The notion of our everyday lives is being surveilled and our desires are being monitored.
By stimulating our most sensuous desires, luxuries are converted into necessities. WE desire desire.
We are stuck in this system of wants and needs . Every click is recorded, every button is monitored, every desire is registered. S a m e - d a y ,
o n e - d a y ,
n e x t - d a y .
The techniques for marketing these quick deliveries serve as a primal example of the ways in which the modern city is created to serve us. The ability to obtain products virtually, and have them delivered within hours demonstrates the efficiency of the
LOGISTICAL MACHINE. s
The oiled machine blurs that notion of time and space. Its efficiency distort and obscures the physicality’s of time, distances and geographies. The possibilities of expansion and customisation are made available. There is no longer a physical impact on the produce we can obtain; supplies are made infinite and
our cravings are fed.
FOOD WATER SHELTER
THINGS
A Potted History London Medieval London saw food at its epicentre. Markets were centrally located and the acts of producing, selling, buying and eating were the main motives for socialising.
Caravanserai A roadside inn built to shelter men, goods, and animals along ancient caravan routes in the Muslim World. The Caravanserai is one of the prominent building typologies of Islamic architecture; encompassing most of the daily activities for merchants and buyers. This is when the notion of building for trade became traditionalised . Directly linked to the former silk road trade routes, there was an extensive network of Caravanserais build along the whole route network in the middle east and central Asia. They supported the flow of commerce, information, pilgrimage, and people across the trade routes. This allowed for the extension of Muslim empires covering Asia, India, North Africa and South-Eastern Europe form the seventh until the nineteenth century.
Ancient Food Miles Hellas, now Greece, and Italia, the notion of ancient food miles began. The Mediterranean, Black, Adriatic, the Baltic and the North sea. The ability to obtain products that could not be grown locally (at the time) became facile. This demonstrates how early empires used the sea to create territories of logistics.
Supernatural Uli Westphal The ability to show, hide or exaggerate information on the origins or makings of produce allows for the consumer to be alienated. Thus, the role of marketing and packaging can be named the culprits of consumer-deception. Most consumers would not even recognise or question where or how the produce was manufactured and delivered to our local supermarkets. Here, Uli Westphal’s project, supernatural, shows utopian landscapes which are fabricated from the depictions of animals, plants and landscapes found on food packaging from local Supermarkets such as Asda, Morrisons and Waitrose. The individual elements of the image are cut out, multiplied, mirrored and rearranged into ever repeating patterns. The series studies the way nature and agriculture is portrayed by the food industries. It reveals an idealised, heavily distorted image of the origins of our food.
https://www.uliwestphal.de/supernatural/index.html
Coldscape Nicola Twiley Coldscape, by Nicola Twiley, depicts the vast infrastructure of artificial refrigeration that, beyond our own kitchen fridges, is all but invisible to the general public, but that fundamentally shapes our cities, our shopping practices and the cultivation of the very food we eat. It points out the centrality of refrigeration to our overarching food system and to the perception of food as commodity in the modern West. Charting the monumental architectures of distribution and storage that are so alien to the people who eat those ‘freshly ripped’ foods. Carefully screened from public eyes and imagination.
http://www.cabinetmagazine.org/issues/47/twilley.php
Consumption
Storage Mass
20 m2 domestic urban space. Representing a 4.5x4.5 grid of an urban block comprising of 40 domestic units.
Consumption on the Urban Scale
Time Today, as human activity gets more and more detached from its physical location on earth but rather move onto a digital dimension, the idea of a territory takes a new shape. Instead of delineating (di-lin-eate) a whole mass of land on a map to claim a territory, individual architectural spaces around the globe can situate themselves in a network, execute activities in synchrony, thus create their own time territory. The UK is situated on an island in the North Sea. Historically, the North sea was a mediator that allowed the different lands surrounding it to be connected via colonisation, migration and trade. The sea was the facilitator in creating these territories of logistics.
Time
The Sublime Same-day, one-day, next-day.
4.5 Hours Within the UK, there are over 1500 warehouse units and distribution centres, Equating to around 424 million square feet, these centres aim to serve the needs and desires of the population. Located within what is referenced as “the Golden Triangle,” the UK’s largest logistical parks include Dirft and the Magna parks. Lying between Leicester, Coventry and Milton Keynes, the parks are positioned for efficiency. Dirft is located perfectly between the junctions of the M1, M6 and M42 motorways, which means access to all directions is possible. With this location, 85% of the UK population is reachable within 4 and a half hours, which is the legal limit that a driver can drive for without a break. 4 and a half hours of driving at around 60mph equates to around 360km being reachable. Here, time is not only crucial, but is the facilitator of space.
