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IN SEARCH OF CONFLICTDaniel Romano

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IN SEARCH OF CONFLICTDaniel Romano

The autonomy of architecture is prohibitive to its intent, through its isolation from the environment it wishes to address. Collaborative practice can readdress this relationship through a realignment of the design process, no longer confining it to the exclusivity of the architect. Instead it becomes an active engagement, transformative in nature and inherent with innovation, social progression and the distribution of knowledge. This essay examines the complex and controversial issue of the role of the participant. No longer consigned to the periphery, participants become emancipated as active agents in the creation of frameworks that encourage difference.

Recognising the role of conflict as a development objective, it argues that architecture needs to consider a dynamic model of participation. A model that entertains the notion of conflict as an enabler in environments that can sustain a dialogue between its participants and the authority of architecture. It also draws focus to the subsequent affect on the archi-tectural profession as a foundation for forms of agency that resonate with the theoretical standing of architecture, in a mutually exploitive relationship.

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Introduction

Architecture is a social profession, and as such needs to be socially projective. Its design process needs to be reflective of its context, engendering works that compliment the complexity of society. However, as John Beckmann laments “the mark of a great architect today is judged more by the loud thump their new book makes when it hits the boardroom table then by their contributions towards the betterment of society”1.

This contradiction is reflective of the role of the architect in contemporary society, subsumed by conflicting ideologies and ambitions and increasingly compromised by the prevailing economic powers. Two divergent positions have been established, whereby architecture is understood first as a node of society, politics economy and culture, and secondly consumed as a singular, self contained formal object2. The latter manifests as a derivative of architecture, indistinguishable from the conditions from which is emerges and isolated from the effects it stimulates2. Collaboration could present an opportunity for architecture, mediating the architects power and their relationship to their context. An interjection in the design process could enable the resultant scheme to become more socially aware through relevant consideration of the participants needs.

This essay looks at the potentials collaboration offers the profession of architecture and ultimately how this can result in its progression through the furthering of the design process. ‘Access all Areas’ identifies the autonomy of architecture as a defining reason for its current failings in the design process. Misuse of the professions autonomy has rubbed it clean of its meaning, leaving it as a manifestation of the concerns that it sought to heal. Architecture has become a hinderance, convulsively spraying sterile forms, void of any semblance of the society that it seeks to identify with, in every direction. Architecture appears to find itself in isolation, masquerading as an allegory of society, whilst in truth materialising as a carcinogenic affliction on the formation of society.

‘Access all Areas’ seeks to examine the potential of participation, redressing the balance of power between the architect and the participants in the design process, to create projects that resonate with their needs and challenge the way they live their lives in a constructive manner. It also explores the romanticised notions of collaboration on the architectural discipline, determining the impact on its standing within the new formation of design. Drawing analogies with the previous failings of participation, it argues that any system of collaboration must addresses the attribution of knowledge, whilst acknowledging the preservation of the architects authority through an appreciation of its knowledge base.

1 Beckmann, J. Merge Invisible Layers. in Beckmann, J. (ed.) The Virtual Dimension: Architecture Representa-tion and Crash Culture. (NY: Princeton Architectural Press. 1998), p.13.2 Stanek, L. & Kaminer, T. Trans-disciplinary: The Singularities and Multiplicities of Architecture, Footprint, 1, (Autumn 2007), p. 1.

IN SEARCH OF CONFLICT: Daniel Romano

‘Conflict [in]formation identifies that conflict represents an opportunity for architectural design to create reactionary innovation. It examines instances of reaction which have spurred creativity and engendered new forms of architecture, through the inclusion of outsiders in the design process disrupting the equilibrium.

It argues that conflict must be embraced as an enabler, and anything that can disrupt the heterogeneity of design must be encouraged to prevent a linear narrative within the design process, weighted in the favour of the architect. It therefore becomes apparent that any form of collaboration is already a form of conflict and as such it can be understood that conflict breeds collaboration through the establishment of a mutually exploitive dialogue. Participative design therefore offers possibilities for the advancement of the architectural profession, whilst preserving the integrity of the architect.

Finally, ‘Act one, Scene Won: Lost in Context’, examines the environments necessary for participation, considering theories of cybernetics that enable participation in the design and use of architecture. It identifies that this consequently results in a transition towards anticipatory participation and examines the role that architecture can have in the creation of environments that permit participation in the lifecycle of the building, rather than just confined to the initial design process. This is seen to provide new applications for architecture, enabling it to improve its response to the users desires and needs.

However, this is dependent on the creation of environments that facilitates a constructive participation. By examining these environments it argues that the success of any project is ultimately a reflection of the environment in which it was conceived. Architecture is intrinsically linked to its context therefore it has to be considered and engaged in the design process for any collaborative practice to produce anything of note.

Access all Areas

For too long architecture has sought refuge in the safe haven of its autonomy, allowing architects to detach themselves as humans - as social, political and ethical beings, witnessing the world as an abstraction3. This autonomy seemingly prevents architecture from engaging with social matters through its detachment from the environment it seeks to address. The relinquishment of this autonomy and a transition to collaborative agency could bear witness to a reinvigoration of architectural design, realigned with socially engaged projects.

Collaboration can offer redemption. Architecture has always insisted on preserving a single, authored control, despite its need to collaborate with various disciplines4. If Architecture

3 Till, J. Architecture Depends, (Cambridge: MIT Press. 2009), p. 25.

4 Patt, T. The Collective Image: Form, Figure and the Future, in (ed.) Choi, E. Trotter, M. Architecture at the Edge

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was to surrender its autonomy and engage with alternative knowledge and ideas of community, it can reinforce its relevance and potential for society. However, considering the defining feature of any profession is its knowledge base5, any surrender sets architects in an impasse, with the charge of reassessing what constitutes their knowledge. In so doing there is a worry that they “may no longer be seen as an architect.”6 It is natural that an insecure profession like architecture clings to the certainty of their own knowledge, rather than subjecting itself to “the uncertainty of what others may know.”6 Participation then represents the enforced relinquishment of their power and consequently sees architecture relinquishing its knowledge and therefore its very definition5.

