is a spectacular city of the future. One in which cars are replaced by intelligent, next-generation  transport systems, and human-scale meeting places where people naturally mingle and connect.  A city which breathes and adjusts and interacts with its citizens like a living system.

When you sum up all the visions contained in this room right now I have to tell you, the future looks pretty enticing. And the most thrilling part? A significant proportion of those dreams will within the next decade or two become real. Why? because you will make it so. You are the 2011 graduate class of the GSD. Like few other people on earth, you have the skills and the  resources to truly change the world.

But here’s the rub. What will determine which of the dreams here present today see the light of day, and which will languish unfunded, forgotten, ignored?

Well, usually a single person can’t make a big idea come true (unless they have extremely rich parents). In almost every case an idea need multiple backers. So it must first spread from one brain to many, spreading excitement as it goes. So what makes THAT happen? It certainly helps if the idea itself is powerful. By which I mean some combination of beautiful, ingenious, and… affordable. But there’s something else.  It needs to be communicated with power. One of the most tragic things in the world is a powerful idea stuck inside the head of someone who can’t actually explain it to anyone else. At TED over the years, we’ve had a lot of architects come and share their visions with us, and a good number of them have been absolutely… awful.  How can that be?  They have the most compelling subject matter imaginable. Giant designs at a scale that impacts thousands or millions of people… Yet when it come to articulating them, they descend into gibberish – the abstract, over-intellectual language of architectural criticism that makes an audience’s eyes glaze over and their brains numb.  This is an utter tragedy!  Whatever else you do in the coming years of your life, I beg you, I truly beg you to find a way of sharing your dreams in a way that truly reveals the excitement and passion and possibility behind them.

The good news here is that you’re entering the profession at a wonderful moment. I speak as an outsider, but it seems to me that three giant trends are combining to transform both the role of architecture – and  how it can be talked about. First of all, in recent years a mode of thought that has dominated intellectual life for much of the past century is gradually being laid to rest. I’m referring to the toxic belief that human nature and aesthetic values are infinitely malleable, and determined purely by cultural norms. For a while this gave a generation of architects exhilarating freedom to abandon all traditional architectural rules, and impose their own vision on society. But, like similar experiments in music, art, drama, and literature, they didn’t always win the world’s love.

Today there’s a growing consensus that we should think of humans differently. That far from living in separate cultural bubbles we actually share millions of years of evolutionary history. That there are far far more ways that we’re the same than that we’re different. The anthropologist Donald Brown has documented more than 200 human universals present in every culture on earth. They ranged from things like body adornment, feasting, dancing to common facial expressions and, yes, shared aesthetic values. This latter question has been the subject of countless experiments around the world in the past couple decades, and they’ve mostly revealed an amazing degree of resonance among vastly different people on what they find…  beautiful.

This shift is surely allowing us to change the language in which architecture is discussed. In a world of pure cultural relativism, there are no absolutes to appeal to. To succeed you had to learn the opaque language of a tight-knit clique of critics and opinion formers. It didn’t matter if the rest of the world was left scratching its head. Today, slowly, gingerly, it’s become possible once again to use language the rest of us can understand. I think it’s even OK to use that B word again. Beauty. Not as a proxy for arrogant artistic self-expression, but as a quest to tap into something that can resonate deeply in millions of souls around the world.  I’m happy to report that in the last couple years at TED  we’ve been wowed by a new generation of architects  Joshua Prince-Ramus,  Bjarke Ingels, Liz Diller, Thomas Heatherwick and others, as they’ve shared with us – in plain English -  their passion, their dreams, and yes, the beauty of what they’re created. When Thomas Heatherwick shared his vision for a stunning, new residential complex in Kuala Lumpur, curved out from narrow bases like a bed of tulips, I had just one thought.  I wish I had been born in the future.

I suppose an architect might have dreamt of such a development 30 years ago… but it could never have been built. And that brings us to the second trend. Technology is changing the rules of what’s possible. The astounding power of computer-assisted design and new construction techniques are giving us the ability to actually build what before could only have been a whimsical doodle on a sketch-pad..  Suddenly the fractals and curves of Mother Nature, are a legitimate part of the architectural lexicon. And around the world, as people watch these new buildings arise, instead of muttering “monstrosity”, their jaws are dropping, their eyes moistening.

And finally, perhaps most important of all, we’re at a moment in history where the world is paying attention to you like never before. As leading designers of scale, you, more than anyone else, hold in your hands the answers to the most important question we all face. Namely this. Can the coming world of 10 billion people survive and flourish without consuming itself in the process. The answers if they are to be found, – and I think they will – will come from… design. Better ways to pattern our lives. There is nothing written into our nature that says that the only path to a wonderful, rich, meaningful life is to own two cars and a McMansion in the suburbs.

But it’s becoming urgent for the world to start to see a compelling alternative vision. Probably it’s going to come down to re-imagining what a city can be, and making it so wonderful, that few people would want to live anywhere else. If there are to be 10 billion of us, we will have to, for the most part, live close to each other — if only to give the rest of nature a chance. Indeed more than half the world already lives in cities and the best of them offer so much to the world : richer culture, a greater sense of community, a far lower carbon footprint per person – and  the collision of ideas that nurtures innovation.  And the future cities you will help create need not feel claustrophobic or soulless. By sculpting beautiful new forms into the city’s structures and landscapes; by incorporating light, plants, trees, water; by imagining new ways to connect with each other and work with each other, you will allow the coming crowd to live more richly, more meaningfully, than has ever been possible in history – and to do so without sacrificing your grandchildren.

Now finally, I guess it’s traditional at a time like this to offer some personal advice to you as you embark on your career. Everything from “one word: plastics”.  to… “follow your dream, pursue your passion”. Indeed the mantra of romantically pursuing passion is hammered into us by countless movies, novels and pulp TV. I’m not convinced it is very good advice. Apart from the fact that many people aren’t sure what their passion is, even if they were, there are lots of wonderful things in life that absolutely should not be pursued directly. Take love.  We all want it. But there’s a word for people who pursue love a little too directly.  Stalker. Or take happiness. Go after that wholeheartedly and most likely you’ll end up a hedonist, a narcissist, an addict.  A great musician who wants to pursue the absolute in artistic creativity doesn’t get there by being creative. She gets there by being disciplined. By learning, listening and by practicing for hours… until one day the creativity just flows of its own accord.

The architect Moshe Safdie ended his TED talk a few years with this poem.

“He who seeks truth shall find beauty. He who seeks beauty shall find vanity.
He who seeks order, shall find gratification. He who seeks gratification, shall be disappointed.
He who considers himself the servant of his fellow beings shall find the joy of self-expression. He who seeks self-expression, shall fall into the pit of arrogance.
Arrogance is incompatible with nature. Through nature, the nature of the universe and the nature of man, we shall seek truth.
If we seek truth, we shall find beauty.”

