<HTML><BODY style="word-wrap: break-word; -khtml-nbsp-mode: space; -khtml-line-break: after-white-space; "><FONT class="Apple-style-span" face="Arial" size="4"><SPAN class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: 13.3px;"><DIV style="font-size: 12.3px; ">re: usman's and others, reflections on "interactive" design, and on the possibility of art/architecture shaping technology in resistance to the military, and the call for addressing the marginalized. re: the last, i suggest that its an issue of pragmatism - realistic assessment of how social change happens, which has a great deal to do with "scale of tactics and strategies." </DIV><DIV style="font-size: 12.3px; "><BR class="khtml-block-placeholder"></DIV><DIV style="font-size: 12.3px; ">dutch architect Hermann Hertzberger comes to mind, as he builds incompleteness and permutability into his housing designs so that they can be finished by occupants and/or arranged by choosing from a palette of options. and his design strategies in general promote "interactivity" in every social and environmental way possible. there is much to reap here for the benefit of more specifically technological approaches. his concept of "living courtyards" is worthy of note, and his de-reification of the concept of "house."</DIV><DIV style="font-size: 12.3px; "><BR class="khtml-block-placeholder"></DIV><DIV style="font-size: 14.3px; "><FONT class="Apple-style-span" face="Helvetica" size="3" style="font-size: 12px; ">a few quotes from his website project descriptions follow. <A href="http://www.hertzberger.nl">http://www.hertzberger.nl</A>/</FONT></DIV><DIV style="font-size: 12.3px; "><BR class="khtml-block-placeholder"></DIV><SPAN class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: 12.3px; ">Each of these row houses consists of a basic dwelling core over the full depth, with next to it a freely interpretable zone the same size. In some cases this zone has been built-up with an additional living-room area, at times with extra sleeping space upstairs. In others, it has been fully glazed like a sort of greenhouse where the occupants are free to add whatever form they wish. In yet other cases this zone has been left entirely open. Then the house </SPAN></SPAN></FONT><FONT class="Apple-style-span" face="Arial" size="4" style="font-size: 12px; "><SPAN class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: 12.3px; "><I>is</I></SPAN></FONT><FONT class="Apple-style-span" face="Arial" size="4" style="font-size: 12px; "><SPAN class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: 12.3px; "> the basic core.</SPAN></FONT><DIV style="font-size: 10px; "><BR class="khtml-block-placeholder"></DIV><DIV style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; font-size: 10px; "><FONT class="Apple-style-span" face="Arial" size="4" style="font-size: 12px; "><SPAN class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: 12.3px; ">Flexibility</SPAN></FONT></DIV><DIV style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; font-size: 10px; "><FONT class="Apple-style-span" face="Arial" size="4" style="font-size: 12px; "><SPAN class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: 12.3px; ">The patio houses consist of two ‘naves’: one with bedrooms, bathroom, storage space, entrance and patio, and one that is not subdivided containing the living room/kitchen. The great width of the house (8.10 m) allows the brief to be tailored to individual requirements, whereby one can choose between living on the street side or around the patio. Or one can opt to live up on the roof garden and roof terrace floor, with the possibility of a void to the ground floor.</SPAN></FONT></DIV><DIV style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; font-size: 10px; "><FONT class="Apple-style-span" face="Arial" size="4" style="font-size: 12px; "><SPAN class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: 12.3px; "><BR class="khtml-block-placeholder"></SPAN></FONT></DIV><DIV style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; font-size: 10px; "><FONT class="Apple-style-span" face="Arial" size="4" style="font-size: 12px; "><SPAN class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: 12.3px; ">Key to the plan is a sophisticated modular residential layout that allows for endless variations and combinations. We have developed a plan that can be laid out and expanded in many different ways.</SPAN></FONT><FONT class="Apple-style-span" face="Arial" size="4" style="font-size: 12px; "><SPAN class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: 12.3px; "> </SPAN></FONT><FONT class="Apple-style-span" face="Arial" size="4" style="font-size: 12px; "><SPAN class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: 12.3px; "></SPAN></FONT></DIV><DIV><FONT class="Apple-style-span" face="Arial" size="4" style=""><SPAN class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: 13.3px; "></SPAN></FONT><BR class="khtml-block-placeholder" style=""><DIV style=""><BR class="khtml-block-placeholder"></DIV><DIV style=""><BR class="khtml-block-placeholder"></DIV><DIV style="font-size: 12px; ">A comparison to Tschumi's writings in Architecture and Disjunction, is necessary here because it lays out one model for realistic analysis based on "dynamic architecture," and "event