LOOK INSIDE: New Investigations in Collective Form

In October 2017, YBCA approached The Open Workshop to create an exhibition for our City Initiative program, an ongoing series of case studies by architects, designers, planners, and artists creating provocative works in the urban environment. The exhibitions are meant to expand YBCA’s commitment to model the art institution as a public resource—to pledge the organization to artistic practitioners and constituencies who understand art and culture as forms of knowledge and experience that support civic inquiry and public culture.

The series began in March 2017 with Teddy Cruz and Fonna Forman’s Visualizing Citizenship: Seeking a New Public Imagination. The exhibition highlighted their cross-disciplinary practice, which uses diagrammatic and analytical tools of architecture, urban planning, and political theory to research government and civic structures, and deconstruct and visualize urban and public policy. This was followed in June 2017 with Damon Rich and Jae Shin’s Space Brainz: Yerba Buena 3000, which presented work from their design studio, Hector, and their most recent experiences with contested architecture and planning projects in North American cities. The exhibition resembled a futuristic city made of modular structures where Hector’s projects and proposals, successes and failures, narrated the clashing interests involved in shaping the urban fabric.

With The Open Workshop’s New Investigations in Collective Form, we turned our focus to local practitioners. From the gold rush to the building of the Golden Gate Bridge, through the postwar population boom and the rise of Silicon Valley, the kinds of ingenuity fostered in the Bay Area have made it one of the world’s leading economic, academic, recreational, and cultural regions. Through a playful yet rigorous approach, The Open Workshop delves into some of the most urgent issues we face in the Bay Area: climate change, inequity specifically as related to housing, and the need to learn and relearn to live together as society becomes ever more pluralistic. The exhibition makes clever use of models, plants, drawings, and interactive elements to grant the visitor agency in articulating their surroundings. In a time that feels particularly isolating, The Open Workshop creates a space for people to share experiences, touch, learn, and imagine new possibilities for both the built and the natural environment—and, most importantly, for the future. ◘

Martin Strickland, Associate Director of Public Programs

Lucía Sanromán, Director of Visual Arts

FOREWORD

PIER VITTORIO AURELI

One of the most controversial topics in architecture today is form . As soon as you mention the word form, architects often immediately claim that what they are doing is not just “form”. The concept of form is downgraded to a vague container of everything that is wrong about architecture—self-referentiality, disengagement, irrelevance. Yet, it is worth a reminder that everything that exists, whether an object or a process, has a form. Form is not just morphé , that is, sensible form, or the form that we can detect through sight; form is also skhēma — the way in which something is presented, and èidos — the internal, invisible structure of things. Defined as such, form is the essential property of architecture. If we agree that architecture concerns the visible and invisible structure of buildings and the built environment, then we can say that Architecture’s most important purpose is to give form to these things. In the act of giving form, architecture reifies, and makes tangible, the political and economic forces that govern the space in which we live. Moreover, it is precisely by addressing architecture as form that a critique of architecture becomes possible. Roland Barthes argued that “the more a system is specifically defined in its forms, the more amenable it is to historical criticism”. 1 Of course the act of giving form through architecture is far from innocent. The problem of architecture is not just that architecture for too long has been complicit with institutions of power. The problem with architecture is that it often ‘naturalizes’ power, making it acceptable. The way in which architectural form naturalizes forms of (oppressive) power is visible in housing, parks, public buildings—all sort of constructions we now take for granted as inevitable paraphernalia of what we call the city. Rather than presenting these constructions for what they are, as ‘artifices’, architecture often tries to downplay its own artificiality and thus its real agency. This is not the case of The Open Workshop, whose body of work can be read as a deliberate production of form, but also as a reflection on the making of form itself. For The Open Workshop, form is always collective because it is the reification of forces that exceed individual intention. As such, ‘collective form’ cannot be an overdesigned product in which form becomes the manifestation of a unique style . Certainly, The Open Workshop has developed a unique style and a recognizable language, especially in terms of representation. Yet, I would

