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h) Architectural Design

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Editorial Helen Castle
Preface Michael Speaks
I ntroducti on SHoP/Sharples Holden Pasquarelh
Versioning: Evolving Architectures - Dissolvihg I dentities
'Nothing i s as Persistent as Change' Ingeborg Rocker
Versioning: Connubial Reciprocities of Surface and Space
Monica Ponce de Leon and Nader 7ehrani
Versioning, Time and Design Culture Ed Keller
Material Effect: A Non-Alphabetical Glossary of the Cellular-Core
Translucent Panel Emmanuelle Bourlier, Chrisban 8Mitrnan and Andreas f r oech
Collective Construction Rick J oy
Letter from the Front Line: The Radical Potential of Urban
Corporate Practice Vishaan Chakrabarh
Remaking in a Post-Processed Culture William Massie
Recombinant Assemblies Anna Oyson
The Buro Happold Tapes Helen Lastle
SYSTEMarchitects Jeremy dmiston and Douglas Gauthier
The Dean: Bernard Tschumi in Conversation with J ayne Merkel Jayne Merkel
Burgeoning Versioning: An Exploration of the FastapTM Keypad David Levy
Eroding the Barri ers SHoP/Sharples Holden Pasquarelh
Contributors Biographies and Project Credits
I nteri or Eye: Specht Harpman Craig Kellogg
Practice Profile: Mikan Masaaki Takahashi
Building Profile: Transportation Centre for I nchon Airport, Seoul Jeremy Meivin
Engineering Exegesis: Transparency and the Performance of Building Skins Michael Weinslock
David Gosling Stephen Proctor
Highlights from Wiley-Academy Abigail Grater
Site Lines M Sean Stanwick
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Versioning, Time and Design Culture
d Keller examines the full ramifications of versioning as a time-based technique
ow has the current engagement of experimental practices with temporal analyses
rged? What potential does such intelligence i n design, which is able to produce
rent versions over time, have i n supplanting a stylised Modernism on a vast
le7 Siting versioning in a broad cultural context, Keller draws parallels with Nike's
ctices of mass customisation and t he bioengineering of genetically manufactured
ps Illustrating hi s text with film grabs, he produces an alternative but parallel
mporai narrative
Versioning is an operative shift in the
way architects and designers are using
technology lo expand, hrne as w i i as in
territory, the potentia/ effectsof dewgn on our
world -~SHoP office staterncnt
Clearly this concept IS articulated by SHoP in a
manner to position it beyond the territory that
other digital design practices have adopted in
the past decade. This territory is one that
legitimises a pmcessual approach to design by
asserting that a crucral element of 'time' IS
captured by an analytical process.
To place the concept of 'versioning' within a
larger cultural framework, and evaluate it as a
strategy, we have to map how and why this
engagement with time and effect is taking place
Recent work addressing 'time-based' analyses
mi sts on the use of temporal criteria in
generating diagrams which then can be used
through reverse engineering to suggest design
solutions. Time is crucial in this investigation. as
the phitosophical background from which many of
these practices emerge insists that only through a
nuanced engagement - over time - with variation
can any intelligence in design be produced
The contemporary technoscape, with its incredible
range and speed of computational advances (distributed
computation, genetic engineering. nanotechnology.
quantum computation, invisible surveillances, etcl, has
not been properly recognised and absorbed by popular
culture as a whole, which does not yet move rapidly
enough to become aware of these movements in time to
respond intelligently. It 'responds', but without deep
intelligence. By default, then, these technical advances
in fact define the horizon of a designer's ability to
control 'time' as well as space. Virilio and others have
theorised this morphological shift of 'time territory' in
the military/cinematic space. DeLanda's unpacking of
Oeleuze and Guattari's 'rnachinic phyla' can be fully
understood only as an intelligence deployed across time
as well as space.' These theories of time suggest [but
do not guarantee] the possibility for a more intelligent
range of responses across populations.
