Blowing UP
Update – Kickstarter goal reached, Inflato lives to pop up soon!
Read More:
The Atlantic Cities. “New York Could Get a Classroom Inside a Dumpster” Oct 16, 2013
FastCompanyDesign. “Architect Wants To Reclaim Public Space, One Dumpster At A Time” Oct 31, 2013
FastCompanyLabs. “The Future of Pop-Up Hackspaces Is… Dumpsters?” Oct 21, 2013
Architizer. “Can An Inflatable Pop-Up Dumpster Help NYC Residents Transform Their Neighborhoods?” Nov 1, 2013
Treehugger. “Presto, Inflato! Dumpsters to be reclaimed as “pop-up” public spaces in NYC” Nov 5, 2013
DesignBoom. “Inflato Dumpster Gives NYC a Blow-up Mobile Learning Lab.” Oct 18, 2013
Gothamist. “One Day We Will All Live In Dumpsters.” Oct 22, 2013
UntappedCities. ““Inflato Dumpster”: Turning a Dumpster into an Inflatable Classroom in NYC” Oct 16, 2013
Inflato Dumpster
I’m really excited to introduce a new project by the Department of Urban Betterment (John Locke and Joaquin Reyes) – The Inflato Dumpster, and the accompanying KICKSTARTER campaign:
http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/851648659/inflato-dumpster
A pre-emptive, heartfelt thank you! Also, please email me if you’d like to help out in any way, with any ideas for site, or just to say hi.
Project Description:
As public space in New York becomes increasingly privatized and commodified, The Inflato Dumpster seeks to counter that tendency by serving as an open, engaging street-level structure that acts as a mobile learning laboratory.
For five days this fall, the temporary, dome-like structure will confront the tendency of city space to limit public exchange by serving as a large scale urban intervention in which workshops to create and explore the possibilities for smaller, targeted urban interventions will be produced and deployed from within.
We believe that the architecture of the Inflato Dumpster can act as a networked node of neighborhood information – using screens and sensors to produce constantly updating streams of demographic and subjective information regarding the local site – and then in turn produces a smaller constellation of satellite interventions created by locals and visitors alike. We envision the site as a hub for all, to create a gathering space where programs can be curated to the needs of the community.
Visitors can enter, visualize, learn and explore various urban techniques and strategies before leaving the structure armed with the knowledge to redesign their own total environment.
Initially, we see this space as taking the form of a hacker workshop where simple, off the shelf components can be procured and combined to provide local residents with access to technology and a means for hands-on testing of public space concerns.
The structure’s faceted shape, materials and unexpected location will all combine to make for a fun, dynamic addition to the streetscape with the inflated structure evoking the blow-up castles of street festivals and the long history of big inflatable space from AntFarm to Spacebuster. We’ve been seeing a lot of construction dumpsters on the streets in the neighborhood, they symbolize change but also an opportunity for us to create something new.
As residents of various areas in New York City, we aim to take advantage of the mobile, temporary nature of the Inflato Dumpster to pop-up in areas that we love, neighborhoods where we live and around the people and communities that we know. We’ve identified a number of intersections and areas where the workshops and education laboratory programs would have the greatest impact, so stay tuned as we finalize the exact spot.
The Inflato Dumpster will be built from readily available lightweight materials and combined into a structure that can be inflated and occupied. Consisting of gold and silver mylar, it will reflect the light filtering down from the trees and create a shimmering, inviting structure on the street.The logic behind the materials is as follows: up to a datum level of approximately six and a half feet, the structure will be made of clear polyethylene. This is an inexpensive, common and biodegradable plastic material that will allow views both from the street into the space, and from within back out to the street. The street side will be primarily comprised of gold and silver mylar material with small clear holes throughout to allow light to filter in, evoking the feeling of being under a shaded tree. The highest point on the dome will be approximately 28’ and the space will comprise nearly 2000 cubic feet of overall volume. The sidewalk side will be built from faceted white tyvek building wrap, used both for its lightweight capabilities and also to provide a surface for projections of film and data. The final and most important material is of course the dumpster, a 30 yard refuse container that is 23’ long by 8’ wide and will form the solid base of the intervention.