Land Consumption Within the ‘Golden Triangle’, the industrialised areas, the farmland, the meadows, the natural reserves, and the ‘untouched landscapes’ sit side by side, meeting at junction points, interfaces and thresholds. The only obstruction are these lines of infrastructure, splitting and dividing territory, claiming each space as its own function.
�e Golden Triangle
Land Consumption
‘A Shed the Size of a Town’ Located rurally as there are no limits on extension and size, here, time defines and creates territory. The fascination with these structures is the simplicity of design but the complexity in permits and size. Some of these superstructures are noted as nationally significant projects, where the national government had to give planning permission instead of the local councils. The area of land in which these distribution centres sit on can take up the area of a town; hence, the reference ‘a shed the size of a town.”
Scale
Dirft
1945
2004
2009
Modified Histories
April 2016
September 2016
2018
Modified Histories
A Lost Terrain
/ A New Terrain
In order for the logistical machine to operate smoothly, it must sit on a smooth surface. For the operations within the buildings; the trucks, machines, robots, racks and people must all sit on the same plane with no more than a 0.05 ° difference. Topographic features of an existing site are ignored then forgotten; the landscapes are engineered to a capacity that can create completely new terrain.
15x15
/ 5x5
The land is gridded, and the building’s plane is too; each and every square encompasses a vital process that serves the logistical machine. The concept of a grid is employed and exploited, it is no longer utilised simply for a conception of a regular framework of reference lines in which the dimensions of major structural components of the plan of a building are fixed to, the spaces between the lines convey the important elements. Each square allows the machine to run smoothly, operate efficiently, and continue its movement.
�e Grid
A shed the size of the town
Today, the notion of surplus as a virtue is abused and storage becomes a mode of power.
Process Dictates Space
/ Form Follows Performance
Albert Khan stated that “ The method of production should not be adjusted to the building, but the building should be adapted to the production.� With the rise in demand for immensely large storage facilities , there was a transfer of the seven principles of mass production, including power, accuracy, economy, continuity, system, speed and repetition, as target variables of Taylorism, to architectural design. Here, the space of capitalism and consumerism are manufactured. Commercial demands for efficiency and frugality were fulfilled at the same time as maximum functional flexibility. The processes that would occur in the distribution centre dictate how large the space must be. Simply, here is where the virtual becomes reality; where the internet becomes physical.
Space of Desire
The Platform The platform, acting like a plinth, is raised by 1.2m in order for the incoming (and outgoing) delivery trucks to be at the same plane as the operations within the centre. Every item that sits in a box, on a shelf, on a rack, on the floor is exhibited as a mean of displaying the demands of the consumer.
Platformance
Row 01
/ Shelf A01
Data centres; A space where humans and machines ensure that the logistical machine is running smoothly. Desires are measured, demands are monitories and supplies are fed. What we require first is the easiest to reach, on the first row, on the first shelf; 1-A.
Controlling Desires
Components The components that make up the raised platform of the distribution centre. The importance of the straight line and the plane - the components sitting on one single surface, occupying the space, functioning together and separately in order to run the machine.
0
1.2 Metres
1
2
5m
Objects of Fulfilment The spatial implications of the logistical machine are vitally significant; ultimately making up the commodity chain. A computer; the internet that allows us to have the unlimited possibility of choice and customisation. An avocado; the food that we desire, alienated from its place of production. The platform and the truck that delivers products from port to warehouse, and warehouse to consumer. The data centre, in which our desires can remain monitored and our demands can be processed. A warehouse rack, a pallet truck, a pallet, a box, and at the epicentre of all this lies the consumer; myself the object that encompasses every process of our desire
Taxonomy of Scales In comparing the scales of the domestic and the industrial, the acts of desire and fulfilment convey mutual processes. The computer with the data units, our hands as palet trucks and the shelves as our archives.
Taxonomy of Scales
not to scale
not to scale
Threshold and Interface Spaces of receiving goods, the truck’s delivery platform and the foyer for the house.
Taxonomy of Space The spaces in which our objects accommodate. The organised, gridded surface of the distribution centre and its racks, and the space of consumption, isolated from order and geographies.
Arsenal of Spaces These arsenal of spaces, functioning at different scales are all part of the same logistical machine. The shelf and the house become one - our relationship to the object has become the mediator between these spaces.
House as Storage The acts of buying, owning and consuming goods have become our sacred rituals. The dwelling has adapted and houses a collection of artefacts that serve as an objective map of our rituals; but if the distribution centre acts as the main storage facility, the house then becomes a ‘shed’ as part of that collective; a support unit.
