Author: Peter Raisbeck

I am an architect, design tutor and a researcher. I have been at Melbourne University teaching architectural practice and design since 2006. Prior to this I worked in architectural offices, research organizations and in my own practice. I have taught design at RMIT and Melbourne University. I currently research and write across architecture urban design, technology, financial systems, procurement and architectural history. I see architecture as a domain which requires research that is future driven and yet realistic and practical in its outcomes. I have published research related to employing quantitative methods to measure design, procurement systems, the aesthetics of BIM, as well as the relationship between 1960s avante-garde architects, such as Robin Boyd and the Metabolists and technology futures. I have also presented papers on biometrics and agent based technologies. My PhD thesis on the Marine and Underwater City movement of the 1960s identified Bertalanffy's systems theory as the core idea underpinning these utopian schemes. In 2010 I collaborated with others to exhibit a project called Mould City as a part of the Australian Pavilion at the Architecture Biennale. More recently, in 2015, I formed a collaborative group based in MSD which entered an entry in the Planetary Urbanisation competition sponsored by the journal ARCH+. The entry proposed the remediation of the Whaleback iron ore site in the Pilbara whilst giving primacy to indigenous ownership and governance in that region. In 2010 and 2012 I led postgraduate MSD students to Monterrey Mexico. This work involved to working with people in informal settlements. Recently, as an architect I have worked with the Port Phillip Community Housing Group and the Quaker Society of Friends. In 2016 I will teach a new elective called Design Activism which will teach MArch students the skills needed to position design thinking and design research into protest campaigns.

The story of the Gloop and emerging architects

August 7, 2017August 8, 2017Peter Raisbeck

A few years back I was invited to do a poster, so I made a kind of comic which I then turned into a larger collaged piece within a frame. Given my total, and in some ways perverse, avoidance of digital skills I have always been more comfortable creating with photocopied images from books using crude collage techniques. My brain is a library of all the images and memories of architecture I have consumed in life. Some of these are in the Gloop narrative.

When I produced the Gloop collage it had been quite some time since I had actually done anything creative. This was because in some ways being creative was beaten out of me at architecture school. Firstly, I wasn’t good looking or charming or genteel enough to get a High Distinction for my architecture thesis. The High Distinction in my year went to the taller, good looking architect, who then went to the east coast graduate school. I was pretty annoyed that my tutors gave him an extra two weeks to do his work. Arguably, my special brand of thesis craziness, evidence by my drawings, was never going to get the big mark. But nonetheless, it certainly wasn’t a level playing field and that is probably why to this day I feel that studio jury and moderation processes in architecture schools need to be absolutely transparent and fair. The masculine clubs, networks and pedigrees that seem to confer design authority on some and not others has always repulsed me.

Architecture Thesis 1986: Federal Court of Australia

When I did my Masters of Design after my Bachelor of Architecture I tried to design a few things but was beaten down by the tutors whose idea of architecture was so precious, and dare I say it anal, that every fucking line had to be argued and justified. I certainly didn’t think that designing was about drawing the same line over and over again, until you break out into a sweat, and then finally, and inexorably, draw an oblique line; or get some banal insight into a typological context or history that propels you to draw more of the same lines again. Or worse still, draw the lines over and over again, waiting around for some second-rate “Master” or auteur to tell you what to do when they get back from the client meeting.

Even when I was in practice there were only a few things I felt I had actually designed. Mostly, these were competitions which were always won by the usual suspects, and lists of big networked firms, who had lots of infrastructure and staff. Everyone else seemed to win these except for our practice. Well thats how it felt at the time. We did about four or five competitions over about 2 years and no-one who mattered really took much notice. Doing these competitions killed the practice because of the resources they depleted.

None of our competitions were published and I had to grovel to get a sessional teaching job from the local overseas implanted head of the architecture school. The comic aesthetic didn’t really help. Nor, did it help that we weren’t in the boys club of that time. I drove cabs and my partner did planning gigs. Although, during this time in practice I did manage to design one thing that still exists today and I was relatively happy with. Even though the client wanted to sue me. After a while I ended up leaving architecture. I was so sick of it and the lack of opportunity and generosity and the clubbiness.

Nowadays, I really think we, all of us in the cult and discourse architecture, need to encourage small practices and emerging architects. We need more competitions, we need more enlightened larger clients who take risks with smaller practices and we need larger firms to mentor smaller firms. We need more mentoring and authentic career pathways in architecture. We need professional associations that actively foster and mentor small young practices. We need more inclusiveness. We need exhibitions that show what emerging prcatices are doing. We need to save and archive the outputs of the studios led by young and emerging architects. We need to look after each other.

By the time I did the Gloop collage I had come back to the fold of architecture. It was probably the first creative thing that I had done for many years. I did the collage in the space of two days. The collage and the images quickly came tumbling out. In my conceit, I felt like Ranier Maria Rilke at Dunio near Trieste when he wrote Duino Elegies, after not writing any poetry for a long time. Maybe, I should change my name to, or name my next child, Rilke Raisbeck.

But the real point of this is that it doesn’t matter how unksilled or messy we feel we might be as architects. As architects, we are all struggling in systems, or contexts, that do not seem to value our efforts. Despite my bloggy cynicisms, I think that even when we are unable to design or build, or we lose the competitions, or we go bankrupt, or the clients want to sue us, or we are discriminated against, we should never let go of our own ideas or sacrifice our continued learning and development as architects.

I hope you enjoy the story of the Gloop.

New Paths of Architectural Practice: Not everyone is going to be an architect with a capital A.

August 1, 2017August 2, 2017Peter Raisbeck

There has been a lot of chat lately about new models of practice. Increasingly, the scavengers and myriad tribes of architects that exist find it difficult to make their practices profitable in the face of intense fee competition and, what some have called, the economics of austerity. I have touched on alternative modes of practice in a few other blogs but I thought I would say a bit more.

No Silver Bullet

Foremostly, I am worried that practitioners think that there is a silver bullet or a simple solution to this issue. That we can wave a magic wand over the structure of their practices and it will all be better. I am worried that practitioners think that if only they had restructured their practice in a different way in the first place things would be easier. Yet, the legal and corporate frameworks for practice are normally quite limited within, and across different countries. There is no one way or legal “switch” that a practitioner can switch on or off if a practice is not profitable or not seeming to get anywhere. Changing the legal or financial structures may not change things. If you are not making money you are not making money.