argue that their way of producing architectural form makes evident that the source of these forms are architectural ‘common places’—such as the linear sequence, the striation of activities, the grid, the stacking of different forms, etc. These elements are developed out of a renewed commitment to a modernist vocabulary, which The Open Workshop is not afraid to reinvigorate in the face of the current post-modern revival. The idea of collective is thus figured forth by The Open Workshop not just by the kind of use that their projects evoke—such as libraries and archives, gardens, or collective housing schemes—but also by the very form of these projects. When we look at projects such as the housing schemes for Kagran, Austria or Hamburg, Germany, or the proposal for a garden in Grand Metis, Canada, we immediately recognize that the formal vocabulary is rooted in specific architectural traditions (the housing ‘ siedlung ’, the formal classical European garden, etc.). Yet these traditions appear within The Open Workshop’s body of work not as erudite quotations, but as suspended forms, and thus open, as artifices, to be manipulated and constructed again into a new project. ◘

PIER VITTORIO AURELI IS AN ARCHITECT AND EDUCATOR. HIS WORK FOCUSES ON THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN ARCHITECTURAL FORM, POLITICAL THEORY, AND URBAN HISTORY. TOGETHER WITH MARTINO TATTARA, HE IS THE CO-FOUNDER OF DOGMA.

1. Roland Barthes, Mythologies, trans. Annette Lavers (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1972), 112

CURATOR'S STATEMENT

FOREWORD

INTRODUCTION Charles

NEW INVESTIGATIONS IN COLLECTIVE FORM

CONDITIONING POSSIBILITY

RE-ASSEMBLING

ONLY A MATTER OF TIME

DRIFT HOUSE

GARDEN OF DISPLACED ROOTS

DREDGESCAPING ISLANDS

STAGING

Pg.91

Pg.106

Pg.99

Pg.119

Pg.125

Pg.131

Pg.113

Pg.76

Pg.36

URBANISM OF COMMONING Rafi Segal

SHEPPARD

GARDEN OF NEW WORLDS

VARNA PUBLIC LIBRARY & ARCHIVE

Jenny Odell

THE ARCHIVE

Clare Lyster

Lucía Sanromán & Martin Strickland

Pier Vittorio Aureli

Waldheim

Neeraj Bhatia

RE-COMMONING THE FRONTIER

INFRASTRUCTURE, IDENTITY, AND TIME

PROJECT CREDITS

Pg.144

Pg.151

Pg.166

Pg.159

Pg. 185

Pg. 193

Pg. 216

Pg. 175

Pg.220

Pg.142

Pg.164

FRAMEWORKS

SURFACES

FORMING LIFE IN COMMON

AFTERWORD Peggy Deamer

GARDEN OF FRAMED SCENES

Albert Pope

DEPTH OF FIELDS HOUSE

STEAM STRATUM

GETTING CONNECTED Keith Krumwiede

THE OPEN WORKSHOP’S COLLECTIVE IMAGINARY

CHARLES WALDHEIM

In his 2017 essay “Environment as Politics,” Neeraj Bhatia published a set of infographic isometric diagrams depicting the geographic and spatial implications of the 2016 United States presidential election.1 While the essay elides the most obvious implications of November 2016, the isometric projection drawings accompanying the piece serve to illustrate the empirically observed correlation between density of settlement patterns on the one hand and voting patterns on the other. Bhatia describes these floating isometric arrays as a “visual study of the relation between residential density and voting behavior,” with the euphemism “behavior” politely pointing out the pathology in question. These drawings of the empirical study of density move well beyond the now-commonplace red vs. blue state divides, or reconsiderations of the relative merits of the Electoral College. They render redundant the perennial electoral maps showing the tortured gerrymandering of electoral districts. They make irrelevant the ambitious redistricting diagrams proposing more organic, and potentially more hydrologically informed, political boundaries. In place of these oftimitated cartographic lamentations for a lost golden age of geological determinism, Bhatia’s cunningly clear drawings of spatial order present the cultural and political implications of decades of re-segregation of the U.S. electorate along an urban-suburban-rural trajectory. They also afford an empirically observed and wittily depicted alternative to the culturally regressive New Urbanist construction of the urban “transect” as a model of urban order.