Looking forward to seeing you in the dumpster!
A link for high resolution images:
https://www.dropbox.com/s/8x1wpc1m3wo6nfx/INFLATO_DUMPSTER_IMG.zip
This space could be…
To generate interest and excitement for our BLOQ PARTY proposal, we wanted to start a conversation by showing how the program elements we produced could potentially activate the competition site. Competitions, design proposals and urban space planning oftentimes fall under the radar of the actual users of the site who are both unaware that a competition is taking place and then have no voice in the process or outcome. The plastic signs are intended to link the digital proposal to an actual physical space – less obscure websites and more public posters. It also helped to see how our space division laid out on the actual site, we had treated the eastern, narrower plaza area as space for movement and dynamic interaction – biking, running, skating. The western, more generous plaza was designed for slower, more spontaneous meeting areas. We hope the signs can begin to create a diaglogue for the best use of the space including potentially new and different program ideas that can eventually bring the space to life in a vibrant manner for all.
BLOQ PARTY
Designed with Mark Bearak and Yuval Borochov
What began as a competition for a temporary rehabilitation of an existing chain link fence along two blocks – adjacent to a pair of parking lots – quickly became a more encompassing proposal as we realized the latent potential of the two narrow, un-programmed plazas bordering the modest chain link fence. Located at the Delancey Street connection to the Williamsburg Bridge, the site acts as the symbolic gateway to the Lower East Side for those leaving and entering Manhattan, and as such, displays a great wealth of untapped design opportunity. As a temporary proposal of less than 5 years duration, we identified a variation of possible plug-in nodes that could be used to test ideas for the site and generate community engagement by bringing the scattered, diverse collection of LES attractions together at the fence, displaying the street-level density and multiple, overlapping functions that have historically characterized the LES. Budget and business plans were also developed to illustrate the feasibility of a more ambitious program at the site through a variety of funding and sponsorship options.
PROJECT DESCRIPTION:
The possibilities of programming a BLOQ are endless, ranging from a bike repair station, to a satellite location of a Lower East Side business, to a concert venue stage. Each block will have its’ own identity, but share geometric cues from its neighbors. In our proposal we will aggregate 16 BLOQS that will serve as a gateway to the LES while also providing an oasis of attractions within the neighborhood.
The site will consist of two city blocks and each section will have its own identity. We call the Eastern section the PIT-STOP based on its adjacency to the Williamsburg Bridge and its planned programmatic functions. The BLOQS located in this section will serve as a way station for pedestrians heading to Brooklyn or entering the LES. This section will have BLOQS with services such as bike repair, coffee and skate gear.
We call the Western section the CHILL space and we will treat it as more of a destination. The width of the site allows for larger gatherings of people who can congregate into the farmers market or catch a drink at the pop-up bar. Our proposal represents a handful of potential BLOQS; over the life of the project there are endless possibilities for temporary and permanent installations.
Further exploring the actual BLOQS, each zone will be defined by a fence which will act as a billboard for the community and patterns placed along the ground. Each section of fence will be a billboard representing an actual block of the LES. The design of each section of the fence will be a series of parallelograms that advertise local businesses within the represented blocks of the LES. The parallelograms will be colored based on following four categories: Shop, Eat, Explore & Nightlife. The adjacent ground will be a continuation of this theme containing patterns unique to each BLOQ.
The most liberating feature of the BLOQS will be created when the fence is used as a jumping off point to an architectural installation. We will bend, fold, cut, extend and warp the fence to accommodate the unique functions of each BLOQ. In some cases the drama of the gesture will be relatively modest; in the case of the market the fence will simply be extended horizontally to create a canopy to protect the produce. In more complex situations, structure and furniture will be built off of the fence to create a space suitable to host large groups of visitors. One of the largest BLOQS will be composed of a bar, stage and viewing area built within the distinct vocabulary of the installation.