architecture." If Parc Villette is one embodiment of his theory, it's failure in his terms, function over form, use over style, event over 'program,' (in its narrow sense) etc., is worth contemplating, and the reasons should not all be laid at his feet, but, also at the feet of the municipal agencies responsible for it's maintenance, gathering of public interest to that site, at the feet of the publics themselves, etc. These are failures Hertzberger did not have to contend with. There is a social component built into most of his projects, with a remarkable integration form studio to users to clients, etc. In many ways, he is the better proof of Tschumi's concepts. His work would be a superb case study in which to run test case scenarios of integrating technologies, exactly because of the degrees of success at social integration in his projects. It would make for an excellent studio component. And obviously this approach could be broadened to test many types of already existing sites/projects. This approach might even gain economic backing as it follows the "proof-of-concept" model required by funding sources. Another way to put this: what would it mean to reshape Media Lab methods as less military/capital driven, and more genuinely involved in social problems? That is, if "proof-of-concept" means, "social proof of social concept?" Tschumi sites his own disillusionment at that being possible, given that architecture is that which embodies the values and needs of existing military-industrial-information forces. Herteberger succeeds, at least to some extent.</DIV><DIV style=""><BR class="khtml-block-placeholder"></DIV><DIV style=""><BR class="khtml-block-placeholder"></DIV><DIV style="font-size: 12px; "> it's worth revisiting as one reference point, some pioneers in social inclusion in the design process, like Sim Van der Ryn and Michael Calthorpe (UCB) on community design, sustainability, eco-design. <A href="http://new-ced.berkeley.edu/ced/people/query.php?id=173&dept=all&title=all">http://new-ced.berkeley.edu/ced/people/query.php?id=173&dept=all&title=all</A></DIV><DIV style="font-size: 12px; "><BR class="khtml-block-placeholder"></DIV><DIV style="font-size: 12px; ">it strikes me that Michale Albert's (Alternet) concept of "parenonomics" - participatory economics - is conceptually and pragmatically relevant here. the term is his, though not the concept which is shared by other social theories in one way or other, including some versions of anarchism. I site albert here only because he is quick to hand: <A href="http://blogs.zmag.org/search/node/parecon">http://blogs.zmag.org/search/node/parecon</A>. the pioneer here was late economist, Kenneth Boulding, who not only wrote the landmark, Human Values on Spaceship Earth (1966), but other works like: The Economics of Human Betterment (1984). Manual Castels, who is an "urban planner," hasn't come up here in the short time i've been on this list. I assume he has. but social networks in his analysis has much to offer this discussion. </DIV><DIV style="font-size: 12px; "><BR class="khtml-block-placeholder"></DIV><DIV style="font-size: 12px; ">to move beyond lip service to participatory anything means radical social transformation, and the ONLY place i see this happening productively is in Latin America. It IS happening in Venezuela and Bolivia to a lesser degree. It is happening in the Zapatista efforts in social and political terms. One of the extraordinary mechanisms for social change in the Venezuela context is the creation of Social Missions aimed at particular social problems. Illiteracy was wiped out nationally in 72 months (without digital technologies at all) with a massive volunteer education program. Now that the country is up to high school level, they are moving on to universal college level education. </DIV><DIV style="font-size: 12px; "><A href="http://www.venezuelasolidarity.org.uk/ven/web/2006/missions/social_missions.html">http://www.venezuelasolidarity.org.uk/ven/web/2006/missions/social_missions.html</A> It works here because there is government support, (which means coordination and political and economic backing) and because the efforts are bottom up, inclusive, and local. </DIV><DIV style="font-size: 12px; "><BR class="khtml-block-placeholder"></DIV><DIV style="font-size: 12px; ">Abandoning the cult of the expert implies abandoning the cult of the leader as well. But the paradoxical lesson is, this succeeds only when there is government support, or social movements strong enough to force the governments hand (like the newly emerging Immigration Movement in the US). frankly, i see absolutely no hope for participatory roles in any facet of technological development in the dominant so called developed countries. Diagnosing the problems is easy. Fixing them is another matter entirely. </DIV><DIV style="font-size: 12px; "><BR class="khtml-block-placeholder"></DIV><DIV style="font-size: 12px; ">The question of real social change may be scaled thus:</DIV><DIV style="font-size: 12px; ">What would it take in the US, Europe, Australia, say, to establish effective Social Missions for civilizing and socializing technologies, urban spaces, rural spaces, etc.? It would take nothing less than a broad social movement. A million individuals working independently on prosocial issues will have zero impact 99% of the time. While 10 coordinated efforts have impact 10% of the time. Collective thought is fabulous, but easy. The question is: how to collectively act. Organizations like APC (Association for Progressive Communications) and WSIS (World Summit on Information Society, UN), and World Social Forum, are working along these lines. Is it possible to join forces to makes these efforts bear fruit?