Moore's law,' a temporal threshold governing the
countdown to obsolescence that any piece of computer
equipment i s ruled by, has had a profound impact upon
our culture -witness the Recording Industry
Association of America's [Rlnn'sl desperate race to keep
up with Napster, Morpheus and other P2P softwares
which were unthinkable just five years ago; the US
military statement in the general press of its definitive
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acknowledgement that P2P coordination and
networking for battlefield intehligence is being
implemented; and the fact that all the positive
and negative implications of Teilhard de
Chardins prediction of the arrival of the
noosphere are being borne out by myriad
examples. Although such speculations about the
emergent, transcendent mind are indeed rather
long in the tooth - having been bandied about for
many decades - the tech threshold has changed
profoundly in the past ten years.
There are many examples that site the
concept of versioning tn milieu that popular
culture will be aware of. Mass customisation.
genetic modification of crops, remix culture; all
products of a new technical horizon that permits
feedback loops previously impossibLe to
implement. These feedback loops permit the
user base, or certain participants in a design or
manufacturing pipeline, t o engage almost
instantaneously in the process and produce
variations. In addition, the media now provide
seamless rebroadcast capability on a global
scale: worldwide feedback circuits
As an example, let us consider the practices
of Nike, a major consumer goods chain that
targets a responsive constituency and takes
advantage of rapid prototyping and
manufacturing to create the illusion of better
customer service. In thrs case the mass
customisation sets up a dosed feedback loop
between the company and the user group. In the
most basic sense, the use value of the shoes
sold by Nike is located within an iterative logic,
which, as it is mediated by mass customisation,
plays a growing economic role in the companys
life cycle.
Or, consider the versioning logic inherent in
the genetic modificetion of crops. One cannot
separate the economic feedback loops from the
purely technical advances made when a crop is
developed that produces its own pesticide or is
immune to a pesticide developed by the same
company that engineered the crops A corrupt
relationship that binds farmers to banks
supported by the same companies that sell seeds to the
farmers is not new, as such relationships have existed
for millennia. However, thc channels for unprecedonted
acceleration of variation have not previously existed. I n
this example, the consequences of genetic pollution
become radicat when the crops have a kill gene built
into them, which supposedly will not migrate but has
already been proven to reach neighbouring farmers
crops. IThis kill gene is an exarnpte of a temporary pure
repetition. which becomes immedrately subject to the
vicissitudes of versioning as it crossbreeds with other
crops 1 Also, the economic fallout is profound when an
agricultural economy and material practice based on
selection and stockpiling of strong gene lines by
farmers for the next years planting i s transformed by a
l egal arrangement between the farmer and the
company engineering the seeds, binding the farmer and
preventing him or her from keeping seeds for future
plantings. In this legal structure, farmers must be
approved for loans by banks controlled by the same
companies. and so the cascade from a biogenetic milieu
into an economic and legal one takes place at an
accelerated rate and with absolutely new
consequences.
In this example, of course, we find both the pusfive
and the negative aspects of versioning as it is made
possible by advanced computational and technical
thresholds. Again, crucial to this understanding of
versioning is the feedback loop that allows not only the
designer to more rapidly adjust ha or her process, but
the user group to participate in the process as wet1
SHoP is arguing that its design practice i s pLaced
squarely within this new phase, where a small firm can
not only keverage the speed that computation makes
possible -something that great designers, in any case,
have always managed to do {work fast, that i s) - but can
also gain novel forms of traction between the
architectural design field, the engineering and
contracting components of this, the legal conditions and
the developer component of the architectural workflow
In this sense the bioengineering world i s a better model
than older paradigms of information ftow and control.
We have seen design/build firms in the past, but
SHoP s argument 15that it will be able to take
advantage of this new set of channels in a way that is
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unprecedented. [Given the above examples and
their track record to date, it would seem that this
is a reasonable assertion.] In addition. the idea
that architecture and urbanism would respond t o
a form of rapid-prototyping or just-in-time
delivery is not new, dating back to at least the
Industrial Revol ~ti on, ~ However, the channels
that might allow a radical acceleration of the
processes of design, establishment of use value,
modification of this use value. and production of
a modified gene line, are branching into
capillary regions that have not yet been
encountered, much less properly mapped. In this
sense, architecture might attain a capability to
self-regulate which would overcome the
limitations that Tafuri and DalCo identified with
the failure of Art Nouveau (it could not
popularise its formal vocabulary. even via
modern manufacturing techniques] as the last
hallucinatory flash of flame of designers
imagining they could create a formar vocabulary
that all classes would embrace.
