Barcelona's Interstices - essay #5

#5

essay #5 personal practice: immediate reflections on future paths

personal practice: immediate reflections on future paths

essay #5

The last essay of this series resumes the architectural concerns exposed before and attempts a discussion towards their solution profiting from the aspects that have been emerging during the unraveling of this research work. It does so through the proposal of a number of conceptual transitions, which should be intended as a will to move the focus from one aspect to another, however not completely annihilating the first. These transitions are sorted in three fields which demand to be readjusted according to our aim: our goals, our techniques and our education. introduction: back in the architects’ shoes The articulation of this work should now evidently state at least one fact: this dissertation is the history of a personal epiphany. Such long and curvy, explorative journey has allowed me to address many questions, intimately connected to my architectural practice that I, being an insider, could only uncertainly feel and not clearly debate. It is in this sense a personal interest to return to my homeland in this final chapter, aiming at the evaluation of what such journey might benefit in terms of future architectural practice. After having become geographers, explorers, sound recordists and photographers, we get back into our architects’ shoes. One thing should be clear however: such shoes won’t be polished and black, nor all-black will be our suit. Not even we will exhibit thick-framed and fancy glasses. It appears compulsory to dismiss such old-fashioned, dusty clothes in order to

wear fresher ones, much more appropriate to the discoveries we have made.

Of course, this is only a metaphor. The question it aims at underlining is that a certain front edge of architectural practice certainly exists and is radically different from its inherited models, may they be Vitruvius or Mies van der Rohe. In fact, for the sake of brevity, these architects are not the typical architect which centuries of history have delivered us: they are not isolated geniuses but connected professionals; they don’t write their poetics in manifestos but they practice them; they are interested in building but they do not exclude other ways of affecting space; and they seem not be interested in realising their idea but in achieving the most efficient global result.

However, merely following what has been done by them can be both ineffective, as the world in which we live in demands constant experimentation, and impossible, since this edge is nothing close to a school of though with its guidelines and workbooks, but rather 111

One famous architect getting back into his (black polished) shoes.

a set of experiments and experimentalists occasionally and temporarily linked together. Instead, what this research allows us to do is to try to imagine a personal future architectural practice which is definitely inspired by such lively practitioners, but mainly informed by the perspectives uncovered during this experience. In fact, it is my belief that imagining such possibilities is not (only) a question of method, intended as a set of practices which one can easily assimilate, but rather one of awareness and consciousness.

For these reasons we will attempt to ground some inquisitive lines which apparently emerge from the expounded research: again, these are not to be meant as dogmas or teachings but instead as personal guidelines for practical futures. These will be marked through this text by three readjustments to work towards: goals, tools and education. readjust our goals Humanitarian interventionism through architecture is a matter of fact, as the vast number of international cooperation agreements, emergency response programmes, specifically targeted agencies and privately funded projects witness.

Moreover, these have gained quite significant interest through the work of many researchers and research centres: even mainstream architectural publications do offer a space for such niche today. This strand of our practice has the unquestionable power to state that architecture, at least this one, is made for the people and their wellessay #5

being. This usually happens in the harshest of situations, where dwellers don’t have access to sanitary facilities, hygienic conditions are extremely scarce or natural disasters have overturned formerly inhabitable situations.

However, observing the global panorama, such experiences seem to be almost exclusively (apart from a few brilliant examples) focused on so-called Third World countries, where such issues are most evident and worrying. Hordes of volunteers fly from their home countries in Europe or North America to offer their skills for limited periods of time in most cases. My intention is not to subtract any merits to these wellintentioned activists nor to acknowledge the efficiency of such actions, but to underline how humanitarian goals in architecture can’t be limited to such experiences.

To overstate the case: architects in, say, Burkina Faso work with problems while architects in Europe work with trends.

However, trends and fashion are not the only element populating european cities. In fact, as the previous essay has so thoroughly stated, our development model is founded on inequality and exploitation of the weakest sectors, might they be global or national.

Furthermore, the actually enduring sociopolitico-economical crisis has harshened already existing issues, widening the gap between the rich and the poor ones: lack of infrastructures and of consequent possibilities is evident, to name a few, in the shortage of affordable housing, the difficulties of transportation, the deficiency of social inclusion and the enduring absence of solutions for housing migrants 113

and political refugees who are constantly growing in number. In the middle of this mess, architectural design in the Western World does not seem bothered by these problems nor animated by any humanitarian approach: architects are busy finding their personal way in this increasingly jungle-like world, hunting the next business opportunity in the strive for economical survival. As highlighted in the problematic panorama sketched in the introduction to this work, architects seem to be caught into a series of traps constituted by apparently unsolvable dichotomies. One of these is the already acknowledged fracture between profit- and social-oriented actions (see #4) determining the impossibility to act for public good.