The traditional models of sole practitioner, partnership or even company model appear to limit what architects can do. Some of the mega-firms, or Transformer firms, as I have denoted them elsewhere, seem more successful. They appear to manage ok, by virtue of being extremely large and having integrated service chains that provide a potential client anything; let’s not think too much about how these large firms might manage their taxation affairs.

Critical Regionalism

For many smaller scavenger and tribal practices there is still the dream of criticality at a local level. Of doing great jobs that people love in your own city, street or neighbourhood. Thinking about this reminded me that in the early 80s Kenneth Frampton argued for a new architectural culture based on critical regionalism. Frampton advocated an architectural culture and discourse that was resistant to what he saw as processes of universalization. Frampton argued that optimising technologies had delimited the ability of architects to create significant urban form. For Frampton, the work of critical regionalism a practice focused on, and grounded in local traditions and inflections, was intended in Frampton’s words to “mediate the impact of universal civilisation.

I think that much of Frampton’s dream has come to imbue much of what we value in Architectural Practice and design. The Pritzker prizes seem to go to regionally inspired and grounded architectural auteurs. In my country a lot has been written about the two main city based “schools” or traditions of work the Sydney School and the Melbourne School. But, I worry that as architects we have been boxed in and swamped by global capital and technologies while we clong to models of practice are focused on the auteur. I think the the dream of critical regionalism is something that perhaps masks the real situation: The continuing commodification of architetcural knowledge.

Exploring new models of practice.

A few years ago, I got my architectural practice students to do business plans for Social Enterprises. In other words, for enterprises that had a social purpose or profit. In my naivety I thought they would love doing it. The idea was to encourage the students to think about how they would use their architectural skills and knowledge to determine the nature of a new social enterprise. It was a way to hopefully get the post-graduate Master’s students to think, yes actually think, about different forms and models of practice.

The better social enterprise plans were encouraging. A number of plans aimed to address gender discrimination. One plan looked at commercializing feminine hygiene products in order to get homeless woman off the streets. Another group targeted the architecture and construction workforce by supplying sustainable personal protective equipment and then investing the profits to advance gender equality in the design and construction workforce. A few projects looked at issues around waste and recycling. For example, one project looked at recovering discarded food and food waste. One of the better social enterprise plans produced by the students was based on putting beehives into social housing estates and then harvesting, marketing and the selling the honey. Thus, employing some of the residents in the estates.

Thinking outside of the box.

But by and large most of the students hated the exercise, my student experience scores that semester tanked, and my academic masters wondered “WTF” I was doing. A practitioner associated with the school asked, “why are you doing business plans at all?” I think the social enterprise plan about the Bees was the one that really drove everyone nuts. Of course, it didn’t really help that I said in the Assignment instructions that: “There are no prescriptions for this assignment. On the basis of the business plan, you will be assessed as to how well your social enterprise will realistically establish itself, survive, and grow.”

So much for getting the students to think out side of the box and deal with high levels of ambiguity. This year we went back to business plans for the straight-down-the-line architectural practices.

Abandoning the old ways

If we are to talk about different forms of practice then I think architects really need to abandon their pre-conceived notions of what practice is. There is no magic solution. We need to use our learned creativity and design thinking skills to embrace new ways of doing business. Not everyone is going to be an architect with a capital A. We need more beekeeping ideas.

A recent exhibition at the CCA, and now travelling, suggests that historically alternative practice doesn’t always have to centre on the single genius. At any point in time architects have always sought to explore new models of practice and escape the constraints that beset them.

Thankfully, there have been those in recent years who have broken out of the old moulds of architectural practice. Collective and collaborative action is a common theme on my short list. Notably, and not in any order, the following spring to mind:

Assemble, Parlour, Forensic Architecture, ONOFF, Sibling, R&Sie and Group Toma.

These examples suggest, a wider range of practice, as well as the different ways, that architects might now practice. I am sure there are also other examples and I will add to this list over time. Contact me if you know of anyone. But the final upshot is this: Architects really need to think about these new paths. Because, architects can’t be sure that the old ways are going to work for much longer.

The Research Paradox for Architects: What is design research?

July 25, 2017August 7, 2017Peter Raisbeck

The image on the home page next to this post is a picture of a typical architectural researchers desk. Sadly there are people in this world who dont think architecture has much to do with research. Even I sometimes have trouble convincing people that I am actually doing research.

Yet, in recent practice, architects have argued that architectural design is a research activity in its own right. The research activities of architects include a range of problem solving and design related research activities such as data collection, workshops, internet searching and design drawing. In addition architects also research historic precedents, climatic issues, construction methods, products and materials. Design as research, also points to the emergence of research amongst architects related to the scripting of programmes, 3D digital modelling and prototyping. But is design research simply speculative or generative designing?

I like many other architects agree with the proposition that designing can be research. But this is clearly a problematic proposition.

The design as research culture

Numerous PhDs, design studios, books and even entire courses have been built around the notion of Design as Research. In fact no one really knows how to write it: design research, or is it Design Research, or is it “design as research” ? But the real point is that, many architects regard design processes such as creating sketches, making digital CAD models, building physical models and building prototypes as research. But is that what design research is?

Of course, some have had a go at defining what it is. Dr. Peter Downton at RMIT argued that design is a ‘way of enquiring a way of producing knowledge; this means it is a way of researching.’ In a study of architectural design PhDs Radu asserts: ‘Architectural design is to architecture what research is to science’ and the ‘process of architectural design is close to the process of knowledge creation in the sciences’

No research infrastructure

Across the globe system there is clearly a lack of research infrastructure for architects at a number of levels; research infrastructure doesn’t just mean having big grunty boyo computers. In my country of Australia, research skills are not clearly articulated in the architectural accreditation system. Architects don’t often do formal research methods courses and few graduate schools of architecture offer courses around design research. Notably, my own school does offer such a course. Worse still design research outputs, such as buildings are not counted in research evaluation and publication exercises.

The reality of practice.