These remarkable illustrations represent the most recent critical cultural production of Bhatia’s design practice, The Open Workshop. Unlike the work of a social scientist, demographer, or urban planner, Bhatia’s drawings of the political economy of proximity flow directly from what we might describe as his aspiration for a kind of collective public imaginary. In this regard, Bhatia’s architectural proposals, installation projects, and territorial projections collectively conjure a pluralistic audience imbued with both cultural and political significance. While Bhatia is presently based in California, it might be relevant in this context to describe Bhatia as a Canadian architect most closely associated with the putative Toronto school of contemporary urbanism. In these terms, we may understand Bhatia’s spatial diagrams of political dysfunction as a form of collective cultural therapy through which he sorts his own identity and place in the world in the wake of the 2016 election. Rather than reading Bhatia’s drawings of distributed political economy as distinct from his more

Democratic

VALLEY SECTION OF DENSITY

Divided America

Divided America

(6F) Leon FL

/ T35% | 0.90 ppl/ac (6E) Lake, IN

/ T38% | 1.55 ppl/ac

Republican America

Republican

(6D) Albany, NY

C60% / T35% | 0.90 ppl/ac

(5F) Boone, MO

C49% / T43% | 0.37 ppl/ac

(5E) Wells, ME

C50% / T43% | 0.26 ppl/ac

(5D) Jefferson, TX

C49% / T49% | 0.36 ppl/ ac

(4F) Bremer, IA

C40% / T54% | 0.09 ppl/ac

(4E) Forest, MS C41% / T56% | 0.25 ppl/ac (4D) Kanawha, WV

/ T58% | 0.33 ppl/ac

Bronx, NY C89% / T10% | 54.15 ppl/ac

(9D) Cambridge, MA

C89% / T7% | 26.65 ppl/ac

(8F) Boston, MA C82% / T14% | 21.63 ppl/ac

(8E) Brooklyn, NY C80% / T18% | 58.02 ppl/ac

(8D) St. Louis, MO

C80% / T16% | 7.97 ppl/ac

(7F) King, WA C72% / T22% | 1.54

Typical spatial organizations in 51 counties, with counties that voted heavily for Trump in the center and Clinton on the left and right. Pop. density is represented on the vertical axis.

Plotting the 2016 election results for all U.S. counties. High-density (top) and low-density (bottom). A vote for Clinton was equally as likely as a vote for Trump at the tipping point.

Department of Associations

Department of Metadata

Department of Defunct Technology

1542 - Jaques Cartier Corn, Zea mays, Fig. 1 Exploration of the St. Lawrence River

1612 - Samuel de Champlain Jerusalem Artichoke, Helianthus tuberosus, Fig. 2 Map of New France

1635 - Jacques-Philippe Cornuti Groundnut, Apios american, Fig.3 Canadensium Plantarum

1675 - Louis Nicolas Codex Canadensis

1700 - Michel Sarrazin & JP Tournefort

Fig.1

Fig.2

Fig.5

1545 - Orto Botanico di Padova Fig.1

1590 - Hortus Botanicus Leiden

1635 - Jardin des Plantes Fig.2

1755 - Real Jardín Botánico de Madrid Fig.3 Fig.4 Fig.1

Fig.2

Fig.4

English Romantic Garden

French Formal Garden

AFTERWORD

PEGGY DEAMER

The Open Workshop closes the door not only to normative practice but also to the idea that an architectural project aims at harmony and well-being. Don’t be deceived! The beautiful, even peaceful, forms are meant to distract from the difficulties they unfold – of historical determinacy, of subjective agency, of representational stability, and of social cohesion. The latter in particular is the object of intense interrogation and it warrants these final observations. Their work mediates on two disturbing aspects of the social: the instability of the environment we inhabit and the incoherence of the multitude who inhabit it. The environment is portrayed at all scales simultaneously, guaranteeing that it is not just “out there”, but integral to our social and individual lives. One cannot, in The Open Workshop’s projects, disassemble domesticity from the imbalance of “nature”; the up of the ceiling and sky from the stool that sits below us; the city from the blades of grass; the room from a drop of water. Whether the social is reformed and re-inscribed by “articulated surfaces,” “soft frameworks,” “living archives,” “rewiring states,” or “recommoning,” the result is an existential connection between things human and non-human, big and small, in and out of our control. All of this is reinforced by the interconnection, representationally, between data and affect, making the environment both felt and abstract and the social both real and hyper-objectified.