The main purpose of the BLOQ installation is to activate the space. The BLOQ will not only serve as a gateway to the LES, it will serve as a destination for all New Yorkers. The project will never be static and its potential can be tested over time as the project evolves to suit the changing needs of the community. Eventually the project will not only be a representation of the vitality of the neighborhood, it will also serve as a benchmark for the evolution of the Lower East Side.
http://newyorkcity.arthere.org/art/bloq-party-2/
http://lesbloqparty.com
Continuous Contour
Looking North from the Sculpture Park
Quick Project Description
Continuous Contour is a folly built from one single 1050’ length of rope – sourced in Long Island City and hearkening back to the area’s historical role as a center of nautical manufacturing – as well as a series of guide wires and steel rings. Evoking a contour drawing where the pencil never leaves the paper, this rope becomes a continuous, eccentric line that winds its way through a series of metal rings to transform into a phantom geometrical construction, capturing space with visible boundary lines while still remaining imminently temporal and open. The folly proposal comments on architecture’s attempt to force order on the natural world by highlighting the impractical tension between the rigid, recognizable cubic forms and the seemingly chaotic guide wires that connect to the naturally occurring trees that circumnavigate the site. This forms a contradictory structure that is both delicate – being able to sway along with trees and grasping hands – but also completely in tension and dependent on each node to remain standing.
Description
The folly Continuous Contour is constructed from a number of locally manufactured and off the shelf materials. Long Island City was once a hub of naval construction and the area still retains some capabilities for producing nautical components, cotton rope primary amongst them. This became the basis for the design proposal and the main feature becomes a single, continuous line of dyed rope facilitating an investigation into the latent possibilities inherent in the material’s strength for flexibility and manipulation.
Architecture school begins with drawing, and one of the first methods taught in the development of a young architect is the contour drawing method, essentially a line drawing that traces the outline of a given subject – a simple means of emphasizing mass and volume on a flat two-dimensional surface. In Continuous Contour the subject becomes spactial and is manifested in a three-dimensional construction that forms the outline of a number of cubic forms that tumble about the sculpture park appearing to take flight as they near the water line. A canvas or plastic tarp is affixed to one side of the forms to potentially provide shade or a projection surface while further emphasizing the geometry. The single approx. 1000’ strand of the rope winds through a series of metal rings, back in on itself and then away again to form a unified decorative agglomeration. The eye can delight in following the eccentric path of the rope, tracing its voyage as it weaves through the park, transforming from a material that connotes a coiled, resting mass into a temporal folly that is now slightly recognizable as something structural. The folly defines space, both within its individual forms and within the park, defining zones of play and contemplation. However, as the folly is merely an outline – the graphical representation of space constructed from a linear material – it is inherently empty and creates a dramatic tension from the play between the two contradictory notions of void and outline.
The rigid, recognizably intentional geometric forms are held in place by a delicate system of guide wires attached to the park’s trees and a minimal number of ground anchoring points. The guide wires are constructed from flexible steel rope and a number of standard connection systems, amongst them stainless steel rings and carabiners. The folly comments on architecture’s ambition to manipulate forced, ordered forms out of the chaos of nature by emphasizing the seemingly chaotic web of guide wires required to stabilize the cubic volumes that appear to hover above the ground. The overall structure of the folly becomes delicate in one sense, in that it gently sways in the breeze in tune with the supporting trees, while the effects of someone tugging on the rope on one end are felt and seen as a rippling throughout the overall system. The folly is then at once elaborate and extravagant, necessitating a detailed site survey for tree locations and a complex system of guidewires in tension to form the node points, while it is also built from modest, common materials.
After the exhibition ends all of the materials can be easily reused and recycled into a number of alternate uses. Due to its softness to the touch, cotton rope is frequently used in railings and could become woven together in a net or other shape to make a wonderful addition to a number of city playgrounds. Likewise, steel rope is frequently used for railings and other tensile applications, but can be easily melted down and recycled.