In actual practice, I fear that the documentary, formal and methodological structures supporting the organic activities of design research are fragmentary and adhoc. Few practices have formal R&D procedures in place, and few practices have developed procedures for articulating and documenting its original design outcomes. Aside from, practices publishing their projects for peers and marketing. much of the knowledge generated by all of the research in architectural offices remains largely implicit within firms.

Few firms write research reports on the information they collect and yet many often claim that research information is transferred to other projects. These adhoc practices make it difficult to ascertain, and argue, which aspects of architectural research are a contribution to new knowledge.

Research models in practice

As a result, many firms flounder around when it comes to research. A lot have tied their own research models focused around digital design and fabrication. Other firms have focused their research on Sustainability. But simply having and seeming to follow through on this research focus is not enough. A few firms go beyond a simple focus on a strategic research area. Many dream of, or attempt to adopt, research models related to a management consulting. Larger firms are better at this. But this is, more often than not, without the well-worn and templates and proprietary methods that real management consultants have.

Moreover, only a few architects have embraced research models related to patent innovation and product development. I am still struggling to teach graduate archi students what Intellectual Property is.

The research paradox for architects.

The paradox is that many architects often state that research is a part of their design philosophy yet there is often no further articulation of this. Often in practice the organic integration of routine research and design as research activities makes it difficult to identify what is routine design and what is design which creates new knowledge. Establishing the contribution to knowledge of any research endeavour is necessary if it is to be regarded by non-architects as research. I worry that to many architects in practice R&D is about simply placing product and materials information at the back of a project file.

This is not to say that architects do not develop new knowledge or insights as a result of design processes. But, many firms appear to lack the methodological infrastructure, systems or research training needed to support R&D activities. This makes it difficult to isolate and position the research knowledge and innovations arising out of design research. Without these methodological and meta-structures in place it is difficult for architects to argue how design as research makes a contribution to knowledge. It also makes it difficult to position and distinguish new design from previous design research.

Policy failures

The focus on design as research, and its rise in architectural schools, has too often tended to emphasise research related to material issues: drawing, modelling, fabricating and constructing. But further research in the architectural schools could identify to what degree design as research in practices is focused on non-material and context-dependent topics: urban space, gender identities, teamwork, and cross cultural issues. Not to mention history and culture.

Arguably, few other professionals would actively have this broad range of skills and expertise at their disposal. Yet, the role of architects is not often accounted for or encouraged in national innovation systems or construction innovation policies.

All the politicians love a so-called smart and sustainable city. We require initiatives need to examine in the potential role of architectural design as research in national innovation systems. These considerations could lead to policies that highlight the linkages between, design as research arising out of architecture and new technologies, construction, industrial design and manufacturing. But at present the design thinking and research of architects is often subsumed and only seen as a minor element in national innovation, research and educational policies. As architects, we need to build and develop our industry in a way that substantiate, explore and promote the design research agenda to the max.

Just designing, and then making something, and then claiming that this is research will not be enough.

Architects and the branding of the new Ecocity: The need to dismantle the greenwash

July 20, 2017July 20, 2017Peter Raisbeck

We have just had the Ecocity 2017 world summit or conference in my city. Al Gore came to speak about his work and he received an honorary doctorate from my university. I didn’t attend the conference but the spin round it prompted me to think a bit about what an Ecocity might be. It made me think how architects and urbanists should respond or think about the Ecocity concept.

Since 1990 the ECOCITY World brand has claimed to address “the way humanity builds its home — its cities, towns and villages.” Interestingly, the Ecocity brand is promoted as a series as if it was some kind of global franchise:

“The series focuses on key actions cities and citizens can take to rebuild our human habitat in balance with living systems, and, in the process, slow down and even reverse global heating, biodiversity collapse, loss of wilderness habitat, agricultural lands and open space, and social and environmental injustices.”

I worry that the Ecocity brand nexus of neoliberal policies, big property linked to the markets, and what I would call the “smart” and “sustainable” city industry is only leading us down the Business As Usual path to climate catastrophe. For some of your reading this, in mentioning the C word (catastrophe), I am going to sound uncool and alarmist. But maybe that is the reality and maybe since Nicolas Stern’s The Economics of Climate Change: The Stern Review neoliberal and oh-so-nice, left of centre policy makers, have really been compromised.

It’s always great to talk about cities as ecosystems or as places full of so-called smart sustainable infrastructure. There is a lot of that talk in my architecture school about this. But, is this enough? Do we really need cities; and in the Anthropocene, is it wise to conceive of cities as ecosystems. Doesn’t this conceptual act place our own species with a role at the center of the natural world. Are we really at the center?

A recent book by Derek Jensen the radical environmentalist also raises the above questions. He argues that sustainability is now a devalued term. He writes about what he calls the conservation-industrial complex:

“big green organizations, huge “environmental” foundations, neo-environmentalists, some academics–which has co-opted too much of the movement into “sustainability,” with that word being devalued to mean “keeping this culture going as long as possible.” Instead of fighting to protect our one and only home, they are trying to “sustain” the very culture that is killing the planet. And they are often quite explicit about their priorities.”

Jensen, argues for, and imagines, an end to “technologized, industrialized civilization and a return to agrarian communal life.” Of course to the well-heeled policy urbanists this is a seemingly extreme view. But nonetheless, it is a view, that at this point in time, I am drawn drawn to. It reminds me a bit of the urban efforts and gestures of the architects Leon and Rob Krier to return us to a pre-industrial urbanism. So what exactly would be wrong with such a return?

Another author of interest to me in this debate is late Australian philosopher Val Plumwood. Plumwood questions what she denoted as hyperseperation. Hyperseparation gives rise to the dominant structures that drive binaries such as, nature-culture, matter-mind and savage-civilised. In the context of the Ecocities debate we run the risk of simply arrogating all mind to our own species and seeing everything else as mindless matter. Matter, as exemplified by the cities formed in our own image. These Ecotopias, Ecopositive cities and Ecocities are now crowding out our social media feeds, and these imagined cities are too often image-cities emptied of, and destructive of, real ecologies.