So I guess my advice would be… Don’t pursue your passion directly. At least not yet. Instead… pursue the things that will empower you. Pursue knowledge. Be relentlessly curious. Listen, learn. You’re leaving Harvard this week, but your learning cannot ever, ever be allowed to stop.

Pursue discipline. It’s an old-fashioned word, but it’s never been more important.Today’s world is full of an impossible number of distractions. The world-changers are those who find a way of ignoring most of them.

And above all. Pursue generosity. Not just because it will add meaning to your life — though it will do that — but because your future is going to be built on great ideas and in the future you are entering, great ideas HAVE to be given away. They do. The world is more interconnected than ever. The rules of what you give and what you hold on to have changed forever. If you hold on to your best ideas, maybe you can for a moment grab some short-term personal commercial gain. But if you let them roam free, they can spread like wildfire, earning you a global reputation. They can be reshaped and improved by others. They can achieve impact and influence in the world far greater than if you were to champion them alone. If we’ve discovered anything at TED these past few years, it’s that radical openness pays. We gave away our talks on the web, and far from killing demand for the conference, it massively increased it, turning TED from something which reached 800 people once a year to something which reached half a million people every day. We gave away our brand in the form of TEDx, and far from diluting TED, it democratized it, and multiplied its footprint a thousand fold.

Knowledge, discipline, generosity. If you pursue those with all the determination you possess, one day before too long, without you even knowing it, the chance to realize your most spectacular dreams will come gently tap you on the shoulder and whisper… let’s go.  And you’ll be ready.

And that is how you’re going to help shape a better future for all of us.

No pressure or anything, but we’re counting on you.”

For regular updates from Chris Anderson be sure to follow him on twitter.

Architecture is fundamentally limited to the conception of the building-as-object: a theoretical and historical fixation that erases the social and political experiences of the city. The following was written through the theories of Ian Borden, author of Skateboarding, Space and the city: Architecture and the Body.

Skateboarding as a process for rethinking architectures manifold possibilities:

My interest in skateboarding began well before my interest in architecture. It is not architecture history or theory but skateboarding that influences my social, spatial and conceptual understanding of architecture. My appreciation of the city is through the intimate desire to find new possibilities of representing, imagining and experiencing architecture. The followings investigates skateboarding as a legitimate means of architecture criticism and spatial appropriation.

Traditional architecture theory conceptualises the city as an absolute; it is recognised as an object that is not only static but also grounded by regulation. Through the values of skateboarding however, the city is reconceptualised as an amorphous space in constant transition, a space for the flow of ideas, events and activities. French Sociologist Henri Lefebvre argued that ‘in addition to being a means of production and reproduction, space must serve as a tool for thought and action.’[1]

Skateboarding is perhaps an unusual object for study in architecture. However, it is precisely its marginal position that enables skateboarding to function as a critical exterior to the profession. Skateboarding is fundamentally concerned with the perspicacity of experience.

My own perception of architecture recognises space for production and reproduction. Space is neither stable nor fixed, but is constituted by the discourses and practices of social life. Architecture should be understood beyond the construction of built space; and through the practice of skateboarding,  architecture can be defined broadly to be the tools, experiences, mappings, compositional processes and social relations that pertain in space.

Rejecting Capitalism:

In Sydney, skateboarding emerged in the late 1980s. Within a few years, it was legislated against. Innately, such laws add to the anarchic character of skateboarding, and form part of its dependence on, as well as struggle against, the modern city. Architects have often worked alongside the city to deter skateboarders from using public or private space. The danger that skateboarders possesses to the city goes beyond physical considerations and legalities; it is about what they symbolise. Skateboarding is the freedom of movement, it does not produce a commodity, and it is an unpredictable and unconventional anti-capitalist value.

The skateboarder requires an object (the skateboard); it involves great effort but produces no commodity in exchange. In contrast, architects exist because they produce a commodity (the building); they inherently support and make money from capitalism.

Marxist theorist and Situationist Guy Debord (1983) describes the capitalist experience of the city as the ‘Society of the Spectacle’. Architecture contributes by creating part of the spectacle. Debord states ‘The spectacle has created a passive society and aims to isolate the individual and reality itself becomes replaced only by images. There can be no freedom apart from activity, and within the spectacle of society everything is prohibited.’[2]

The Situationists responded to the ‘Society of the Spectacle’ by bodily movements of derive and détournement. The skateboarder actively moves through space using the same Situationist desire lines. Skateboarding is a true form of urban derive that refutes the reduction of activity solely to the spectacle of the image. Skateboarders say almost nothing as codified statements, yet present an extraordinary range of implicit enunciations and meanings.

Skateboarding’s critique of capitalism is through the negative dialectic that denies exchange and through the positive dialectic that restlessly searches for new possibilities of representing, imagining and experiencing the city. Skateboarding is not only a critique upon the product of architecture but also upon the role of the architect. Skateboarding describes the need for architecture to consider social value, to be productive of things, and to encourage activities that are not explicitly commoditised.

The skateboarder undermines the ordered and commercial atmosphere of the city. The value of skateboarding when applied to architecture requires the architect to question the city in its conventional arrangement of floors, walls and stairs – to re-evaluate the importance of spatial experience.

Representation and Imagination:

Architecture criticism is traditionally conveyed through writing. However, skateboarding is also a form of architecture criticism entirely different to writing, drawing or theorising. In the participatory movement of the skateboarder’s body across urban space lies the central critique of the city. It also forms a critique on architecture criticism and considers the need for criticism when concerned with experience to extend beyond the realm of writing.

The below image maps the movement of 2 different skateboarders and architects as they were asked to critique an area of the city. The site is Martin Place bounded by Elizabeth and Castlereagh Street. The diagram represents their movement (in plan view) within the site over a 10-minute period. Crosses mark the beginning and end of their critique, time is shown in minutes and the circles represent a physical interaction with a particular object (touching a wall, sitting on a bench etc). The path of the skateboarder is shown solid, while that of the architect is shown dotted.

Each of the maps allow observations about the manner by which the skateboarder and the architect interact with space. In each instance, the architect touches no more than two objects and there is no repetition in their movement. It is possible to trace the direction of their path and, at all times, the architect critiques within the boundaries of the site. In contrast, in each instance, the skateboarder touches more than 30 objects, whether it be a wall, handrail, seat, stair or floor. The movement of the skateboarder is fast and repetitive and it is difficult to trace the direction of their movement due the irregularity of their path, which intersects and overlaps. The skateboarder does not stay within the boundaries of the site and explores within the private properties of the commercial buildings.

The path of the architect shows his or her critiques of the site through passive observation. Conversely, the skateboarder critiques through movement and incites an active reassertion of touch, hearing, adrenalin, rhythms, balance and focus. The overlapping lines and specific areas of density within the skateboarder’s movement show his or her focus on specific and isolated objects. There is no conventional arrangement to the skateboarder’s movement and their disregard for rules is shown through their penetration beyond the site and within private space.

