cityofsound

Essays: Introducing SuperNormal

A quick word about a new series I’m curating for Domus, the Italian art, architecture and design magazine. Called SuperNormal, it’s an attempt to ‘sketch’ a different kind of technology journalism, recognised how cultural it is. 

A few years ago, in response to the usual diminished depiction of contemporary technology as simply “IT”, someone—I forget who—said something like “Is a 14 year-old girl updating her Facebook status from her mobile phone as she walks down the street ‘IT’?” Of course it is, but more importantly, it isn’t. It is more than that; contemporary technology is deeply cultural. We might argue that all technology always has been “deeply cultural”, from the Stone Age axe onwards, but given that symbolic consumption and production—one definition of culture—is now actively and deliberately embedded in objects we design and build, and that these objects are embedded in the patterns, habits and rituals of everyday life—another definition of culture—we must now see technology for what it is.

So with Domus, Joseph Grima and I saw an opportunity to write in a different way about everyday technology. Domus has a long tradition of writing about such things, driven by the strong Italian heritage of post-war industrial design, covering Brionvega radios, Elica hoods, Vespa scooters, or Olivetti typewriters, for instance. 

But as I suggest in my series opener (below), perhaps a culturally powerful contemporary equivalent of these things now exists in the form of social media, mobile phones, web services, information graphics, smart cards, personal informatics, robots, and so on.

It might be a stretch to suggest that these things are the equivalent of an Olivetti Valentine in a number of ways, but not in terms of the way such things now shape our lives. Yet the vast bulk of journalism concerning this everyday technology is dominated by the technology press, which is rarely critical in the sense that Domus is, rarely covers design aspects with any depth, and rarely attempts to place developments in a wider cultural context. While I have no problem with the likes of Engadget, Techcrunch, Wired and the rest—not that they’d notice either way if I did!—there did seem a gap in the market here.

Conversely, this was also a way to introduce discussion of the recent design disciplines of interaction design, experience design, service design and information design, to this more established strata of design media. For what it’s worth, my motive for doing this—discussing the technology in terms of culture, and discussing its design in the context of other design practices—is in order to try to understand it better; which is in turn in order to design it better, to realise it better, to procure it better, and so on.

(By the way, it’s a huge honour to work for Domus. There can have been few more influential titles in design history since its inception in 1928 and Joseph Grima, who I first worked with on Postopolis, has repositioned the magazine at the forefront of media once again, for me alongside Eye and Idea as the best design magazines out there. It’s also been a pleasure to work increasingly closely with the designers, Salottobuono, and particularly Marco Ferrari.)

The series will run in the magazine and online. We’re using the website to carry more in-depth versions of the print articles, and including video and other contextual information such as interviews where relevant.
I’ve written the first two articles to frame the series.

The first covered the Nokia N9 (and to some extent its successor, the Lumia running Windows Phone) but pitches that in the context of the wider skirmishes in the mobile phone market, tactility, sounds and ocularcentrism in cellphone design, the hegemonic power of Apple, the importance of materials and the “dark matter” of licensing and logistics, European design history and entrepreneurship, via Roland Barthes and the Citröen DS19.

The second piece concerns Facebook Timeline, and so timelines, information design, social graphs, identity and representation, and so on —but also the broader context of a shared social memory, and how that might affect the way we forget and function. (Additionally, Facebook were good enough to get us an interview with Timeline’s lead designer, Nicholas Felton—he of Feltron Annual Reports fame)—and his early mockups of Timeline, to accompany this article. Thanks to both Nicholas and Meredith Chin for that.)

These initial articles are markers, sketching out the trajectory and territory of the series to some extent. But as the series opener suggests below, the terrain should get increasingly rich, diverse and fertile and I’m lining up a set of great writers ready to explore it and map it. More on that to follow. I’ll pitch in from time to time too.

Have a read of the first two—‘Portable Cathedrals’ on the Nokia N9 and ‘In Praise of Lost Time’ on Facebook Timeline—and let me know what you think: here; at Domus; or elsewhere.