A real debate around cities needs to merge that examines how cities might be dismantled and decolonized and how we might see them less as machines of innovation and capital. At the conference the academic program looked like more of the same old pap: Densification, greening the cities or “Bringing Nature Back In”, resilience, healthy cities, new forms of co-operation and sustainable food production. Certainly there was some good stuff in the conference around the First Nations and those other real cities, the organic informal cities full of inequalities.

But, in the face of climate change and the loss of actual and real ecosystems, habitats and species, outside of our existing cities there is only so much of this pap I can take. A few papers held glimmer of hope about new research agendas and questioning of this prevailing, and increasingly branded paradigm. I guess the image that headlined the conference (ably devised by Simon Cookes) of chucking plants onto concrete buildings and rooftops kind of says it all for me.

As architects and urbanists we need to explore the dynamics and effectiveness of architecture in relation to the real and deeper ecologies than just greening up the cities in Photoshop. This also means having a debate around how we might dismantle the cities and explore new forms of settlement. We need to dismantle the greenwash.

Surviving the Design Studio: Don’t be a Lemming when choosing a design studio.

July 18, 2017Peter Raisbeck

Yes, it is almost that time of year (at least in the Southern Hemisphere) when architecture students begin class and go about the business of choosing their final semester design studio.

This blog is a repeat of previous blog I did last year. In that blog I argued that the four worst reasons for choosing to be in a design studio are related to a cluster of common syndromes. But I have now added more syndromes to the original list. This is as a result of countless millenia watching architectural student lemmings jump off the cliff and choose the wrong studios.

So here is the latest list of Lemming like syndromes:

1. Everyone passes this studio (Degree of badness 9 out of 10)

Choosing a studio or a design tutor because you think that everyone who takes that studio will pass. That’s great until you work out that it’s not exactly true and you fail the studio. Never take passing for granted.

2. My friends told me to do it (Degree of badness 10 out of 10)

Another bad reason and indicative of someone who can’t take responsibility for their own architectural education.

3. My friends are in it (Degree of badness 8 out of 10)

Time to cut the umbilical cord from the friends you met in the enrolment queue or at orientation. When you leave architecture school you will be working in teams, yes I am serious, actual teams with different people in them. A good idea to get used to it now.

4. It sounds too theoretical (Degree of badness 10 out of 10)

Sure that’s fine if you never want to think about architecture’s place in the world as a critical practice. that’s the path to CAD monkey and BIM monkey mania. If you want to be valued in a practice, when you graduate, then you need to have a handle on theoretical and conceptual ideas.

5. I already did that kind of project before (Degree of badness 7 out of 10)

Maybe. This is a legitimate excuse for not doing a studio. But it may also be a good reason to get really good at something by doing the same kinds of over and again. Going into greater depth might be good.

6. Running with the pack syndrome (Degree of badness 8 out of 10)

This is a variation on, “my friends told me to do it”. It’s great to get into a popular studio and “run with the pack s” at the beginning of the semester. But, it is not so great at the end of the semester when you realise how unsuited that studio was for you. It’s even worse when the studio outcomes semester end up being the most mediocre at the end of semester.

All because it is popular doesn’t mean the studio will be good.Popularity is the most misleading reason to choose a studio on. Don’t succumb to peer group pressure or groupthink.

7. Charisma syndrome (Degree of badness 10 out of 10)

The seemingly charismatic tutor or architect may not be the tutor that you need to foster and build your design confidence. Charismatic architects, especially the alpha-male variety, do not necessarily make good studio leaders or teachers.

Of course they looked great at the studio presentation, they have been published a lot, won a few awards and have a great website. But, that charismatic architect or the person who gives a great presentation to students about the studio may in fact be one of those woefully inadequate studio teachers. Woeful studio teachers are the ones that are potentially narcissistic, lack the humility needed to teach, mismanage your criticism time, develop favorites in the class and give contrary and contradictory advice to students from week to week.

8. Interesting project syndrome (Degree of badness 7 out of 10)

This is when students choose because it seems like an interesting project. What do you mean by “interesting” and how do you know it is actually interesting? Will the design outputs of the studio make a contribution to design knowledge.

What architectural or studio project isn’t potentially interesting? Good architects are the people who make mundane and ordinary programs and problems into something cogent and culturally powerful. So just choosing a studio because it sounds like an interesting project is a really unthinking way to choose. I learnt the most from the worst and least interesting projects that I did at architecture school. The bourgeois house, the outer suburban primary school, the kindergarten the social housing on the large site. You don’t need an exotic landscape, location or intricate program to learn in a studio.

9. Sounds easy syndrome (Degree of badness 10 out of 10)

Unfortunately, it is easy for students to think they are learning something when they are having a great time in a design studio. In fact the converse is probably true. When the student is challenged by a tutor or a design problem that is probably when they are actually learning something. By doing studios that are personally challenging an aspiring architect is able to learn design resilience, not just in the face of critical indifference or negative criticism, but also learn how to pursue a design proposal from start finish with all the various steps and missteps that this normally involves.

After all, once outside of architecture school, the aspiring architect must rely on their own reserves in the face of trenchant indifference to architecture.

10. Bogged down in research (Degree of badness 7 out of 10)

Of course, it’s not so great when you get into that “interesting project” studio and find there is no established brief and you spend so many weeks researching the project that you don’t get enough time to design it at the end. This is a common syndrome. Make sure that the tutors have a handle on the research component of the studio. A clear time schedule usually helps.

A few guidelines to help

Choosing a studio for a postgraduate architecture student is a personal one. It’s a personal decision. In choosing a studio students should firstly ask themselves the following questions:

What technical skills do I have and what skills do I still need? Which studio or studio leader help me develop those skills?
What am I yet to do at architecture school? What projects or types or scales of problem should I get experience in?
What do I need to learn about in relation to design processes? Do I have the confidence to experiment? Should I do a studio that allows me to do this? SHould I do something is right outside of my comfort zone?
What do I need to learn or in what kind of studio do I need to be in to grow in confidence as an aspiring architect?

Finally

You cannot rely on Architecture school to learn what you need to learn. Learning and and becoming an architect is kind of like any race in many respects. Preparation is important, practicing on different types of tracks, constantly refining your own training regime and above all taking responsibility for your own education is vital.

The best architecture school’s, like the one I teach in, offer an impressive range of diverse studios and teaching approaches. The best architects in the future will always be those architects who are self-taught. The ones who made the most of the diverse opportunities available to them at architecture school.