The repetition in the skateboarder’s path and physical interaction with architecture in fact indicates a deep understanding of those particular objects that the architect would not be able to describe accurately. Skateboarder Todd Kelly describes skateboarding as the enhanced understanding of spatial meaning: ‘I don’t just walk through space without learning anything about it, or without having a relationship with it.’[3] The skateboarder analyses architecture not for historical, symbolic or authorial content, but for how surfaces present themselves.

Architecture theorist and skateboarder Iain Borden advocates skateboarding as a productive means to critique the city. Borden states ‘architects can learn from the protestant work ethic of skateboarding, which suggests architects can produce different things: to explore building not as a product but as the production of emotions, actions, effort and play.’[4] When the movement of the skateboarder is applied to the application of criticism, it explores the need to understand buildings beyond visual appreciation and writing. Skateboarding reveals the need to represent the joy and experience of space through participation.

Social and Cultural Engagement:

Architecture is fundamentally limited to the conception of the building-as-object: a theoretical and historical fixation that erases the social and political experiences of the city. By doing so, it neglects the reproduction and experience of architecture. Lefebvre argues that ‘architecture must produce activities and experiences of social and cultural importance.’[5] Skateboarding uses the left over objects of architecture to produce experience and meaning: ‘Two hundred years of technology has unwittingly created a massive cement playground of unlimited potential.’[6]

Architecture rarely considers buildings as the facilitators of social and cultural autonomy. Architect Lebbeus Woods (1988) responded by creating moments of ‘freespace’: a space with no commodity or pre-determined use that allows pedestrians to use the space socially and culturally however they choose. The skateboarder applies the ideas of ‘freespace’ throughout the entire city and has therefore developed an unorthodox appreciation and ability to seek out potential social relations.

The below images are extracted from video documentation that records the social reaction of three different skateboarders and architects as they approach a constructed conversation. The top 3 images are that of the architect, the 3 below images are that of the skateboarder. Over a period of 10 minutes, I asked the skateboarders and architects to interact with something they found interesting. Their site was Martin place bounded by George and Pitt Street. The video camera was placed in a hidden location.

The video uncovers the different social and cultural responses of the skateboarders and architects. In each instance, the architect walked past the group of people (of the constructed conversation) without acknowledging any interest in their ‘performance’. They each located various physical objects as their point of interest (such as façade details). At no point did the architect actually attempt to experience the object of interest beyond a visual or aesthetic appreciation. However, each of the skateboarders interacted with the people (of the constructed conversation): ‘This group of people, who I wouldn’t usually associate with, looked like they were having fun. I wanted to say hi, I wanted to be a part of that.’[7] Skateboarders are often understood as anti-social, yet their participation in the ‘performance’ actively sought to engage in a social activity.

Each of the skateboarders actively participated in the conversations in order to truly experience social values. The architects sought an entirely different agenda. The video explores the possibility for the ideals of skateboarding to flow into the general appreciation of space from which architects can learn. Architects design buildings from a spatial vision, and in order for that space to function, pedestrians are typically controlled though various architectural strategies including program and circulation. Their renders, plans and photography typically show their building without people or disruptions and by doing so, their total vision is withdrawn from social and cultural considerations. Skateboarding is inherently a cultural and social value. Architects are often too concerned with aesthetics and they neglect to find meaning or interest in the activities that actually happen within the space.

Skateboarding began in the beach cities of California, as a surfer’s activity, emulating the surf moves on the hard surfaces of urban subdivisions and concrete. Skateboarding has therefore, always been about appropriating the city. Architects conceptualise their building in totality and typically conceive space with a pre-determined use (seats are for sitting, stairways are for walking). Skateboarding is fundamentally concerned with micro-spaces and rejects any pre-determined use of space: ‘Most people think handrails are for people with mobility problems, I however say they are for ollie nose grinds.’[8]

Borden describes the architect as the creator of hierarchies, “of architecture-as-object, architecture-as-drawing or architecture-as-idea; the skateboarder disregards these hierarchies to create architecture-as-process, continually repeated, yet forever new.” [6]

While rejecting the current condition of the city skateboarding begins to re-conceptualise the city. Skateboarders appropriate architecture through different techniques. The above image (left) shows a freestyle skateboarder who maps the city through seeking isolated objects (such as handrails, stairs and curbs) and uses them in a manner entirely different to its ideological content. It is about finding fixed and left over points in the city. The above image (right) shows a surf-style skateboarder who maps the line between two points: when the opportunity appears, they take advantage of a particular linear feature: ‘Good paving on Fifth Avenue or a connecting bike lane—that’s the kind of thing you’re looking for.’[9] Each skateboarder finds a different technique and priority for spatial appropriation and creates a different map through space and time.

Skateboarding creates maps composed from the opportunities offered by the physical and emotional contours of the city and are enacted through new spaces and moments. Architects must understand that pedestrians use the city to create moments that are different to what is intended. Architects should encourage the ability for spatial appropriation, in order to allow social freedom and experience. By understanding appropriation as important to architecture, architects may begin to focus on the experience of space as opposed to the object.

Skateboarders take over and consume space conceptually as well as physically, and thus strike at the heart of what everyone else understands the city to be. The skateboarder dissolves the physicality of the modern city into the imagination of another micro-space. When applied to architecture, architects must question what is conventionally understood as the city and this will help to shape new appreciations of appropriation and spatial meaning.

Skateboarding as Architecture:

‘Surely it is the supreme illusion to defer to architects, urbanists or planners as being experts or ultimate authorities in matters with relation to space.’[10] Skateboarders are among the most social and spatially aggressive group to reclaim the city for their own appropriation and as such, deny architects, urbanists and urban planners as ultimate authorities. Ian Borden proposes, that skateboarding actually becomes architecture, not as the object, but as the production and reproduction of space. Without licence, authority or professional obligations, the skateboarder creates personal space with intimate and subjective meaning.

Architecture can be described as the tools, experiences, mappings, compositional processes and social relations that pertain within space. Architecture, following Lefebvre’s (1991b) body-centric formulations, ‘reproduces itself within those who use the space in question, within their lived experience.’[11] It is through this definition of pedestrian, experience and reproduction that the skateboarder has a deeper understanding of space than the architect.

The skateboarder responds to everyday architecture and appropriates new edits, mappings, meanings and actions. The above images show spatial meaning and composition. Skateboarding denies the standardisation and repetition of the city as the serial production of building types, functions and discrete objects; it decentres building-objects in time and space in order to re-compose them in a strung-out yet newly synchronous arrangement. Through the values of the skateboarder, architecture is not seen as the vision of the architect but as the turbulent nexus of reproduction: ‘On the street the urban blight is being reworked to new specifications. The man on the avenue is the architect of the future; Invent your own life.’[12]

Within Borden’s theory, Skateboarding rejects the idea of the architect as the creator and their work as a project. Production is not seen as the production of things but of desires and actions, the purpose of space is for use rather than exchange, richness is social wealth not ownership, place is composed of time and speed, and the city is the interrogator rather than the determinant of the self.

