The effect of embedding these principles, following architect David P. Brown’s call for a jazz-like design process, “does transform, shift and expand architecture practice from an emphasis on the design of objects to an emphasis on the coordination and manipulation of resources, including the production of objects, to facilitate access to processes.”17 Allowing for looseness in the generation of a design might provide for looseness in using it too.
01Sigmund Freud, “Jokes and Their Relation to the Unconscious,” trans. James Strachey (New York: W. W. Norton, 1960).
02Keller Easterling, “A Short Contemplation on Money and Comedy,” Thresholds 18: Design + Money (1999): 15.
03Ibid., 16.
04Daniel Belgrad, “Improvisation, Democracy, and Feedback,” George E. Lewis & Benjamin Piekut, eds. The Oxford Handbook of Critical Improvisation Studies, Volume 1 (New York: Oxford University Press, 2016), 289.
05Stanley Mathews, “The Fun Palace as Virtual Architecture: Cedric Price and the Practices of Indeterminacy,” Journal of Architectural Education, Vol. 59, No. 3 (February 2006): 39.
06Ibid., 41.
07Ibid., 46.
08Janie Grote, “Matrix: A Radical Approach to Architecture,” Journal of Architectural and Planning Research, Vol. 9, No. 2, Special Issue: Women’s Voices in Architecture and Planning (Summer, 1992): 160.
09Ibid.
10Ibid., 161.
11Ibid., 164.
12IDEO Rules for Brainstorming provided by IDEO/ Devin Peek via email, 23 April 2018.
13Matt Fotis, Long Form Improvisation and American Comedy: the Harold (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2014), 6.
14Rob Kozlowski, The Art of Chicago Improv (Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann, 2002), 28.
15Fotis, 5.
16Cited in Fotis, 7. Del Close’s eleven rules for performing a Harold:
•You are all supporting actors.
•Always check your impulses.
•Never enter a scene unless you are needed.
•Save your fellow actor; don’t worry about the piece.
•Your prime responsibility is to support.
•Work at the top of your brains at all times.
•Never underestimate or condescend to your audience.
•No jokes (unless it is tipped in front that it is a joke).
•Trust … Trust your fellow actors to support you; trust them to come through if you lay something heavy on them; trust yourself.
•Avoid judging what is going down except in terms of whether it needs help (either by entering or cutting), what can best follow, or how you can support it imaginatively if your support is called for.
•LISTEN!
17David P. Brown, Noise Orders: Jazz, Improvisation, and Architecture (Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press, 2006), (xvi).
WITH GREAT POWER…
A CONVERSATION WITH JACK SELF
REAL Foundation, Glass House, 2017. Rendering. Image reproduced with author’s permission.
Jack Self is a prolific architect, editor and author based in London. He is Director of REAL Foundation, a cultural institute and architectural practice notable for its critical approach to architecture and design, informed by a deep engagement with politics, philosophy and economics.
With design studio OK-RM, REAL Foundation were responsible for the British Pavilion at the 15th Venice Architecture Biennale in 2016, entitled Home Economics. In the years since, they have designed gala openings, museum exhibitions and mortgage products. To date, they have published six issues of the magazine REAL Review as well as the collection of essays Real Estates.
Jack visited Melbourne in October 2017 to deliver a talk as part of the annual MPavilion program. During his visit, he participated in a conversation with students at the Melbourne School of Design convened by Colby Vexler and Scott Woods.
Inflection spoke to Jack in March 2018. Our wide ranging discussion attempted to define the designer’s position in relation to the vast network of agents and actors that we must navigate. From our discussion, we gained an understanding of how designers can practice and communicate critically—and ethically—within the confines of a capitalist society.
We think of big data as an objective, quasi-scientific procedure of analysis. But its parameters are currently being dictated by external forces. How can architects and designers exert influence over how data analytics are implemented within the built environment?
Architects certainly can have an influence on this. It has to do with the ‘meta-metrics’ that we use to assess the value of different types of information. During the early days of parametricism in the mid-2000s, many parametric projects that were executed by Zaha Hadid Architects or under [ZHA partner] Patrik Schumacher at the Architectural Association, presented design as a logical and inevitable consequence of data-sets. They would say, for example: “We analysed the site for ten weeks, and using that data we’ve designed a building that is a perfect response to the existing patterns of use of the site.” The difficulty with that is, first of all, you’re not making a proposition; you’re just making something which is a reaction to existing conditions. It would be an insane prospect to design a building that perfectly responds to the conditions of 1922 when you’re actually building a hundred years later than that. During that intermediate time, societies change in their structure, human use patterns change—so you cannot only respond to data. You have to also make a proposition.
Then comes the value judgment, which is to say: “this data set is more valuable than another.” For me, it comes back to a core principle of mine, which is: I want to be free, and I want everyone else to be free too. What does a value judgment like that mean? It can be drawn into dangerous territory of ultra-libertarians who think that everyone should