At the end of the day, the best and most employable graduates will be the ones who took the harder path at architecture school rather than the easier one.

The destruction of our 1960s and 1970s Architectural Heritage: The demise of Robin Boyd

July 12, 2017July 13, 2017Peter Raisbeck

Dr. Christine Phillips from RMIT and I recently presented a paper on Robin Boyd at SAHANZ 2017. SAHANZ is the 34th Annual Conference of the Society of Architectural Historians, Australia and New Zealand. This year it was around the theme of Quotation, Quotation: What Does History Have in Store for Architecture Today? For the conference we chose to focus on the Australian Architect Robin Boyd; over a series of previous SAHANZ papers we have sought to demythologise Boyd’s work by a close examination of the Boyd archive at the State Library of Victoria.

What follows are excerpts from our paper alongside a call to arms, as we increasingly find our architectural heritage from the 1960s and 1970s slowly being destroyed.

At the conference, we were able to duck out and visit two notable Boyd buildings. The Zoology Building at the Australian National University competed in 1961 and Churchill House on Northbourne Avenue, completed after Boyd’s death in 1971. The Zoology building is finely constructed and Spartan modernist building within it is a characteristic Boyd courtyard.Taken together both of these works indicate how Boyd himself changed over the tumultuous 1960s.

Zoology Building

The research for this paper adopted a framework focused on a discursive analysis of Boyd’s journal articles and books of the 1960s to his death in 1971. We chronologically mapped and matched his writings to his public building projects during and across this time period. The analysis revealed how Boyd’s works and writings from 1960-1967 depict a relatively consistent commitment to a universal modernism tempered through a regional lense. This is exemplified in the earlier Zoology building. On the other hand, Boyd’s later writings and works from 1968 through to his death in 1971, diverge into a less coherent and fragmented body of work. This is arguably evident in the later Churchill House.

Churchill House

This trajectory illustrates the degree to which Boyd’s Modernist Universalism changed over the course of the 1960s, his last works arguably expressing a crisis and bewilderment in Boyd’s own thoughts about modernist architecture. This also echoes the degree to which Modernist Universalism changed over the course of the 1960s as it entered into Post-Modernist tendencies.

In a number of later projects Boyd appears to produce conceptual designs which highlight the iconicity of quoted fragments rather than trying to produce an integrated concept. Neptune’s Fishbowl is a good example. It is a project that appears to indicate an abandonment of the principles espoused by Boyd earlier in the decade. This was an iconic geodesic dome reminiscent of Buckminster Fuller, but via it’s use of integrated advertising signage it also appears to allude to the iconicity of Venturi, Scott Brown’s Learning from Las Vegas published after Boyd’s death in 1972.

Churchill House designed in 1968 and 1969 also appears to show Boyd’s experimental bent and abandonment of an integrated and universal modernism. Again, this plays on a dichotomy of forms but there appears to be no effort to integrate or reconcile these forms together. Each façade has a different compositional treatment and the building is not a whole, like the earlier zoology building, but composed as series of fragments.

Churchill House Detail

The sloping glass box which sat on top of the original Churchill has been destroyed. It is only a matter of time before either of these fine buildings face demolition. As with the Sirius building in the Sydney and Kevin Borland’s Harold Holt Pool, not to mention the imminent destruction of Robin Hood Gardens in London, these buildings face mindless destruction.

This destruction is ironic given this is a time when the curiosities of Brutalism and other architectural moments and experiments exemplifying the 1960s and 1970s are rushing through our social media feeds. What we need to understand about these buildings is that they represent an era, if not the very last era, when architecture and architects still mattered. This heritage is now slowly being destroyed.

For those of you interested the French architectural historian Jean-Louis Cohen’s keynote at the Conference was delivered on 6 July 2017, introduced by Gevork Hartoonian. Its a great lecture and can be found here.

The Architect’s office: Gleaners and waste pickers in a scrapyard.

July 5, 2017Peter Raisbeck

In many respects the architect’s office resembles a scrap yard and the organisational pattern that emerges from the activities and material artefacts in the office is the idea that an architect is a gleaner. Or in other words, a kind of waste picker of knowledge. I will explain more about what I mean below. I came to this conclusion after conducting an ethnographic study of two small architect’s offices, sharing the same office space, in Melbourne and the full write up of the study was presented at the ARCOM conference in 2016 and can be found here.

In the Agnes Varda film The Gleaners and I (2000) a gleaner is a person who hunts for food, knick-knacks, and thrown away or discarded items. Similarly, as I observed this office I began to think that an architect is a person who collects together, or gleans, data and information from various sources in order to create and generate design knowledge.

Often the knowledge we architects salvage, find, assemble, test, reassemble and put together, or glean, is not valued by the other people we work with in the design supply chain. Design knowledge is often viewed as being of no use. For builders, developers, sometimes consultants, tradespeople or other workers all wanting to make a buck along supply chains the knowledge architects value is seen as being as. Design knowledge related to history, urban theory, sociological perspectives, spatiality, aesthetics and nuanced construction processes are is seen as being wasteful.

With the rise of digital software and BIM work practices the architect’s office is increasingly, and should be seen as, a knowledge intensive digital workplace. Dare, I say a KIDW. Digital technologies are blurring the line between physical and virtual work practices both within and outside of the firm. Internally, physical and virtual workflows are now to a degree interconnected. Externally, architects are now digitally connected to various stakeholders including clients, builders, consultants and sub-contractors.

Given this context, and from my perspective, the study was a quick way to explore the myth of seamless integration, between our digital models and the physical world, that the technology proponents and software vendors seem to push down our throats as architects all the time: all the time and all the time. I worry that it sometimes makes us architects feel a sense of self-loathing, because we are not “real” architects unless we have, and are, using and immersed in the latest and newest technologies.

As an ethnographic observer in the office, this initial thought of gleaning, was related to how the material artefacts in the office reminded me of the scrapyard and waste pickers I had met in Monterrey Mexico. We can think of the architect is a waste picker of construction and building knowledge for two reasons. Firstly, the material artefacts and tools in the office seeming organised across the space of the office in an extremely ad hoc fashion. Secondly, the office contained 12 substantial physical bins. This space was full of physical artefacts and in no way paperless or entirely digital.