Deconstructive Architect Bernard Tschumi (1991) describes the need for architecture to focus on the events and actions that must be facilitated within space. Tschumi describes his work as ‘anti-form, anti-hierarchy, anti-structure—the opposite of all that architecture stands for and it is precisely for that reason.’[13] If architects were to consider the activity of reproducing space, architecture might develop in a manner that allows the pedestrian, like the skateboarder, to appropriate space as they desire.

Conclusion:

Throughout the course of architecture’s history, social theorists including Debord (1983) and Lefebvre (1991a) have argued the social and cultural application of architecture. Architects often focus on the production of the object as opposed to the production of experience and therefore fail to truly understand the way in which space may be understood and appropriated by the various users of the city.

Skateboarding has a deep appreciation and understanding of architecture, regardless of how unconventional or subversive it may be. Ultimately, skateboarding helps to rethink architecture’s manifold possibilities. Through the movement of the skateboarder across urban space, and in its direct interaction with the city, skateboarding forms its critique on architecture. When skateboarding values are applied to architecture, architects must reconsider conventional conceptions of space, values of experience, notions of control, ideals of freedom and architecture’s contribution to corporate structures.

Additional reading: Check out this post on A Daily Dose of Architecture on Urban Sports and Design.

References:

1. Wikipedia.(2010). Henri Lefebvre. <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henri_Lefebvre>.

2.  Gavin, F.(2007).Street Renegades: New Underground Art. p.4. Lauren King Publishing Ltd., London, UK.

3. Borden, I. (2001).Skateboarding Space and the City; Architecture and the Body. P.200. Berg, Oxford.

4. Pooley, J. (2007).Skateboarding vs Architecture. Viewed 23 September 2010, <http://www.skynoise.net/2007/09/15/skateboarding-vs-architecture/>.

5. Lefebvre, H. (1991b).The Production of Space. Pg 4. Blackwell, Oxford.

6. Borden, I. (2001).Skateboarding Space and the City; Architecture and the Body. P.173. Berg, Oxford.

7. Mainter, J. (2010), pers. comm. Interview conducted by Linda Bennett.

8. Shudder speed. (1981), Thrasher magazine, p.50. Vol 1.

9. Nobel, P. (2010), pers. comm. (email) Interview conducted by Linda Bennett.

Suggested Reading:

Anderotti, L.&Costa, X. (Eds). (1996).Theory of Derive and other Situationist Writings on the City. Meseu d, art contemporani de Barcelona, Barcelona.

Benjamin, W. &Baudelaire, C. (1985).  ALyric Poet in the Era of High Capitalism. Verso, London.

Borden, I. & Dunster, D. (Eds). (1995). Architecture and the Sites of History: Interpretations of Buildings and Cities. Butterworth Architecture, Oxford.

Borden, I. (1998). Body Architecture: Skateboarding and the Creation of Super-architectural Space. In Occupying Architecture(edited by Hill), Routledge, London.

Borden, I. (2001). Skateboarding Space and the City; Architecture and the Body. Berg, Oxford.

Debord, G. (1983). Society of the Spectacle. Black and Red, Detroit.

Gavin, F.(2007).Street Renegades: New Underground Art. Lauren King Publishing Ltd., London, UK.

Gottdiener, M. (1985). The Social Production of Urban Space. University of Texas, Austin.

Hill, J. (Ed.). (1998).Occupying Architecture: Between Architecture and the User. Routledge, London.

Kiendl, A. (2003).Godzilla vs Skateboarders: Skateboarding as a Critique of Social Spaces. Dunlop Art Gallery.

Lefebvre, H. (1991a).Critique of Everyday Life. Volume 1: Introduction. Verso, London.

Lefebvre, H. (1991b).The Production of Space. Blackwell, Oxford.

Marx, K. & Engels, F. (1963).Selected Writings, T. Bottomore & M. Rubel (Eds). Penguin, Harmondsworth.

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Unfortunately it has been a while since I posted on Archi-Ninja. Many exciting things have been happening in last couple of months. I have graduated from my Masters of Architecture degree at UTS. I have travelled Europe and America and spent time visiting amazing offices around the world from BIG (Copenhagen) to Frank Gehry (Los Angeles).

I continue to work full time at Architectus on 1 Bligh Street, Sydney. Also keeping me busy is my new little Dalmatian puppy, Louie. Named after Lou Dog – the unofficial mascot for the American ska-band Sublime. (If you have some time, check out STP – one of my fav Sublime tracks!)

Luckily, I have lots of content ready for Archi-Ninja and will kick off my first post with a mega essay about the relationship between architecture and anarchy. A topic which continued to surface throughout my last couple of years at uni.

My interest in anarchy began when I first listened to a 1982 punk-rock album titled How Could Hell Be Any Worse? by Bad Religion. I was fifteen years of age and from that moment the ethics of early punk rock began to influence a set of principles which to this day lie at the forefront of my professional ambitions. In 2004 I began my studies in architecture, and by then my still-developing anarchist outlook on social politics had rejected almost every ideology tradition of past generation.

I understand the practice of architecture as a culture of hierarchy that appears entirely at odds with the ideals of anarchy: architecture is dependant upon commissions and regulations; the architect must work within a time frame, budget and brief, and is restricted according to safety, money and law. Anarchy, on the other hand (though the definition of anarchy differs between groups of anarchists) is the generic social and political suggestion that expresses negation of all power, autonomy, domination and division. Architecture happens to naturally prosper under the structures and regulations that anarchy aims to eliminate. But it is precisely the differences and contradictions between the ideologies of architecture and anarchy that motivate my aspiration to study and practice in the field.

Anarchism maintains that corporations (of whatever sort, political or commercial) do not value basic human needs, and tend to diminish cultural and social freedom. Architecture plays an increasingly important role in the production of the corporate city – it is the handmaiden of corporatism – and yet I remain intrigued by the possibility that somehow, through the application of the theory and principles of anarchism, designers might be able to challenge the purpose of architecture and to ultimately redefine spatial and cultural implications.

Cities are a product of capitalism. At the turn of the 20th century architecture responded to the influx of rural migration with the systematic separation of social class and mass production. In 1923 Le Corbusier proposed the traditional city be swept away in favour of rational and productive strategies of regulation and suppression. He proposed the eradication of “social chance” and “architectural wilfulness” through mechanical efficiency and regulation of city structures. He also posited architecture as an explicit alternative of, and antithesis to, radical social change: “Architecture ou Revolution?” is the title of one chapter in his magnum opus, Vers une architecture.

