Q & A with Ivy Harrison of Metropolis Magazine: People Power
As an architect, you must get pleasure out of designing and building. What do you think the architect can learn from this idea of not filling the void. Are you talking about observing the way people use space we can better build in the future when we are not in economic crisis?
Yes, being aware of how urban dwellers use empty spaces can offer us clues to the shaping of spaces in the city. I guess this was implicit in the research since I spent a large portion of my time observing, listening and talking to the individuals and groups who have appropriated the empty spaces for their own uses.
The Zero project, however, aspires more. The restraint from building is only one of the options. There are several examples in the website where emptiness, whether designed or found can add richness to the architecture, intensify our experience of the everyday, reconnect our senses to environment and becomes a transition space for marginalized groups.
The 10 attitudes I offered at the end are intended to re-frame the relationship between buildings, people and the city in a post economic bubble age. For example, ‘Make Do’ can be perceived to be relinquishing the opportunity to design. It is a misconception because 'Making Do' is a highly creative and ingenious tactic to adapt and re-purpose materials, objects and spaces with little to zero cost.
Similarly, the manner in which the local residents reclaimed an empty, abandoned residential development in the Min Buri district of Thailand, and transformed it into a vibrant place relied primarily on the cultivation of diverse ecologies of social, economic and spatial relationships. This is fascinating for me as an architect because we have been educated in schools to think within the confines of what is visible and the isolated building, instead of the network of invisible effects that these ecologies have on the city. Architecture is, perhaps a material vessel of these effects, which can be shaped to contain, channel or amplify them.
What becomes the role of the architect here- it seems he is removed from the equation. How can he participate without building?
The architect will continue to be an important equation in the design of a building. What I hope to do is expand the conventional role of an architect. For example, through my experience working on a community-based project in Beppu, Japan, I discovered that the violent act of demolishing an empty building, which had existed for years and retained strong memories for the community could be very painful. Therefore, my collaborator, Kenta Kishi decided to search for a more thoughtful, gentle and redemptive act of de-signing, which the community could participate in the process, and perhaps even create new skills/jobs in the economically depressed city. In this case, participatory unbuilding can potentially become a new opportunity for the architect.
Moreover, if we follow the line of thought that design is making visible the hidden networks of local effects from the multiple ecologies in the city, then the result may not necessarily be a building.
When I inquired about laundry facility at a small Osaka hotel I stayed in recently, I was told to walk half a block, take an elevator up to the third floor of a private apartment building and use the coin operated laundry facility there. I guess there must be some kind of an agreement between the hotel and the private apartment managements. The level of trust and openness to share impressed me. It is a brilliant idea in how we can share facilities in the city instead of duplicating or commissioning another independent building to house more of the same. I feel this is a highly possible future scenario in an age of scarcity and ecological adversity. To make this a reality, however, demands a mind shift in the way we live now, and a willingness to in re-examine our accepted notions of comfort, convenience, private ownership, etc.
You talk a lot about the rules and regulations against these informal activities. Do you think there is any case when these rules are justified.
Many of the examples in the website do have some form of simple rules that shape and govern their continuing existences. The rules are negotiated, with lots of give and take in the process before coming to some kind of an agreement. Some are tacit, while others more explicit; such as where you can deploy so that it does not obstruct the shop front, how one needs to mindful of others to maintain a peaceful co-existence and what one needs to return as a favor to continue inhabiting these empty spaces. The rules are continuously re-negotiated, adjusted and accommodated as circumstances change. They arise out of interpersonal exchanges and are reciprocal. Such a city, for me, is alive and sociable. My concern is with rules and regulations that are top-down, driven by fear and lack of tolerance, repressive, advocate homogeneity of behaviors and stifles initiatives- rules and regulations that produce what Richard Sennett called ‘purified cities’ that reject messiness, conflicts, diversity and complexities.
http://www.metropolismag.com/pov/tag/thomas-kong
Zero in Core77: The Value of Empty Spaces
http://www.core77.com/blog/object_culture/the_value_of_empty_spaces_thomas_kongs_zero_project__17695.asp
Zero in Reclaim Land: Vibrant Places in Empty Spaces
http://reclaimland.sg/rl/?p=1470
As an architect, you must get pleasure out of designing and building. What do you think the architect can learn from this idea of not filling the void. Are you talking about observing the way people use space we can better build in the future when we are not in economic crisis?
