For Future Folklores by The London School of Architecture

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Half-life

Dragons

Dust

Storytelling

Folklore

Lifetimes

We can only speculate on the appearance of professional archaeologists of the far future: one suspects that they may not wear beards and woolly jumpers. Whether their nails are laced with dirt and their hands toughened by modest excavation tools and brushes we simply do not know. But judging how languages have evolved over the centuries, we can assume that they are not called archaeologists, so for now they are the downdiggers (for underground is where they are looking and digging is what they are doing). In two thousand years, a group of downdiggers strike gold! For several days they have been scanning the seabed for an ancient lost city on the now submerged piece of land once known as NTD KNGDM. Their super-scanners burst into action collecting the two-dimensional plan before scaling the height of the building and creating a 3D reconstruction. The downdiggers don headsets and delve in to their digital model of this lost world.

As the machinery picks up more information the model becomes increasingly detailed. The downdiggers walk around trying to decipher the purpose of this square plan filled with more squares within. Tiny traces of brick, plastics and metals are recognised as once featuring here, but have since disappeared. Millions of shards of glass still glitter in the ground and the downdiggers assume the building to be a greenhouse. Their equipment goes on to reveal many more like structures like the first. They want to mark the area as an ancient food production zone. But the orientation of the buildings does not align with the sun â&#x20AC;&#x201C; and impossibly, after all tests have been carried out there is little evidence of sustained ecological life in this place. If it wasnâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t for people or plants, what was this?

The downdiggers scratch their heads.

The thing is that most aspects of life are becoming intensely blurry. With more connectivity has come less memory; more photographs provide less meaning; more opinions cause less action. Confusion tactics are muddling what is right or wrong and who we should trust or avoid.1 The documentary filmmaker Adam Curtis argues that we are ‘unable to challenge anything because we live in a state of constant confusion’ where ‘nothing really makes any coherent sense.’2 This fuzz has infiltrated our cities. Take London, a metropolis with endless empty and underused space that claims to be amidst a “housing crisis”. But there is no clarity in the city! The spirit of cityness is what draws us and sustains us. This fabulous man made ecosystem. These overwhelming melting pots of merged masterplans, many people and a multitude of beliefs, foods, buildings, styles, fashions and everything else, inevitably do not signpost an obvious path to tread. Cities and buildings need not be clear, they should definitely not be

bland, but like our information, they must be in some way navigable. Richard Sennett writes that ‘ritual behaviour feels as though the celebrant has stepped out of time in performing a rite’. 3 Historically, at times of crisis, to find our way across ever-increasing influxes of ‘stuff ’ we might refer to familiar rituals found in age-old folklores. Though we are bombarded with stories, through newspapers, blogs, YouTube and gossip, some of these tales have the weight to thread themselves across the years. These stories are a communal act, tweaked, remodeled and mutated over time. The folklore that can relate from grandparent to great grandchild alike is a powerful thread to cling on to. Many of the crises that we face are not new, not mountains that have never been climbed before. Even a climate on the brink of dramatic shifts, in the grand scheme of things, is not exclusive to the last 50 years. It may have been recounted before. Take Cairns, Australia, where for

thousands of years, a local tribe have told of the story of the rise in sea levels which created the Great Barrier Reef: â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;a legend that has been passed down from generation to generation in the form of a danceâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;.4 I am fascinated with Folklore, our shared, personal and infinite human history. I seek to find if a better understanding of folklore can offer signals and signposts in a world facing huge and often terrifying challenges. Sharing. Listening. Meandering. Can simple notions help to find an architecture which reconnect us to time? How do we disrupt dishonest stories and retrieve time-honoured rituals? Is it possible to form future folklore? And, when such urgent change is needed, is there space and time for meandering in the straight lines of architecture?