The architecture of the early “masters” of modernism (such as Frank Lloyd Wright, Le Corbusier and Mies Van Der Rohe) is often credited with the destruction of the traditional city as a coherent cultural entity. Despite their lofty promises of utopia, their work to this day is reproduced by the mainstream architectural profession for an incompatible corporate structure; the city is stripped of its moral base to function efficiently as a component of a state-supported global capitalism.

City planners to this day adopt Le Corbusier’s model, in which congested streets are replaced with a combination of towers and freeways. Architectural firms function with a leader of extreme charisma, predictive elitism and authoritarianism, also characteristics of Wright, Le Corbusier and Van Der Rohe. The education system is also misguided; universities often encourage their students to reproduce architectural proposals of past typologies and techniques. The academy’s focus on the past can be seen as non-progressive towards exploring new ways of developing architecture.

Henry Rollins of 1970’s anarchist punk band Black Flag recognises the effect of modern design on urban life, describing the modern city a product of “manipulation, control and agenda.” (Rollins 2010, pers. comm., 3 June) “A society has to at least in part, conform to the structure of the city”, (Rollins 2010, pers. comm., 3 June) and by doing so cities are controlled by the objectives of the people who make them. The success of the city is highly dependant upon a competitive corporate market. Global capitalism has created the need for specific methods of research and monitoring. Information and details about our behaviour are stored in order to aid businesses and government in predicting our reactions and to therefore plan and control our cities accordingly. Research shows that you’re most likely to turn right after entering a shop, that you’re most likely to buy something on an overcast day and that you walk slower when streets are planted with trees. Every space that you pass through in the city is designed with human traffic flow and productivity in mind. The city structure is a functional and efficient system which controls the way its inhabitants move through space. Individual and social components of the city are defined by corporate considerations. The emphasis on the absolute recognises the city with machine-like efficiencies; it is not dissimilar to the 1923 vision of Le Corbusier.

By contrast, the tenets of anarchism to which I adhere are not merely anti-statist but relate more broadly to ideals of freedom. I believe human beings are capable of managing their own lives based on respect, creativity and cooperation. I don’t expect the elite of architecture to embrace anarchy. The modern architect makes their living from the corporate market; when they accept commissions from corporations that affect public life they are in fact committed to supporting political systems.

Architecture contributes to these political systems, firstly, by creating physical devices. The architect for example designs the supermarket like a passage of narrative text, forcing the user to pass from the beginning to the end. The architect designs the isles rounded so that you never be averted from the stock. Supermarket architect Ronald Smith describes this as a technique which ‘endures the maximisation of time spent in store and also as a way to capitalise on impulse buying.’

Secondly, Architecture contributes to the capitalist/corporatist project by creating emotion; buildings are designed to affect human behaviour. The tiles on the Woolworths supermarket aisles in Bondi Junction, Sydney, for example, reduce in size as you approach the more expensive items, causing the wheels on your trolley to click faster and therefore increasing your desire to spend.

Lastly, and less obvious than the contributions above, is the ‘creative authority’ of the architect, which further diminishes the possibility for social encounter and individual freedom. Architects design buildings from a spatial vision, and in order for that space to function the users must be controlled though various architectural strategies including program and circulation. Their renders, plans and photography show architectural space without people or disruptions – their vision is withdrawn from social and political responsibility; they have neglected to recognise the additional social and political implications of their work. Architects understand their role as the creator, but in actuality they produce nothing more or less than a physical and social order designed by the corporations who hold political authority and power.

The consequences of this complacance, from the anarchist perspective, are ominous. One of the key figures in the development of my anarchist thinking is sociologist Richard Sennett. Sennett proposes that the acceptance of order in the modern city has led to the underdevelopment of both individual and community. In The Uses of Disorder, (1970) he describes the present individual as one who seeks a similar machine-like order along the lines of Le Corbusier’s early modernist program. Sennett describes the modern city as a bureaucratic, social and economic support structure for isolation, separation and suppression of individual and communal experience.

Sennett typifies the modern personality as one seeking comfortable, functional, unambiguous and unchallenging perceptions of self and society. “The modern individual is in a state of voluntary extraction from social encounter,” (Sennett 1970, p. 108) he writes. Sennett describes that only in a “dense, disorderly and overwhelming city” can an individual recognise the true complexity of life and human relations: “The jungle of the city, its vastness and loneliness, has a positive human value.” (Sennett 1970, p. 134) The city, in Sennett’s view, is the ultimate locality for exploring ethics and social diversity. “A city isn’t just a place to live, to shop, to go out and have kids play. It’s a place that implicates how one derives one’s ethics, how one develops a sense of justice, how one learns to talk with and learn from people who are unlike oneself, which is how a human being becomes human.” (Sennett 1970, p. 65)

While Sennett’s work is that of a philosopher and not an architect, it is possible to understand his ideas of the city as practical advice for designers and urban planners. In order for humanity to rediscover social freedom and culture, Sennett proposes anarchy in typical 1970’s advocate: he recommends a radical destabilization of power and perception. One architect who seems to reflect the architectural implications of this suggestion is Lebbius Woods. Another of my personal standard-bearers in seeding an anarchist architecture, Woods in a similar manner to Sennett, explores the creation of culture and social encounter.

Woods recognises that architecture constructs a subjective position though the spatialisation of power. “The architect speaks of designing spaces that satisfies human needs, but it is actually human needs that are being shaped in order to satisfy space.” (Tuscello 2003) Woods attempts to create a “freespace” within the controlled city network, freespace being an area with no prescriptive function and no imposed behaviours. Woods recognises human behaviour as dynamic but highly influenced by the inactive state of architecture which contributes to our perception of values. “People come and go, ways of living change, but architecture endures, an idealization of living.” (Tuscello 2003)

Woods introduced the concept of freespace in his Berlin Free Zone project. He describes the project as “A hidden city within the city.” (Woods 2010) The Berlin Free Zone project through conflict of materiality provided unpredictable possibilities for culture, social and individual transformation. The project created machine-like ‘buildings’ within an area where the Berlin Wall once stood. It is difficult for the general public to conceptually understand the work; there is no spatial order or system, as intended the use of his buildings for those willing to invent ways of spatial habitation. Through the breakdown of architectural order and structure, Wood’s architecture allows the participant to redefine their definition of space.

Woods focuses on social and political conflict without violence; his project for the Korean De-militarized Zone depicts a hangar-like structure without walls. The structure is supported by a heteromorphous meshwork of support beams emerging from sinuous columns. Sunshine streams through ragged holes in the roof though the sky is rarely visible though the meshwork above. Internal tension between ideals and the need to survive emerges in a space of suspended conflict. The concept of ‘freespace’ provides a moment of dynamic and patternless structure. The geometry of Woods’ work is seemingly modelled upon the notion of chaos theory – a pattern of order so complex and subtle that it cannot be comprehended as such. His work offers a compelling critique on to the basic human condition of community.