The City as Barrier Today, the concept of time and space is made abstract. The modern worker is constrained; the obsessions and pressures of maintaining a balanced lifestyle and attempting to ration their time between work, health and recreation is a challenge. The rapidity of infrastructural growth is accelerated, the system adapts to the infrastructure whilst it’s creating new, more efficient ones. Distance becomes so manipulated that the machine sits in the city, absorbing it whole - then, we begin to serve the machine. The London Metropolitan area introduces a new obstacle compared to the mass infrastructure of rural England. Congestion zones, zero carbon emission zones, strict speed limits and physically smaller routes limit the speed of the moving truck, interfering in efficiency.
0 mph 5 mph 10 mph 15 mph 20 mph 25 mph 30 mph 40 mph 45 mph 50 mph 60 mph 70 mph
0 mph 5 mph
Urban Machine London From the rural to the urban, as the logistical machine infiltrates the spaces of the city, local depots become realised. Miniature distribution centres that serve consumers within their areas. Products travel from land, to sea, to land and to these multi-scalar spaces before reaching the shelves of the consumer.
DEPOT
DEPOT
Radii As the products reach their spaces of consumption, these local depots encompass the same abstraction as the specifically calculated sites of the distribution centres. Their radii engulf the surrounding homes of city dwellers where the desire to consume and own has become the desire to desire.
Serve
House Typology London Learning housing typologies in London; as the project reaches the urban scale, the domestic scale and its related taxonomies begin to emerge. The terraced house, the semi-detached, the detached and the block compose the urban fabric of London.
Typology
Urban Typology London The row house - the measurement of one street, one system. The project starts by creating a system that operates from the street scale, the urban block. Looking at the different arrangements of the row house within the city and understanding the unit size and system. In looking at the spatial elements of the distribution centre and ultimately introducing it to the domestic scale where space performs both as a barrier and a performer and accelerator.
Block Typology
Precendents
Drawings, paintings, photographs, images and films that helped develop the foundation of the project. Experiments that challenge use, manipulate existing systems and accelerate certain methods of representation, thus testing limits of existing structures and envisioning what could be done.
Frued Unlimited Madelon Vriesendorp, 1975 Freud Unlimited is an attempt to show the “subconscious of Manhattan.” Spaces, objects and infrastructures that seam to bear no or little importance on the operation of the overall system coming together in a room-like space, acting as objects of which they are not. “Infrastructural concealment” - not only invisible by nature, but it can also be camouflaged by design. Some infrastructures are literally buried in the ground or underwater, in the forms of water, sewer, electrical and bandwidth lines, and others are designed to blend in with the scenery, like modern day fulfilment centres; clad in the natural tones of their surroundings.
http://socks-studio.com/2015/02/02/madelon-vriesendorps-manhattan-project/
Sears Advertisement circa 1961 Mass consumption and marketing have always been a focal element in the shift to a consumerist lifestyle advertisements since the 20s tackled the idea that every house must be equipped with the same goods, fulfilling every possible product that a housewife might require.
https://www.history.com/news/sears-catalog-houses-hubcaps
Just what was it that made yesterday’s homes so different, so appealing? Richard Hamilton, 2004 Hamilton’s piece has come to define the rise of consumer society in the mid to late 1950s. Can the home be a space of consumption - viewed from the perspective of customisation and choice of the user?
https://www.tate.org.uk/art/artworks/hamilton-just-what-was-it-that-made-yesterdays-homes-so-different-so-appealing-upgrade-p20271
Bad Press DILLER SCOFIDIO and RENFRO, 1993 Bad Press was a 1993 project by studio DILLER SCOFIDIO and RENFRO, examining the manipulation of the aesthetics of efficiency. The regimented ironing pattern was devised so that a minimum energy would be expended in pressing a shirt into a flat, rectangular shape with the goal of fitting it economically and efficiently into a range of orthogonal storage systems - the wholesale shipping carton, the retail display case, the dresser drawer or the closet shelf, and the suitcase. The project scrutinizes ironing as one of the forms of domestic labour. By trading the image of the functional for the dysfunctional, the post-industrial body is freed from the aesthetics of efficiency altogether. The distortion and manipulation of the object serves as an example of destroying the ‘system’ by accelerating it. This is the foundation of what the project will encompass - experiments that aim to manipulate time and efficiency, further distorting the system and testing its limits.
https://dsrny.com/project/bad-press?index=false&section=projects&search=ironing
Half a Room Yoko Ono, 1967 So, what if we were only able to have half our objects, functionality becomes futile.
https://aseriesofrooms.com/#/asset/-KZB-SEYPkU7ksNONP3m
Family Stuff Huang Qingjun Jiadang , 2000s
or what if we live as Nomads? - where our objects are the only permanent things in our lives?