To a place called Onkalo. Under kilometres of crisp frozen Finnish land. A dragon is sleeping. A beast more powerful than mere humans. A creature that, so it is told, must go undisturbed for one hundred thousand years. The monster’s lair is a cavernous tangle of underground tunnels for the final storage of spent nuclear fuel. One hundred thousand years is it’s long lifetime. Earthquakes, supervolcanoes, world wars and human races can run their course in a fraction of that time. Michael Madsen’s documentary contemplates how you begin mark such an untouchable place to deter inquisitive generationsm, far flung into the future, from entering. Those who find it will unlikely speak the same language or read the same symbols as we do.5 What will humanity look like? What will world look

like? When they discover our underground landfill, will they thank their pioneering, resourceful ancestors; or curse we selfish, shortsighted and extractive earthlings? ‘The ONKALO project…transgresses, both in construction and on a philosophical level, all previous human endeavours. It represents something new. And as such I suspect it to be emblematic of our time - and in a strange way out of time’.6 This lethal treasure trove was the first repository of its kind. Denial isolated in cold hard concrete. This hiding place is emblematic of an architecture that is bracing itself for a bitter and dark future ahead. A fear that echoes in the Svalbard Global Seed Vault Archives: a monument to the living ecosystems of planet earth. Extinction is the assumed future. The building is a survival mission, built to endure against all odds.

Whilst bunkers burrow underground, the architectural dusting on the surface of the earth is increasingly transient. Components coalesce into specific buildings for a specific moment in time. Buildings are, rubbish. Many will not even outlive their design teams. Squinting short-sighted at the present, they reflect the fads that surround them at their unique moment. They refer only to the safe perspective of human lifetimes and disregard who will deal with their decommission. But Architecture is too big and too solid for fashion and ‘spurious novelty’.6 We can’t keep using valuable materials like they mean nothing. It is our problem what happens when a building ceases to be. ‘Green’ architecture is embedded within this era of planned obsolescence. Its predictable collection of stuff mirrors the height of consumerism: a green roof here, triple glazing there and a few solar panels on top. Though some are more sophisticated than others, as Peter Buchanan wrote in

his inaugural big Rethink essay, these buildings ‘merely reduce the degree of unsustainability’.7 The elements of buildings themselves do not coexist let alone reach beyond the building footprint to their surroundings. In fact these green enclaves sit almost smugly among the rest saying, this is what money can buy you. Neither solid caves nor pop up dust are facing up to their future. One fears it, whilst the other ignores it. We have to acknowledge and embrace our moment in time as a moment of many. Is there something to be built between the pop up and the bunker that can embrace its life and legacy on this longer timeline? An architecture that does not take from time, but gives to now and the future. Buchanan concluded his Big Rethink series by writing that sustainable design will involve ‘far more than shaping a new environment: also new economic and politics, lifestyles and social rituals, culture and underpinning collective myths’8. This is no linear challenge: if everything is changing, everything will need to change.

Sustain! Sustain! Sustain! The buzzword of the environmental movement calls to citizens of the world to endure! Carry on, but above all stay the same! These terms sit next to ‘reduce, avoid, minimize, sustain, limit, halt’9 in the book of how-to-stop-someone-listening-toyou. These headlines are often broadcast adjacent to those familiar images of cracked desert ground or polar bears. But we do not live through telescopes or satellites; we who are heating those cracked deserts do not live there. The birds slicked in black jackets of oil and the bewildering micro and macroscopic windows to the world choreograph a dance around an issue that is so vast in scale, no one knows how to deal with it. In her essay, Archives of the Present Future, Emily Scott searches for a form of representation that is up to this task. She argues for ‘adequately muddy’ perspectives, which are ‘highly situated yet move across registers and scales—both spatial and temporal’.10 In order to find this perspective we must begin at the middle of things. We should situate ourselves within these changes from a scale and place that is

not alien, but relatable as we accommodate world and local views at once. In 2015, Alan Rusbridger, the 20-year editor-in-chief of the Guardian newspaper, asked himself if he had any regrets about his time at the paper before he stepped down from the helm. Yes. There was just one that he couldn’t ignore. Rusbridger knew that the paper had not given the potential risks and futures of climate change enough space on his pages. He wrote that ‘the changes may be happening too fast for human comfort, but they happen too slowly for the newsmakers – and, to be fair, for most readers.’11 Knowing this, in 2015, the paper gave its front page over to extracts from Naomi Klein’s ‘This Changes Everything’ and invested in their ongoing ‘Keep it in the ground’ campaign.12 The average left-leaning readers of this paper would still rather read the football results than a campaign for the climate: one year on their ‘environment’ page still sits in a list below ‘football’, ‘fashion’ and ‘lifestyle’. Yet this bold campaign has begun a challenge to the entire profession of journalism. Not only have new collectives