HACKING THE URBAN EXPERIENCE II – STUDENT WORK
I spent a second semester with a great group of young architects, urban designers and planners teaching a course at Columbia. The class was titled “Hacking the Urban Experience” and was about a number of things I’m interested in, specifically how to fabricate, repurpose and interact with urban space. It was a very good short semester and I was super proud of all of the student’s work. I thought the ideas went deeper and successfully built off the earlier semester. All lectures and process work are archived on the class tumblr: http://hackingtheurbanexperience.tumblr.com. Classes typically took the form of lectures on precedents and concepts, a discussion of student work and tutorials on materials or software techniques as required. Topics during the semester included overviews of unsolicited architectural proposals, building-scale light projections, inflatable materials, urban siting opportunities and community/crowd sourced funding.
Course Description
The course goals haven’t changed dramatically since the last semester, the course still seeks to assert the relevance of the fabrication tools at our disposal as potentialities for social and environmental relevance. Through the re-appropriation and re-imagining of existing urban conditions, the student will design and fabricate a working prototype that embraces the messy reality of our city and promotes community involvement. The student will begin by identifying a quality of the urban condition that includes the latent capability for improvement and work toward fabricating an adaptive, responsive and environmentally viable solution. Specific emphasis will be placed on testing and exploring through hands on research the possibilities of detailing and fabricating connections using unorthodox materials. At the conclusion of the course the student will produce a full scale urban intervention and observe and document their relevant successes or failures.
Workshops were conducted to introduce the students to the possibilities inherent in new material technologies, through production and detailing techniques, and the proper use of fabrication techniques. Material workshops encouraged students to explore with everything from dynamic, variable surfaces using latex and silicone to parametric agglomerations using quotidian materials.
The first investigation was the creation of the connection detail. It was encouraged that this be a parametric joint that breaches the gap between the existing streetscape and the student’s intervention. Flexibility, safety, durability, adaptability will all be tested while exploring different possibilities for a potential synthesis with existing urban forms, examples of which can include: will the student’s intervention clamp on to a lamppost, hang from a phone booth, project from an existing building or rest in a parking lot?
By attempting to capture a broader audience for architectural interventions, a number of questions presented themselves and the student was challenged to anticipate possible eventualities – how will it be used? Can its use be changed? Is it durable? Is it waterproof? Can it safely stand up? Fabrication was considered less from a formal quality, and more from a use, durability, improvisation and public participation viewpoint.
Ultimately the student should have come out of the course with a healthy respect for two core concepts: Firstly, an increased skill in the use and applicability of the fabrication machines we have at our disposal for solving design issues using unorthodox materials in unconventional settings; and two, that there is an opportunity for architects to regain lost relevance by inserting themselves through unsolicited proposals into the public consciousness as steward’s of urban well being.
Assignment 01 – PARASITES
Part of the Atlas of Urban Connections project (TBD), the first assignment involved designing and fabricating a joint to connect something, anything, to a vertical street extrusion (such as a tree, street sign, light pole, etc…). The members of the Public Works Department in NYC are masters of improvisation, you can see it walking down any street here, and there is a lot to learn from their successful and not-so successful techniques for attaching to existing sidewalk infrastructure. This assignment was prepared to introduce the student to the capacity to breaching the gap between the pedestrian and existing streetscape objects, with the goal to test flexibility, safety, durability, adaptablility while exploring different possibilities for potential synthesis with existing urban forms.
ChunChun, Yuri, Shuang, Rubing, Renwick
Assignment 02 – INFLATABLES
Hurricane Sandy played hell with our first few weeks, and necessitated that the initial assignments were bundled together. However, we still had a chance to look at inflatables and the material qualities inherent in cheap polyethylene of different mil thickness. Using an iron, tape and plastic, quick inflatable bladders were constructed and tested. The students were tasked with creating an inflatable, mobile “seating” system that was either self-supporting or used a site’s natural currents to inflate.