Historically, the autonomy of the architect served as a metaphor for their authority and position within society7. Modernism was a celebration of the architects knowledge and authority, but its plight seemingly reinforced this notion of autonomy. Its failed program of purity and order masking the shortcomings of its social utopias and therefore becomes symbolic of the problems facing architecture today.

Bruno Latour, recognised the restraints Modernism imposed on the design process and its subsequent marring of architectural intent. Before Modernisms intervention a building could be understood as the “intersection of a range of forces”8, where the social needs and natural reality and the meanings and mechanisms were combined9. However, Modernism intervened with its relentless program of purification and separated out the parts, dismantling the pathways that joined them and establishing each as its own distinct sphere of knowledge. Buildings conceived through the resultant design process suppressed social needs and compromised the integrity of the architecture, failing to grasp the problems it was creating through its own autonomy8. The sociologist Zygmunt Bauman recognised Modernism as a gardening state, bringing the unruly, the chaotic and the fearful under the rule of nature, regularity and control10. In so doing it becomes a sterile environment, with its purity creating illusions of utopia, but in reality just reinforcing its own stasis.

Predictably, faced with the collapse of Modernism, architecture didn’t grasp the chance for social engagement and retreated yet further into its autonomy. It becomes evident that the reaction to any historical crisis or change in social circumstance is not an engagement with the forces that have served to enable them, but an “internalised redefinition of architecture in the face of them”5. The belief in the output, reinforced by the professions exclusivity, has induced works that assign authority to form, conceivably for the sake of publication, thereby avoiding a serious confrontation with societal problems.

of Everything Else. (Cambridge: MIT Press. 2010), p. 144.5 Till, J. The negotiation of hope, in Blundell Jones, P. Petrescu, D. & Till, J. (ed.) Architecture and Participation. (London and New York: Spon Press. 2005), p. 31. 6 Till, J. The negotiation of hope, p. 32.7 Till, J. Architecture Depends, p.19.8 Till, Architecture Depends, p.56.9 Latour, B. We Have Never Been Modern, (New York: Harvester Wheatsheaf. 1993), p.35.10 Stallybrass, P. & White, A. The Politics and Poetics of Transgression, (London: Methuen. 1986), p. 22.


This lack of social consideration and grounding in the design process, has ultimately witnessed not architectures triumph, but its coming to terms with the shutting down of “certain social functions that architecture has previously performed.”11 However, by acknowledging participation in architectural design, the autonomy of architecture can be breached, developing productive collaborative agency that can become transformative in nature. Florian Schneider recognised how a collaborative structure, presents the most fertile site for revolutionary potential12 . Assuming that the respective participants are furnished with knowledge that is divergent yet conducive to that of their architectural counterparts, an environment where change can occur and “frameworks of difference can flourish”12 is enabled, which sustains a meaningful contribution to the progression of the design process.

It is these frameworks that must be nurtured to breed innovation and interrupt the stasis of an architectural profession reluctant to engage the social functions. As a participant in the design process is exposed to the workings of the scheme they enter into an interplay of stimulus and response. Through their reaction to these stimuli they develop their own response to the arrangement, their own acknowledgement of the composition and crucially their own “tastes, personal inclinations and prejudices.”13 Their perception of the original project is modified by this distinct and calculated perspective13, enabling them to define a direction for the project that the architect as author “might never of dreamt possible.”14 This promotes innovation in the design process and permits the inclusion of interests that are of benefit to society. It interrupts the stasis of architecture, facilitating its transition to areas that it may have previously not had the instruments to engage.

However, to facilitate a meaningful and productive participation, this process must be two way. The participant must have the freedom to enhance the knowledge of the architect15. This can only occur if the architect “first recognises and then respects the knowledge (of the participant), grounded in everyday life.”16 Consequently, it becomes evident how participation represents not a threat to the autonomy of architecture, but an opportunity to progress it by “challenging the very limits and constraints of the specialist knowledge, expanding the narrowness of vision found in highly trained people”10.By giving this external knowledge a ‘spatial dimension’ in the design process, through the acceptance of its worth in the presence of the specialised knowledge, the project can be understood as appropriate at the point of active reception, situated in the everyday.

As Bruno Latour observed, buildings must take into account their engagement with their

11 Bauman, Z. Modernity and Ambivalence, (Cambridge: Polity Press. 1991), p.7.12 Miessen, M. Nightmare of Participation: Crossbench Praxis as a Mode of Criticality. (Berlin: Sternberg Press. 2010), p. 99.13 Eco, U. The Open Work, (Cambridge: Harvard University Press. 1989), p.3.14 Bishop, C. Viewers as Producers, in (ed.) Participation, (London: Whitechapel. 2006), p.16.15 Pateman, C. Participation and Democratic Theory, (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 1970), p. 68.16 Till, J. The negotiation of hope, p. 33.

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context as they are “inescapably embedded in the everyday world”17. There is an acute awareness that if architecture is to remain relevant, it has to take into account the conditions that define it. Any glaring omission of this devalues any intent that the project apportions through the truth that any architecture that opposes this relationship, will consequently be ignored everyday18. By enriching projects with the participants knowledge, synonymous with the projects context and the conditions that it occupies, it improves the relevance of the architecture and heightens its appropriateness, escalating it to new levels of significance. Architecture becomes accordant, advantageous to its ambition and therefore intrinsically linked to the relationships it seeks to strengthen.

