rchitects without architecture

Emerging models for a different kind of architecture due to different kinds of technology: transdisciplinary studios for 21st‐century challenges and ‘small pieces loosely-joined’ forms of urbanism

Dan Hill (Abre numa nova janela)

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Dec 30, 2020 (Abre numa nova janela) · 54 min read

Ed. In 2018, Mark Burry (Abre numa nova janela) asked me to contribute to a special edition of Architectural Design journal (Abre numa nova janela) that he was editing: AD: Urban Futures: Designing the Digitised City (Vol.90, Issue 3) (Abre numa nova janela). I've written for AD before - on the tactical urbanism of pop-ups as a form of R&D (Abre numa nova janela) in 2015; a 2050 version of 'the street as platform' (Abre numa nova janela) in 2014 - and was delighted to be asked by Mark (Abre numa nova janela), someone I've known since my Australia days, and a pioneer in digital architecture (he's perhaps better-known globally, along with Jane Burry (Abre numa nova janela) and others, for their multi-decade work completing the Sagrada Familia (Abre numa nova janela).) Although architecture faces many challenges and opportunities (Abre numa nova janela), this piece had to focus on the urban questions posed by tech. Familiar themes are presented — cooperative blocks, participatory platforms, strategic design, libraries, streets, mobility etc. Please forgive any repetition, as I tend to worry away at a few core themes across several contemporaneous pieces, each framed slightly differently. Writing is like sketching, in this sense.I wrote one piece, and then split it in two for the journal: ‘Small Pieces Loosely Joined: Practices for Super‐local Participative Urbanism’ (Abre numa nova janela) and ‘Architects Without Architecture: How Transdisciplinary Studios Reposition for 21st‐Century Challenges’ (Abre numa nova janela). What follows below is the original mix, thoroughly re-edited. Given the recent rate of change, accelerated by Covid-19’s various forms of devastation and disruption, the AD articles feel almost out-of-date already. Certainly my list of studios could be twice as long, and more diverse, emphasising other practices, particularly around nature-based technologies (Abre numa nova janela), radical indigenism (Abre numa nova janela), virtual environments (Abre numa nova janela), hi-tech/lo-tech cultural diversity (Abre numa nova janela).The recent collection, Architects after Architecture (Abre numa nova janela), does a great job of collating many of the most interesting contemporary practices in that respect. Other aspects of the pieces seem to hold up well to current events, further revealing that Covid-19 is simply underlining existing trends, exposing latent stresses. Do read the Slowdown Papers (Abre numa nova janela) for more recent thoughts on those challenges for urbanism, and a deeper investigation of the ‘small pieces, loosely joined’ design pattern (Abre numa nova janela) discussed here.