The sources from which the architects glean information from are varied and diverse. An architect may glean information from the computer or from the Internet; the architect may also glean information from the digital models that are created in the computer. Hence much the information that is embedded and inscribed into the architect’s digital models in this office comes from a diverse and extensive range of sources including: personal knowledge as expressed through hand gestures and vocalization; information gathered and gleaned via communication devices, paper documents and all manner of physical materials including scale models, material samples, drawings, printed materials books and videotapes.

A predominant metaphor that appears to dominate the discursive practices and sale pitches of software vendors is that of the library. This in sharp contrast to the conceptual model observed here. That the broader milieu of knowledge used to design a building is a scrapyard and that architects using techniques of gleaning via performance narratives to create design knowledge. Architects fashion knowledge out of chaos.

However, BIM and digital software proponents presume that the projects or indeed the world is a library that can be categorised and that the design of project can be done by drawing or data mining this catalogue. This is a metaphor that certainly supports industrialised building and automated design processes. Many of the objects that are in BIM libraries are building components that have been manufactured by building component companies. The prevailing metaphors in used association with BIM and the Industry Foundation Classes all suggest a high degree of ordering and structure.

If the digital realm is one of structure and order then it is the architect who uses his skills of gleaning to bring order to this digital realm. If the architect’s office was to be understood as library then much of the material in the office would be catalogued and filed in particular formats. However, this is not often the case because too much of the materials and tools used to create design knowledge within the office are simply not catalogued. The library metaphor does not account for the way that material is bought together through narratives that may rely on the architects sketching, vocal communication or gestures. Data entry and information transfer via framing and the translation of things into common scales or media was a predominant activity in the office.

To reiterate, gleaning is an activity that includes materials (both physical and digital), gestures, rituals and suggest that architects create designs, and fashion design knowledge, out of a chaos data and information.

This process of gleaning in order to produce design knowledge also suggests that current models of knowledge management and models of IT management in architectural practices should be revised. These models need to account for the rituals performed in the office and the material culture contained within it. In other words, the super duper digital model of the architect’s office does not allow for the many rituals, narratives and inflections when architects design.

This suggests that more comprehensive and nuanced models of how architect’s offices generate design knowledge should be developed. No more dumb-ass technological utopias. Maybe then we can make better architecture with the technologies at hand and stop feeling ashamed about not being on the latest technology bandwagon.

I am just back from a short holiday and hoping to head to the SAHANZ conference over the next few days where I am presenting 2 co-authored papers. I would like to thank all of you who have supported and read the blog this past 18 months. So far, this year I have had as many visitors to this blog as I received for all of last year. I would encourage you to follow me here and at the other social media channels.

Two tribes: Why design teachers are second class citizens.

June 21, 2017June 25, 2017Peter Raisbeck

As universities have become global marketing machines in search of students the architecture schools within them, have I think, suffered. Architecture schools are now embedded in corporate entities with slick brands, advertising campaigns, and strategic statements and so-called KPIs. As a result, our architecture schools are now stratified by two classes, or tribes, of knowledge workers.

Tribe 1: Travelling in First Class

University rankings and brands are these days built on reputation usually linked to research outputs and some notion of reputation. There are various ranking regimes and national processes and metrics differ from country to country. The problem is those research outputs, in my country at least, are linked to traditional academic activities. Creative works or anything outside of this doesn’t get a look in. If these works do count they are certainly harder to count. Of course, writing a blog like this accounts for zilch or as we used to say in the bogan suburb: Jack Schitt. Moreover, I always suspect that anything cross-disciplinary, or from the sociological (especially ethnography), or the organisational sciences is viewed with suspicion by athe first tribe.

Brownie Points

In many architecture schools the research brownie points mostly go to the historical or technical research (especially around sustainability) and sometimes, but less so, architectural theory gets a look in. There are lots of architectural historians (myself included I guess) and technologists in architecture schools. In regards to the brownie points anything related to design is often put into the too hard basket.

As a result the people who do well in these university systems are not the architects or designers or even the design studio teachers, teaching in the sludge of the undergraduate studios , it is very often the tribe of “traditional” academics. These academics find things to study, they ask research questions which more often than not they answer; they produce papers and they arguably, and demonstrably, contribute to knowledge. Their outputs unlike the design outputs are highly valued and easily counted in university systems.

Don’t get me wrong, I love this tribe and many of the people in it.

A few people might read their papers including other architects. Sometimes members of this tribe will produce books about architects and these are very often great. We all read the books and revere the authors. But in my experience few of these people, because of the enormous effort needed to develop an academic career, can design or even teach in the design studios. Some don’t even want to teach in the studios even though they have devoted their lives to the discourse canons and traditions of architecture. Sadly, a few have been so consumed by this struggle that they have forgotten about architecture; for these, the pedantic practices of textual research is all that matters.

The Dunning-Kruger Effect

In the current university systems these are the people who have solid and enduring career paths. They are in many respects the model citizens who benefit from the institutions status and prestige. The good ones go up the food chain. Many of them made into first class when the earlier layers and regimes of metrics and KPIs were easier and softer; less brutal than they are now. It is probably too harsh for me to say that the Dunning Kruger Effect is at play here.

How to identify members of this tribe

So what do these people look like? There is no need to dehumanize them in the above paragraphs. So, what is this tribal first class actually like? I once made contribution to a short film on Boyd. I was a little overweight, stuttering and hardly able to make eye contact with the camera. Uncomfortably, spitting out the words about Boyd and his relationship to Japan with difficulty. The other academics, the first class tribal travellers, casually dressed, smooth talkers, patrician and relaxed as if they had just stepped out of the country club. Turtlenecks and Zegna jackets. It’s hilarious to see the comparison between myself and the others.

New Directions from Jacques Sheard on Vimeo.

Tribe 2: The Underclass

There is however, in the graduate architecture schools and universities across the world, another tribe. These are the people who actually teach in the undergrad and post-grad design studios, are a different class entirely . Mostly, they are sessional staff working on the run, part-timers, emerging practitioners or the handful of academics who can teach design and research. Even these academics are on the run as they juggle design teaching with the traditional research outputs. In many universities these academics are thrashed because they are usually pretty good at teaching and they are constantly faced with working against diminishing resources, pointless organisational makeovers, increasing class sizes and all too lax entry requirements. Some of these people academics are, or were, practitioners, large and small, and many continue to practice and design and build.