Exaggerating, the perception exists that if I am socially concerned I must volunteer and that if I want to survive economically I can do nothing but forget such humanitarian aspirations.

Of course, our aim is to work towards this transition from market-oriented to missiondriven. Let it be clear: we are explicitly calling it transition, for this movement involves a wide variety of steps, hues or mélanges. If specific situations offer possibly infinite assemblages, already on the more general organisational plan profiles vary from socially responsible company, through social enterprise to non-profit models with income generating activities. Also, the same agency might collect profits from marketoriented activities in order to reinvest them in pure mission-driven projects. Either, activities might rely on alternative economic circles such as non-monetary exchanges, 114

time-related economies, material recycling and bartering. Again, possibilities are multiple and every one is case-specific, but the important fact is to acknowledge their existence.

Such shift regarding our goals immediately prompts us to enlighten the second transition we are aiming for, which is the one moving from outcome to process. Again, I must dissolve the apparent contrast between the two: process should not assume a hegemonic position in respect to outcome, as “procedural” drifts have shown their downsides throughout history and the two remain equally important. Let me suggest that it would be more correct to indicate a sort of reconnection between these two entities, however this term would not be trenchant enough in order to state our need argument for radical change. If working with conceptual transitions involves this risk, then it might be worthwhile undertaking it.

In the light of what has been stated in the previous essay, it is our strong interest to practically explore how things can be carried out in a proper and innovative way not only as long as the final results are concerned, but rather at the scale of every single phase of the process. Indeed, now that we have assessed the current conditions, contradictions and most of all roles and impacts of architectural production in the urban environment, we cannot deny addressing it through our very material design practice. Moreover, as finding alternatives to standardised solutions is of course a challenging task, it requires increasingly more intense creative effort to be put into

Barcelona’s interstices: opening up architectural practice

the process itself: independent fundraising, participatory planning, advocacy actions, resources research, construction materials recognition, communication strategies and political pressing demand great imagination to be assembled in a flowing ensemble. This imaginative effort finally becomes at least as intense as the one usually saved for strict architectural design. readjust our techniques This research holds at its core the belief that space in general, and urban space in particular, is shaped by strongly heterogeneous and contrasting forces: architects are not alone. This is increasingly evident as human sciences and philosophical contributions proceed in their discoveries: imagine how clear it is today the role of signposts or advertisement banners in determining urban patterns. Or the capacity of the politico-bureaucratic substratum of determining spatial outputs. Again, if our operational context is changing, so must do the professional spaces that we occupy, understanding that building might not be the best solution to a spatial problem as already Cedric Price forty years ago used to say.

It is evident how such disciplinary expansion involves the necessity of challenging, stretching and reassembling the top-down procedures through which architecture is normally produced: one client finds some reasons to commission a building; he therefore demands a design to the architect, who draws it completely; when the design meets the requests of the client, it is finally essay #5

approved and construction phases begin. In our quest for new spaces to occupy however, we might disassemble these dynamics and experiment with such field as well. First of all, we need to understand them, placing our architectural activity in the expanded context of the capitalist production of space and its rhetorics. Secondly, we need practical situations in which to materialise such understanding through creative practice. For example, we might come up with a complete design, even if it has not been requested, in order to stimulate a commission. This design might come out of a certain social group’s aspiration and desires, or might constitute an utopian and ironic statement to underline an issue. Possibilities are, again, endless but case-specific.

Resuming such hypotheses, it appears that the programme (intended as the set of instructions given to the designer by the client) is not anymore the primary tool in shaping our choices. Or at least, not the programme as it is. Rather, a third transition seems to emerge here, shifting our planning focus from programme to practices. The above essays have thoroughly underlined what is intended by this term and how these material bodies of work constitute the central focus of our geographical inquiry, namely the one capable of guiding it. In a parallel way, practices seem to be the most valuable field able of informing our architectural design, according to the shift from profit to social outlined above. Human and non-human behaviours, their patterns, exceptions and poetry as they are observed, participated and felt while on the field 115

appear to be the most stable guideline in this naturally uncertain world. However, let it be clear: as soon as this transition is concerned, practices are not intended to substitute the programme. Instead they can be observed in order to re-program it before its fulfilment, to challenge it and render it efficient for our purposes.