ChunChun, Yuri, Shuang, Rubing, Renwick
Ni, Mengna, Darian, Juan, Ying
Assignment 03 – LIGHT PROJECTION
Using Graffiti Research Lab’s projection bombing tutorial at Instructables, the class set up a mobile power station using a 75V marine battery, and set off around the neighborhood near Columbia to experiment and throw up some interactive light projections.
The last year has seen some truly inspiring displays of the potential light can have as an interventionist tool, and the class studied this problem using three main strategies: 1) messaging independent of site, i.e. you only need a blank wall, 2) site dependent projections, like those following the curving, horizontal bands on the Guggenheim, and 3) flexible projections that can adapt and interact to a number of different sites, taking advantage of the unique characteristics of each. Care was given to create projects that both actively and passively engage those passing by the site. Each group’s projects was able to successfully confront one of these strategies.
Ni, Mengna, Darian, Juan, Ying
ChunChun, Yuri, Shuang, Rubing, Renwick
Assignment 04 (FINAL)
Building off the previous assignments, the final assignment sought to synthesize the work and concepts of the class into a larger installation that could still be completed in our very tight time frame, but started to explore the core ideas of the course, in effect becoming a proof-of-concept, working model. By attempting to capture a broader audience for architectural interventions, a number of questions presented themselves and the students were challenged to anticipate a range of possible eventualities – how will it be used? Can its use be changed? Is it durable? Is it waterproof? Can it safely stand up? Fabrication was considered less from a formal quality, and more from a use, durability, improvisation and public participation viewpoint.
Ultimately, A successful project would accomplish three things: 1) display ingenuity in fabrication technique and material 2) re-imagine or re-design a specific urban site/condition to take advantage of its hitherto hidden potential, and 3) have a performative component, in that the intervention has a temporal quality that while engaged promotes public interaction.
ChunChun, Yuri, Shuang, Rubing, Renwick
Ni, Mengna, Darian, Juan, Ying
HACKING THE URBAN EXPERIENCE – STUDENT WORK
I had the pleasure to teach a course this semester with a great group of young architects and urban designers, titled “Hacking the Urban Experience” at Columbia. I couldn’t be more proud of all the hard work and the high level of engagement with which the students approached the class. All lectures and process work are archived on the class tumblr: http://hackingtheurbanexperience.tumblr.com. Classes typically took the form of lectures on precedents and concepts, a discussion of student work and tutorials on materials or software techniques. Topics during the semester included overviews of unsolicited architectural proposals, building-scale light projections, inflatable materials, urban siting opportunities and community/crowd sourced funding.
The course sought to assert the relevance of the fabrication skills at our disposal as potentialities for social and environmental relevance. Through the re-appropriation and re-imagining of existing urban conditions, the students designed and fabricated working prototypes that embraced the messy reality of our city and promoted community involvement. The students began by identifying a quality of the urban condition that included the latent capability for improvement and worked toward fabricating an adaptive, responsive and environmentally viable solution. Specific emphasis was placed on testing and exploring through hands on research the possibilities of detailing and fabricating connections using unorthodox materials. At the conclusion of the course the students produced a full scale urban intervention and observed and documented their relevant successes or failures.
Material workshops were held to encourage the students to explore constructions from inflatables to parametric agglomerations using quotidian materials. Ultimately, the goal was for the students to come out of the course with a healthy respect for two core concepts: firstly, an increased skill in the use and applicability of the fabrication skills we have developed for solving design issues using unorthodox materials in unconventional settings; and secondly, that there is an opportunity for architects to regain lost relevance by inserting themselves through unsolicited proposals into the public consciousness as steward’s of urban well being.
Students:
Jared Dignanci, Farzin Lofti-Jam, Ehsaan Mesghali, Katerina Petrou, Paul Tran, Wassim Shaaban, Maryam Zamani
Assignment 01
Part of the Atlas of Urban Connections project (TBD), the first assignment involved designing and fabricating a joint to connect something, anything, to a vertical street extrusion (such as a tree, street sign, light pole, etc…). The members of the Public Works Department in NYC are masters of improvisation, you can see it walking down any street here, and there is a lot to learn from their successful and not-so successful techniques for attaching to existing sidewalk infrastructure. This assignment was prepared to introduce the student to the capacity to breaching the gap between the pedestrian and existing streetscape objects, with the goal to test flexibility, safety, durability, adaptablility while exploring different possibilities for potential synthesis with existing urban forms.
