In About a Month

By the look of things I have around a hundred hours of rhinoceros work left to do, but the design of the four thesis speculations are there. The final cities for the workshop framework are Baltimore, DC, Philly, and the wildcard: New Orleans. John Hong likes it, I like it, I am going to pass. Forward to the finish!

Work Updates (!)

Updated a couple of projects that were under patent consideration by MIT. They are important links to my future work and I am still very excited about them. Check out Palimpost and Awware.

Making America p.2

Recent movements in fashion and product design have given way to what I will call the material rugged, or a new viability for the less-produced (as opposed to mass-produced) American brand. These products focus on quality over quantity, or ruggedness, that is a reflection of a balance between traditional and innovative techniques, skilled craftsmanship, and material usage. They have created a domestic and international market for specialized, high-quality products.

This ruggedness can be defined as rough, discrete, heterogeneous, dynamic, and strong. These qualities are manifest architecturally by the workshop, a productive space in which people deal face-to-face with the issues of labor, education, authority and the play between adaptability and skill (Sennet, 54). Unlike the modern factory, where tools are specialized to the point of automation and workers generally unskilled, in the workshop tools are necessarily general, optimized to adapt to the dynamic demands of small-scale production. This adaptability and a necessity on well-built, rugged, output demands skilled workers are developed through apprenticeship where the rough, unskilled, worker is hewn and trained through labor into the master herself.

In addition to ruggedness, the increasing democratization of technology is empowering productive entrepreneurs with ever-decreasing capital investment. The implication is easier initial entry into market. But the environment with which to nurture these opportunities has been limited to incubators, hackerspaces, and web-based collaborative systems. Through the integration of cohesive trade-based pedagogy into an archipelago of discrete urban workshops a new productive environment can develop. An environment for the balance of authority to autonomy and protection to publicness necessary to cultivate the balances in a growing productive business.

A dedication to these largely forgotten models would provide the fulfillment of a Jacobian economic transition in the US from traditional craft production to mass-production to differentiated production (Jacobs, 261). Where small scale production negates the “tax on diversity” of products and undermines the economy of scale that American producers can no longer compete with.

Unfortunately these phenomena are generally too easily dismissed as sentimental or ineffectual. But the embedded notions in ruggedness, making, and apprenticeship of reduced consumption, skilled labor training, and domestic production must instead be perceived as both contemporary and progressive.

Neil Gershenfield of the MIT Media Lab has said, “now that we are empowered to make anything, machines that can make machines require businesses that make businesses.” This project positions itself as a speculative framework to cultivate new American productive business in middle-sized cities. For American cities to benefit from these phenomena the new rugged workshop must be situated carefully within a productive urban and architectural framework. [more to come.]

Jacobs, Jane. The Economy of Cities. New York: Random House, 1969.

Sennett, Richard. The Craftsman. New Haven: Yale UP, 2008.

Making America p.1

My working thesis is interested in how differentiated production, in the form of small workshops, can contribute to the re-urbanization, education and growth of a new American productivity. The project addresses the topic at three scales. First, given the recent re-emergence of small-scale production and making, with a renewed interest in quality over quantity, how might design respond and empower this movement? Second, with the blighted urban condition of many middle-sized American cities, what opportunities for productive speculation exist? How can productive and educational architecture be adapted to the urban low-rise townhouses that account for a majority of this blight? Finally, in the immediate external and internal architectural conditions, how are the dynamics of authority, skill, and education manifest? How might an architectural system provide for a prolific urban workshop and trade education typology?

Further explanation to come.

IDEO + Harvard

For the past couple of months my friend David and I have been working for IDEO with Harvard SEAS and GSD on a design thinking workshop for engineers. I am pretty excited to announce that it is happening the week of 13 January in Cambridge. It just so happens to be the same week of my thesis defense, but I will be there.

The Immaturity of Skills

From Immanuel Kant in Berlinische Monatsschrift, 1784:

Enlightenment is mankind’s exit from its self-incurred immaturity. Immaturity is the inability to make use of one’s own understanding without the guidance of another. Self-incurred is this inability; if its cause lies not in the lack of understanding but rather in the lack of resolution and the courage to use it without the guidance of another. Sapere aude! Have the courage to use your own understanding! is thus the motto of enlightenment.

I originally read this in Richard Sennet’s Craftsmen, which is excellent. I am so excited about the time I was born into and the challenges that designers have to solve. While a return to craft in total is naive and sentimental there is a great deal to learn from the perceptions of skills, both in the past and going forward.

Open House (Service?)

Some action this morning regarding a collaboration between Droog (love) and DSR (not so much). Allison Arieff published an editorial criticizing the project as short sighted and Renny Ramakers of Droog quickly responded. I agree with Arieff’s analysis regarding the programming of the Open Houses. However, I think Droog’s polemic response is correct as well. Let me explain.

While there is a decidedly Droog tongue-in-cheek perspective in the project, it has moments of avantgarde architect signatures that make me suspect. Including programmatic ideas like a “love hotel” as an appendage to a single family home screams, “I am an idealist architect interested in being provocative” and says nothing of “I imagine the future of the suburbs to be _____”. In Arieff’s words…

“Is there anything more absurd than listening to a New York academic theorize about suburbia through the lens of ‘60s conceptualism?”

Here, the provocation is intended to be the point, but it falls flat. Architecture struggles with relevance. And I doubt that the people architects hope to design for are interested in being provoked by their own homes. Arieff is right, the suburb doesnt need the avantgarde. They need real change. But that real change will be a collaboration between government, real people, and designers. Perhaps we should take people into consideration before leveraging their spaces as opportunities for own agendas. Architects should begin to adapt the philosophy of human-centered design instead of continuing to marginalize themselves by convoluting design with conceptual art in all contexts.

From Ramaker’s response I believe that it is architects pulling the whole thing down.

“In our work, we approach many serious topics, such as the rise in single living, sustainability, the increasing pace of life and the economic crisis in a playful way. We want to continue to generate debate by presenting models and possible scenarios with a light-hearted spirit.”

Make the rejuvenation of the community about the quirkiness of the people living there, the context, and the actual needs. I believe Droog has the capacity to do this by capitalizing on their ability to pull disparate designers together under their umbrella. And that is why I propose that Droog gather more small (local) design firms – sans DSR, MVRDV, et al. – to continue this work. Make it about the people and the typology, not about architecture.

Built By Baltimore

Central Baltimore and New Work

Thesis is coming into focus and this is the working map of the site. Central Baltimore is going to be my neighborhood for the next couple of months (and beyond). What can we do with so many vacant row houses? So much more to come.

Small Batch Manufacturing in the USA

An article in the Wilson Quarterly makes an argument for the importance of urban manufacturing in the USA. I am getting excited about my thesis for the GSD which is just warming up while my advisor is globetrotting. My argument is around the regeneration of small scale American manufacturing and the way that urban design and architecture can support it. It is less here is what a factory should look like and more here is what the urban typology of this manufacturing could look like. I am headed to NYC this weekend to meet up with a couple of experts in this field. More to come.