DUS - MOMENTARY MANIFESTO FOR PUBLIC ARCHITECTURE

from DUS Architects

MOMENTARY MANIFESTO
FOR
PUBLIC ARCHITECTURE

1. DO
Design by doing is architectural beta-testing. Build 1:1 models in the public domain that function as immediate site analysis, architectural test case and social condenser. Put your practice to theory. Do the unthinkable: build a manifest, write a building.

2. MAKE IT BEAUTIFUL
People like pretty things.

3. USE NEW OLD MATERIALS
Celebrate mass consumption. Reveal the beauty of the everyday, by using ordinary objects in a different manner. Look beyond traditional construction materials, and re-introduce old crafts with new fabrics. Create social value from worthless stuff.

4. COOK
Food is social construction material. It unites people. Cook, drink and dine together. A mere cookie can be the answer to a big brief.

5. CREATE A PUBLIC
Shakespeare said it: "all the world's a stage". Architects have the world's largest audience. Discover for whom you are designing and respond to the res publica with the proper act. Public architecture is the staging of all events of life, and our tools can be those of performance artists.

6. MIND THE DETAILS
All details contribute to the architectural atmosphere. If you want people to meet, tie the drinks together and hand them out in pairs. A piece of rope is architecture too.

7. ACT UNSOLICITED
Reprogram the brief, the building and the profession. Consider re-use of vacant office buildings rather than designing new ones. Use your own office 24/7 and program the space as club at night. Partake in society, rather than architecture competitions.

8. BE PERSONAL
Establish human relationships. This social construction material is just as important as bricks and mortar. Communicate and educate. Host an excursion and exemplify the unknown. Step onto the street and speak the language of those who will live in your buildings.

9. PUT EVERYONE AROUND ONE TABLE
Different people have different agendas. Place the client, manager, municipality, resident and neighbour around one table and they will communicate. Everyone is amateur and professional. An amateur can be a true expert at "residing", and a professional client may have no knowledge of architecture. Make the architecture at the table the subject of conversation and catalyst for the process. This creates mutual understanding, and speeds up the design process remarkably.

10. DESIGN THE RULES AND THE GAME
Arrive early. Architectural decisions are made in the urban planning process. Design this process and ensure a great outcome.

11. PLAY THE CITY
Play the city, don't plan it. Cities are shifting. Incorporate existing bottom-up initiatives and let these inform the top-down. Design a script rather than a blueprint; be the director. Reserve space for change and celebrate the informal.

12. SHOW THE GENIUS OF THE LOCI
Reveal the potential of the place by building a temporary building overnight. Hand it over to the public, accompanied by one simple rule: a free stay in exchange for a personal contribution to the building. The qualities will show on site.

13. CONFUSE
Create architecture that is mutable and open to multiple interpretations. People will discover it and thereby make it their own. Architecture that confronts each person?s imagination creates opportunities for communication between the private and public domain, and between individuals.

14. BE BIASED
Carry a strong signature and be opinionated. Who wants to listen to someone with no ideas?

15. ABSTAIN FROM AUTHORSHIP
Celebrate change. See architecture as an open source; a gift in which others are challenged to participate. In order to bring about social relationships through architecture, one has to give up copyright claims.

16. BE THE CURATOR
Urban renewal is the future. Within extant city layouts, new architecture is about reprogramming; about social planning, temporary events, sports, education, art, and media. Find the right experts in these fields and curate the environment in which they can act together.

17. BE AN URBAN ARCHITECT
The public domain is the future. Real architectural quality often does not lie in the building, but in the public domain. Design this domain as if you would a facade.

18. BUILD MENTAL MONUMENTS
There's always a need for places for people to gather. Combine the real with the virtual in pop-up buildings; like an analogue facebook or a physical webforum. Make momentary monuments: one-day events can last a lifetime in the collective memory of the visitor.

19. SMILE
Enjoy what you do and have fun.

Jumpers for goal posts

In response to This town, is coming like a ghost town.

Whenever I walk past the Transport Museum there is generally football match going on in the space at the front. This made me wonder about a jumpers for goal posts mentality and how that mentality could be applied elsewhere.

I see this mentality as being about engaging with your surroundings to find a space suitable for an activity and then engaging in that activity. As well as urban football I also see Street Skating, Parkour and Buildering. All of these are pretty physical activities, there are examples of other types activity that engage with spaces available. The Bucky Bar (see Social Space post) is an example of this, although it doesn't quite achieve the simplicity of the other examples. I have also attempted to do this with an event called Stairwell Cinema which turned a stairwell in to a cinema. 

I see this mentality as a potential answer to any lack of formal space for an activity. Through engaging with a space, such as the urban space of the city, we can identify how the characteristics of the space lend themselves to an activity. 

This town, is coming like a ghost town

By about 6pm Coventry city centre is empty. You may encounter a few small groups of people passing through the centre only stopping to use a cash machine or maybe a group of skateboarders taking advantage of the empty spaces. Most people don't have a reason to occupy the city centre after 6pm. This 'coming like a ghost town' as The Specials put it is generally perceived as being one of the negative traits of Coventry city centre. Why does this trait have to be negative? Here we have an empty urban space with no activity, we should perceive the empty space as an opportunity. Viewing the empty space as an opportunity we have to ask ourselves the following questions:

Why are we not activating the space ourselves?