The merits of facilitating the inclusion of outside knowledge in the design process becomes relevant in the context of Le Corbusier’s project at Pessac. The project, conceived as a product of Le Corbusier’s theory of purism, epitomised his primary aesthetic of universal good taste19. Inevitably the purity of the original became “overwhelmed by the urges of everyday life”20 and the occupants rebelled against the vision of Modernism offered to them. They were not prepared to live under the image prescribed by Le Corbusier19, and sacrificed the steel windows, flat roofs and open terraces for vernacular timber windows, Moorish features, and other forms of decoration20.

While this may seem destructive, disrespectful even to the knowledge that realised it, the occupants simply added their needs19. They became participants in the exploration of architecture and if anything their reinvention could be seen to carry more significance and meaning due to the oscillating relationship between their needs and their desires. If their knowledge had been present in the design process from the beginning, the building could have bridged the dichotomy of the architect and client relationship, through the creation of something that both groups could identify with. The knowledge both groups possess has a value and therefore needs to come to the fore for the emancipation of the design process to be considered a success. Ultimately, through its absence at Pessac, the architectural knowledge became submissive and devalued in the final iteration.

Whilst this case may seem inconclusive as to the benefits to the architectural discipline of collaboration, the dangers are evident. Hal Foster, amongst others has expressed reservations about the waves of optimism accompanying collaboration and participation. The conjunction of ideas consequently stimulates messy juxtapositions of individual agendas, where “the effects are more chaotic than communicative”21, encouraging illegibility in the outcome22. Pessac suffers from the same infliction, with the purity of Le Corbusier’s

17 Till, Architecture Depends, p.137.18 Rakatansky, M. Identity and the Discourse of Politics in Contemporary Architecture, Assemblage 27, (1995), p.15.19 Blundell Jones, P. Sixty-eight and after , in Blundell Jones, P. Petrescu, D. & Till, J. (ed.) Architecture and Participation. (London and New York: Spon Press. 2005), p. 133. 20 Till, Architecture Depends, p.41.21 Foster, H. Chat Rooms, in Bishop, C. (ed.) Participation, (London: Whitechapel. 2006), p.192.22 Foster, Chat Rooms, p.194.

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forms wrestling with the decorative additions provided by the occupants, resulting in a collision of meaning and use in exhibition. Such an engagement is of no use to either party and ultimately becomes a metaphor for the detriment of architecture and its isolation from its context.

However, the subjection of the discipline to the confinement of a collaborative agency, has significant ramifications for the future of the independent architectural discipline. Compelling, René Descartes, in defining the attributes of the architect highlights the authority of the individual and the banishment of chance23 as congruous to its judgement. Participation facilitates chance and knowingly fractures the authority, undermining the standing of the profession. The role of the architect is depreciated, simply representing an isolated singular component whose powers of influence have been checked. The fragility offered to the profession under the aegis of participation forces the architect to seek solace in the myth that they are the author instigator within the system, while in truth they “become not the agent of change, but one among many”24.

The notion of the architect as an autonomous power is consigned to myth. The architect becomes an anti-hero; someone who co-authors from the outset, yet actively and knowingly concedes authority24 to facilitate change.

This results in architects becoming co-dependent with the participants in a mutually exploitative complicity that engenders dialogue and ultimately conflict. The role of the architect becomes to facilitate channels that can provide a productive transfer of knowledge and enable a productive collaboration to occur. The architects’ importance is not diminished in the context of such an environment and as therefore represents an important role to play in the formation of and society

The importance of the architect in collaborative systems is witnessed most poignantly in the examination of New Babylon. This project conceived by the artist Constant Nieuwenhuys of the Situationists, was intended as a new Situationist city that would conform to no rules of urbanity ever conceived before25. However, this project was created by an artist simply masquerading as an architect for polemical reasons; utilising ideas from the Situationist collective but working in isolation for the development. This was ultimately the projects downfall, with his confinement from the profession he wished to engage with heightening the projects “lack of full architectural understanding and detail.”26

In truth this project never really got over its creators difficult relationship with technology,

23 Till, Architecture Depends, p. 42.24 Schneider, T. and Till, J. ‘Beyond Discourse: Notes on Spatial Agency’, Footprint, 4, (Spring 2009), p. 97.25 Spiller, N. Visionary Architecture: Blueprints of the Modern Imagination, (New York: Thames and Hud-son.2007), p. 44.26 Spiller, Visionary Architecture, p. 50.

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existing simply as a quasi-architectural project25 before slowly declining into a series of scribbles, before fading away.

Yet if this project was conceived as a collaboration, connecting the artistic skills, ideas and imagination of Constant with the technical knowledge of the architect, it could have produced something of note for all of society.

Seemingly isolation culminates in closed and brittle constructions; any oversight subjected to relentless judgement to such an extent that the credibility is shaken, enough to render the entire project obsolete. The project lacked a foundation, a point of reference to validate its aims: the knowledge of the architect.

Therefore it becomes apparent that architects still have a part to play, even when subjected to participative restraints. Descartes belief in the dissolution of the architects integrity through participation is, in my opinion, flawed. Any architect that sets prescribed limits to their field of operation runs the risk of irrelevance in their social objectives. Nothing of note can be achieved in the isolation of the profession, simply resulting in the reinforcement of its own stasis. Fundamentally, it must become apparent that nothing conceived in a vacuum can survive once exposed to conditions it has denied are there27. Therefore, architects must surrender their autonomy and prevent the expediency of architecture by facilitating a return to social values in the design process that resonate with the participants concerns.