Incentives and the Research Quantum

But what this tribe designs and builds or gets published is not often counted in the research quantum. It doesn’t necessarily really help your academic career, or as a sessional practitioner, to produce creative or design research outputs. Firstly, no one in the upper class tribe really knows how to measure creative and design outputs. Worse still I fear that the upper class tribe don’t have an incentive to help the underclass get the Research Quantum points based on design or creative outputs. Why should they? That would undervalue their position. Much easier to cast aspersions on the value of design knowledge because it is hard to quantify and is not technical or textual based research (Even I have been guilty of doing this).

One contradiction

But as with the existence of all underclasses, in organisational contexts, there are contradictions.

One contradiction is that the first class tribe loves the second class tribe when when it comes to the impact metrics and surveys. In my country we have ERA, but this is an incredibly opaque process, which tries to capture impact. I have never been able to figure out the ERA process and how it works. I assume ERA is not that transparent. Conservative governments are always trying to put in place KPI measures of impact but they never quite get there.

These types of impact assessment exercises always help the university or school, but not the design orientated researcher on the ground.

Two tribes

The under class are too busy trying to juggle everything, families, practices, projects and research that doesn’t fit into the neat categories of the upper class tribe.

Every design teacher whether they be in architecture, graphic design, industrial design, landscape or urban design has the dilemma of how to make their research count. How do we convince the first tribe that running a studio, doing competitions, or doing speculative projects designs or making a building contributes to knowledge? Broader research is harder to sell. Even research around industry structure of the profession, architectural innovation, or sociological studies of architectural practice. If its applied research then it’s somehow flakey.

But the first tribe love it when the citizens of the second tribe win awards and accolades. In fact when that happens the first tribe goes nuts and use these to bolster whatever institutional brand they need to bolster.

Consider the architecture school you know best and ask yourself how these two tribes relate. In some schools these two tribes are at war and in others they tolerate each other in a dysfunctional fashion. In some schools one tribe dominates over the other and this leads to all sorts of problems and research imbalances. Some schools are single tribes.

Guess who is making the money?

Oh and I forgot to mention another contradiction: The crazy thing is that it is the design studio teachers who are making the money for the universities and this money subsidises the research of the first tribal class. So at the end of the day it’s not about the knowledge or the discipline of architecture it’s all about the money. Unless resolved by the universities, and profession itself, notions of civility will be abandoned as these two tribes battle it out for resources.

In great architecture schools, it is not just about the money, these two tribes collaborate, debate and have enough respect for each other by seeking to understand the other.

Q: Why do Architects need to be better communicators? A: Because everyone is ripping us Architects off.

June 21, 2017June 24, 2017Peter Raisbeck

A few years back I got together with another architect who had also been to business school. We had the idea of looking at how we might develop a course about that would help corporate strategists and line managers understand the nuances, ambiguities and worth of design thinking, innovation ecosystems, prototyping, creative destruction, design methodologies, iterative generation, developing idea portfolios and managing creative teams. We had even gone some way to developing a syllabus.

We trucked it around to the architecture schools. No one really cared. The local business schools were more interested but wanted to see architecture schools buy-in. The architecture schools did not really get it. Oddly enough the only people who seemed half interested were the Edward De Bono types.

Of course, these sorts of courses have now sprung up in quite a few places. But certainly not in architecture schools. Nor, have they emanated from anywhere near the domain of architecture. There are now design thinking courses and more courses, and consultancies all over. In fact everywhere. Except in architecture. Maybe because of these developments architects are slowly coming to the realisation that they have a unique way of viewing the world and this is valuable and can be of value to others. But coming to this realisation now could be too late.

Now all of this is not to say, or exalt our own egos, by saying that we were ahead of our time. But I did start to think about this failed project when I came across a recent article by Barbara Bryson at Design Intelligence entitled, the Future of Architects: Extinction or Irrelevance. This article appears to have gone viral across the usual social media platforms and it is worth quoting and analysis an excerpt:

Firstly, I strongly agree with her argument that:

Design thinking, the empathetic problem-solving methodology, grew, in part, out of our architectural problem-solving design methodologies. Education innovators are also taking lessons from architecture schools. Active learning, making spaces, and student engagement all have roots in the studio process.

But it’s probably not just in the education that our design expertise is being ripped off by others. Everyone is grabbing our best stuff. Maybe this is why, the next sentence struck a chord with me:

The rest of the world is learning from our processes, grabbing our best material, and moving on to success and relevance.

She then concludes that:

Architects, on the other hand, are impossibly stagnant in process and perspective, incredibly vulnerable to irrelevance and even extinction. I believe we have been on this road for decades, and we need to make some profound changes if we as architects are to have an impact on the built environment in the future and if we wish to be relevant.

Her argument is that architects have become too narrow in defending the territory of design. It’s still a hard task to convince architects that we need to expand our territory and domain of knowledge. Trying to convince other architects that a couple of architects with MBAs could teach the strategic line managers something was mostly greeted with blank looks and polite silence. Yet, Architects are better at design and know more about it than engineers, accountants, lawyers, and dare I say it, even software developers.

But, have architects really been that good at communicating why design thinking is important and how it may apply to other fields of knowledge? Have we really been able to develop our own research methodologies and methods in order to stake expanding territories of knowledge rather than shrinking ones? Are we really open to strategic collaboration and using our design intelligence to expand what we can do; and what we need to do in cities and urban settlements?

Unless architects move out of a defensive mode to a more generative and expansive domain in regards to our traditions of design thinking, it is possible that we will become irrelevant. Spitting the dummy, and having apoplexy every time: we perceive our design territories becoming somehow “impure”; or when we argue that simply designing something is somehow design research, without understanding what the contribution to architectural knowledge is; or we cling to an alpha-male and pedigreed star system, a star system that rewards the biggest egos; or worse still, the biggest spinmeisters; or we silently support a non-inclusive career path system; or an intern and work culture of chronic underpayment; or an industry association research infrastructure that is non-existent; or our unthinking love of new and emerging technologies. Any wonder we get cut out of so much stuff.