Conflict is a common theme throughout Woods’ architecture: he proposes not a utopia but a heterotopia – a spatial environment where individual differences and conflicts come together. The creation of buildings without walls is in direct opposition to the neoliberal dream of privatized spaces, and the exploration of such spatial interventions are explored in the work of other anarchism-influenced artists and architects – Gordon Matta-Clarke being a prime example.

Matta-Clarke was also trained as an architect, but is predominantly known for his artworks. While Woods explored conflict though lighting and materiality, Matta-Clarke explored the same theme through juxtapositions of past and present. Matta-Clarke’s work often shows hostility towards his initial architectural education which he often described as a ‘trap’.

Matta-Clark’s work can be understood as the attempt to redefine what is by convention considered architecture. Matta-Clarke stated he was “more concerned in voids, gaps, spaces, abandoned and underdeveloped places, for example, places where you stop to tie your laces and places that have a disruption of your daily movements.” (Mannino 2006) Splitting is the first of several works which investigates subversive acts of architectural negation. The project literally cuts a suburban New Jersey home in half. He described the project as offering “A complexity that comes from taking an otherwise completely normal, conventional, albeit anonymous situation and redefining it, translating it into overlapping and multiple readings of past and present.” (Phillips 2006) Matta-Clarke took the utterly banal and through a process of subtraction he reinterpreted different spatial experiences and new modes of urban inquiry. One viewer of his work was quoted as saying, “The first thing you saw was this enormous split in a building. People noticed it and began talking about it on the street.” (Phillips 2006) His work spurred, street conversations, public debate, and an open discourse though which collective dialogue could act as a facilitator for new ideas of socio-spatial relations?

Like Sennett and Woods, Matta-Clarke was very critical of his modernist predecessors, once telling an interviewer that “far from addressing humanities problems, most architects were not solving anything except how to make a living.” (Attlee 2007) He stated that “design morality is valid. The functional issue (of modernism) was chosen because it seemed the most critical break from the beaux-arts, historic garbage. It was valid for its time. But how long has it been? Seventy years since and no kind of radical reappraisal has gone on?” (Attlee 2007) Matta-Clarke often wrote of ideals in juxtaposition to the slogans of his predecessors. Le Corbusier pronounced the plan as the generator, while Matta-Clarke wrote, “There are forms without plans – dynamic orders and disorders.” (Attlee 2007)

Matta-Clarke’s work seeks to celebrate the inner city is all its disorder, social variety and crazy juxtaposition of architectural styles and eras. Le Corbusier wanted to abolish the hidden infrastructure that lay beneath the streets; Matta-Clarke saw the underground as the last repository of history. His work induces a sensation of anarchistic freedom by finding new ways of inhabiting the city. Above all, Matta-Clarke was a politically motivated artist/architect. His work represents a dynamic manifestation of criticality, and his aggressive but subtle deformation of liminal space provides an opportunity for the public to develop their own social critiques of city space.

Sennett, Woods and Matta-Clarke each expressed their hostility towards the social and political outcomes of Le Corbusier’s work and towards the project of early modernism as a whole. Their varied studies in philosophy, architecture and art can be understood as explorations in the rediscovery of social culture and individual freedom. They propose various forms of intervention which in different scales develop a state of anarchy. But anarchy as a means of architectural regeneration – in the way that I wish to explore in my future work – implies certain added conditions.

Under the state of anarchy proposed by Sennett, every community would design their own space according to their individual demand and uniqueness. Politically, Sennett proposes an extreme form of participatory democracy, whereby liberty and choice are in order not by laws of government but by the dialogue and critique within a community of individuals. In order for architecture to exist in such a state, it is dependant upon the breakdown of the entire political system which surrounds it. Henry Rollins describes anarchy of this type as an anti-structure which is not commonly tolerated: “if thousands of people started camping out in Central Park, NYC, I don’t see that working out very well those people.” (Rollins 2010, pers. comm, 3 June)

Likewise, I question the progressiveness of complete disorder; I don’t see it possible in our current commercial position to produce such a state of anarchy. Sennett describes the social possibilities after the break-down of structure but was likewise unable to provide any indications as to how we could radically provide such a global state of anarchism. It is very difficult to imagine a society functioning without government. By Contrast Wood’s and Matta-Clarke propose moments of anarchy within a functioning system of government. My professional ambitions also lie within a similar realm of thinking.

Woods and Matta-Clarke recognised the impossibility of ignoring the actual condition of the modern city; they accepted and understood the rules of the city – and society – as it actually was in order to work from within. Both Woods and Matta-Clarke embark on the transfer of human knowledge and communication in an attempt to alter the role of architecture. Woods produced architecture as an architect, while Matta-Clarke manipulated existing products of architecture as an artist. Woods created an intervention within the city while Matta-Clarke was interested in making space without building. Both, however, sought to create an active public dialogue, rather than attempt the kind of direct revolutionary activity proposed by Sennett.

Likewise, differences pertain between Woods and Matta-Clarke also bear examination. The two differed in the ways that they engaged with the public. Woods created spaces of conflict, a parallel state which removed the users from the customary constraints of reality. Matta-Clarke’s work, by contrast, exacerbated past and present spatial conflicts and made the user acutely aware of their own physical being, their own reality. It was Matta-Clarke who created, to my mind, perhaps the more realistic and confrontational work, questioning the environment in which we live and creating a sense of vulnerability and weakness that exposed the failures of the modern city. More than the idealism of Sennett, or the purely speculative work of Woods, Matta-Clark’s contribution is my ideal prototype for modern action.

Of course, all three anarchy-inflected thinkers – Sennett, Woods and Matta-Clarke – reached the height of their influence in the 1970’s and 1980’s, when concepts of anarchy and revolt against capitalism were more a part of the intellectual discourse than they are today. When I think of the revolt of the young intellectual against capitalism I cast my imagination back to Paris, the summer of 1968. Thousands of working class individuals and students took to the streets in revolutionary protest. Work was forgone, normality disregarded and in that moment, the world was theirs. Although short lived, the riots of 1968 are regarded as a widespread reaction against the oppressive atmosphere of the capitalist city. But today, soixantehuitard-style revolution seems exceedingly distant from mainstream architectural ideologies and concern.

And this is where the political – and architectural – potential of the punk ethos I imbibed as a teenager seems relevant. Punk emerged in much the same period as the work of Sennet, Woods, and Matta-Clarke, the late ‘60s (if one admits The Stooges as the pioneer punk-rock group). But punk was also a lived culture: not merely the image of revolt, but an actual live enactment of the concepts of freedom and anti-establishmentarianism. Punk’s heroes, musicians like Henry Rollins and Iggy Pop, broke instruments, exposed themselves in public, and generally carried on as though anarchy was already an established fact, rather than an abstract ideology. Most of all, punk’s DIY (Do It Yourself) ethic placed the means of creating the anarchic life in the hands of anyone who would take it up.