And here, below, is the original text for the series—which I’ve dubbed SuperNormal, in respectful homage to Jasper Morrison and Naoto Fukasawa’s great book and exhibition, noting its title Super Normal: Sensations of the Ordinary. This text introduces and frames the venture, and is a slightly different version to that which appears on the Domus website and in the magazine.

Essays: On retail

A few months ago I wrote a piece on retail for Architectural Review Australia, now published in the June 2011 issue as 'Local Rules: The Death (and Rebirth) of Retail'.

As is becoming common practice here, I'm posting the longer 'director's cut' version below. Thanks to Maitú Ward for commissioning the piece in the first place. It also gave me a chance to get my story straight about all this before I appeared on ABC Radio National's By Design show, talking about online retail in the context of what they called 'self-direction' e.g. airports where you check in by yourself.

If you're in Australia or thereabouts, do check out the physical version of the June 2011 Architectural Review Australia—it's always a good read, and this issue features a slew of different tangential perspectives on 'shopping', including writing from old colleagues, friends, cohorts and correspondents David Neustein, Claudia Perrin, Russell Fortmeyer, Lee Stickells, Maitú Ward and others.

The piece below is not actually 'just about retail', as it touches on distribution patterns, fabrication, local economies and localism, and of course cities—but this is partly as retail is so core to what cities are about. I don't mean that as any kind of paean to consumerism at all; far from it. More a recognition that cities are about exchange, either cultural or commercial (or both), and that the marketplace, and its descendants, has always been a core component as a result.

The article was written with Australia as the focal point, as you'd expect, and many of the specific examples are drawn from that culture, but its general arguments probably apply more widely, and draw from experience elsewhere too.

However, the Australian market is characterised by a few key players who dominate the scene, which makes for a particularly tasty comparison with both independent retailers and online shopping. They include 'self-made men retail characters-types' like Gerry Harvey and Frank Lowy, responsible for dominant consumer electronics stores and malls respectively; and the behemoths of Wesfarmers and Woolworths—aka Coles and Woolies—who exert extraordinary control over the everyday lives of Australians. Watch this short ABC-produced infodesign-heavy movie to see how they have far more influence than, say, Walmart does in the USA. Harvey in particular led an ill-advised campaign essentially against online retail itself—I know—last year, before doing a U-turn.

(I'm also posting this in light of the news that the brilliant bookshopkeeper James Daunt has been appointed to take over Waterstones. Also a conversation earlier today, spiralling out of the fact that we have some Ikea furniture (a bed) in a shipping container somewhere, travelling from Australia to Finland, and the thought occurs that Ikea could replace that physical shipping by simply sending a copy of the bed from the Espoo store, and picking up the old one in Sydney. A form of fabrication possible with their already distributed network of components. And also posting as a marker of enjoying the ongoing discovery of numerous small, independent stores here in Helsinki. That, combined with the fact that Sundays here are largely retail-free, and so you remember the joys of a weekend not engulfed in pervasive shopping, a sensation now alien to much UK or Australian life.)

Spoiler alert: the core argument of this piece, as so often here, more or less comes down to this: 

"Physical experience had better be bloody good if it is to withstand the force of the internet. It now has to have a reason to exist, over and above simply being there by default."

And I write this as a positive and optimistic call-to-arms—as a design challenge, a strategic challenge—for those interested in digital/physical hybrids and systemic change, and from one who believes that the power of physical experience is essentially unrivalled.

Journal: World Design Congress 2009, Beijing: Opening ceremony

(Continued from World Design Congress 2009: Day one and National Centre for Performing Arts. Written at the time, last October.)

(Waiting for the opening ceremony in the main hall, I chat to Tavs Jorgensen, a smart designer/thinker/teacher/researcher from Autonomatic, at University College Falmouth, UK. He’s researching “3D digital production” i.e. design practice and new forms of fabrication.)

The opening ceremony does not disappoint. Significant dignitaries from the Beijing Municipal Government, the Peoples’ Republic Ministry of Culture and Ministry of Education are the distinguished guests, and line up on stage with the studied repose of the effortlessly powerful, sitting opposite the artfully articulated lectern occupied by Yang Lan, a super-chic Chinese TV personality, entrepreneur, millionaire, 'China's most beautiful woman' ... and our host for the day.