Wassim, Katerina, Paul
Assignment 02
Using Graffiti Research Lab’s projection bombing tutorial at Instructables, the class set up a mobile power station using a 75V marine battery, and set off around the neighborhood near Columbia to experiment and throw up some interactive light projections.
The last year has seen some truly inspiring displays of the potential light can have as an interventionist tool, and the class studied this problem using three main strategies: 1) messaging independent of site, i.e. you only need a blank wall, 2) site dependent projections, like those following the curving, horizontal bands on the Guggenheim, and 3) flexible projections that can adapt and interact to a number of different sites, taking advantage of the unique characteristics of each. Care was given to create projects that both actively and passively engage those passing by the site.
Wassim, Katerina, Paul
Assignment 03 (FINAL)
Building off the first two assignments, the final assignment sought to synthesize the work and concepts of the class into a larger installation that could still be completed in our very tight time frame, but started to explore the core ideas of the course, in effect becoming a proof-of-concept, working model. By attempting to capture a broader audience for architectural interventions, a number of questions presented themselves and the students were challenged to anticipate a range of possible eventualities – how will it be used? Can its use be changed? Is it durable? Is it waterproof? Can it safely stand up? Fabrication was considered less from a formal quality, and more from a use, durability, improvisation and public participation viewpoint.
Ultimately, A successful project would accomplish three things: 1) display ingenuity in fabrication technique and material 2) re-imagine or re-design a specific urban site/condition to take advantage of its hitherto hidden potential, and 3) have a performative component, in that the intervention has a temporal quality that while engaged promotes public interaction.
Wassim, Katerina, Paul
the future of suburbia
In a remarkable piece from New York magazine regarding the liberal world’s MVP, Paul Krugman, the author described the genesis of Krugman’s 2006 book:
When he was writing The Conscience of a Liberal, Krugman found himself searching for a way to describe his own political Eden, his vision of America before the Fall. He knew the moment that he wanted to describe: the fifties and early sixties, when prosperity was not only broad but broadly shared. Wells, looking over a draft, thought his account was too numerical, too cold. She suggested that he describe his own childhood, in the middle-class suburb of Merrick, Long Island. And so Krugman began writing with an almost choking nostalgia, the sort of feeling that he usually despises: “The political and economic environment of my youth stands revealed as a paradise lost, an exceptional moment in our nation’s history …”
Krugman’s own vision of a lost utopia on Long Island, during that bright post-war bloom of middle class prosperity, which must have had seemed so full of limitless potential and opportunity but somehow lurched toward our current state of contraction, pulled apart and forgotten by the twin poles of unimaginable wealth disparity, was at the front of my mind when I had the awesome opportunity to manage this project from David Benjamin and the Living. This was House #7 of nine theoretical projects that comprised part of a one-day only open house installation on the future of suburbia, a what-if, hyper-fictional reality showing design’s potential to provoke and elucidate a hypothetical path forward hosted by Droog and DS&R.
Conceived with the ingenuity of hybrid housing/service industry residences seen in Tijuana and rendered with the graphic intensity of Chinatown, David’s concept called for a home that is both a store and factory for making and selling signs. The factory is an inhabitable sign in and of itself, and the facade of the house is taken over by examples of constructed signs. As more and more Levittown residences convert to self-sustaining home businesses the House of Signs positions itself as an integral piece of future suburban infrastructure. We went from concept sketch to exhibition in less than 10 days.