If architecture is to be progressive and forward thinking, it must embrace participation and step out from the protection of its autonomy to engage with new ideas. If architecture can learn to harness a method of design that is networked and receptive, rather than contrary and secluded, it will actually be able to be creative, discursively constructive, and projective in concert.28

Conflict [in]Formation

Participation is not simply conditioned by the notion that it is primarily a form of ‘agora’ that gathers people to make a collective decision29. The values that participation bring forward present an opportunity for the implementation of design, not a threat; an opportunity to share a collective knowledge that can define the nature of architecture and subsequently reinvigorate the design process30. It must represent a dialogue about differences, and about difference as the catalyst for creation, even if this ultimately leads to confrontation29. It must therefore be understood that any form of participation is fundamentally a form of

27 Bauman, Modernity and Ambivalence, p.82.28 Patt, T. The Collective Image: Form, Figure and the Future, p. 145.29 Querrien, A. How inhabitants can become collective developers, in Blundell Jones, P. Petrescu, D. & Till, J. (ed.) Architecture and Participation. (London and New York: Spon Press. 2005), p. 114.30 Till, J. The negotiation of hope, in Blundell Jones, P. Petrescu, D. & Till, J. (ed.) Architecture and Participation.(London and New York: Spon Press. 2005), p. 34.

conflict31, consequently it is this idea of confrontation that must be embraced to see how these situations of conflict, individually and collectively, provide the impetus for architectural production that benefits the architect and the users alike.

Once such occurrence of conflict arose in the 1950s, with the expanding realisation that the “promised dynamic and technologically advanced architecture of the Modern movement had failed to materialise”32. The indifference of the Modern experiment eventually led to the formation of reactionary groups such as Archigram. Although they did not categorise themselves as a form of collaborative architectural practice, they often worked together, especially in the publication of (fan)zines and comic books33 as well as with other participants from outside of the traditional sphere of the architectural discipline, such as Gordon Pask34. However, it was the use of the fanzines that arguably demonstrate the contribution of the collaboration to the evolution of the architecture more than any other act as they represented a reactionary vehicle through which they could generate change.

Archigram’s first pamphlet, released in 1961 against the backdrop of murmurings of discontent with the current practice, sought to evade the stifling straitjacket of prescriptive Modernism35. The featured projects pointedly neglected its orthogonal composition protocols as Archigram agitated to prevent Modernism from becoming a sterile and safe orthodoxy by its pupils who retreat to its order and apparent authenticity35. Although these publications were often “terribly self-serving”36, they provided a means through which the group could broadcast their vision of a consumerist city, facilitated through their allegiance with technology and symbolic of the optimism of the period33. Their reaction through these alternative means of publication aroused peoples attention and drew focus away from the banal design techniques favoured by others in the discipline through confronting their social utopias with their own vision for a fast paced consumerist city33.

Archigram represented a new world: a world of “burgeoning technological advancement”37, optimism and liberation from the stifling moral codes and class of the Victorian era37. Their publications detached Archigram from the classical proportions and purity of modernism and witnessed them declaring themselves to the fast world of expediency and desire38. In so doing, Archigram engaged the concept of conflict as an enabler39, reacting against

31 Miessen, M. Nightmare of Participation: Crossbench Praxis as a Mode of Criticality. (Berlin: Sternberg Press. 2010), p. 91.32 Spiller, N. Visionary Architecture: Blueprints of the Modern Imagination, (New York: Thames and Hud-son.2007), p. 72.33 Awan, N. Schneider, T. & Till, J. Spatial Agency: Other Ways of Doing Architecture, (New York: Routledge. 2011), p.87.34 Spiller, Visionary Architecture, p.49.35 Spiller, Visionary Architecture, p.75.36 Awan, Schneider, & Till, Spatial Agency, p.91.37 Spiller, N. Visionary Architecture, p.76.38 Spiller, N. Visionary Architecture, p.77.39 Miessen, Nightmare of Participation, p. 96.


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the stoic nature of the architectural practice and illustrating their participants dissatisfaction with the refusal of the profession to grasp real and meaningful technological innovation40. Here in all its unadorned splendour, was Archigram rejecting the teachings of the Modern masters and promoting their own vision of a dynamic architecture - void of the sterility that had begun to define the age32 - and redefining the limits of architecture. The vision of their participants influential projects, witnessed in comic strips, poetry and radical statements, proved powerful and served as the reactionary vehicle for the conflict to gain momentum.

These tactics became active in the shadow of Archigram, adopted by other groups influenced by Archigram’s systems and strategy of reactionary confrontation. Archigram’s conviction in their brand of architecture and declaration of it proved so compelling that it prompted the birth of several other disillusioned groups - but in disharmony with Archigram’s vision. The development of other avant-garde groups, observed as a reaction to Archigram’s unique vision, intensified as groups sought to challenge Archigram and imagine a more “socially and politically engaged architecture”33. Archizoom and Superstudio are two groups that gained prominence through their reaction to Archigram, providing an ironic response to Archigram‘s “consumerist logic”33 and their failure to readdress social imbalances respectively41.

One group that seemingly embraced the potential of conflict is the Situationists International. They preceded many of the avant-garde groups but also adopted the collaborative approach, displaying a willingness to collaboration with others from outside the discipline of architecture such as artists, namely Constant Nieuwenhuys42. In so doing they opened up the autonomy of architecture and exposed it to the conjecture of artists, with their insight being allowed to inform the outcome. The coerced alliance between the two disciplines ultimately offers a greater potential for conflict to occur as the conflicting knowledge bases compete for prominence.