The presence of those senior officials at this opening ceremony is incredibly significant. To Western eyes disaffected by political leaders who'll turn up to the opening of an envelope, it’s important to pause and reflect that this is a quite extraordinary statement of intent from China, and Beijing. Their presence is a tacit approval for a theme that would instantly become clear - that China is interested in augmenting its position as workshop of the world by also becoming creative studio for the world. 

Journal: Interaction Design Classics #3: The 'A Bit More' button on the Breville Professional 800 Collection 4-slice Toaster

What I love about the 'A Bit More' button on this toaster is not just the functionality, though that's clearly come some from careful observation of everyday habits, but the name. It could so easily have been called 'Power boost' or 'Toast+' or 'Extend', or something else unthinkingly derived from an engineering- or technology-led process. 

But no. The button is simply marked 'A Bit More'. Because that's what it does, and also because it has a touch of the conversational, domestic, familial, colloquial. Entirely appropriate for its context. And it's funny, in a gently everyday way. 

That choice of name - and the function, and its simple realisation in a sturdy button with a good action - is a deft bit of design, and for me, the ability to produce deft, including through good copy, is one of the key differentiating factors setting apart good designers from average.

The 'Lift and Look' button isn't bad either - equally self-explanatory, but it doesn't quite have the essential humanity and wit of a phrase like 'A Bit More' applied to a button. (I quite like that it has a button marked 'Crumpet' too, but that's just the Englishman in me.) Well done Breville.

Elsewhere, on Interaction Design Classics:
#1: The 'progress bar' on the Voice-O-Graph in 'Badlands'
#2: The big pink arrow from 'Grand Theft Auto'
#3: The 'A Bit More' button on the Breville Professional 800 Collection 4-slice Toaster
#4: The Melnikov House intercom system

Journal: For the life between buildings - some notes on the iPad

Many, many, many people have written about last week’s announcement of Apple's iPad. I don’t actually remember a response quite like it. Far more than for the iPhone, for instance, or for any contemporary product or service I can recall. Perhaps its omnipresence in the media is due to promise it appears to hold for the media itself. But the response outside of the traditional media also feels immense.

As for me, I couldn’t help but make a few observations - I'll try to take a different angle, at least initially, approaching it from urbanism as much as product/service design, particularly not having seen the thing in the flesh yet. To get the basics out of the way right away, yes, I think it’ll be incredibly successful. And yes, the name’s a bit iffy but will not be a problem in time because it'll be incredibly successful. And yes, it’s the first iteration of something that will be rapidly refined over the coming years.

 There’s been lots of talk of it being a ‘third’ product, in-between iPhone and laptop. To me, this reminds me of ‘third places’. That’s a Ray Oldenburg term, of The Great Good Place, and generally refers to cafés, bars, libraries etc. Thus the iPad to me feels more like a product for third places rather than a third product. Its form factor and service model is defined for in-between spaces. Although it will float around the home and the office perfectly well, it comes into its own in these third spaces in a way that that phone and laptop cannot, being either too small or too large respectively.

With this in mind, it also reminds me of Jan Gehl’s book, Life Between Buildings, in that the iPad is a device for the life between buildings. 

If we approach it spatially - in terms of context of use I mean, rather than the device itself - it becomes clear why I think it’ll be a success.

It’s a device for airplanes, taxis, public transport, park benches, coffeeshops, pubs, bars, bistros, co-working spaces, breakouts, studios, receptions, meeting rooms, plaza and piazza, public libraries, beaches and all manner of transient spaces, civic spaces. 

It’s a device for cities.

Essays: 'Toward the Sentient City' exhibition, New York

Mark Shepard kindly asked me to contribute a review of the 'Toward the Sentient City' exhibition he's curated for the Architectural League of New York. As the show, which runs at the Urban Center on Madison Avenue, concerns urban informatics and all that - and features The Living/Natalie Jeremijenko, Usman Haque, SENSEable City Lab and others - I was more than happy to oblige and my review is now available on the well-stocked '...Sentient City' site, as well as re-posted below.