for sharing information come out of this campaign, (thats right, journalists sharing) but it has questioned what should be regarded as newsworthy. It has formed a new movement towards publishing news pieces praised on their value and impact, rather than their volume.13 We need to find methods of telling these invisibly urgent tales. How can a building, a space, communicate optimism, joy and life? Returning to Onkalo, Madsen asks â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;if we cannot rely on markers and archives how will you know? Maybe our legend will reach you by being told over and overâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;.14 Could these vast and often frightening stories be broken down into universal narratives? Can Scottâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s engaging spatial and temporal methods be found somewhere within the idea of Folklore?

‘Beliefs, customs and expressions link the past to the present and help us understand our specific communities and cultures, as well as our shared humanity. Far from being static or an ageing genre, it remains relevant by adapting to new circumstances, with the ‘Folk’ (people), and the ‘lore’ (stories) continually informing and influencing each other.’15

Many hands curate folklore. This open source code for the perils and pleasures of living life broadcasts universal tales. Carlo Ratti discusses Wikipedia’s ability, as an open platform, to run on ‘an economy of reputation and altruism’. 16 It shouldn’t work, but somehow it does: the many voices at work self organise information at an incredible rate.

becomes

increasingly

treacherous.

Narrowly avoiding jail sentences in February 2016, the tale of heroic Heathrow 13 was retold many times in the media.17 Despite their success, one of the 13, Alistair Tamlitt, had difficulty with the labels of heroism. To set a few above everyone else would inevitably disempower those outside of the spotlight; he echoed the Guardian’s campaign writing that ‘an individual’s value to a movement is not contingent on how much they can produce’.18

Yes, shared systems can hold the capacity for miscommunication, mistruths and misunderstanding but the information is broad and relatable. It is when we become disconnected with alternative perspectives we lose the ability to converse.

Not everyone is a writer, or a speaker, or a creator; not everyone has to revolutionise stories we are living. Folklore prizes the sharers. They are a new type of actor, not the centre stage hero, but the PostAssemble pack who care about what their impact is, not who built it. As Gem Barton tells ‘our educated youth are ethical souls… they want to leave a legacy of betterment’.19

If we are unable to converse, there is no chance of debating, let alone convincing. If we become islands, navigating safely through the jagged rocks of these invisibly curated information systems

‘By now, almost all of the shetl’s three hundred-odd citizens had gathered to debate that about which they knew nothing. The less a citizen knew, the more adamantly he or she argued. There was nothing new in this…and still to come would be other questions to debate, and other questions after that. Questions from the beginning of time –– whenever that was –– to whenever would be the end.’20 Our successes and failures are plotted along the timeline that links the behind to the beyond. In the United Kingdom we treat generations as their own entities: the elders are often left to age away from their families whilst the very young are given their own specific domains. This strange order of compartmentalising stages of life misses opportunities to pass on stories and rejects the passing of time. Listening can reveal our differences and universalities. But ears are often quick to switch off and shut out to avoid the stories that we don’t want to hear. It is often too easy to stereotype the environmentalists as

complainers and too easy to criticise the advancers science, technology and engineering as evil advocates of Monsanto.21 As the earth is making signs we cannot ignore. We, folk, need to clear our throats and find a new voice to speak with. We are lucky to be working as the modern worldview transitions into the late modern worldview: to stand outside hundreds of years of ME V NATURE and in the space before NATURE + US is EXCITING.22 As our buildings will outlive us, we must hand down and be handed to. We must stop talking and building in wicked tricks and riddles! Action and architecture can be clear, conscious and universal: ‘only architecture than can be appreciated without explanation, that makes sense in itself, can open the discussion.’23 As Something Fantastic write, architecture will need to be conversational if we are to engage wider audiences in new modes of thinking and living.