Don’t get me wrong I love architects and wouldn’t be in any other profession. But, we need to grow up as a profession and have a mature discourse. Otherwise, we are heading down the gurgler.

As one of my connections in my social media feed said: Barbara Bryson has “nailed it.” And you can read her full blog here.

The Rise of the Box Building: Bananas in Pajamas and BIM software.

June 14, 2017Peter Raisbeck

I fear that the latest digital software dictates our design decisions without architects really thinking that much about it. Instead of jumping on the new great new BIM technology bandwagon we need a different debate. I worry that some of the readers of this blog may be a bit tired of my seemingly old school rants about the hazards of digital technologies and design. But they need to be voiced, or written about, before it is too late. Architects need to resist architectural design and design knowledge becoming a sub-system of a commodified production process. Debating the merits of the prevalent software brands is critical to developing a resistance to anything that diminishes our field of knowledge.

B1 and B2: The predominant global software brands

Let’s call the two predominant software tools beloved by our profession B1 (Trade name of large white almost extinct animal) and B2 (Weird trade name that conjures up Cousin IT). How did our discourse become beholden to these global brands? In order to protect the guilty, I prefer not to name them by their trademarked and branded names. That would give their developers too much dignity. You can work out who I mean.

Like the Bananas in Pohjamas, also named B1 and B2, both are entities that are the result of the new digital media arena that architects work in. A landscape, dare I mention it, intertwined with the emerging digital-military complex. I wont dwell on this broader point, as today I would like to focus a bit on the hazards of B2.

Firstly, for those readers who need further prompting, B1 is a software brand with animal logo of an almost extinct mammal. In total, there are only about 20,000 of the white species of animal left. B1 allows you to design and create plastic and fluid curves and shapes. Arguably, and supposedly, B1 allows you to generate a design. The emphasis here being on the word generation.

The B2 database

In contrast B2 is different to B1 it is not a modelling tool. It is essentially a database. Yes, an actual database that allows you to do some 3D drawing. You can even do 4D in B2. Wow. Googly Moogly Batman: you can slowly watch the Banana being peeled in order to meet supply chain logistics and OH&S logics. All the information created by the B2 can then be used as the B2 created banana withers and dies. All very sustainable. Or so it is claimed.

B2 does have some add-ons which augment it. But in the rush for technical skills, and post graduation jobs, many students and indeed studios are being hampered by the lack of generative capability. Disturbingly, I am starting to see more and more design studios employing the B2 software tool as a generative and primary tool. No conceptual drawing, no generative diagrams, no annotated sketches, no exploration of options, no physical models. Just jump in and start the model.

CAD and BIM Monkey Magic

Who needs the fluff of design when you need the BIMMY B2 skills to get a job, to become a CAD BIM monkey eating B2 bananas. Who needs that when you can quickly whip up an orthogonal framework and put stuff into it. Yes, using B2 in a design studio you can quickly develop a convincing orthogonal structural frame; and a so-called system; and lo and behold fill your overall frames with some little boxes; or even slightly bigger boxes; Holey Moley Batman these could be rooms: you can then easily pretend you have designed and actual building. A building that is little more than an overall orthogonal frame filled in with boxes and frames and segments.

Pleasuring the reward centres

But B2, unlike B1, does not create a NURBS wonderland and it has a limited ability to manipulate individual polygons. The pleasure and experience of using B2 is quite limited. You can easily pull stuff out of the B2 database, as that is what it is made for. Coffee tables, dining tables, office tables, chairs, sofas and trees. Not to mention all sorts of windows and doors. It’s not about generative design: It’s about scrolling, clicking and selecting and then placing. Not so different to Ebay. Each time an architect undertakes this process in building a digital model, a reward pulse goes from your eyes once the database object is placed, to the reward centres of your brain. You then feel good using a database even though you have populated your building model with slop. You feel like you have achieved something. You feel as if the model you are working on is real.

Architectural Design requires thought and effort to conceive, generate, manipulate and then recast. It is an iterative process. Sometimes, two steps forward and one step back. The upshot is that with software tools like B2, limit this process, and encourage the least course of resistance to be followed in the design process. Architectural studios and graduate schools are quickly becoming populated with the results of an over use of B2. Our discipline is getting getting swamped with B2 boxes.

A guide to recognising the B2 designed Box

These projects are B2-like boxes, they are easily recognised, and the following guide should help you to spot them as well.

1. They are boxes: Usually with a few additions and subtractions. Addition, subtraction, orthogonal segmentation and division are about the limits of compositional nuance. Of course, you might find a few abberrant curves, But these will be outliers.

2. They are boxes: The box finishes at the lines of its border. Everything is contained within and there is no effort to either extend or consider how the design might extend into or be a part of a surrounding context. No need to think of architecture’s broader urban responsibilities. The bunny is definitely in the box.

3. They are boxes: and utilise a segmentation that is commensurate with the most advanced, but simplistic, prefabricated building techniques. It’s always a melange of concrete and aluminium panels. No need to think about constructional craft or detailing. Its flat packed world of timber and chipboard.

4. They are boxes: and whilst a section may have been cut through the model for display, it is at worst a section that shows an undifferentiated layer cake of walls and ceilings, at best a few gaps have been dropped out or erased to make some interior spaces. There is no crafting, shaping and contouring of sections.

5. They are boxes: The only light that illuminates these creations is the final oh-so-awful V-Ray renders. B2 software does not allow the architect to think about how light might enter or be manipulated in these toxic creations. I mean who cares. You can’t dial up or select actual light from the database.

6. They are boxes: They are dumb and inchoate boxes that have abandoned architectural theory and history except in the most superficial way. There are no cultural tones or thoughts in these creations. No authentic design research and experiment. They are lacking in irony and there is never any subversive hint or self-awareness in their own making. I hate it when these types of projects win prizes.

Architects decried the modernist box of the 1950s international style. But these new boxes are more insidious. Who needs a critical theory of architecture when you can appease your pleasure centres by using a cool database. Who needs theory when you can be part of the B2 Banana cult future.

A future that is a retrograde technological utopia devoid of architecture.

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