inflatable mobile voter center
A quick entry I put together for a mobile voter registration and information center competition which had a pretty cool set of limitations – it had to be under 1000 dollars, fit inside a 3’x3’x3′ box, and be assembled and ready to hit the streets by September. The immediacy and modest budget were compelling and a nice change of pace. An inflatable structure was used to get around the rigid packaging requirements to produce the maximum volume to surface area, that, and I really dig the giant inflatable union rat that has been popping up around lower Manhattan streets. Unfortunately and inexplicably, the deadline was pushed back to 2011 (which is not an election year) so I guess I’ll be waiting to see how I did.
concept
The gesture of the “i want you” poster was extruded and placed in a cylindrical shape for maximum exposure. Each arm becomes a customizable exhortation to vote and the end cap can be written and erased with a dry erase marker. The gesture is returned by the prospective voter who has to reach into the arms and place the completed form inside the unit.
aga construction
Images copyright Robert Lemermeyer Photography
I’ve been diligently following the exterior construction progress of the AGA museum in Edmonton via the museum’s dedicated online webcam, and it looks absolutely wonderful, but unfortunately the spectacular interior spaces had been hidden from view until now. In my imagination and the computer and physical models I spent the better part of three years designing in while at RSA, I saw the public entry lobby as an expansive and light filled space that was confirmed by these first images taken from the museum’s facebook page. They were a joy to see and a welcome reminder that the days consumed by getting that projecting finger in the top left to look just right as it slid past the grand stair were all worthwhile.
the (un)certain future of competitions
Ok, so this is my entry to the Next Stop Design “competition” for a bus stop on the University of Utah campus. I’d just spent a fair amount of time in Utah so the setting piqued my interest. The boulders are recycled from national parks around Utah and brought into Salt Lake to form the shelter of the bus stop. Whatever, right, pretty straightforward and not bad for a lazy afternoon’s work. What’s actually much more pertinent for discussion is how NextStopDesign understands the application of the buzzword “crowdsourcing” in relation to the future of architectural competitions.
Wikipedia defines crowdsourcing as “the act of taking tasks traditionally performed by an employee or contractor, and outsourcing it to an undefined, generally large group of people or community in the form of an open call.” Wikipedia is an example of crowdsourcing. Here’s another: Netflix uses an algorithm to recommend other movies you’d like based on your past viewing habits. This algorithm could certainly be improved upon so it becomes more accurate and stops trying to get me to watch The Benjamin Button movie. So to design a better recommendation algorithm, Netflix didn’t hire some movie-algorithm-predicter company, but rather put out an open competition – with a prize of 1 million dollars – with the idea that anyone out there can come up with a better algorithm that will more truthfully predict what kind of movies I’ll like. And anyone and everyone has tried: academics, laypersons, programmers, etc.
Now here’s how NextStopDesign competition organizer and researcher Daren Brabham defines crowdsourcing: “a company posts a problem online, a vast number of individuals offer solutions to the problem, the winning ideas are awarded some form of a bounty, and the company mass produces the idea for its own gain.” Sweet, so I can be compensated a nominal amount for my work, and then some other company reaps massive profits. Score! Where do I sign up?!?! But maybe the problem is that this dude’s narrow and cynical reading of crowdsourcing isn’t actually inaccurate, but actually pretty well describes the exploitive nature of crowdsourcing.