‘One thing is certain: if we hope to achieve our objectives around global warming and a myriad of intimately related problems then we need to take an urgent step backwards before we can take two steps forward.’24

behaviour coming from outside ourselves, which relieves us of self-consciousness’.25 Korda described to me the cathartic sensation she felt as local residents moved to the soundtrack of a choir of local children.26 The spectacle still sits in many memories, however the folkdance was not repeated and the maypole has been used just once in the years since. Fabricating a tradition is an impossible, task, especially in the limitations of one funded project. Korda had to take care to manage the expectations of the residents in terms of the legacy of the project.27

Don’t fear mistakes! Don’t block the Chinese whisper! Stories never move in straight lines! Nordhaus and Shellenberger conclude their address to a stunted environmental movement stating that we must not be afraid to go back and re-choreograph our identities, actions and directions. Change and recognition will not come from forcing the same things down the same narrow channels.

The movement archive is where this project finds its longevity. This was not tumultuous, it was not a spectacle: its purpose was to document extremely everyday motions of sitting at a computer or doing some washing. These actions had little value to their donors, yet they have a place in time. We can’t plan what knowledge will resonate with future generations. This project celebrated the formal and the delightful; the straight line and the meander.

In Barton Hill, Bristol, the artist Serena Korda’s Work as Movement Archive (W.A.M.A) created a folk dance inspired by old motions from the cotton mills and the new rituals of today. The piece was not a static artwork: the artist’s vision was a finale where locals would gather, parade and act out this dance around a maypole. ‘Whether cosmic or small, ritual seems to be

‘Every single thing is the product of countless sources before it.’28 It’s not outrageous to suggest that architecture affects everything. It’s outrageous to suggest that something doesn’t affect everything. Architecture can affect a lot of things and I repeat Something Fantastic’s claim that ‘none of our actions are without consequences’.29

is to come, the future doesn’t look so great. We need to act now. At an urban scale, can we borrow folklore’s capacity to look both ways and engage opposites in wide narratives? Unlike Balkin’s archival protest, architecture is too built for exclusive and singular perspectives. It cannot convince through protest alone. Perhaps it is the time for something more marvellous.

We are currently not building spaces to allow open stories to propagate and we are not building architecture which is able to transform sustainability into something much more valuable. As an architect/ urban thinker/spatial agent or however the label reads, in the scale of the city, there is opportunity to converse and offer a more wonderful alternative at great scales.

As I write this, a year on from the Guardian’s campaign, they report that the last monitoring station in the world to measure levels of Carbon Dioxide over 400 parts per million has hit that number: ‘we’re officially living in a new world’.31

Amy Balkin’s web based vitrine for her open-ended project ‘A people’s archive of sinking and melting’ suspends fragments of human life on screen which we stand to lose in the years to come. 30 The collection is beautiful but vaguely haunting. Actually very haunting. Gazing over what we stand to lose is just sad. If we only face backwards, or equally if we obsess over what

I want to experiment whether cities can grasp their sense of time and their responsibility in time through folklore’s very old, very human, actions and altruisms of sharing, listening and meandering. I believe that the counter to endless flows of information that are constantly blurring and recasting ‘our concept of context’ will be real, tangible and universal elements.32

It is a new world. In many ways. We must be quicker to respond to this.

I am also not I; rather one hand of many at our moment on a timeline. Many of us seek betterment: ‘a series of non-monumental acts, each performed with great care.’33 We are connected to the future: therefore give us no hand in building enclaves or bastions because we don’t see a future of doom. Instead I would like to add my hand to living archives that don’t fear their own transiency. Places not of perfection or suspension, but orientation. City heater, lifetime homes and paint the town red are first thoughts for new urban folklores. They are different touchstones to retell and redirect the city at different scales. We will be judged on our leftovers. Share

pass

and

For future folklores,

meander. in time.