The contribution of these resultant instances of conflict, and their subsequent affect on the design process becomes apparent in the context of information theory. This theory states that: “in order for a piece of information to contribute to the general information of a community, it must say something substantially different from the community’s previous common stock of information”43. In the instance of the Situationists, their willingness to engage with other disciplines such as artists ensures that they could become receptive to other ideas, meanings and social agendas, thereby heightening their projects credentials. The potential differences between the two agendas represents fertile ground for the formation of dialogue and therefore conflict.Information theory can be seen to facilitate conflict, sanctioning a departure from the previous stock of information. Conflict must therefore be present to prevent a linear narrative

40 Spiller, Visionary Architecture, p. 75.41 Spiller, Visionary Architecture, p. 86.42 Awan, Schneider, & Till, Spatial Agency, p.102.43 Eco, The Open Work, p. 53.


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in the development of architecture, as the agendas of each participant must be broadcast. Collaboration only works if there is a clearly defined opportunity for each participant. However, reality dictates that when individuals come together, they will primarily look after their own interests44. Conflict enables this dynamic to become productive, facilitating a dialogue that brings to the fore the interests of the participants.

Through the application of conflict the way architects design and conceive architecture evolves, permitting variety, reaction and actively encouraging difference. Archigram’s publications shone as a bright beacon of architectural potential, lifting the stifling blanket of modernism and changing the way that practices envisage and ultimately design architecture. Their methods characterised ‘difference’ against the traditional stock and therefore elevated themselves above the conventional stream of architecture. It can be seen that conflict can breeds conflict, serving as a multiplier through which change emanates. Archizoom and Superstudio arose out of an instance of conflict, in this case against Archigram’s consumerist vision33, with their existence serving to portray the creation and intensification of information - here understood as their position of opposition to Archigram. They provided a vehicle through which the collective optimism of the voices coming out of Archigram could be moderated, offering an alternative to its participants program of promoting consumption and ultimately feeding its “ravenous hunger for social fragmentation”45. In the same way they represent a return to social agenda and the furthering of architectural responsibility41, whilst their very ‘difference’ ensured their contribution to the common stock of architectural knowledge and progressed an enduring social agenda in design.

Archizoom’s believed architecture must become an open structure, increasing its accessibility and admission of intellectuals46. This acceptance of ‘outsiders’ into the discipline ultimately offers an opportunity for the evolution of architecture through its potential heterogeneity. A more diverse and informed set of conflicting voices permits multiple agencies and discourse, which encourages the production of “alternative and unexpected knowledge”47 in the design process. At the same time, disciplinary knowledge is not eclipsed or rendered obsolete through the promotion of the knowledge informed by the ‘outsider’48. Rather, the two channels complement and clarify each other, whilst also validating the architectural contribution through the examination of its relevance in the context of society. These outsiders become integral to the advancement but their effectiveness becomes

44 Miessen, Nightmare of Participation, p. 180.45 Spiller, Visionary Architecture: Blueprints of the Modern Imagination, p. 85.46 Spiller, Visionary Architecture: Blueprints of the Modern Imagination, p. 87.47 Miessen, Nightmare of Participation, p. 96.48 Hughes, R. The Art of Displacement: Designing Experimental Systems and Transverse Epistemologies as Conceptual Criticism, Footprint, 7, (Spring 2009), pp. 49-63.

dependent on their levels of involvement. They must not remain eloquent outsiders but must become active participants in practical life49 without denying their knowledge or neglecting their opportunity to guide. Conflict in this instance must not be implied as a form of protest or provocation; but rather as “micro political practice, through which the participant becomes an active agent who insists on being an actor” in the field they have operating50. Therefore, the participants become immersed in a form of critical engagement, which has the capacity to redefine architecture and progress it to areas previously untouched by architecture practiced in isolation. Therefore, it will increasingly be the ‘outsider’ who will manage to succeed in adding to the pre-established power relations of expertise in the architectural profession51. The design culture without the interjections from the ‘outsiders’ is ultimately based on consensus rather than conflict, merely producing multiplications but seldom any new knowledge52.

In order to avoid homogeneity there must be continual reinvention53 in the way we conceive architecture. Archizoom’s own project No-Stop City, suffers the consequences of its inability to trip up repetition suggesting that perhaps even in a collaborative environment design progression remains unattainable without a provision for conflict. Imagined as a shock therapy for urbanisation through its escalation of urbanisations consequences, its denial of architecture in favour of a more flexible and ultimately consumable replacement in furniture was meant to facilitate a more effective form of urbanisation54. However the condition of the ‘noncity’ proposed by No-Stop City continually undergoes a process of obsessive repetition, tending away from the final dissolution of the city and towards a process of predictability. This redundancy is perpetually echoed, whereby any distinction or contradiction inadvertently becomes the catalyst for the infinite reproduction of the system itself - and therefore for its own stasis54. This infinite cycle doesn’t tend towards an architecture of change, rendering its affect on the proliferation of design void.

However, Roberto Mangabeira Unger recognised there are opportunities for destabilisation and transformation in the seemingly most intractable situations. Through the escalation of practical and imaginative conflict, even the most entrenched formative context can be diffused55. This escalation becomes the result of ‘difference’ following the conjunction of the two operations that are normally kept apart, interrupting replication. In the same respect any

49 Gramsci, A. Selections from the Prison Notebooks of Antonio Gramsci, (New York: Columbia University Press. 2001). pp. 7-23.50 Miessen, Nightmare of Participation, p. 93.51 Miessen, Nightmare of Participation, p. 97.52 Miessen, Nightmare of Participation, p. 95.53 Petrescu, D. Losing control, keeping desire, in Blundell Jones, P. Petrescu, D. & Till, J. (ed.) Architecture and Participation. (London and New York: Spon Press. 2005), p. 60.54 Pier Vittorio Aureli, The Possibility of An Absolute Architecture. http://deaddouble.blogspot.co.uk/2013/02/bad-infinity.html (accessed January 2013).55 Unger, R. M. False Necessity: Anti-Necessitarian Social Theory in the Service of Radical Democracy, (Cam-bridge: Cambridge University Press, 1987), p.331.