What or who is stopping us? 

Conversation with Elinor Morgan

I met with Elinor Morgan the programmer of Extra Special People at East Side Projects. The above image is an attempt to organise what we discussed and with a view to gaining a better definition of my interests/aims.

There were several really important questions and points that came out of the conversation. What follows are my initial responses and thoughts.

What is the Project?

I feel this questions has to be given some form of answer first. By answering this question I feel I will gain a greater level of direction within my practice.

At this point in time I can confidently say that the project is about The Commons and to further frames that I would say Common Space is the particular area that I want to explore. Admittedly Common Space is still a very broad area but I through understanding my role in any project along with research into common spaces the project will become more defined.

I have already been in contact with the Wasteland Twinning with regards to working with a Wasteland in Coventry. This is a project I envision becoming a Common Space. I have also been working with the other studio holders at the Meter Room with a view to re framing my studio as a Common Space.

What is my role?

Architecture has always been a big influence upon my practice; add to this the desire to work with common spaces I can see framing myself as an art-chitect of common space. I see myself as taking on a role that would involve the creating and or shaping of a common space(s) which can be animated by the activity of the community.

I came across a description of Strelka Institute which with a few minor tweaks provides a good description of the common spaces I would like to shape

...a collective, intellectual common space for the exchange of knowledge, ideas, discussions and encounters...

 I feel that I should shape and frame the space but I would like others to take on the role of animating it.

Community and commitment.

Having discussed common spaces I was asked who I wanted to engage with. Did I want to engage with my peers in the art community or with a wider more diverse community? I really don't want to create a space that is hidden behind the veil of the art institution

I want to engage with the wider more diverse community, I understand this will be difficult. I feel that this is where a core community/team is required. I not sure how strong I would be when it comes to actively trying to engage a wider community. I imagine my skills would develop but I feel that other members of the core team would fu
lfil this shortcoming  This kind of project is much bigger than anything I can undertake myself. I want to see an engaged community that animate the spaces sharing their knowledge, stories and ideas etc.

Elinor did explain that I would have to be committed to any project that would engage with a wider community. The project would be asking the community to invest into it and it would be totally inappropriate to just drop the project at some point in the future. I accept that I would have to make this commitment, I would have to enter into knowing full well what I was committing to.

Socially Engaged Practice

One thing that did become apparent was that much of my knowledge about this area comes from outside of the art world. There are practitioners working in and around the areas I'm interested in. Checking out some of these people out is very high on my list.

Jeanne van Heeswijk
Kathrin Böhm
Grizedale Arts
Edible Eastside

and reading

Artificial Hells
Locating the Producers

Connecting with others

Connecting with other people to share ideas also came up. This is where some of the the core team mentioned earlier will come from I'm sure. I have already begun some conversations with other regarding Wasteland Twinning. Through ESP I hope to connect with other artists working in similar areas. The conversation will help me to really understand and develop my work. I really hope that my input would also be of benefit too.

Knowing the context and community

We discussed how important it will be to understand the context and the community. The project must be framed in the correct way for the community to be able to engage with it. It will be really important to understand the Coventry and its history, it is important that the context and community are engaged from an informed position. 

The Knife - Shaking The Habitual - The Interview

I have always loved The Knife and I am really enjoying the new album Shaking The Habitual. What I really like is the progression from album to album, it is not just a repetition of previous works. This video is really worth a watch as it talks about the process that The Knife went through in making the album.

Stairwell Cinema

Stairwell Cinema is a project that was created to offer some answers to a couple of questions,

What is architecture?

How can we interact with architecture?

I posed this question to several people including myself with the stipulation that the response be in the form of a film. I see the resulting program as series of different perspectives. The project doesn't and shouldn't seek to offer definitive answers to the questions. I would say the aim is to show that there isn't a definitive answer. 

For me, what is important are the questions and the practice of questioning. By asking questions such as the ones above we begin to expose possibilities, we begin to expose the plasticity. We ask the question 'What could it be?' and then realise it could be many things, it could be a stairwell or it could be a cinema.

Thoughts on Meter Room Collaboration

After the most recent meeting I felt it would be a good idea to share my thoughts.

This is a diagram that has come about from some ongoing conversations I have been having with Sam via Liane Gabora. It is my version of a diagram he drew which I feel shows (or at least comes close to showing) the process I would like to explore within my practice. I want to create situations in which this process can occur.

I envisage the best way of doing this would be through the creation of confrontations in which you are presented with the new information. I feel that this would have to be done through the creation of a structures that when entered you make some form of investment (possibly just the act of entering), thus by investing in some way you want to receive something in return. At present I think the best of doing this would be through the creation of gatherings as I feel through the creation of a social dynamic/community/network there can be a forum that engages with and elaborates upon the information. To pull this back to the collaboration, I would say that our meeting are an example of one of these gatherings. I would really like to see one of the results of our collaboration being one of these gatherings.