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final
draft
Designing
Architectures
Endgame
Completion is both essential for, and
antithetical to, innovation. Here,
Gretchen Wilkins and Guest-Editor
Andrew Burrow attempt to resolve
this generative paradox by going in
search of open-to-ending strategies in
architectural practice. They advocate
the model of the final draft in the
design process as a means to bringing a
project to a close while anticipating or
encouraging future work.
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Isnt keeping things unfinished the most open and the best
way of getting things done? Certainly, it is a generative
design path that was advocated in the 1990s by the likes of
Greg Lynn, Brian Massumi and Michael Sorkin when the
introduction of digital software advanced the possibilities of a
new level of experimentation and iteration. See, for example,
Massumis analysis in this issue (pp 5055). Of course, this all
depends on what is meant by done, and the reasons to stay
undone are changing.
A telling starting point for what is meant by done is the
term final draft. Firstly, because the two words bring into
tension the completion and incompletion of the same entity.
Secondly, because it hints at an indirection. Namely, the
possibility to resolve this tension by imagining a sequence
of drafts that stand apart from the final object, so that
finality is reduced to a stopping of the drafting process. It is
a very useful term for this reason, even if conflicted, and an
incredibly vital space for design to operate within, even if
elusive; we know design may begin anywhere, but can it also
end anywhere? If final drafts indicate that a piece of work
is effectively done, but not finally, they also indicate future
potential within that work (more than the termination of
it). They say, this is done, but there is more to be done and
hand the work over to the next. If endings are then designed
with this agenda, to anticipate or encourage future work,
then incompletion and completion might coexist as two sides
of the same coin, strategically as well as incidentally. This
article is a search for some of the open-to-ending strategies in
architectural practice.
Endgame
The dilemma is this: completion is both essential for, and
antithetical to, innovation. Production is a prerequisite for
innovation new ideas, things or methods emerge from
existing complete ones. Yet, innovation is by definition
concerned with transformation and change nothing can be
taken as complete, and everything remains open to become
source material for further development. In this sense, to
innovate is to see things as incomplete. This essay seeks to
show how, in architecture, the most amenable approach is
to create conditions that allow for the intensity and focus
of individual authorship while introducing the annealing
benefits of creative and collective input, for work to be done,
but not necessarily end.
Then, what are the ways we can reach the final yet stay
in draft? It is helpful to think about three realms in which
these tactics can manifest. Firstly, there are tactics in the
material realm, those present in the final object by virtue of
its deployment of materials. Secondly, there are tactics in the
representational realm, those present in the draft itself either
by virtue of the need to put it into play in order to realise
the material design, or by virtue of a fluency in the language
of the drafts themselves. Finally, there are tactics that relate
directly to either, but only after transformation by innovation.
Once we are clear on what these might mean, we will be close
to the very core of this issue.
It is relatively simple to locate a few of the key tactics in
the material realm. We can create things that contain material
that is unallocated, subject to reallocation, or even raw in
some sense; for example, the partially constructed meals of a
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Unfinished Cities
Cities in the world that have been great cities in my
lifetime have gone through legendary phases in which they
offer cheap ground-level retail space and cheap live-work
space for young artists. They no longer have it in the same
way. Theyve become sort of cooked. And once a city is
completely cooked, its more like Paris, where the citys
business is not to change. But its not a place that actually
welcomes innovation.
William Gibson, 20125
Unfinished cities engender innovation. Depending, once again,
on what is meant by done, the types of cities that most readily fit
this description are not always new or not-yet-finished cities; it is
not a function of being undeveloped, but being open to change.
Even mature or stable cities can grow to become unfinished as
a result of severe economic, industrial or environmental shifts.
Detroit is an example, over 300 years old and still uncooked
by many definitions including Gibsons, with no lack of cheap
ground-level retail space and (consequently) much opportunity
for innovative design practice. As such, inverting the original
statement may offer the best definition of the term: cities that
engender innovation are unfinished, and assert their draft state
as final in order to perpetuate continued innovation.
In this case, being unfinished is posed as an agenda rather
than a description. Cities should strive to remain unfinished
in central districts, and not just the urban peripheries. The
momentum of growth in any major city would suggest this is
impossible, but is it? Cannot the best qualities of unfinished
cities be (re)inserted into the mature, less affordable ones? How
might architecture and urbanism embody incompleteness, even if
their city is already cooked?
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Notes
1. Alejandro Aravena, quoted in Justin McGuirk, Alejandro
Aravena, Icon, Vol 67, 2009, p 56.
2. Donald Davidson, Radical Interpretation, Dialectica, Vol 27,
1973, pp 31428.
3. John R Searle, Expression and Meaning: Studies in the Theory
of Speech Acts, Cambridge University Press (Cambridge), 1979,
pp 129.
4. Richard Rorty, Incorrigibility as the Mark of the Mental,
Journal of Philosophy, Vol 67, 1970, pp 399424.
5. William Gibson, quoted in Alex Pasternak, William Gibson in
Real Life, Motherboard-TV, 4 April 2012; http://motherboard.
vice. com/2012/4/4/motherboard-tv-william-gibson-in-real-life
6. Michael Sorkin, Local Code: The Constitution of a City at 42
N Latitude, Princeton Architectural Press (New York), 1993.
7. William SW Lim, Incomplete Urbanism: A Critical Urban
Strategy for Emerging Economies, World Scientific (Singapore),
2012, p 62.
8. Dan Hill, Low2No project by SITRA and the Helsinki Design
Lab: www.low2no.org/.
9. Temple Sagrada Famlia: http://sagradafamilia.sial.rmit.edu.
au/.
10. Passport Projects: http://passport-projects.com/.
11. Andrew L Burrow, Negotiating Access Within Wiki: A System
to Construct and Maintain a Taxonomy of Access Rules, in
HYPERTEXT 04: Proceedings of the Fifteenth ACM Conference
on Hypertext and Hypermedia, ACM (New York), 2004, pp
77 86.
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