There was much to chew on in terms of show's ideas and implications, even though I wasn't even able to see it in person. I've offered what I hope is a constructive critique below, yet found that I couldn't address the subject without really addressing the role of architecture more broadly. And though I only really touched on that it's not a topic one can get in and out of quickly or, indeed, unscathed.

Essays: 'Bluestone Lounge Room: Designing the Streets of Melbourne' exhibition; opening speech

Last week Melbourne gave itself over to State of Design, the now annual design festival that somehow wraps up the entire city into a frenzy of all things design (I say "somehow" - it's due to the hard work of Ewan McEoin and team, as well as the receptive culture engendered in the city over the last two decades. Last year I was one of the speakers at Design Capital, and I've rarely been as well-treated at a conference.)

This year, I took part in an 'urban mobility' workshop for the 2040 City Design Laboratory (thanks to Crowd Productions for enabling that) and was invited to give the opening speech at a new exhibition at the Town Hall's City Gallery: "Bluestone Lounge Room: Designing the streets of Melbourne". (I've included my speech below. Unusually for me, I read it out in order to fit into the five minute time limit.)

(The Lord Mayor of the City of Melbourne, Robert Doyle, actually gave the opening opening speech, and I followed him. I don't think I broke too many official civic protocols.)

Robert Miles Kemp (Postopolis! LA)

Robert Miles Kemp’s talk was always interesting and occasionally spellbinding, most of all when showing the work in responsive robotic structures. His videos of simple blocks self-assembling into what he called “nano-architecture” are quite extraordinary (sometimes eliciting a collective delight similar to that of The Living at Postopolis! NYC). Kemp situated this within a wider context of interactive and informational architecture, centred around his work at Variate Labs and renowned new media deisgn firm Schematic (and his blog, Spatial Robots) described in a consistently interesting talk, covering many of the primary themes in contemporary interface design - and indeed extending the idea of where and what interfaces are.

Austin Kelly/XTEN Architecture (Postopolis! LA)

Next up, Austin Kelly, one of the principals of the firm XTEN Architecture, as interviewed by David A and David B of ArchDaily/Plataforma Arquitectura. Intriguingly, the two principal architects at XTEN are Kelly and Monika Häfelfinger, who come from very different backgrounds: Los Angeles and Switzerland respectively.

In responding to the Davids’ question as to their profile, Kelly starts with this fact. He notes that Monika coming from Switzerland lends a very different sensibility to the office - her education and experience combining with his in interesting ways (elsewhere it's been described as "minimal vs. expressionist") - particularly as they strive for an open office environment, characterised by frequent “debates and arguments in the office”. Kelly says they have a “very horizontal office” in this respect. (Having been a manager of teams large and small myself, I recognise that this is the kind of thing we managers often say, frequently with little justification. Kelly sounds like he means it though, and his thoughtful, considered answers lend credence to his claim.)

In response to the question “what is architecture?”, Kelly replies that it’s “a process of questions, a method of inquiry. From the questions we develop 3D models, diagrams, drawings etc. Then we debate, and then we start synthesizing these ideas into material dimension - physical, connected, spatial ideas …”. It’s a literal answer to a question that is often interpreted in more abstract fashion, but in almost instinctively focusing on their work, their practice, Kelly says a lot about their firm with this answer. 

When asked about the role of architects in current society, Kelly tentatively suggests that “we do have wider role.” By way of an example, he suggests that the school system in particular “has not been addressed in Southern California”, and that if “architects can get a seat at the table” they would have a lot to offer to that thought process, amongst others.