In this light, the responsibility of versioning
would be to identify the pathways that
architecture can take advantage of, which would
allow the propagation of a design interface into
an economic and cultural constituency that
would never have had access to what Iwill risk
calling good design. Indeed, the strength of
versioning lies in its ability - via channels like
P2P networks and Open Source infrastructures,
which are now indistinguishable from an
emergent ethic they have created - to go beyond
the purely aesthetic and the individual
understanding of variation, exploring a
spatiotemporal territory which realises that
some of the ethical limitations of industries
driven by economic and political horizons of
modernity and late capitalism have been lor are
about to bel utterly overthrown without anyones
quite noticing it. In this way our ability to
Legitimise our own definitions of good design
will be subject to a much wider peer review than
many designers are prepared for!
There is a need for incredible awareness in
such practices, as they do give architects access to new
For thousands of years, architecture has provided a vital
externalised memory. The life and form of the city. as a
general system, has been one of the most resilient
cultural engines for hybridisation that humanity has
managed to create for itself, precisely in the degree of
- _ - - _ _ __ _ I _ _ __ _ _. _~_ _ _
Advances in the genetic sub-
stance of architectural design
might well find new avenues
to hybridise with the legal and
cultural envelopes that usually
restrai n evolut1onar y pathways
due to a total disconnection
with design sensibilities
stability that a machine like a city requires to function
for centuries, in batance with the intense cultural
variations that the city encourages more quickly within
its populations.
The concept of versioning, when extended to its
logical. prosaic extreme [(Iam thinking of design to
construction flow: building without construction
drawings by manufacturing direct from CAD files)
establishes a new point of self-regulation within the
larger stability by which the city has been governed for
mitlennia. If there i s a gtace where SHOPSclaim to a
new control of time can be substantiated, it would be
urbanism sudden& t a temporal parity with
a1 mechanisms for
temporaucultural controt and regulation] In this way
advances in the genetic substance of architectural
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Notes
1. Manuel DeLanda. loo0 Years
of NonLinear History. Zone
design [this genetic material running the gamut
from zoning and legal envelope, through
main mechanism that has allowed any genetic population
to survive. The moment we start to homogenise.to
Books l New York). 1997.
2. Currently. every 18 months.
computationalpower doubles.
aesthetics to more intangible ideas dealing once
more with variations not in formal systems but
establish a uniform genetic structure across a population,
we introduce the chance of profound catastrophe, and
We are rapidlyapproaching the
manufacturinglimits of chip
design. however.
in temporal flows) might well find new avenues
to hybridise with the legal and cultural
create the opportunity for a single infection to affect all
individuals. Versioning in its optimal form partakes of a
3. A longer period inWestern
philosophyi f you consider
Bergson'swork. This thread can
envelopes that usually restrain evolutionary
pathways due to a total disconnection with
survivalist agenda for whatever 'genetic line' it occurs
within, and insists that the 'prototype' be considered
be traced back as far as to a
number of other t hi nkem Plato.
DBgen Kigen. Lucretius.etc.
design sensibilities.
If architecture, urbanism and the developer
only in relationship to future generations and the external
systems with which each of these generations connects.
L. Icontend that realvariation and
evolution would take place were
the company to issue stock with
worlds merge and become a single. hybrid
service economy, while manufacturing
The vector i s an element that breaks free of the
visual field. A surrealist element. a line of flight. This
each purchase d a pairof shoes
thatwas customisedonline: how-
ever, giving the consumer the
economies collapse into automation, then the
dynamics of brand identity that govern the
primary component of the diagram has been developed
in contemporary practice by architects like Lynn,
option to chwse a Logo siitched
onto the trainers i s nothingbetter
than an obfuscation of real chace.
quicker service economies in the age of the
internet - precisely their ability to t rul y include
Kolatan/Macdonald, Van Berkel +Bos. Cache et al.
Deleuze's Foucault proposes this 'theory of the line' as
5. The classic exampte here i s
Guimard's Pari s Metro entrance
designs. mass-producedfrom
their constituents in the design process -Icf,
again. the nascent emergence of this in Nike's
something that can only ever be understood through i t s
connection to other systems which are more or less
moulds.