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‘outsider’ is seen to be exhibiting the same difference in a system allowing themselves to “become fully immersed in its depths in a dilettante manner”51. Such a superficial interest in any project provides a means to “circumvent predictability,”56 as Claire Doherty calls it, and progress toward continual reinvention. Dilettantism provides the access point of curiosity into an existing discourse, enabling the creation of more productive modes of collaborative engagement51. Such curiosity arouses exploration, inquisition and learning; it allows for “a forceful injection of external knowledge that is alien to the system that one engages with”51.

However, such dilettantism is dependent on the provocation of the outsider. Curiosity provides a means to insert an ‘outsider’ actively into the system, overcoming the passivity of the authoritative architectural agenda and translating it into active participation and conflict. The subject of the design advancement is a public that is called upon and installed as a critical participant in its own creative role, deviating the design process away from the influence of the architect and towards more social concerns.

However, whilst conflict facilitates and activates the outsiders within the design process, it does have the potential of undermining the architectural knowledge, causing it to be omitted in the compromise of conflict. Architecture is a relation of power that constitutes the social body in any society, but this relation of power cannot be established and implemented without the production, accumulation and functioning of a discourse57. Therefore, conflict is represented not as an opportunity for architectural design, but a threat to its very success, revealing the limitations of a design approach restricted to aspects which lie outside any intensive encounter with the profession of architecture.

In the same regard, the contribution of the avant-garde groups Archizoom and Superstudio to the advancement of design must also be questioned. In their will to start from nothing, these groups deny history in order to find another point of departure58. Any resultant projects therefore easily achieve utopia through its withdrawal from reality, yet this isolation also helps to reinforce the situation it wished to destroy58. Therefore, it can be seen that in order for any participation to be productive, there must be a mediating element to serve as a foundation. Any resultant conflict without this will simply serve to fracture what it sought to heal as it diverges further away from its participants agendas. Fundamentally, conflict changes the way we must conceive architecture. The design process must facilitate ‘difference’ and as such must allow for outsiders to influence the proceedings. Conflict is a primary source of innovation and therefore architecture has to embrace new methods of broadcast and publication in the design process to provoke reaction and get outsiders involved. Archigram was so successful in this regard as it

56 Doherty, C. The New Situationists, in Doherty, C. (ed.) Contemporary Art: From Studio to Situation. (London: Black Dog Publishing. 2004), p.11.57 Faucault, M. Two Lectures, in Gordon, C. (ed.) Power/Knowledge, (Brighton: Harvester Press. 1980), pp.93-94.58 Scolari, M. The New Architecture and the Avant-Garde, in (ed.) Hays, K. M. Architecture Theory since 1968, (Massachusetts: MIT Press. 1998), p.128.


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radiated difference through its fanzines and comic books detaching itself from the traditional stock and therefore coming to peoples attention. While some of Archigram’s ideas may have been reflected on differently had history not validated them, I believe that their brand of reactionary conflict stemming from participation, is the best environment to achieve such ideas in the first instance. Therefore, there must be a provision for conflict in any collaborative system for it to produce anything of note.

Act One, Scene Won: Lost in Context

It is perhaps at this juncture that the sublimity of participation has been overwhelmed by the infinity of conflict, and conflict itself has become elevated to a new form of agora. New kinds of relationships will begin to take into account the environments that realise participation. Any such environment must be understood in the context of the underlying dynamics of contemporary society for it is there that participation carries the greatest potential. In the context of these relationships, participation can be seen to provide new applications for architecture. Archigram, acknowledged that a building should be seen to express its inhabitants supposed desire for continuous change59. Echoing ideas of cybernetics, specifically second order cybernetics, they set out to readdress the expediency of architecture through the creation of indeterminate architecture. This branch of cybernetics concerns the participant as part of a self referencing autonomous system, establishing a constant feedback loop whereby they can be seen to affect and be affected by the system they are concerned with60. The creation of architectural environments receptive to ideas of cybernetics in their design are ultimately capable of responding to the indeterminacy of social and individual conditions61 through the provision of flux. The removal of architectures sense of self interest improves the buildings relationship with its participants, promoting its relevance through the reflection of their lives it can offer.

This engagement with cybernetics progresses participation away from the dependancy of the design process and towards anticipatory participation that stems from the result of considerations made in the duration of the design process. These ideas were embraced by Cedric Price, working in collaboration with the cybernetician Gordon Pask, in the development of the Fun Palace. This project was designed by Price to encourage participants “to be responsible for their entertainment, their learning and their space.”62 The building was designed to be anticipatory in nature, reflective of its users needs and

59 Rosenberg, D. Indeterminate Architecture: Scissor-Pair Transformable Structures, Footprint, 6, (Spring 2010), p. 20.60 Heylighen, F. & Joslyn, C. Cybernetics and Second-Order Cybernetics, in Meyers, R.A. (ed.), Encyclopedia of Physical Science and Technology, 3rd ed. (New York: Academic Press. 2001). 2.61 Steiner, H. Beyond Archigram: The Structure of Circulation, (London; New York: Routledge. 2009), pp.13-20.62 Spiller, N. Visionary Architecture: Blueprints of the Modern Imagination, (New York: Thames and Hud-son.2007), p.48.

sympathetic to them; through the provision of a highly defined kit of movable parts, which could be utilised in numerous ways, serving a variety of uses and spatial configurations63.

