a Status Update for posterity, circa 1900: hats, mustaches, and beer. (Click image for source)

It's been shamefully long since we've posted an update on our whereabouts and happenings, so here goes. First-up: Phase Two (?!) is off and running.

Early in PRE's planning, we recognized that the need for further work experience and professional development would not simply disappear because we happened to enter the profession into a nonexistent job market during a recession.  The hope, of course, was that we might use the forced downtime strategically and carefully to examine modes of practice, develop an infrastrucutre for practice, and generally lay some appropriate groundwork in order to make fuller sense of hte opportunities that would eventually come back around. While the economy has not by any stretch recovered (and honestly probably should not return to its former modus operandi), we at PRE have been lucky to start (separately) acquiring some of that much needed, real-world street cred.

Briefly, Zachary is hard at work at Leslie Gill and coteaching with Mabel Wilson at GSAPP; Aaron is at Heintges; and Leah is currently dividing her time between NYU and Urbanscale. The differences in our so-called day jobs sleak to the multi- and interdisciplinary approach to which PRE remains as committed as ever, and the promise of what these varied skillsets and experiences may bring to a single team is only more exciting the more we learn.

The full swing of Phase Two does not mean that the research that began two years ago has been halted, abandoned, nor back-burnered in any way. On the contrary, the Conversations with Architects research (on modes of practice and office development through economic cycles) has taken a few interesting and promising turns over the recent months and is beginning to shape up into a more compelling product that we could have earlier imagined. 

In other upcoming news, Aaron and Leah will be delivering a keynote talk at the AIA Georgia Chapter's 2011 Design Conference next month. The conference theme is "One Architect/One Future," and while the final touches are still being put on the presentation, we'll be excited to share its main points soon.

Where and How It Started

A : Water on the Moon because it's crazy.
B : WikiLeaks because 2010 has been full of it.
C : The Honey Bees because their impact has been huge and we think we know what is wrong.
D : Welcome (again) to the Future because we wonder if people think 2010 was futuristic enough (see Brief A).
E : War because it's everywhere and we haven't brought it up yet. 
F : What Did We Miss? because the year's been intense and because a free-for-all topic is in order after we've picked all the topics.

Check out the SA site for the full briefs, deadlines, and submission guidelines.

Two recent books featuring PRE and a little PRE work:

First up is The Studio-X New York Guide to Liberating New Forms of Conversation (edited by the ever-wonderful Gavin Browning, featuring an afterward by Mark Wigley and the graphic design of MTWTF). The guide includes a few of Leah's events with the Buell Center as well as PRE's event in October 2009 and 2010's RAPID RESPONSE: Spontaneous Architecture.

Second, Dimitris Kottas' Contemporary Digital Architecture: Design and Techniques features Leah's 2009 collaboration with SoftRigid's Brian Brush and Yong Ju Lee, "Ornamental Connectivity: Form, Fabrication, and Data Environments." The project was an experiment in the potential intersections of GIS analysis and digital fabrication techniques.

Decadal surface temperature anomalies relative to 1951-1980 base period. From "Global Surface Temperature Change" (2010) by J. Hansen, R. Ruedy, M. Sato, and K. Lo at NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies

Excerpts from this month's brief: "It's hot, and it's hot everywhere...If you live in a city in the Northern Hemisphere, the urban heat effect is probably melting you...When politicians are still denying Global Warming and Al Gore isn't convincing anyone new, when we're still pumping out air-thickening pollutants and protected by our air conditioners, how do we start to contend with our sweltering summers and staggering seasonal changes? Further, what kind of winter might Mother Nature have in store for us this year?"  

Let's be honest, this heat is oppressive and borderline unfathomable. This month we're asking for submissions from people who are sweating and have an opinion about that fact. Read the full brief and enter the competition at www.spontaneousarchitecture.net.

After a rough patch of technical difficulty, July's Spontaneous Architecture competition is off and running! This month's brief can be found at SpontaneousArchitecture.net and centers around last month's strange happenings regarding Cold War-esque Russian espionage in American suburbia.  

After six months of learning-through-doing about the Spontaneous Architecture project, we hoped to return to a topic somewhat akin to January's brief: something a bit more speculative with perhaps a little more critical visioning than problem-solving...something perhaps a little more fun.

