Can We Stop Wasting Architecture?
What do we do with the rest of the Iceberg? According to the Guggenheim Foundation, 1,715 design entries were submitted for the Guggenheim Helsinki Museum Competition. Along with the winning entries that received their fair share of press, the foundation launched a website to highlight the sheer volume of various ideas that battled for the throne.
But what happens with the other 1714 projects that didn’t get picked? Many of the competition entities withhold the rights to the ideas, yet it is unclear whether these ideas are utilized beyond their initial submissions.
There is a widespread problem in the architecture discipline. Ideas are iterated in the form of drawings, models, digital models only to be tested against each other. The ones that fail in the survival of the fittest are discarded. Some lucky ones manage to survive to the final pin-ups as ‘process,’ often enraging the presenter when jury seem to favor the haphazardly taped chipboard model over the meticulously resolved 3D print.
Discarded iterations, bits of ideas, and projects are a rich source of knowledge.
It’s inevitable; potentials are always much more interesting than resolutions. Regardless, the point is that there is a huge number of ideas that result as byproducts. Perhaps, some of them will linger in the back of our head to reemerge at another appropriate moment, but only through a process of excavation.
The current design process reveals the inherent inefficiency in design. Discarded iterations, bits of ideas, and projects are a rich source of knowledge. The problem is that we don’t have a standard method to organize and archive those projects.
We have scattered efforts utilizing independent methods to organize our knowledge. Imagine a universal database that is accessible to all designers around the world. Regional research could be used as a reference for future projects. Formal types could be preserved for later applications.
In the design world, ideas are constantly produced, developed, abandoned, hidden, and seldom rediscovered. While practices do recognize the under-utilization of design byproducts and capitalize on their catalog of ideas, it is difficult to openly work with previously developed ideas as designers are expected to create something new every time. If anything, as designers, we should have access to existing precedents and ideas in the most open manner.
As the word ‘research’ is frequently thrown around in design, we may actually learn from how the field of science organizes researched knowledge. The act of research is based on a strong culture of building upon existing knowledge. As scientific knowledge is tested hypotheses accumulated on top of each other, every research must begin with a body of references that define a solid starting point.
Naturally, all scientific publications depend on each other. Under these circumstances, plagiarizing is strictly prohibited through its own publishing system: ideas cannot be redundant; a new study is forced to push an existing idea, in one direction or another for either differentiation or development.
But the call for a singular architectural database does not intend to diminish the existing efforts to archive architecture. There are existing models. A popular example is the rising trend of large offices beginning to catalog their collection of models. It is widely known that OMA hired the Dutch national archivist after completing the catalog of their extensive collection of models. There are many other architects including Herzog & de Meuron and Richard Meier who have recently established dedicated spaces to archive their models.
These internal archives not only work as documentation of their process but also become a pool of resources they can reference. A famous example is OMA’s Casa de Musica. The building was actually developed upon a rejected model that was originally proposed as a private residence. This is a great example of how an existing formal solution can be readapted for a different design problem. Rather than beginning from scratch, the office is taking advantage of their body of knowledge. For firms that are production intensive like OMA, an efficient method to search and organize their database is critical.
In the digital realm, Archdaily had an issue where they had so many projects in their database that they wanted to introduce “essentials” as a way to cull those unknown projects. Web 2.0 has allowed architects to easily and voluntarily share their work online and as in the case of Archdaily, their volume reaches 18,000 projects and 33,000 articles to date.
Recently Architizer has launched a service that connects manufacturers to the projects. While browsing projects, viewers could now directly find out and access a particular material they liked from the project. These models suggest how architectural knowledge and data could be exchanged through an online platform. The web offers unprecedented accessibility in which knowledge can be curated, exchanged, and developed.
Where most endeavors fall short is that while there are many online platforms that collect designs, products, and ideas, we lack a standard way of organizing and archiving them. While it could be a limiting measure to impose a single standard on such a diverse and complex set of media, text, and concepts, only through a certain lens we will be able to relate one idea to another and strengthen the knowledge tree of architecture.
We can address these shortcomings in two different aspects drawing from existing platforms of knowledge. AcademiaEdu is a platform to share research publications. The website has grown as a marketplace of knowledge where leading researchers would collaborate on ideas by sharing their research results on the website. The outcome is a community driven by independent researchers that work on collective knowledge.
The open source and positive attitude of the participants resemble how Wikipedia had established itself as a platform of common knowledge. However, AcademiaEdu derives its strength from its community members who are qualified researchers that can keep the quality of the publications in check.
Github for architecture?
Another precedent is Github, which is primarily a platform to share codes. However, while the majority of the files that are shared on Github are codes, the system is more of a methodology to track the change in information. Anyone can work off of an existing code and Github is simply a system that tracks all the changes in the versions of code.
It provides a standard in which knowledge can be structured yet the users have complete freedom over how each code is developed. The irony lies in that Github as a concept was inspired by Christopher Alexander’s design pattern language. It’s about time that we take advantage of the new tools to revisit the project of the pattern language.
The simplicity of Github as a system grants unlimited possibilities in which data associations can be created. It is a blank board where data exist as points. Users can connect any two points to create a line and the system only keeps track of the where the lines are being drawn.
The current mode of architectural history has been recorded in a linear fashion and barely leaving the western hemisphere. However, with a dispersed network that Github offers, architectural ideas can be associated in a multidimensional manner transcending time, location, material, and cultures.
The idea is to apply such methodology in our designs. The Github for architecture would be something that allows us to zoom out and notice lines that connect the dots, and the larger patterns created by the lines.
A standard for organizing architectural knowledge can bring about a considerable change in which our non-tangible work is produced and preserved. Architects working on opposite parts of the world in a similar issue could work off of each other’s projects. Academic projects could have a greater impact on architectural thinking as they could develop upon existing concepts and problems. Studio briefs can take a more inter-institutional approach as research topics could be tested under various local conditions.
The Cloud powered web enables a sophisticated interconnectedness among projects. By consolidating our knowledge in an accessible database, our endeavors in exploring architectural problems could receive a context. Under the flexibility and the ease in which associations could be made and broken, novel and various relationships between ideas can be readily tested and developed by multiple authors. Knowledge could be built, driven and shared by a collective.
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