As architecture becomes responsive and interactive in reception, participants can be seen to be influencing its very behaviour64. The user becomes elevated to the level of participant, becoming the author-instigator of the buildings function. Participation creates a dynamic and mutually dependant relationship with the building, with each iteration of design validating the importance of active engagement within the creation of the participants environment. Pask utilised the resultant ‘human learning’ as a cybernetic system65, wiring the audience’s seats into a feedback loop, connected through computers to the performers on stage. In so doing he realised his vision of architecture consisting of building and inhabitants, in this case recognised as participants, forming dynamic self referencing systems64. In effect, the theories of cybernetics result in a synthesis of humans and machines, providing a platform from which participation can become advantageous to the design process in virtual space. It becomes the means through which to challenge and blur the boundaries separating the living and the non-living thus facilitating the extension of the human consciousness into new environments of social engagement66.

Pask’s involvement in the understanding of participation consequently changed the way architects must design buildings to maximise engagement. Unfamiliar design methods and concepts therefore resulted in a change to the design process. There becomes a need for architects to design dynamic rather than static entities; offering contingency for the future needs of the participants, whilst also imagining the structure as “continually regulating its human inhabitants.”67 Therefore, the role of the architect becomes facilitating participation during the life cycle of the building in its entirety.

The Fun Palace tried to create a democratisation of space through the creation of fluid spaces that could reconfigure and respond to their users’ needs. Correspondingly, the architect Marcos Novak equated the notions of cyberspace and virtuality as metaphorically liquid, therefore offering the potential for a new cybernetic Situationist playground68. Novak’s Soft Babylon project (a reinterpretation of Constants earlier New Babylon), embraced the infrastructure of the global internet to position the contemporary user as an inhabitant of cybernetically liberated Situationist new Babylon, engendering a new form of participation.

However, Novak’s transition into cyberspace raises the question of whether this is really the

63 Spiller, Visionary Architecture, p.49.64 Hosale, M, D. & Kievid, C. Modulating Territories, Penetrating Boundaries, Footprint, 6, (Spring 2010), p. 64.65 Spiller, Visionary Architecture, p.49-50.66 Yiannoudes, S. Kinetically Digitally-Driven Architectural Structures as ‘Marginal’ Objects- a Conceptual Frame-work, Footprint, 6, (Spring 2010) p.45.67 Pask, G. The Architectural Relevance of Cybernetics, Architectural Design, (September 1969), pp. 494-96.68 Spiller, Visionary Architecture, p.50.


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The Fun Palace resonated w

ith Archigram

’s brand of indeterminate architecture: by D

aniel Rom

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best environment for participation. The environment has to be conducive with participation, much like the one created in the Fun Palace. Fun Palace facilitated an anticipatory structure, one that encouraged flux and responded accordingly to the participants needs, providing an empowered participation that was receptive as well as constructive. In doing so it allowed for an interaction that was beneficial and constructive for the human and non-human participants. However, the art of managing complexity, stemming from the combination of formerly distinct areas of knowledge in collaboration, puts a strong emphasis on the “appropriateness of the methodologies and forms of communications”69 used to connect ideas from distinct fields. It can therefore be seen that to facilitate such a form of participation the potentials of technology must be embraced to facilitate a constructive environment for participation to occur, just as Novak and Price did before. Echoing Novak, a transition into cyberspace to enable participation may be the most productive choice for the future of collaborative design. Technology can facilitate the translation of reality in the creation of new environments which expand the frontiers of known physical and political realms70. Our current informational society is transforming all the time around technologies71 and therefore, this area offers the chance for the development of an open architecture that becomes accessible to a wider range of participants.

An architecture based on openness and flow, from the actual to the virtual, must therefore be understood as socially receptive through the banishment of barriers for social involvement. It becomes synonymous with the infinite potential of design through the rejection of any conceptual boundary between the organic and inorganic, affording greater innovation in the design process.

While the appropriation of these environments can be seen to be advantageous for the objective of participation they come at the detriment of architectures relevancy. There is a discontinuity between the contexts of the environments where the architecture is conceived and the environment where it is situated. The comprehension of architecture is also violently distorted, whereby “Architecture is now invisible, and organising information is referred to as architecture.”72 This incompatibility carries ‘less is more’ to a provocatively anorexic extreme. The architecture is not rooted in the ground, and therefore rejects the “earthwork that Gottfried Semper identified as the first of his four elements of architecture.”73 It therefore

69 Hughes, R. The Art of Displacement: Designing Experiential Systems and Transverse Epistemologies as Conceptual Criticism, Footprint, 4, (Spring 2009), p.52.70 Alonso, R. Expanded Space, in art.es, (November 2004/February 2005), p.6-7.71 Castro, B. The Virtual Art Garden: A Case Study on user- centered design for improving interaction in Distance Learning Communities of Art Students, in Sonvilla-Weiss, S. (ed.) Mashup Cultures, (Germany:Springer-Vertlag. 2010), p.40.72 Beckmann, Merge Invisible Layers, p.13.73 Mitchell, W. J. Anti-Tectonics: The Poetics of Virtuality, in Beckmann, J. (ed.) The Virtual Dimension: Architec