The multitude inhabiting this condition is another matter. Indeed, we know that the demographic of happy, healthy, mostly white and western individuals, who run, jog, and walk their dogs are an essential player in global colonization. We know as well that within this homogeneity, these subjects are, as Neeraj Bhatia writes in “New Investigations to Collective Form,” “individual and collective,” “chaotic and ordered,” and “informal and formal.” As he observes, citing Hannah Arendt:

Human Plurality, the basic condition of both action and speech, has the twofold character of equality and distinction. If men were not equal, they could neither understand each other and those who came before them nor plan for the future and foresee the needs of those who will come after them. If men were not distinct, each human being distinguished from any other who is, was or will ever be, they would need neither speech nor action to make themselves understood.1

Bhatia’s observations about the possibilities of cohering the uncohesive social realm owes much to Arendt and Fumihiko Maki, who, besides modeling for Bhatia the design approach to “collective forms,” also points to the disparate nature of the individuals who make up the collective. But I think the real allegiance is to radical democracy, a concept emphasizing not consensus but disagreement and debate; a society of openness to contestation framed by equality and freedom.2 A connection can be drawn between radical democracy’s individualized citizenship and the inhabited environment: developing a sustainable environment within this current culture of limited political participation requires a politically active citizenry that understands the connection between the ecosystem and their own self-constitution. Another connection can be made between radical democracy and urban design/planning: as the geographer Doreen Massey has pointed out, the public realm is shaped by the acts of the citizens in the “forever unachieved” but always negotiated “articulated moments in networks of some relations and understandings,” not bounded communities.

If this afterword emphasizes the conflict that lies behind The Open Workshop’s elegant propositions, it is to draw attention to something strategic and intentional that might be missed if the images are not read closely or the texts not scrutinized. The doors are now open to an architectural optimism that sees the public realm as conflicted and unresolved— a democracy at it’s radical core. ◘

1. See the introduction to “New Investigations to Collective Form”; from Hannah Arendt, The Human Condition (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press:1958) 175-176.

2. See Ernesto Laclau and Chatal Mouffe’s, Hegemony and Socialist Strategy: Towards A Radical Democratic Politics (London: Verso, 1985); for a good secondary source that goes to the heart of the contemporary political consequences of radical democracy, see, Lincoln Dahlberg, “Radical Democracy in Contemporary Times,” e-International Relations, February 26, 2013.

PEGGY DEAMER IS AN ARCHITECT, ARCHITECTURAL EDUCATOR, AND EMERITUS PROFESSOR OF ARCHITECTURE AT YALE UNIVERSITY. SHE IS THE FOUNDING MEMBER OF THE INTERNATIONAL ADVOCACY GROUP, THE ARCHITECTURE LOBBY.

THE OPEN WORKSHOP team between 2013 and 2021 included Neeraj Bhatia, Haifa Al-Gwaiz, Caleb Bentley, Rafael Berges, Andrew Bertics, Kayla Bien, Mary Casper, Jared Clifton, Carly Dean, Ian Erickson, Zack Glennon, Clare Hacko, Alicia Hergenroeder, Anesta Iwan, Jeremy Jacinth, Shawn Komlos, Brian Lee, Douglas Lee, Mikaela Leo, Liz Lessig, Cesar Lopez, Bella Mang, Shirin Monshipouri, Jonathan Negron, David Ornvold, Bomin Park, Sonia Ramundi, Katharina Sauermann, Blake Stevenson, Kurt Stubbins, Laura Williams, Shuang Yan, De Peter Yi, and Wei Zhao.

Projects featured in this volume include collaborations with Blake Stevenson, igg - office for architecture, RICA

Studio, Studio VARA, Studio LD, and SurfaceDesign Inc.