</DIV><DIV style="font-size: 12px; "><BR class="khtml-block-placeholder"></DIV><DIV style="font-size: 12px; ">Less grandly: </DIV><DIV style=""><FONT class="Apple-style-span" size="3"><SPAN class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: 12px;">What architecture would result from the superimposition of , say, Tschumi/Hertzberger, Albert/Boulding, Ryn/Calthorpe, Castels/Mike Davis, Social Mission as model for the "studio"? There are many possible substitutes for any of these names, of course. </SPAN></FONT></DIV><DIV style=""><FONT class="Apple-style-span" size="3"><SPAN class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: 12px;"><BR class="khtml-block-placeholder"></SPAN></FONT></DIV><DIV style=""><FONT class="Apple-style-span" size="3"><SPAN class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: 12px;">one example, with compelling pragmatic and symbolic value, and of course not without it's problems: <SPAN style="font-size: 13px; "><FONT class="Apple-style-span" face="Lucida Grande" size="5" style="font-size: 18px; "><SPAN class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: 18.3333px; "><FONT class="Apple-style-span" size="3" style="font-size: 12px; "><A href="http://www.thelandfoundation.org/?About_the_land">http://www.thelandfoundation.org/?About_the_land</A>. the way this project delimits it relations to "technology" is interesting - no to electricity, yes to solar and natural gas powers, based on their social impacts. it's "house projects" are another matter.</FONT></SPAN></FONT></SPAN></SPAN></FONT></DIV><DIV style=""><FONT class="Apple-style-span" face="Lucida Grande" size="3"><SPAN class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: 12px;"><BR class="khtml-block-placeholder"></SPAN></FONT></DIV><DIV style=""><FONT class="Apple-style-span" face="Lucida Grande" size="3"><SPAN class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: 12px;">In terms of strategies/tactics, it makes me think of efforts to create sustainable fisheries. Designate fishing-free zone along the entire west coast of the US, (in process in CA), where fish may replenish their numbers and then migrate to fishing-allowed zones. There is a social lesson for arch-tech here, i think.</SPAN></FONT></DIV><DIV style=""><FONT class="Apple-style-span" face="Lucida Grande" size="3"><SPAN class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: 12px;"><BR class="khtml-block-placeholder"></SPAN></FONT></DIV><DIV style=""><FONT class="Apple-style-span" face="Lucida Grande" size="3"><SPAN class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: 12px;">though the tenure system might have to be changed, as it seems mostly to be a fishing-allowed zone.</SPAN></FONT></DIV><DIV style="font-size: 12px; "><BR class="khtml-block-placeholder"></DIV><DIV><SPAN class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: 12px; ">mark bartlett</SPAN><DIV style=""><FONT class="Apple-style-span" face="Arial" size="4" style=""><SPAN class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: 13.3px; "><BR class="khtml-block-placeholder"></SPAN></FONT></DIV><DIV style=""><FONT class="Apple-style-span" face="Arial" size="4" style=""><SPAN class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: 13.3px; "><BR class="khtml-block-placeholder"></SPAN></FONT></DIV><DIV><FONT class="Apple-style-span" face="Arial" size="4" style=""><SPAN class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: 13.3px; "><BR></SPAN></FONT><DIV style=""><DIV>On Sep 27, 2006, at 12:21 PM, Mark Shepard wrote:</DIV><BR class="Apple-interchange-newline"><BLOCKQUOTE type="cite"><DIV style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; ">Brian pointed to Non-standard Architectures @ the Pompidou. Frank referenced "Hybrid Space : new forms in digital architecture". To that I would add the Non-standard Praxis symposium @ MIT - <A href="http://architecture.mit.edu/project/nsp/">http://architecture.mit.edu/project/nsp/</A></DIV><DIV style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; min-height: 14px; "><BR></DIV><DIV style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; ">Ahh... The usual suspects. The starchitects are in the house!</DIV><DIV style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; min-height: 14px; "><BR></DIV><DIV style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; ">It's high time we get beyond the blob, the digital hybrid, and the tendency of architecture to merely "represent" ideas in formal terms using the common digital tools (CAD/CAM, digital fabrication) available to us today. I think for some architects at least, the whole "constructing digital architecture" debate has really run its course. Moving beyond screen-based simulations or real-time "reactive" spaces (which are often no more than glorified automatic door openers), the questions today have less to do with the old digital/analog debate.