This is how NextStopDesign attempts to apply the principle of crowdsourcing into the design of a bus stop in Utah: Anonymous users post one to three images of their proposed design on the site, and other registered anonymous users rank said designs on a scale of one to five stars. When the voting ends, the highest rated design “wins.” What you win is completely undefined, but hidden deep in the bowels of the site is the statement that NextStopDesign will present the portions of the highest rated designs as possible qualities the Utah Planning Division could consider implementing in the future. In this scenario NextStopDesign acts an unnecessary parasitic gatekeeper. Now, since being highly rated is predicated on how others rank you, it is in each users own best interest to vote everyone else as low as possible as they jockey for a higher position. This leads to a cutthroat environment where everyone leaves absurdly irrelevant and overly harsh criticisms on other designs, and depresses the entire vote score. Out of around 200 designs the median score is a paltry 1.6 out of 5. Therefore, the highest ranked design is the one has garnered the most goodwill amongst a loose network of vindictive users that are each looking out for their own vested self-interest. Since all comments and ratings are anonymous you can’t trust anybody. This ultimately leads to the major misunderstanding NextStopDesign must confront regarding crowdsourcing and urban planning which is this: When Netflix crowns a winner they will be able to quantifiably judge that someone in the crowd has designed a more efficient algorithm. It can be tested, verified, and agreed upon by all. The design of a bus stop is different, and must address a whole slew of realities such as siting, fabrication, cost, etc. that are unable to be processed from even the most beautifully rendered image. On the other hand, what could make this competition interesting is if NSD were attempting an experiment to quantify the intangible qualities of architecture via a participatory network, or using the performative values of a proposed design (using program, energy, structural)as a means to rank and determine what’s “better.” But based on their repeated and simplisitic definition of crowdsourcing (step1_competition, step2…., step3_profit!) as simply a buzzworthy potential means to realize a new profit model it falls flat, and it is narrow and cynical. I’m torn here, because I think a lot of the submitted designs are really clever and inventive (I’m looking at you Bus-Shroom!). It’s the means to which they’re being used that bothers me.
There’s absolutely nothing groundbreaking about letting the general population participate in the results of an architectural competition. I’ve worked on at least two competitions where the voting results of the public became a factor in the jury’s deliberations. Also, archinect just ran a completely awesome competition for a Michael Jackson memorial where online contributors could rate and comment on the submissions. But here, the participatory aspect is but one component used in addition to a jury of experts in fields of design, architecture and engineering. And in lieu of this weeks amazing presentation by Usman Haque, in which he presented a survey of his projects that utilize a true participatory network in inspiring ways, NextStopDesign can’t help but come off as cloying and depressing.
In the end, though, it might be worth re-reading the Wired article that NextStopDesign quotes from liberally, and there, one can find the murky origins of NextStopDesign in the form of the earliest use of crowdsourcing, here in the interest of cheap, mass-marketed television programming: America’s Funniest Home Videos. Yes Bob Saget and ABC did make a fortune, but just because America voted for the hysterically zany toothless kid, doesn’t make him as great as the Simpsons. Maybe you really do want to look at reality show programming as the new paradigm for urban planning and architecture, but I’m pretty sure nobody wants more Wiffle Bats to the proverbial crotch.
global panopticon
I didn’t really cut anything from the presentation included below. So, yeah, there’s a lot of slides. It’s (almost) the entire final presentation. I left it pretty much intact because not only 1) I can never edit my own work, but 2) the project is conceived more as a sci-fi narrative of Beijing and it will hopefully make more sense if read in complete order. And you can always just scroll way down to the end for some sweet images. This was for Ed Keller’s SpeedTerritoryCommunication studio, Spring 2009.
quick project description:
Architecture is a system of control predicated on limitations. This project is a study of the existing control systems in Beijing and a projection of how architecture and technology will merge to change not only prisons, but also the urban environment, the social stratification of society. Also addressed are what confinement and freedom will mean in relation to our relationship with how we build our world.
component systems
It was a certainly good times working with Professor Joe Vidich as teaching assistant for the courses Intro to Digital Fabrication and Advanced Fabrication: Component Systems. In component systems we only had five students, and they were pushed really hard, but there was some great work. I appreciated the sensibility that yes, we would make some cool stuff with the machines, but we also would test it for performance using structural engineering analysis, and explore material properties using Solidworks parametric models. It was an ambitious agenda for a short course, and the waterjet was un-operational pretty much the whole time, but the students came through with some sweet projects using the laser cut plexi and the heat bender, the metal mill as well as the 3d printer. Visit the class blog here.
Student work above from left: HoKyung Lee, JiYoon Oh, Kiseok Oh, Dave Kwon and Christo Logan
beijing 2014
Detail from my final studio presentation of one symbiotic cell. See also a sankey diagram of the flows of energy through this system here.