We would like to thank you all, once again, for your continued participation and support!  Our winners and regular participants have all been fantastic, and we look forward to the next six months of SpontArch 2010.

July's competition will close (due to the late start) at 11:59PM on 27 July 2010.  Good luck!

PRE-Office recently completed design on a brand for burgeoning music moguls SWISS HARPER LIVE, made up of the indescribably talented Swiss Chris and Jake Harper. They wanted to convey their unique, client-first brand of music production and were turned off by brands that seemed to adhere to style over quality. After several iterations and meetings with the guys, we produced something that is super-restrained and strong without being overbearing. Inverting the idea of a brand as an umbrella term used to perpetuate a single image, SWISS HARPER LIVE serves as an operative frame through which to see the talent that they work with. Check out the project page for more images, and best of luck to SWISS HARPER LIVE! 

May Day 2010. Populations move in search of opportunity. Migrations have always been directed toward areas with more to offer, be they offering work, offering safety, or just offering the idea of a better future. Recently, as migrations cross borders, people have been getting nervous.

On 23 April 2010, Arizona governor Jan Brewer signed into law a piece of legislation that could change immigration policy and immigrant politics in the United States forever. But the US is not alone in facing some of these issues. Around the world, migration and immigration are changing our global demographics as people search for opportunity. Definitions of citizenship vary from one country to the next along with the mechanisms by which citizenship may be earned. With visas, permits, and passports, in Arizona and elsewhere, the status of the individual is reduced to the status of their documentation. We study globalization and operate within a global economy, but there is no fabled "Citizen of the World."

Participants in May's Spontaneous Architecture are invited to consider the architecture and urbanism of immigration, citizenship, national identity, and boundary. Responses may include how and why borders are secured, how and why immigrant communities and enclaves develop, the creation and implication of a global economy of remittances, or the effects of network culture and technology on the geography of opportunity and connection to home.

Submissions are single images, formatted in 8.5 inches by 11 inches (landscape), 300 dpi tiffs. Images must be anonymous, containing no identification of their creators. Submissions may (but are not required to) include up to 100 words of text. All submissions are due by 11:59PM on 15 May 2010.

www.spontaneousarchitecture.net

a few Spontaneous Architecture entries, January - March 2010

First off, there is a gap in access to architectural competitions. Whether Spontaneous Architecture begins to address that gap aside, it definitely exists. The resources (time and money) needed to participate in traditional competitions is a serious barrier-to-entry. There are good, critical, and thought-through ideas out there, and competition organizers aren't seeing them because of these barriers.

Second, the hypothesis that young designers are trying to find their collective intellectual way is proving itself true. (As we've said before, Spontaneous Architecture is not really a competition for architects whose names we know; it's a competition for the kids who work for them.) There are some, like Andy and Dave, who have a definitive voice. And there are certainly themes that appear across the board in response to each brief. But we're yet to see that young designers have an overarching perspective that we can point to as representative of their (our) generation. On the flip-side, we've had participation from about forty countries on all six continents and haven't seen much differentiation based on location. Though we can't (yet) identify a unified perspective, we can't readily identify specific difference either.

Third, if we can't say that there is a coalescing movement afoot, we can say that our participants are split between good-old-fashioned problem-solving and good-old-fashioned polemics.  Well, maybe "split" isn't the right word. There is a lot more problem-solving going on. Still, individual and critical voices are emerging. And we are finding people to watch out for, especially among our repeat participants. 

Lastly, democratic participation is good for developing community. Just in case anyone doubted that statement, it looks like our experiment is proving it. We've had the opportunity to begin developing intellectual relationships with our participants, because their feedback through voting and discussion has been important from the beginning. They are meeting each other, evaluating their work, discussing the topics, and forming relationships among themselves as well. In the spirit of the competition's concept, if you ask, we try to deliver.  As a result of requests for it, in April we launched a discussion board on the Spontaneous Architecture website.  It's nascent, so not much discussion has happened to date, but we're hopeful that what happens at RAPID RESPONSE each month at Studio-X New York can carry over to the website for our participants who can't make it to NYC. Honestly, when was the last time you thought just participating (not winning) in a competition could be good networking?