In my own career I hope to expand upon the thinking of Sennett, Woods and Matta-Clarke, infused with an architectural punk sensibility, in order re-conceptualise the principles of anarchy and their purpose in architecture. As applied to architecture, the implications of the punk-DIY attitude would include challenging the established professional position of the architect, problematising the official role of the urban planner, purposefully confusing the consumer, manipulating architectural government or directly attacking advanced capitalism.

I hope to explore human behaviour and spatial meaning though social performances and unintended spatial uses. I believe it is possible to reduce the control over a particular space by creating uses for that space which was never intended. It works by changing what that space means and represents for the community which uses it. If I were, for example, to create a situation or place a foreign object within a space, then I am able to give that particular space a different history, reading, purpose or adaption. I hope to investigate this in my own career as a productive revolt against capitalism and as a means of interrogating the role of architecture in society.

I am currently planning a tactical, guerrilla-style spatial invasion for Sydney’s Martin Place. Martin Place currently functions as a transitory and retail space. High-end clothing, retail and commercial corporations enclose the area – their lavish and expensive goods are protected by an image of exclusivity and by the security guards who keep skateboarders and the homeless from public view. In September, 2010 I’ll be pulling up to Martin Place with multiple vans at every crossroad to unload various objects appropriate for skateboarders. In Martin Place the skateboarder is considered Public Enemy Number One; they cheapen and disrupt the image of the institutions who line the area. A skateboarder is representative of an individual who stands in the face of capitalism and refuses to obey the rules; they have turned the city not into something which controls them but into a playground for their own interpretation and discovery. Conducting tricks and grinding down railings, the skateboarders undermine the ordered atmosphere of the site. As the passers-by of Martin Place watch the skaters at play their eyes are distracted from the oppressive corporate environment. Next time they visit Martin Place, they might begin to think and talk about the skateboarder.

This is an example of architectural anarchism in action. Without taking down government, it is possible to reduce the control it has upon city users. The skateboarder may for example disrupt the predetermined path of an unsuspecting individual, forcing them to turn left (instead of right) into a retail shop. The erratic skateboarder thereby incites a human behaviour that was not regulated or controlled by the city as it was planned; the movement of the individual becomes dynamic and unpredictable.

Now, let’s imagine I set up a nation-wide competition at ANZ (an Australian bank) whereby individuals are timed on their ability to race from one booth to the next in a lap around the store. I could organise the competition via the internet or even by word of mouth. People could compete in any shop and record their time on the website. Individuals might establish teams to take on other teams, while the staff at ANZ would have no way of telling which of their customers were genuine and which of their customers were there only to compete. People might begin to create obstacles at other stores, perhaps raising bomb threats or by modifying the internal store layout. Certain stores might become legendary for their fast times, while others might be more frequently targeted by individuals creating obstacles. A national final might be even announced in an unsuspecting store. The competition would wreak havoc on the image and productiveness of ANZ. Their customers would be distracted from the traditional control mechanisms of the corporation. The competition would encourage a productive and collective public culture; some people may work together while other unsuspecting customers may engage in a conversation about what the hell is happening around them; the image of authority previously recognised by ANZ becomes nothing more or less than a nationwide playground. Similar to the work of Woods it seeks to establish a new system of spontaneous social relations through the .creation of unfamiliar spatial relations. But my proposal also attempts to address anarchy not in one, predetermined location but in multiple and unpredictable localities – similar to the work of Matta-Clarke it modifies the context and meaning of the city without building. And in keeping with the strategies of punk, it’s cheap, replicable by anyone anywhere, and creates an instant anarchy accessible to all.

Another example of my projected practice: The Space Hijackers are a group who operate from London and focus on manipulating corporate space. Time Out magazine has described the group as “an inventive and subversive group of London ‘Anarchitects’ who specialise in reclaiming public spaces – usually without permission.” (Richard 2006) They believe if architecture can act as an icon for organisation or government, then we are able to adapt what that architecture signifies. “For example, if we protest outside a particular building often enough the building will begin to become known for the protesters outside it. The community that spiral around the space will equate the building with the protestors even when they are not there. The protestors become a part of the building fabric; they merge with it to become one. The building can become an icon for the protest as much as the organisation that owns it.” (Priestly 2001)

The Space Hijackers, similar to my thinking, recognise the city as a product of capitalism, and their work amounts to a simple statement: “we could mess it up.” The very essence of their argument is rooted in principles of individual freedom and culture which is suppressed under the control of government and corporation. Such thinking redefines the purpose of architecture; it is not a product of capitalism and does not necessarily produce a building which conforms to the traditional constraints of the profession. It’s technique and possibilities are entirely different to existing professional normalities. Through their work, and my proposals the architect functions under a new code of ethics which will expand alongside the development of freedom and social culture.

In all disciplines there exists a radical minority that dares to tread beyond the mainstream discourse. Architecture needs to develop new ways of approaching freedom and culture so the complexities of our needs are not reduced to an environment of regulations and standards. Indeed, architecture is a practice bound by law; it is both technical and economic – but surely it is also capable of providing for fluid and dynamic situations of irregular behavioural and novel social patterns. Architecture should respond to these considerations and not simply be a product devised from the extrapolation of old ideals.

Social theorist Mikhail Bakunin described “the passion of destruction as the passion of creativity.” Perhaps my interest in anarchy can be drawn back to my own desire for individual and creative expression. The creative destruction of punk was my first brush with anarchy; thinkers like Sennett, Woods, and Matta-Clarke have added nuance and shading to my understanding of anarchy. My future proposals do not seek the entire obliteration of regulation and order; rather they hope to find new, more humane and more radical alternatives through architectural intervention. These new activities hold promise for confusing the existing system by creating a pattern of human behaviour which can no longer be predicable. Over time, this would in turn change the way government and corporation must function in order to maximise the productivity of city users. My intention as an architect is to engage in an exploration not of social and political revolution; but of anarchist evolution.

Reference List:

Truscello, M. 2003, ‘The Architecture of Information: Open Source Software and Tactical Poststructuralist Anarchism’, Postmodern Culture, Issue 503, viewed 3 June 2010, http://pmc.iath.virginia.edu/issue.503/13.3truscello.html

Attlee, J. 2007, Towards Anarchitecture: Gordon Matta-Clark And Le Corbusier , Tate Papers, viewed 3 June 2009, http://www.tate.org.uk/research/tateresearch/tatepapers/07spring/attlee.htm.

Mannino, S. 2006, Matta-Clark and Anarchitecture. Infinite letture per infiniti spettatori , DADA architetti associati, viewed 3 June 2009, http://architettura.supereva.com/artland/20060416/index.htm.