</DIV><DIV style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; min-height: 14px; "><BR></DIV><DIV style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; ">I know I'm the one who introduced the form-fetish syndrome into the discussion, but I did so more as a provocateur than anything else. It's been more than a decade since people like Niel Denari<SPAN class="Apple-converted-space"> </SPAN>conducted a graduate design studio at Columbia on blob-form as a graphic strategy, or Greg Lynn introduced concepts of generative form, iteration, and responsiveness into the design process (also at Columbia). I'm not a historian of the term, but I recall hearing (and using) blobitecture (and its close cousin "spaghetti architecture") as a derisive label for the work going on there at the time. (Mea culpa: I was a graduate student there then). I find it remarkable that these terms could be still "in vogue" today.</DIV><DIV style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; min-height: 14px; "><BR></DIV><DIV style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; ">I think Usman's on to something here:</DIV><DIV style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; min-height: 14px; "><BR></DIV> <BLOCKQUOTE type="cite"><DIV style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; ">As I see it, interest in hertzian and networked space is a satisfactory first small step in the right direction, because it negotiates between a fascination with form (ala blobs) and a fascination with architectural program (ala early Tschumi) because such an approach deals explicitly with both the relationship between people and their physical spaces and with topological frameworks that give rise these relationships.</DIV> </BLOCKQUOTE><DIV style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; min-height: 14px; "><BR></DIV> <BLOCKQUOTE type="cite"><DIV style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; ">A subsequent step must be to question the design process itself, no? How might the production itself of an architecture *really* be "interactive" (in the sense that Maturana or Pask use the word)? Surely such an architecture would never be "complete"? This is why I find it quite interesting that Omar, too, is interested in the notion of "performance": because performance is a work, the production of which is very much the work as well.</DIV> </BLOCKQUOTE><DIV style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; min-height: 14px; "><BR></DIV><DIV style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; ">Architecture in this sense involves a dialogue (conversation?) between people, physical space, and the topological frameworks that structure and inform this dialogue. What happens when this dialogue is understood not in terms of real-time "reactions" or "responses," but rather over an extended time-frame? The life of a building, for example? What happens when the "certificate of occupancy" (issued by the building inspector when a building is considered "finished" and safe for inhabitation) is not the end of the design process, but merely another step along the way?</DIV><DIV style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; min-height: 14px; "><BR></DIV><DIV style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; min-height: 14px; "><BR></DIV><DIV style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; ">+</DIV><DIV style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; ">mark shepard</DIV><DIV style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; ">+</DIV><DIV style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; "><A href="http://www.andinc.org">http://www.andinc.org</A></DIV><DIV style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; min-height: 14px; "><BR></DIV><DIV style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; min-height: 14px; "><BR></DIV><DIV style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; min-height: 14px; "><BR></DIV><DIV style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; min-height: 14px; "><BR></DIV><DIV style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; ">_______________________________________________</DIV><DIV style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; ">iDC -- mailing list of the Institute for Distributed Creativity (distributedcreativity.org)</DIV><DIV style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; "><A href="mailto:iDC@bbs.thing.net">iDC@bbs.thing.net</A></DIV><DIV style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; "><A href="http://mailman.thing.net/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/idc">http://mailman.thing.net/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/idc</A></DIV><DIV style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; min-height: 14px; "><BR></DIV><DIV style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; ">List Archive:</DIV><DIV style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; "><A href="http://mailman.thing.net/pipermail/idc/">http://mailman.thing.net/pipermail/idc/</A></DIV><DIV style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; min-height: 14px; "><BR></DIV> </BLOCKQUOTE></DIV><BR style=""></DIV></DIV></DIV></BODY></HTML>