"It is not the strongest of the species that survives, nor the most intelligent, but the one most responsive to change." -Charles Darwin

“Everyone is entitled to his own opinion, but not his own facts.” - Daniel Patrick Moynihan

Competition v. Value

It is time to reconsider the fundamental role of the architectural competition. The reconsideration should not occur at the level of the competition brief; this text often belies a deeper interest both architectural and political in its implications. Instead, we propose a rethinking of the competition at the most fundamental level and through the supposition that the proper competition is emblematic of at least a critical piece of architectural practice, if not its entirety in some cases. This aspect of practice is has a highly public profile but also a staggering economic risk factor, which makes it lauded by those who win and maligned by those who try to win. Understanding the competition as a practical consideration to be adapted or denied allows it to be examined closely and subjects it to the same fiduciary scrutiny of any enterprise that manifests itself as a public good. Presuming that there is little current value of the competition to design culture, we propose an open, peer-reviewed format in the work of the entrant. The valuation of the work rejects the idea of an invited jury entirely and delegates the task to the most empathetic and critical peers: the other entrants. Creating this valuation system and strictly limiting the submission requirements to a single image, we hope, will create an analytical tool through which architectural value can be seen as an agile, contextual critique of the discipline and a practice.

Said v Meant

At its essential level a competition is a composition of images and graphics mounted on identically sized supports, presented in absentia by its participants. The winner is selected based on their ability to create and confer the highest effectual relationship to the jury. What is clear though, is that the theoretical relationship does not account for the meta-relationships between the material and the juries. The completion of the meta-relationship, the jury/entrant relationship, comes from the nature of the images themselves and in their recognition and resonance with the jury. This completion, the political project, has elevated itself above the basic project of instrumentality and innovation expected, and in fact asked for, by the competition brief.

This conscious or unconscious separation, and tacit omission of the immaterial networks underscore the need for a new method. It would be naive to presume that any reward is given based on objective value and is considered in a relational vacuum. However, it is strategic to consider the subversion of these established networks in that it has the potential to provide more agency to those who have a voice, but who lack the social capital to avail themselves of an “appropriate” outlet.

Idea v. Image

The history of the competition is intertwined with the attempt to wrest the perception of the architectural profession from the building trades and insert it into the canon of liberal arts.  As Stan Allen posits in Practice: Architecture, Technique and Representation that Leon Battista Alberti first attempted this codification. For it to be effective, Allen states, “it was necessary to institute an opposition between the speculative and practical aspects of the arts.”[1] This opposition was the establishment of a theory vs. practice dialectic. Allen explains, “ The need for something called theory arises from the desire to think the discipline in more abstract terms. A separate space for theory is defined, in order to reflect on the nature of the discipline at a distance, while the possibility of cumulative incremental change from within is held in check.”[2] It is this dialectic that we wish to challenge head-on. It is not a difficult stretch of reason to see how the competition structure is in synch with the false dialectic of theory v. practice. The competition is essentially a false creation of calculated chance in a realm dictated by unseen forces. The entry fees, the question and answer pages, the juries; all of the window-dressing of a real test of merit and skill for a system designed to select from particular pool of applicants. Both examples draw battle lines that serve to further the discourse through ideological and technical conflict rather than provide a baseline for achievement but succeed only in muting a majority, denied both their vanity and their virtues.

Spontaneous Architecture

“Spontaneous Architecture” is an idea that offers as much transparency as it does mania. Traditionally, the term "spontaneous" conveys impulsive or unforeseen action that is provocative by implication.  This understanding leads to results, which are seldom as interesting as the act itself.  Spontaneous Architecture re-imagines spontaneity in the context of architecture's typically slow deliberation, as something more purposed, something with a result that is greater than its impulse.  The goal of spontaneity should be taken as a challenge for designers to trust their educations, their perceptions, and their intuition.

All of the traditional modes of competition are either collapsed or discarded. The only fees are those for upkeep of the service. The deadline for entry is restricted to 2 weeks. The product: a single image. Assigning value is left up to the other entrants. All entrants retain their voice, albeit one that can not say “I.” They are asked to be critical of their peers, and to a larger extent their culture (our culture), to determine who has synthesized the false dichotomies into a coherent and powerful argument.

[1] Allen, Stan. Practice: Architecture, Technique and Representation . Postscript by Diana Agrest. Routelege Books 2000. Pp. XV

[2] ibid. 

In the meantime, please keep up on Spontaneous Architecture and join us at the monthly RAPID RESPONSE events (6:30PM on the last Tuesday of every month) at Studio-X.