Phillips, D. 2006, Gordon Matta Clark: Anarchitecture and Detournement, ISSUU, viewed 3 June 2010, http://issuu.com/dnl.phillips/docs/anarchitecture_and_detournement-daniel_phillips.

Sennett, R. 1970, The Uses of Disorder: Personal Identity and City Life, Norton & Company, New York, N.Y.

Priestly, R. 2001, Advanced Capitalist Architecture (and how to mess it all up), Space Hijackers, viewed 3 June 2009, http://www.spacehijackers.co.uk/html/ideas/writing/Adcaparchi.html

Woods, L. 2010, The Dreaming Satellite, Lebbeus Woods, viewed 3 June 2010, http://septimus7.tripod.com/ibea/gall10.html

Richard, K. 2006, “London’s secret scenes”. Features. Time Out. pp. 12. > Viewed 6 June 2010. http://www.timeout.com/london/features/1975/12.html

Henry Rollins 2010, pers. comm. (email), 3 June

I recently wrote an article for Architecture Australia on Food For Thought – an Australian spatial and performative experiment, where soup is served to individuals in exchange for ideas. Here is my article:

Performance as Criticism. Linda Bennett becomes a guest soup server for Food for Thought

On 23 April I dress from shoulder to toe in black, not as an architect but as a ninja, to serve bowls of warm watercress soup to the audience of Pecha Kucha. I was participating in Food for Thought, and this was one of two occasions when the project inhabited the informal events associated with extra/ordinary, the national conference of the Australian Institute of Architects.

Instigated by Thomas Rivard and Michael Lewarne, with Dario Vacirca and Andrea de Wattignar, Food for Thought is a spatial and performative experiment. The premise is uncomplicated – interested individuals submit an idea in response to a particular question; in return they receive a bowl of soup – but the concept represents a significant departure from current and conventional architectural modes of discussion and production.

I was interested to take part in Food for Thought because it pursues architectural critique through participation and performance rather than writing, drawing and theorizing. It is a grassroots, guerrilla-style spatial assault that brings together diverse ideas and opinion.

At extra/ordinary, Food for Thought sought to use combined talents of 1,000 architects to develop ideas and to create unsolicited community-based projects, in the belief that 1,000 minds in the conference audience might work together to produce something more thoughtful and relevant.

In line with the theme of the conference, participants were asked for ideas on how a sacrosanct site might be occupied. At Pecha Kucha alone we received over 200 ideas – they were fictional, practical, demanding and generous.

For the most part, the proposals were driven by political or social goals. Typically, particpants’ ideas reconceptualized traditional values and opted against conventional means of practice. On the topic of new projects for Sydney, Keith Drew from hobart suggested that the Luna Park ferris wheel be transformed into temporal sleeping capsules for the homeless. Michael McMillan from Geelong suggested we dam Sydney Harbour to create high-density residential refugee camps.

Responding to the ideas of community, Daniel Beasly from Sydney suggested weekly neighbourhood raids to ensure people really are using less. David Neustein from Sydney suggested we bury fifty dollar notes in soil. Their ideas, along with many others, were full of curiosity and energetic descriptions of change but, most importantly, the responses were productive and genuine, addressing unexpected and immediate questions. Collectively, their ideas were broader and less traditional than those described by the speakers at the conference. Most refreshing were proposals of revolt and nonconformity. David Neustein also suggested we unite to physically scar the perfect ground plans of Sydney with our Stanley knives.

In future Food for Thought events, the answers of the participants will be disseminated to the public through scrolling LED display at the subsequent installation and via the Food for Thought website, Twitter and Facebook pages. A report will also be prepared and distributed to the public and industry. The Food for Thought suggestions form an ongoing dialogue with the city, and it may be that they are used to inform proposed and public interventions and projects.

Food for Thought provides a departure from the standardized format of industry events such as conferences.

Too often, themes are set by a single group of organizers, with a focus on the selected speakers. The audience’s desire to expand, to question and to learn – the very reason that I hope that they have attended – is to be satisfied by the isolated accomplishments of the architectural protagonist. But is this enough? I would argue that this format reflects a profession that is increasingly introverted and unchallenging. Theme and speaker selection of extra/ordinary sought to present tangential, radical modes of architectural practice; however, the accepted format of a limited number of “star” speakers still encouraged a passive audience.

A conference is also an opportunity for practitioners to come together and talk informally, in between speakers or over a few drinks at the bar. I believe this is where the real, bottom-up, collective design agenda can be determined. Food for Thought, along with the conference foyer “actions”, sought to use these informal contexts to make new connections with and among the audience, thereby encouraging the discussion of alternative ideas. The location, format and participatory nature of the Foot for Thought project presents a direct and active critique of the traditional manner in which most architectural discussions and projects are conducted.

The conference was the second installation of Food for Thought, which began in April at Broken Hill. The project will have an ongoing life and there are plans to temporarily locate Food for Thought in a range of urban spaces. The next installation will be at the Bondi FM Cafe on 13 June, followed by the 2010 Sydney Design Festival and the 2010 Venice Architecture Biennale. There are ongoing discussions with the City of Sydney, auburn Council and Bankstown Council. To quote Rivard and Lewarne, “A multifaceted progeny of organ-grinder, ice cream cart, puppet theatre and TARDIS, Food for Thought is an active presence, attracting locals and passersby with the prospect of free soup”. Rivard and Lewarne seek to engage a broader public, expanding participation beyond the architectural community. However, for an even greater cross-section of opinion, I’d like to see Food for Thought at Martin Place or at Summernats.

The ambition to “stimulate discussion about the future of urban and civic spaces” among a wider public is particularly important. If architecture is to participate in future urban challenges, we need to find new means of engaging and to explore how architecture might evolve int he face of these challenges. I believe we must start by fostering a dialogue that identifies the architect not as the singular visionary, but as the collective diplomat, a professional who seeks opportunity and focuses on re-establishing authentic relations. To do this, we need to develop alternative ways to produce projects and to actively reconceptualize architectural criticism.

I would argue that contemporary architectural criticism has become increasingly distanced from productive means of action. Yet, if we hope to have an effect as a profession we need to engage with a public audience in a way that is appealing, dynamic and tangible. Food for Thought provides  a useful means of doing this. Through performance and participation it questions a heroic, insulated and isolated architectural practice through urban action. It is critique harvested from the physical and intellectual exchange of anonymous and collective ideas across urban space.

Architectural practice and criticism need to response more directly to the common space that surrounds us, and not merely engage with the 5 percent of the built environment that architects are currently involved in. The format of Food for Thought is not the answer but rather a critique that reconceptualizes architectural practice and criticism.

Could we by more active and productive if projects were established and discussed by both the public and the collective profession? Would we be more purposeful if architectural criticism was more confronting and less traditional?