Yes, being aware of how urban dwellers use empty spaces can offer us clues to the shaping of spaces in the city. I guess this was implicit in the research since I spent a large portion of my time observing, listening and talking to the individuals and groups who have appropriated the empty spaces for their own uses.
The Zero project, however, aspires more. The restraint from building is only one of the options. There are several examples in the website where emptiness, whether designed or found can add richness to the architecture, intensify our experience of the everyday, reconnect our senses to environment and becomes a transition space for marginalized groups.
The 10 attitudes I offered at the end are intended to re-frame the relationship between buildings, people and the city in a post economic bubble age. For example, ‘Make Do’ can be perceived to be relinquishing the opportunity to design. It is a misconception because 'Making Do' is a highly creative and ingenious tactic to adapt and re-purpose materials, objects and spaces with little to zero cost.
Similarly, the manner in which the local residents reclaimed an empty, abandoned residential development in the Min Buri district of Thailand, and transformed it into a vibrant place relied primarily on the cultivation of diverse ecologies of social, economic and spatial relationships. This is fascinating for me as an architect because we have been educated in schools to think within the confines of what is visible and the isolated building, instead of the network of invisible effects that these ecologies have on the city. Architecture is, perhaps a material vessel of these effects, which can be shaped to contain, channel or amplify them.
What becomes the role of the architect here- it seems he is removed from the equation. How can he participate without building?
The architect will continue to be an important equation in the design of a building. What I hope to do is expand the conventional role of an architect. For example, through my experience working on a community-based project in Beppu, Japan, I discovered that the violent act of demolishing an empty building, which had existed for years and retained strong memories for the community could be very painful. Therefore, my collaborator, Kenta Kishi decided to search for a more thoughtful, gentle and redemptive act of de-signing, which the community could participate in the process, and perhaps even create new skills/jobs in the economically depressed city. In this case, participatory unbuilding can potentially become a new opportunity for the architect.
Moreover, if we follow the line of thought that design is making visible the hidden networks of local effects from the multiple ecologies in the city, then the result may not necessarily be a building.
When I inquired about laundry facility at a small Osaka hotel I stayed in recently, I was told to walk half a block, take an elevator up to the third floor of a private apartment building and use the coin operated laundry facility there. I guess there must be some kind of an agreement between the hotel and the private apartment managements. The level of trust and openness to share impressed me. It is a brilliant idea in how we can share facilities in the city instead of duplicating or commissioning another independent building to house more of the same. I feel this is a highly possible future scenario in an age of scarcity and ecological adversity. To make this a reality, however, demands a mind shift in the way we live now, and a willingness to in re-examine our accepted notions of comfort, convenience, private ownership, etc.
You talk a lot about the rules and regulations against these informal activities. Do you think there is any case when these rules are justified.
Many of the examples in the website do have some form of simple rules that shape and govern their continuing existences. The rules are negotiated, with lots of give and take in the process before coming to some kind of an agreement. Some are tacit, while others more explicit; such as where you can deploy so that it does not obstruct the shop front, how one needs to mindful of others to maintain a peaceful co-existence and what one needs to return as a favor to continue inhabiting these empty spaces. The rules are continuously re-negotiated, adjusted and accommodated as circumstances change. They arise out of interpersonal exchanges and are reciprocal. Such a city, for me, is alive and sociable. My concern is with rules and regulations that are top-down, driven by fear and lack of tolerance, repressive, advocate homogeneity of behaviors and stifles initiatives- rules and regulations that produce what Richard Sennett called ‘purified cities’ that reject messiness, conflicts, diversity and complexities.
http://www.metropolismag.com/pov/tag/thomas-kong
Zero in Core77: The Value of Empty Spaces
http://www.core77.com/blog/object_culture/the_value_of_empty_spaces_thomas_kongs_zero_project__17695.asp
Zero in Reclaim Land: Vibrant Places in Empty Spaces
http://reclaimland.sg/rl/?p=1470