â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;The lover of myth is in a sense a lover of wisdom, for myth is composed of wondersâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;34

Half-life 1 Curtis, Bitter Lake, 2014. 2 Curtis, Bitter Lake, 2014. 3 Sennett, Together, 2008, p87. 4 Alcorn, Great Barrier Reef: David Attenborough ignores politics and appeals to the heart, 2016, [accessed 01.06.16]. Dragons 5 Madsen, Into Eternity, 2010, [44.30]. 6 Madsen, Into Eternity, 2010, [45:50]. Dust 6 Buchanan, The Big Rethink Part 1: Towards a Complete Architecture, 2012. p. 7 Buchanan, The Big Rethink Part 1: Towards a Complete Architecture, 2012, p. 67. 8 Buchanan, The Big Rethink: Towards a Complete Architecture, 2013, p. 11/23 Storytelling 9 McDonough and Braungart, Cradle to Cradle, 2002, p45. 10 Scott, Archives of the Present Future, [ONLINE] Accessed 07.06.16. 11 Rusbridger, Climate change: why the Guardian is putting threat to Earth front and centre [ONLINE] Accessed 15.05.16. 12 See www.theguardian.com/environment/series/keep-it-in-the-ground. 13 See www.theguardian.com/environment/series/keep-it-in-the-ground IMPACT Podcast [6.00]. 14 Madsen, Into Eternity, 2010, [1.04.30].

Folklore 15 The Museum of British Folklore About the Museum [ONLINE] Accessed 20.06.16. 16 Ratti, Open Source Architecture, 2015, p71. 17 The Heathrow 13 are activists who staged a peaceful protest on a Heathrow runway in 2015 on behalf of the Plane Stupid campaign against the expansion of the airport. 18 Tamlitt, Heathrow 13: Don’t make us heroes, 2016 [ONLINE] Accessed 20.05.16. 19 Barton, Don’t get a job make a job, 2016, p10. 20 Foer, Everything is illuminated, 2008, p 12. 21 Rowan, Extinction as Usual: Geo Social Futures and Left Optimism, [ONLINE] Accessed 20.06.16. 22 Buchanan, The Big Rethink: Towards a Complete Architecture, 2012, p68. 23 Something Fantastic, Something Fantastic, 2010, p27. 24 Shellenberger and Nordhaus, The Death of Environmentalism: Global Warming Politics in a Post-Environmental World, 2004, p34. 25 Sennett, Together, 2008, p88. 26 Interview with Serena Korda. 27 Interview with Serena Korda. Lifetimes 28 Tamlitt, Heathrow 13: Don’t make us heroes, [ONLINE] Accessed 20.05.16. 29 Something Fantastic, Something Fantastic, 2010, p11. 30 A People’s Archive of Sinking and Melting [ONLINE] Accessed 01.06.16. 31 Kahn, Antarctic CO2 hits 400ppm for the first time in 4 million years, [ONLINE] Accessed 16.06.16. 32 Andraos, What does climate change for architecture? [ONLINE] Accessed 13.06.15. 33 Scott, Archives of the Present Future, [ONLINE] Accessed 07.06.16. 34 Aristotle, Metaphysics, A

About the museum of British folklore (2015) Available at: http://www.museumofbritishfolklore.com/ about_the_museum (Accessed: 20 June 2016). Alcorn, G. (2016) Great barrier reef: David Attenborough ignores politics and appeals to the heart. Available at: http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2016/apr/11/great-barrier-reef-davidattenborough-ignores-politics-and-appeals-to-the-heart (Accessed: 20 June 2016). Andraos, A. (no date) What does climate change (for architecture)? Available at: http://www. averyreview.com/issues/16/what-does-climate-change (Accessed: 20 June 2016). Balkin, A. (no date) A People’s Archive of Sinking and Melting. Available at: sinkingandmelting.tumblr. com (Accessed: 20 June 2016). Barton, G. (2016) Don’t get a job... Make a job: How to make it as a creative graduate. United Kingdom: Laurence King Publishing. Buchanan, P. (2011) ‘The Big Rethink Part 1: Towards a Complete Architecture, The Architectural Review, (1379), pp. 67–77. Buchanan, P. (2012) ‘The Big Rethink Part 1: Towards a Complete Architecture, The Architectural Review, (1381), pp. 67–81. Buchanan, P. (2013) ‘The Big Rethink Conclusion: Neighbourhood as the Expansion of the Home, The Architectural Review, (1381) Charlie Brookers 2014 Wipe - Non linear warfare summary with Adam Curtis (2014) Available at: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KOY4Ka-GBus (Accessed: 20 June 2016).