6. M Tafuri and F DalCo. Modern
Architecture.Rizzoli INew Yorkl,
online design, or the movement from durable
goods to softer goods and potentially service
remote from the 'prototype' system.' In this. versioning
does not radically differentiate itself from any design
1996. pp 7-13.
7. DeLanda.op cit. pp 28-45.
8 Gilles Deieuze. Foucault.
sectors by companies like Samsonite) - will be
a new terv-itory for architects.
practice that had previously attempted deep analytical
thinking or interdisciplinary tactics. However, at this
University of Minnesota Press
IMinneapolisl.p 34.
%LuisViUareaL. 'The wruses that
The benefit of versioning on both a theoretical
and a practical level can be identified at the
point in time technologically, we find an interesting
problem appearing, which is the simultaneous presence
make us:a role f or endogenous
retrovirusin the evolution of
pkentaLspecses'.
places where a cybernetic understanding sees the
'difference that makes a difference'. If we argue
of this vector in the computational space of the design
analysis and also the final design solution. The danger
http.//dawin.bio uci.edu/-faculty/
villarrealInewl/host-virus.html
10 although Bataillp'sanalogue
for the necessity of a genetic mutation, one of the
basic strengths of any organism can be found in
in this process would be in failing to identify the 'bad
repetitions' in the sequence (the 'copies') from the 'good
f w the informe was the crushed
spider or the blob of spittle. and
though Mi 6 5 detour from paint-
i ts fundamental variation from generation to
generation. We can understand this in the manner
ones' [the 'versions'l with the risk that any information
captured in the 'vector' would be useless information.
ing t wk the form of working with
trash. Giacomettihexample of
formlessnesscannily assumed a
that DeLanda illustrates the difference between
nomadic or urban cultures as being, respectively.
Mapping the human genome has suggested that
there is a good deal of what i s currently understood as
highly polished.even gwmetncal -
l y simple set of shapes. The form-
lessness generated by Suspended
gaseous or crystalline: neither is better, they are
simply different.l In this model, it would be
'junk' DNA in the overall sequence. Hypothetically. this
junk DNA is not crucial to the variations each subsequent
Bail came insteadfrom h w 11
short-c~mu~ted the structural
logic of form. which Bataille had
difficult to locate an evolutionary teleology in the
progression from one individual to the next:
generation will have. (As a relative layman, I find this
difficult to believe. In point of fact, fascinating overlaps
spoken of categoricalky Based on
OppoYtion. every categoryot
thought is maintainednot simply
ontogenetic variation would only be meaningful
in the context of constant phylogenetic variations
between endogenous retroviruses and the
human/mammalian DNA code indicate a crucial role for
by what it names bul by what it
apposes: good as opposed to bad,
male t o female, life to death
[in other words, later generations aren't
necessarily improvements: the change itself is
retroviruses in seemingly useless strings - for example.
internalised viral actions suppressing the female
Giacometti's work. containinga
deft bdl hung M lhat it codd
swing wer a recumbent wedge
the point of value).
If we consider the danger of an infectious
immune system respond locally to allow placental
organisms to carry a foetus to term.)g The process of
producedjust tks stymieingof
categoriesi n that its " eratics-
enacted8 blurringof gender. the
biological agent, for example, we can see [at least
at the grossest levell that the variation in
making a 'diagram' or finding a key 'vector' would
be analogous to identifying the rote a particular gene
wedge appearingboth labial and
resistance to it from individual to individual is the would have in expressing characteristics in future
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NIN LIGHT SHOW
stilt fmm NIN concert footage.