ENVIRONMENT AS POLITICS

USA, 2017

Project Team: Neeraj Bhatia, Liz Lessig, Cesar Lopez

Commissioned by: CCA’s Digital Craft Lab

LIFE ALONG THE CONDUIT DURING THE ANTHROPOCENE

USA, 2018

Project Team: Neeraj Bhatia, Cesar Lopez

Commissioned by Yerba Buena Center for the Arts

RE-RIGGING ATMOSPHERE

COPENHAGEN, DENMARK, 2014

Project Team: Neeraj Bhatia,Cesar Lopez, Blake Stevenson

RE-ASSEMBLING THE ARCHIVE

SEOUL BIENNALE OF ARCHITECTURE & URBANISM, 2019

Project Team: Neeraj Bhatia, Cesar Lopez, Bomin Park, Ian Erickson, Douglas Lee, Shuang Yan, Haifa Al-Gwaiz, Mia Voevodsky, Caleb Bentley

Curators: Beth Hughes and Francisco Sanin

GARDEN OF DISPLACED ROOTS

GRAND METIS, CANADA, 2013

Project Team: Neeraj Bhatia, Anesta Iwan, Cesar Lopez

VARNA PUBLIC LIBRARY AND ARCHIVE

VARNA, BULGARIA, 2015

Project Team: Neeraj Bhatia, Cesar Lopez, Jeremy Jacinth, Shawn Komlos, Haifa Al-Gwaiz

GARDEN OF NEW WORLDS

GRAND METIS, CANADA, 2016

Project Team: Neeraj Bhatia, Haifa Al-Gwaiz, Jared Clifton, Shawn Komlos, Cesar Lopez, Shirin Monshipouri

DRIFT HOUSE

ARCTIC, CANADA, 2013

Project Research and Design Team: Neeraj Bhatia, Tracy Bremer, Mary Casper, Zack Glennon, Alicia Hergenroeder, Brian Lee & Sonia Ramundi

PROJECT CREDITS

DREDGESCAPING ISLANDS

TOLEDO, OHIO, USA, 2014

Project Team: Neeraj Bhatia, Anesta Iwan, Cesar Lopez, Jeremy Jacinth

STAGING SHEPPARD

TORONTO, CANADA, 2015

In collaboration with: SurfaceDesign Inc.

Project Team: Neeraj Bhatia, Geoff Di Girolamo, Cesar Lopez, Shawn Komlos with/ Blake Stevenson

Client: Metrolinx Toronto / IVM

TRIPTYCH TO THE LIFE AND DEATH OF THE BUFFER ZONE

NEW YORK, USA, 2016

Project Team: Neeraj Bhatia, Rafael Berges, Jared Clifton, Cesar Lopez

Commissioned by: StoreFront for Art and Architecture

A ROOM IN THE CITY

SAN FRANCISCO, 2018

In collaboration with: Studio VARA

Project Team: Neeraj Bhatia, Christopher Roach, Cesar Lopez, Jared Clifton

Client: City of San Francisco

RE-COMMONING THE FRONTIER

SAN FRANCISCO, USA, 2016-2017

In collaboration with: Blake Stevenson

Project Team: Neeraj Bhatia, Blake Stevenson, Liz Lessig

Commissioned by: SPUR/ Piero Patri Fellowship in Urban Design

HABITACTORY

HAMBURG, GERMANY, 2017

In collaboration with: igg - office for architecture

Project Team: Neeraj Bhatia, Ignacio Galen, Antonio Mora Ramos, Charles Hajj, Diego Soto Madriñan, Mikaela Leo, Bella Mang, Cesar Lopez, Clare Hacko, Aurea Rodriguez Sánchez

THE CENTER WON’T HOLD

CHICAGO ARCHITECTURE BIENNIAL, 2021

Project Team: Neeraj Bhatia, Cesar Lopez, Kayla Bien Curator: David Brown

RECON-FIGURE

FAR ROCKAWAY, USA, 2013

Project Team: Neeraj Bhatia, Carly Dean, Alicia Hergenroeder, Jonathan Negron, De Peter Yi

INFLECTED FRONTALITY

SAN FRANCISCO, USA, 2013

Project Team: Neeraj Bhatia, Alicia Hergenroeder, Jonathan Negron, De Peter Yi, Wei Zhao

EN POINTE!