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becomes incompatible with the theoretical foundations of architecture and its goals. There is a detachment from material and construction, depriving the outcome an authenticity that defines other forms of architecture. A project therefore conceived as a product of technology has a dishonesty regarding material, resulting in distortion of the design process and a disproportionate emphasis assigned to form. A retreat into cyberspace may also increase the risk of a prolonged dislocation of organisms and their natural environment.74 Martin Heidiggers’ response to the provocation innate in the concept of the environment becomes relevant in the context of this dislocation. When Heidigger speaks of the Geworfenheit (‘thrownness’) of being, it brings to mind the risk of a sudden misalignment of organisms and environment75, similar to the reality of what a model of collaboration in cyberspace imparts on its participants, through their removal from their context. Anthony Giddens’s formulation of agency presents a counterpoint in the application of participation in cyberspace. It becomes apparent that to be part of a collaborative agency, is to act with intent and purpose; where purpose is conditioned by perceptions that are based on an individuals experience of the real world, enabling them to intervene directly in it.76 This is a very human concern as the complexity of experience is conditioned by a persons individual perspective. Experience in cyberspace is always going to be mediated through the non-human presence of a computer and in this mediation “intent is at best compromised, at worst blown apart.”76 It might describe a dynamic state of affairs but it does little by way of having the potential to reference and transform the environment from which the systems knowledge is situated. It can simply gather but not contribute as the experience is influenced by human factors it can not control. Any product from such a collaboration risks irrelevance and therefore further escalating the problems it sought to address. Whilst it can become informed by the contribution of the knowledge and ideas as the participants come together, the design process does not engage with the human considerations like experience and perception that inform great architecture, as it is isolated from the context in which it is addressing. Therefore, cyberspace can be seen to fracture the architectural design process, rendering its conclusions banal and void. It represents an environment that is not conducive to architectural participation, failing to utilise the resources afforded to it effectively and having its intentions compromised by the mediation of non-human components. Architecture must be appreciated as a human gesture in a human world, and as such a gesture, must be judged in terms of its meaning77. Cyberspace therefore restricts this

74 Castro, B. The Virtual Art Garden, p.41.75 Sloterdijk, P. Atmospheric Politics, in Hensel, M., Hight, C. & Menges, A. (eds.) Space Reader: Heterogene-ous Space in Architecture, (West Sussex: Wiley, 2009), p.175.76 Schneider, and Till, ‘Beyond Discourse: Notes on Spatial Agency’, p. 99.77 Scruton, R. Architectural Principles in an Age of Nihilism, in Ballantyne, A. (ed.) What is Architecture?, (New York: Routledge. 2002), p.57.

meaning, through the limiting of interaction with the real world. Any product will simply just impart aesthetic considerations and practical applications without any reflection of its context and its relationship to the wider society.

It has become clear that the fragility of participation is dependant on the creation of environments that can host it. In my opinion Cedric Price’s collaboration with Gordon Pask offers the greatest potential for the production of such an environment. By facilitating a model of anticipatory participation that concerns the user and the building I believe he provides the most fertile ground for a constructive relationship. The system is able to consider wider implications and then respond to them enabling the participation and architecture to remain relevant. Collaboration in cyberspace however does not permit this. While it may have its advantages in terms of an open and accessible structure, enabling the participants knowledge base to grow exponentially and for constructive conflict to occur through the resultant dialogue; it is fundamentally detached from its context. Therefore any architecture will become irrelevant as it can not embrace the human factors that condition our experience of a place. The success of any collaborative systems is therefore pegged to the dependancy of the environment that facilitates it and I believe, for architecture at least, this is not conducive with Cyberspace.

Conclusion - In Search of Conflict

It has become apparent during the course of this essay that participation becomes advantageous to architecture, enabling architects to become more constructive and socially focused. Active participation in the design process, I believe, results in buildings becoming more relevant and sympathetic to the lives of its users who potentially helped to shape them. It can engender innovation through a fresh perspective modified by the participants response to stimuli in the design process that informs their particular and individual perspective13 - separate to that of the architect and therefore increasing the knowledge base of the profession. While it appears that the resultant form of collaboration is dependant on a realignment of the architects role, identified by Descartes as potentially undermining the professions entire existence23; I believe it presents an opportunity for architecture in the facilitation of channels that permit constructive participation, concerning knowledge, conflict and difference. However, while it appears that architects lack authority under the aegis of participation, I believe it simply results in a reinterpretation of the architects authority: seeking to empower and promote other interests that can lead to prolonged social reform. The traditional expertise of the architect serves as an enabler, constituting a platform from which social formation can take root and flourish, complimented by the collaborative knowledge. Whilst


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the adoption of an interdisciplinary practice would have provided a formal attempt to preserve the professions authority by embracing a collectivist knowledge, in reality this would have been unconformable to the notion of architecture as a social practice. Ultimately, collaboration proposes a future of highly efficient, optimised flows of people, knowledge and information, but also simultaneously becomes dependant on the success of the environment that encourages it. The work of Cedric Price is notable in this regard. The influence of cybernetics adopted in the Fun Palace, projects an extremely compelling sense of possibility for a model of participation that becomes holistic in nature, facilitated by an environment conditioned by cybernetics. There becomes a synergy between architecture and user, use and form and the fluidity and complexity of the users lives, through Prices anticipatory participation. Accordingly, there are infinite possibilities for the engagement of the user and architecture can becomes responsible for conditioning such a relationship.

Therefore, I believe that participation represents an opportunity for architecture; one that compliments its theoretical foundations and furthers its advancement through its exposure to external knowledge, but any such opportunity is dependent on the creation of an environment in the design process that enables it. If the design process is to be a socially receptive, open process, then surely we require an environment whose language and forms match such an idea: an environment that transcends the rigid constraints of architectures autonomy - a provider of doubt, difference, innovation and indeterminacy - as Archigram envisioned - and embraces the concept of conflict as an enabler. Perhaps we should be envisaging not ‘environment’ so much as ‘environments’ - fluid, unpredictable and hybrid in nature - real and virtual, encouraging ‘difference’ and therefore permitting conflict and progression. It calls for the sharing of knowledge in environments to embrace the flexibility, flux and complexity of social formation - a transfer epitomised by the data flows of the internet and cyberspace, fertilising a design process that can create architecture that might be described as socially focused. This is architecture born out of the spirit of dynamism, inclusive architecture, not limited to the structure of the building, but fundamentally embracing the worth of the human participant as a component of design. Only then will we approach an architecture of substance.

Bibliography

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Pier Vittorio Aureli, The Possibility of An Absolute Architecture. http://deaddouble.blogspot.co.uk/2013/02/bad-infinity.html (accessed January 2013).

Image References

All images by author


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