A question on the role of innovation in their practice. He answers that they do base some of their built form on the possibilities afforded by technology - such as their laser-cut Diamondhouse - but they think innovation manifests itself more in collaboration. They use competitions to derive ideas, as many practices do, but innovation seems to emerge more through working together on mock-ups, and in particular work with fabricators, and so on. He notes that “lots of fabricators are coming out of automobile design industry, developing composites and glues …”

 

(This is fascinating, and as I noted in my PostOpsLA summing up, a real theme in Los Angeles architecture, perhaps emerging originally in boat building and the aeroplane industry, and then in automobiles - and still prevalent. A few years ago, I was fortunate enough to be part of a UK Government-funded research tour, around the theme of user-centred design, along the entire West Coast of the USA. The stop-offs at BMW and Volvo design labs rarely revealed much in the way of user-centred, or people-centred, design practice, but they were still fascinating. To see how car designers work is always interesting to me - there are good things and bad things about it - but it would be particularly interesting to explore this elision between LA-basedarchitecture and the history of design as pursued by the fabricators of the local car/plane/boat building sector.)

Kelly then talks about how they split work over their offices in Switzerland and USA. He clearly finds it amazing and inspiring (as do I) how the Swiss manage to attain such high standards in design (albeit generalising somewhat). He asks “why the post office is a brilliant architectural building, or grocery stores …” He mentions a particular grocery store in Lucerne as “a brilliant piece of work” (tried to find a reference and couldn't; anyone?). He puts this down to the competition system in Switzerland, in that they have ”competitions for almost everything.” He outlines briefly how the Swiss equivalent of the AIA administers competitions, governs rules, and ensures towns get incentives if they do a competition. As he notes, this is very different to the USA (and indeed Australia), where they “don’t do competitions much.” (I think this is profoundly important cf. recent UTS competition here in Sydney, in terms of creating an open and discursive culture around design in concert with raising awareness of, and therefore quality of, design.)

Kelly’s answer to a question about how the office does ”social networking” is a nice one, I think. He says they “don’t really go to cocktail parties … We tend to focus on the work and let the work go out and network for us …”

I asked a question about this overlap with industrial design, and the use of contemporary fabrication techniques (laser-cut, pre-fab etc. etc.) As well as a technical overlap between industrial design and architecture, I’m interested in these two ideas of the building as one-off, due to particular constraints of site, client etc. - ‘every building is a prototype’ - versus the ideas at play in industrial design, where you might think of a building as a series of designs which iterate over time. In short, that if you draw from the tools of car design, can you - and should you - also draw from the processes and systems of car design? (I should note that one of the foremost thinkers on these issues is the Australian architect Michael Trudgeon of Melbourne firm Crowd Productions, who currently has an exhibition in Melbourne - I haven’t been yet, but I know it will be worth checking out. I was lucky enough to read Trudgeon's fantasitc Phd thesis around these ideas.) Kelly thought this was interesting theme, and said that they do have a prototyping culture and are very much oriented towards fabricating off-site and then assembling on-site. He suggests he hadn’t thought through whether that could in turn enable a kind of iterative, “series approach” to architecture, as with cars and other industrial design, and seemed intrigued by that idea.

Another question from the audience concerns whether and how they swap architects between the Swiss and US offices. Kelly replies that they do work across both offices, and notes that “it’s difficult in terms of timezone and things” but otherwise straightforward and often beneficial. All their team know metric, but getting their head around the codes in Switzerland is more difficult, as they are “intense”. He says the “energy requirements in particular are probably 20 years ahead of US in terms of everything - in terms of the performative aspects of a building”. (Which is interesting.)

I enjoyed Kelly’s approach to these questions, and the thoughtful considered responses, particularly those highlighting issues around the design process and fabrication, as well as insights into the cross-cultural Swiss-US practice straddling such different working environments.

XTEN Architecture

Oyler Wu Collaborative (Postopolis! LA)

Another question and answer session with The Two Davids of ArchDaily/Plataforma Arquitectura. If you want to start a smart, funny, Chilean architecture-based talk show, you know where to go.

Oyler Wu Collaborative are an LA-based but they started in NYC in 2001. (I’m interested in these practices that move across the country, given the different cultural backdrops. It was a perhaps inadvertent theme in the ArchDaily guys’ choices - note wHY architecture’s combination of Japan and American and see also Austin Kelly straddling LA and Switzerland.)