Foer, J.S. (2008) Everything is illuminated. United Kingdom: Penguin Books. Graham, J. (ed.) (2016) Climates: Architecture and the planetary imaginary. Switzerland: Lars Muller Publishers. Hyde, R. (ed.) (2012) Future practice: Conversations from the edge of architecture. New York: Routledge. Kahn, B. and The Guardian (2016) Antarctic CO2 hits 400ppm for first time in 4m years. Available at: https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2016/jun/16/antarctic-co2-hits-400ppm-for-first-time-in4m-years?CMP=share_btn_tw (Accessed: 20 June 2016). Klein, N. (2014) This changes everything: Capitalism vs. The climate. London, England: Penguin Books. Lynas, M. (2015) A good Anthropocene? - Speech to Breakthrough Dialogue 2015. Available at: www. marklynas.org/2015/06/a-good-anthropocene-speech-to-breakthrough-dialogue-2015 (Accessed: 20 June 2016). Madsen, M. (2010) Into Eternity. McDonough, W and Braungart, M(2002) Cradle to cradle: Remaking the way we make things. United States: Turtleback Books. Morris, W. (1993) News from nowhere and other writings. Edited by Clive Wilmer. New York: Penguin Books Ltd, London. Ratti, C. and Claudel, M. (2015) Open source architecture. United Kingdom: Thames & Hudson Rowan, R. (2016) Extinction as Usual: Geo Social Futures and Left Optimism. Available at: supercommunity.e-flux.com/texts/extinction-as-usual-geo-social-futures-and-left-optimism/ (Accessed: 20 June 2016).

Rusbridger, A. (2016) Climate change: Why the guardian is putting threat to earth front and centre. Available at: http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2015/mar/06/climate-change-guardian-threatto-earth-alan-rusbridger (Accessed: 20 June 2016). Sara, R. and Mosley, J. (2013) The architecture of transgression AD. United States: John Wiley & Sons. Schubert, J., Schutz, E. and Streich, L. (eds.) (2010) Something Fantastic: A Manifesto by Three Young Architects. Germany: Ruby Press. Scott, E.E. (2016) Archives of the present-future: On climate change and representational breakdown. Available at: www.averyreview.com/issues/16/archives-of-the-present-future (Accessed: 20 June 2016). Sennett, R. (2013) Together: The rituals, pleasures and politics of co-operation. London: Penguin Press/ Classics. Shellenberger, M. and Nordhaus, T. (2004) The Death of Environmentalism: Global Warming Politics in a Post-Environmental World. Available at: www.thebreakthrough.org/images/Death_of_ Environmentalism.pdf (Accessed: 20 June 2016). Sontag, S. (1965) The Imagination of Disaster. Available at: americanfuturesiup.files.wordpress. com/2013/01/sontag-the-imagination-of-disaster.pdf (Accessed: 20 June 2016). Swimme, B. (1984) The universe is a green dragon: A cosmic creation story. United States: Inner Traditions Bear & Company. Synopsis (no date) Available at: http://www.intoeternitythemovie.com/synopsis/ (Accessed: 20 June 2016). Tamlitt, A. (2016) Heathrow 13: Don’t make us ‘heroes’ – this is everyone’s struggle. Available at: www. redpepper.org.uk/heathrow-13-no-heroes-take-action (Accessed: 20 June 2016).

Thackara, J. (2015) How to thrive in the next economy: Designing tomorrowâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s world today. United Kingdom: Thames & Hudson. The Guardian (2015) The Biggest Story in the World Podcast. Available at: www.theguardian.com/ environment/ng-interactive/2015/mar/16/the-biggest-story-in-the-world (Accessed: 20 June 2016). Till, J. (2013) Architecture depends. United States: MIT Press.