Similar to troops in formation.
the concertgoers submit to an
event which temporarily
homogenises them into a
single body In this case it
Would be useful to compare
this form of homogeneity
with that of a parade formation
of troops, and consider
whether the Concert produces
more temporalvariation or
l ess in lhe memory of the
participants
phallic, the ball cast as both active
and passive. Not surprisingly.
gwen Modernism's commitment
to an aesthetics of form. the
accounts of artists such as
Giacometti or Miro have until
recently omitted their connec-
tions to Bataille and to
Documents. passing as well over
the theoretical mpllcations of the
informe. These implications are
notjust tied to Surrealism. how-
ever. but extend to much postwar
art as well. whether in the
French movement of dkollage or
in Robert Morns's notion of "anti-
form" oc Robert Srnilhson's con-
cept of entropy.' Rosalind Krauss,
from the GuggenheimCollectlo"
website, GuggenheimMuseum
11. I have in mind primarily Greg
Lynn's dehnitive work and writing.
the deeper meanings of which
many popular channels - both
academic and commercial - have
simply misunderstood, outright
ignored or used as a polarising
device around the question of
form -something Lynn htmself E
acutelyaware of. down to the
choice of the name of his ftrm
12 An example of this phenome-
non ul mindless criticism lrom the
world 01 cinema. Emir Kust uri ca' s
filmUnderground, which look the
Palme dOr at Cannes. was raked
over the coals by certain critics in
France because of Kustunca's
refusat to adopt a clear position
an his two main characters' eth-
nicity, pol i t i cs or even moral con-
science One critic even wrote a
damning review of the filrfs polib
tics. but later admitted that he
had not even seen the film. Cf
Goran Gocic. Notes Fromthe
Underground. the Onema of Em,r
Kustunca, Wallflower Press
[London and New Yorkl . 2001
13 Columbia CUP conference. my
notes quoting Sanford Kwinter.
Other contemporary practices
Pushing the envelope 01 this con-
cept come to mind. foremost being
Karl Chu's design thought and
writing. In his search for the over-
tap points between an architectur-
al 'genetics', mnstructlon method
and the oncoming technological
revolutions, Chu's work seeks the
most fundamental pathways that
versioning ais0 addresse, ci Net\
Leach. The Unconsnous Desbny
of Capital, J ohn Wky. 2002 for a
more In-depth engagement with
many of the i s ues raised In this
essay
._____-___---_____---
generations But for this claim to hold up, the
has to be identified
Ring its practice as
some critics perceive as the
failure of 'form' in the past decade. Or did form
'fail'? Certainly in design-oriented pop culture
it did not.
clarity." In many ways the issue of a disturbance,
adjustment and intelligence inform -the 'blob' -
does not differentiate itself from a variety of
pedagogical and critical practices we can trace
back to the Bauhaus, and further. However, in raw
pop culture, the speculations on the 'blob' one
finds in newsstand magazines (architectural or
design culture in general) tend to flatten the
question so that it is no longer even a stain. In
this glossing, the Mob has a tendency to absorb
ath and. mute, lacks any kind of
or intensity. The tendency of
pop criticism is to reduce
understanding and engagement of complex work
his not then suggest that for a
is the designer ready to accept this new kiupposed]
mantle of power? We $sly envisian how
this scenario escapes that hard Left
theorists identified in 1970s, when
Superstudto and Archizoom were making what Bernard
Tschumi has recently called 'verificatibns' of our future.
We are living in that pmverified future now.
SHOP'Scontention that this practice will by defautt
create new vertical int
i f only because the tec
vertically distinct diecipiines now evaporate lor have
to be eliminated simp
clearly implies that a QPof power is upon
us. I tend to agree wit
transformation of OUF practice from a horizontally
segmented one to a kind of Gesamtkunstwerkand
vertical integration is not enough.
To my mind, the greatest chaltenge and opportunity
Lies where SHOPsuggests we can work directly with
time The responsibility would be to think about the
reiationship between the new 'essences' that a
vectorised analytical process csuid carry all the way
through to an instltutionat transformation of the
economic, and imaginative restrictions to which a
conventional under e falls prey. The
radical potential in not simpty to carry
out 'time-based' an phrase within
academia and avant-garde
It is to literally invent new
Sanford Kwinter some years ago when he stated that
our task now is to I... relentlessly invent new ways for
embedding time within matter'."
The ability for an institutionand an tnfrastructure
to embed new forms of thought, new concepts of time,
within their material and intellectual practice, and give
the user base the ability to adjust these forms, ISthe
prize [and danger] that a bioengineering process
applied across dlsciplmes eeems to holtt for us.As
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