Dwayne Oyler and Jenny Wu provided a set of smart, thoughtful answers. I’ll do my best to recall them here.

To the difficult question of ‘what Is architecture for you?’, Oyler replied, as many did, that “architecture is inherently a synthesis of so many different things” - not evading the question so much as suggesting it’s too complex and variable to answer. Though he did then attempt to nail it with “architecuture is specifically the exploitation of material and tectonic ireas for the creation of spatial experience” (which I note is perhaps closer to a more traditional answer to this question, more akin to Corb's “masterful, correct and magnificent play of volumes brought together in light”...)

Wu suggests they’re “more interested in the process itself”, in “experimenting with new ideas,” and constantly exploring detail in the work, throughout construction. Here she specifically mentions fabrication (a theme that would emerge numerous times over the week, perhaps partly due to the looming presence of SCI-Arc in the architectural community here and partly due to the long LA tradition of working with industrial design (boat builders, car designers etc?)

They’re also involved with academia (as many architects tend to be - it’s a way of making a living) and so constantly questioning their work is part of the deal.

Question: "What should be role of architects in current society?"
As opposed to some of the ‘strategic thinking / design thinking’ answers this question sometimes elicited, Oyler suggests that “architecture tends to work on an individual basis” I.e. it affects one person at a time. It concerns “how one person engages the work from a tactile and experiential standpoint”. Wu adds that the “architects’ role is the making of space, of human interactive space”. Oyler adds this is about an “obligation to build … and to build well.”

In terms of innovation, Oyler suggests that there’s an “incredible over-emphasis on the role of innovation - we never set out to design projects that are ‘innovative’. Yes, technology can enable some new possibilities but you can also create incredibly innovative architecture without technology - so if ‘innovation’ is driving the thing you’re making, it’s misguided.”

In terms of this ‘innovative’ technology, Wu describes how, yes, their work is “all CATIA, Rhino, Maya. You have to know it, as a tool, but it’s not the end point in itself. Don’t let the tool become the end product.”

The ‘social networking’ question draws a blank look. They ultimately respond that it’s “important, but not our favourite thing to do.” They’d also suggested that their schools are the source of networks to some degree, and to the Davids’ question about education for young architects, they respond that its fundamentally important to “go to the schools, talk to the people there, see which school has the right spirit for you …”. They say this as, at the end of the day, “architecture is real hard. It’s hard work, long hours, the pay’s not great. You have to love what you do - have to really love it.” They give the sense that it’s important to flush this out early on.

As to what skills they look for, Wu responds, with a smile, “You have to be able to do it all! That sounds like a joke, but when the 2 of us are teaching 3 days a week it has to be someone who does it all. We had someone in the office in front of a computer doing Maya in the morning and he was pounding nails in the afternoon. We’d like to be an office that gets big enough so that that’s not the case, but right now you have to do it all.” She adds that they “work in iterations”, and they don’t employ ‘grunts’. “We don’t have grunts in our office.”

(That’s an interesting sentiment in terms of ‘liking to be an office that’s big enough not to have people doing it all’. Another approach is to stay small in order to retain the ‘do it all’ holistic nature of the work - that the architecture might be better informed by someone comfortable and proficient with both Maya and nails. But the drive towards scaling up is seen as a natural - if incredibly difficult - progression in architecture for sure.)

A good conversation, although you feel Oyler Wu have a little more to give, perhaps, particularly as they’ve been featured on one of the handful of truly essential architecture blogs: that of Lebbeus Woods. I was particularly taken with their write-up of their Density Fields project there, not least the final passage, which further reinforces many of the primary interests we heard about at Postopolis! LA, from OW and others:

“The lack of conventional separation between design and fabrication has allowed us to use the construction phase as an extension to the design process. It has been especially helpful with our aspiration to create a level of engagement that is equally as powerful at the scale of an individual as it is as a site strategy. Overall, this process has led to a period of material discovery, invention, and experimentation that comes only through the difficult, but profoundly rewarding task of realizing the work on a given site.” [From 'Density Fields', by Oyler Wu Collaborative, at Lebbeus Woods]

Oyler Wu Collaborative