http://huangqingjun.com/cg/family-stuff/
Japan House 2020 The exhibition invites visitors to discover the legendary craftsmen of hida and their design legacy today, embodied in the work of century-old furniture maker hida sangyo. It highlights the different between craftsmanship and mass production, shedding light on the importance of customisation, flexibility and design in allowing function and aesthetic to co-exist.
https://www.designboom.com/design/japan-house-traditional-japanese-woodcraft-hida-los-angeles-01-24-2020/
Public Square Michael Johansson, 2015 Michael Johansson uses domestic objects to create playful pieces and presents the audience with recognisable objects in a new light, altering their meaning outside of their original quotidian context - challenging use of furniture and ordinary household items, thus, creating new objectified artefacts.
https://www.michaeljohansson.com/works/public_square.html
Profil D’une Rue Pierre Patte, 1780 The etching, completed by Pierre Patte in 1780, considered the radical possibility of combining the distribution and disposal of water in one system. The interest lies in the close connection it posits between the buildings and those systems which assure their efficient functioning - using objects to develop a machine-like urban form.
https://www.wga.hu/frames-e.html?/html/p/patte/proposa2.html
Staging Silence (3) Hans Op De Beeck, Film, 2019 In the three films, two pairs of anonymous hands construct and de-construct fictional interiors and landscapes on a mini film set of just three square meters in size. This film takes the viewer on a visual journey through depopulated, enigmatic and often melancholic, but nonetheless playful, small-scaled places, which are built up and taken down before the eye of the camera.
http://www.hansopdebeeck.com/works/2019/staging-silence-3
Interventions
The interventions challenge the role of the block. The houses are broken up into spaces of private, public, semiprivate and semi-public. A grid is introduced, and areas are distinguished. The standard urban block of sixty units is taken as the general measurement of intervention, where the spaces in between those units hold as the sites of intervention. It proposes a collective distribution centre in the communal space. The urban block, comprising of multiple land owners, surrounded by junctions and routes, can become one. Partition and boundary walls are diminished and replaced with a continuous system and the block is envisioned as a functional communal archive.
Past Present
Future
The project entails an experimental interpretation of the current state of consumption. It rejects the notion of a particular site, and takes London as the site of experimentation. The multi-scalar system operates and controls the object from the transport and movement of goods to consumption and archive. Disposal is rejected, and things become artefacts.
System Routes
System Routes
One
The Communal Garden
The Communal Garden The first act is in the semi-private spaces of the back garden. The space between the mirrored, symmetrical houses, performs both as a barrier and a performer - barrier to the powers of capitalism and logistics, and a performer to the liberation of the mass consumer.
Partition and boundary walls are diminished and replaced with a continuous system and the block is envisioned as a functional communal archive.
The Strip The shared storage unit behind the row of houses acts both as a delivery system and as a space of interaction. It allows the short term storage of goods during their movement from room to room, dwelling to dwelling and block to block.
A Progressive Archive A continuous strip moving along the garden, sitting on spaces of dual ownership, creates a progressive space of storage, division, rationality and interaction. Objects are stored, shared and rotated between the rooms, homes and blocks.
Two
The Archive
The Archive The second act of intervention also sits in an urban block. At 6,400 m2. The structure acts both as a local fulfilment centre - where shared goods are stored, monitored and retrieved - and as an archival exhibition. The dual-functioning space is representative of time and function. As the system operates on a 24 hour basis, the space is used as an archive, or museum of sort, during the day - which allows visitors, the consumers and ‘owners’ of those objects to browse objects that they might need - as well as viewing the objects as artifactual elements. The space then operates as a distribution centre, where the functional spaces of the delivery bay, sorting area and data centre function.
An Exploited Grid The local fulfilment exploits the use the grid in order to create an algorithmic storage system that allows the products to be placed in order of use, demographic and functionality. As products are used, shared and restored, they transcend to the highest shelves to inherently emerge as artefacts.
A Gridded Archive
Re - Imagined The platform of the distribution is re-imagined, employed as a plinth to the sea of objects within, and still remains as a functional tool to the truck delivery bay.
Skin The Archive is clad in glass and translucent fibreglass, allowing the public from the outside to look in. Fibreglass installations redefine internal spaces, walls, floors, and ceilings are integrated in a continuous surface, splitting and combining functioning for dual functioning. The transparency opposes the cladding and functions that occur in distribution centres located in rural areas, hidden from eyes of consumers.
An Archival Gallery
Progressive The local archive starts off as an empty shell, consisting of shelves and spaces that, over-time, will be occupied to store, share, and display objects as they transmute into artefacts.
Forming an Algorithm Products are registered with a code and tracked, and sit on a specific location on the shelves of the structure. Communal control takes over, where the power of logistics then becomes a micro-system operating on the urban scale.
A Shed the Size of a Block Objects accumulate; recast as artefacts - resisting time - with each holding a different story of use, place and space.