KAGRAN, AUSTRIA, 2013

In collaboration with: Lorena Del Rio (RICA Studio)

Project Team: Neeraj Bhatia, Lorena Del Rio, Carly Dean, Alicia Hergenroeder, Jonathan Negron, De Peter Yi, Wei Zhao

Client: Local Government of Kagran

STEAM STRATUM

LIEPAJA, LATVIA, 2014

Project Team: Neeraj Bhatia, Cesar Lopez, Blake Stevenson

CONSTELLATORY COVE

PORTO BRANDAO, PORTUGAL, 2013

In collaboration with: Lorena Del Rio (RICA Studio)

Project Team: Neeraj Bhatia, Lorena Del Rio, Carly Dean, Alicia Hergenroeder, Jonathan Negron, De Peter Yi, Wei Zhao

Client: City of Porto Brandao

GARDEN OF FRAMED SCENES

VISEU, PORTUGAL, 2018

Project Team: Neeraj Bhatia, Jared Clifton, Shawn Komlos, Haifa Al-Gwaiz

Client: Poldra Project/ City of Viseu

DEPTH OF FIELDS HOUSE

LAKE EDERSEE, GERMANY, 2017

Project Team: Neeraj Bhatia, Cesar Lopez, Haifa Al-Gwaiz, Jared Clifton, Laura Williams

FORMING LIFE IN COMMON

VENICE BIENNALE OF ARCHITECTURE, 2021

Design Team: Neeraj Bhatia, Cesar Lopez, Andrew Bertics, Hannah Jane Kim, Shawn Komlos, Katharina Sauermann, Haifa Al-Gwaiz

Curator: Hashim Sarkis (Venice Biennale) / Lian Ladia (David Ireland House)

MALLEABLE MONUMENTS

NEW YORK CITY, NY, USA, 2016

SAN FRANCISCO, CA, USA, 2017

Project Team: Neeraj Bhatia, Haifa Al-Gwaiz, Jared Clifton, Jeremy Jacinth, Shawn Komlos, Cesar Lopez, Laura Williams with/ Bella Mang, Shirin Monshipouri, Nicholas Scribner

Commissioned by the Architectural League of New York

NEW INVESTIGATIONS IN COLLECTIVE FORM

SAN FRANCISCO, CA, USA, 2018

Project Team: Neeraj Bhatia, Jared Clifton (Project Manager), Cesar Lopez (Representation); Project Team: Haifa AlGwaiz, Shawn Komlos, Blake Stevenson, Laura Williams

Pictured Right (L-R): Haifa Al-Gwaiz, Shirin Monshipouri, Neeraj Bhatia, Laura Williams, Bella Mang, Cesar Lopez, Jared Clifton, Shawn Komlos and Nanuq, Charlotte, Crisco.

NEW INVESTIGATIONS IN COLLECTIVE FORM

Published by Applied Research and Design Publishing, an imprint of ORO Editions. Gordon Goff: Publisher www.appliedresearchanddesign.com info@appliedresearchanddesign.com

Copyright © 2023 Neeraj Bhatia, the California College of the Arts, and AR+D Publishing.

© Content: The Open Workshop / Neeraj Bhatia and collaborators: Blake Stevenson, Ignacio G. Galán / igg - office for architecture, RICA* Studio—Lorena del Rio & Iñaqui Carnicero, Studio VARA, and SurfaceDesign Inc.

©Photographs: Charlie Villyard (Exhibition Photographs, p.4, 11, 14, 218), Luis Belo (Garden of Framed Scenes, p.180-183), Dennis Milam (The Center Won’t Hold, p. 139), Henrik Kam (David Ireland House Exhibition, p.215), All others by The Open Workshop.

Cover illustration and frontispiece: The Open Workshop

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including electronic, mechanical, photocopying of microfilming, recording, or otherwise (except that copying permitted by Sections 107 and 108 of the US Copyright Law and except by reviewers for the public press) without written permission from the publisher. You must not circulate this book in any other binding or cover and you must impose this same condition on any acquirer.

Author and Editor: Neeraj Bhatia

With contributions by: Pier Vittorio Aureli, Neeraj Bhatia, Peggy Deamer, Clare Lyster, Keith Krumwiede, Jenny Odell, Albert Pope Rafi Segal, Charles Waldheim

Book Design: Neeraj Bhatia

Project Manager: Jake Anderson

First edition published by Actar Publishers and CCA Architecture Books (9781948765169) © 2019

ISBN: 9781948765169 (First Edition)

ISBN: 978-1-957183-46-6

Color Separations and Printing: ORO Group Inc. Printed in China.