Accordingly, we must also disrupt the strengthened schism between research and design: in best cases, the architect heads to the project field or future construction site; once there, he puts into practice some quite personal techniques of inquiry, such as direct observation, photographic survey and free sketching; needless to say, these visits are nothing extended nor frequent, nor they involve any sort of ethnographic approach as they mostly aim at registering some formal features of the site which might be later included in or inspire the design proposal; finally such architect returns to his office and lays down his personal design, which is ultimately handed to the appropriate subjects. If our goal is to expand and connect our practice, this fracture must be overtaken.

Firstly, intellectually, understanding that we architects are not solitary and enlightened creators but rather parts of social bodies.

Secondly, practically through imaginative techniques: norwegian architects TYIN Tegnestue sometimes drop their paper and ink and use whiteboards instead, so that the design needs to by memorised perfectly by all the subjects implied in its creation and construction. This is just one example, but it seems to trace valuable directions to explore in abandoning or integrating strengthened 116

habits and tools.

Tools constitute in fact the other half of this discussion over technique. Again, such complex and variegated issues cannot be faced through our traditional disciplinary tools: might they be ink or CAD, they become useless when the necessity becomes, for instance, fund-seeking or participatory planning. Our solutions are not universal and might perform insufficiently and we ultimately need to explore new abilities. As an old proverb states: if all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail. In fact, we might need to be able to design efficiently communicating websites in order to increase accessibility to a project; we might need to produce installations for raising awareness on a spatial problem; we might need to organise group of non-specialised workers or build stuff ourselves; we might even need to be expert in fundraising and campaigning, other than being political spokesmen and women.

Expanding our toolkit involves, I believe, two main directions. Acknowledging the impossibility of learning such wide set of skills, the first option is to found our practice on the specialisation around some selected issues.

For example, focusing on community planning and self-building or digital communication and urban planning. Assemblage seems to be, following the discussion outlined in #2, an extremely valuable notion once again.

The other option seems to be the constitutive role of collaboration with other professional subjects. Collaboration of course naturally happens, however I would conceive it as a fundamental and fertile aspect rather than a

Barcelona’s interstices: opening up architectural practice

necessity-driven solution. readjust our education Such reflections over the necessity of implementing the architects’ tools lead us to the conclusion of this work. In fact, being the final document of five years of architectural studies, it would be unfair to avoid a brief meditation over the educational system that has brought to such results. Moreover, educational inefficiencies, contradictions and possibilities have always been central to my personal thoughts and appear to be interwoven in this dissertation. This work would be incomplete without a conclusive gaze over the past experience and the future hopes regarding such an important phase in my (and others’) life in architecture.

Analysing practical examples would be however tedious: I might rather highlight some conceptual issues which have affected my personal educational career so far.

In doing so I propose, again, other iconic transitions.

Let me directly start from the first one, which aims at moving top-down relational dynamics present in much architectural institutions to rather network-like ones. This should happen at all scales: fostering interaction between students in single courses could improve collaboration, critical thinking and imaginative solutions beyond the professor’s mandates and the aim for a good mark; the same could happen by supporting intercourse partnerships at the department scale and even inter-department agreements at the whole athenaeum scale. Moreover, such essay #5

network-like configuration can be possibly extended beyond the walls of the academia, enacting our second transition from selfreferential to outwards oriented learning process. If architecture as an educational system and process is autonomous in the sense that it is endowed with specific traits, still the above outlined need for inter-disciplinary openness has to begin earlier. This could happen through practical experiences such as, for example, inter-university lectures, shared workshops with professionals and open exhibitions. Ultimately, apart from this hymn to collaboration and shared knowledge, I believe that universities should be conceived as avant-garde environments for critical thinking instead of semi-military training centres. If our discipline becomes increasingly complex following the world in which we live in, we need first of all the tools to understanding. However understanding does not seem to be sufficient, as this research argues that we need the creative power to imagine our own future practice.

In conclusion, I am conscious that this work remains admittedly both synthetic and speculative. However, such research experimentations and theoretical reflections appear to me as necessary to be completed, since I am sure that even the near future will offer the opportunity to develop, especially through practical experiences, the inquisitive lines set in this research.

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This essay is part of a series of five, which together form the research work entitled: Barcelona’s interstices: opening up architectural practice. Essay #1 – Opens questions: observing design through geography works as an introduction; essay #2 – Dealing with the urban: theory, method, tools discusses the theoretical and methodological framework employed in this work; essay #3 – Interstice as shifting space unravels possible debates over complexity, instabilty and layering towards urban space; essay #4 – Challenges at every scale: from economics to politics explores key theoretical questions regarding the formation of contemporary urban space; essay #5 – Personal practice: immediate reflections on future paths concludes this work exploring directions for future architectural practice.