AR+D Publishing makes a continuous effort to minimize the overall carbon footprint of its publications. As part of this goal, AR+D, in association with Global ReLeaf, arranges to plant trees to replace those used in the manufacturing of the paper produced for its books. Global ReLeaf is an international campaign run by American Forests, one of the world’s oldest nonprofit conservation organizations. Global ReLeaf is American Forests’ education and action program that helps individuals, organizations, agencies, and corporations improve the local and global environment by planting and caring for trees.

The Open Workshop: New Investigations in Collective Form is part of The City Initiative, a series of case studies by architects, designers, planners, and artists creating provocative work in the urban environment. It is organized by Martin Strickland, exhibitions associate, and Lucía Sanromán, director of visual arts.

Yerba Buena Center for the Arts is grateful to the City of San Francisco for its ongoing support. YBCA Programs are made possible in part by: The James Irvine Foundation. Additional Funding for YBCA Programs: National Endowment for the Arts, Abundance Foundation, Grosvenor, and Members of Yerba Buena Center for the Arts. YBCA Exhibitions are made possible in part by: The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, Panta Rhea Foundation, American Council of Learned Societies Public Fellows Program, and Meridee Moore and Kevin King.

New Investigations in Collective Form features collaborations with Christoph Hesse Architects, Ignacio G. Galán / igg - office for architecture, RICA* Studio—Lorena del Rio & Iñaqui Carnicero, Studio VARA, and SurfaceDesign Inc. The Open Workshop would like to thank the following institutions and organizations for their support in the production of this work: California College of the Arts, Cornell University, Rice University, Venice Biennale of Architecture, Seoul Biennale of Architecture and Urbanism, Chicago Architecture Biennial, the Graham Foundation for Advanced Studies in the Fine Arts, Storefront for Art and Architecture, the Architecture League of New York, Lawrence B. Anderson Award/MIT, SPUR, Our City Oakland, StoreFrontLab, and the University of Toronto. In addition we would like to thank the amazing team at YBCA, including Deborah Cullinan, Lucía Sanromán, Martin Strickland, Tesar Freeman, Susie Kantor, John Cartwright, Elena Lyman, and Rebecca Silberman; and the following individuals who have supported this project: Emily Vigor, Juhie Bhatia, Veena & Vinod Bhatia, Clare Hacko, Shirin Monshipouri, Kenneth Hu, Bella Mang, Nicholas Scribner, Laura Hardy, Leeanna Nevarez, Ben Kumata, Graham Johnson, Lamia Algwaiz, Nanuq, Pier Vittorio Aureli, Charles Waldheim, Jenny Odell, Clare Lyster, Rafi Segal, Keith Krumwiede, Albert Pope, Peggy Deamer, Lisa Findley, Jonathan Massey, Dustin Smith, Janette Kim, Antje Steinmuller, Christopher Roach, Brian Price, Florian Idenburg, Dora Epstein Jones, Felipe Correa, Stephen Funk, Mark Baechler, Spike Kahn, Dan Spiegel, Richard Hindle, Paola Aguirre Serrano, and Dennis Milam.

THE OPEN WORKSHOP is an architectural urbanism practice that focuses on the relationship between collective form and territory. Specifically, the firm is interested in the agency of form to impact political, economic, and ecological systems towards a more just future. The office was founded by Neeraj Bhatia in 2013.

NEERAJ BHATIA is a licensed architect and urban designer. Select distinctions include the Architectural League Young Architects Prize, Emerging Leaders Award from Design Intelligence, and the Canadian Prix de Rome. He is an Associate Professor at the California College of the Arts where he also Directs the urbanism research lab, the Urban Works Agency. He is co-editor of books Bracket [Takes Action], The Petropolis of Tomorrow, Bracket [Goes Soft], Arium: Weather + Architecture, and coauthor of Pamphlet Architecture 30: Coupling — Strategies for Infrastructural Opportunism. Neeraj has a Master degree in Architecture and Urbanism from MIT where he was studying on a Fulbright Fellowship, a Bachelor of Environmental Studies and Bachelor of Architecture from the University of Waterloo.