Design Ecologies - Towards a Transdisciplinary Practice, Jun 2022

This Design Ecologies issue, ‘Towards a Transdisciplinary Practice’, will focus on how practices consider what is being included and what is not in projects and allow for a reductive design approach and outcome. To consider design as an ecology is a practice fundamentally concerned with understanding the abundance and distribution of all elements involved, which bears on virtually every application of architecture. Can we develop architectures that are intrinsically ecological and transdisciplinary by design through evidence-based practices? Design practices could be considered a mereological condition where the focus of projects is unpacking part-hood relations to the whole, and the relation of the part to the part within the whole. Can we design practices that are whole, inclusive, non-reductive and implicit?

Can we surpass the representational nature of architecture drawing to consider and discuss the agency of architectural drawing in process and result? Over the course of three years from 2019, a cohort of architect–drafters, architect–theoreticians and a curator are meeting every six months in a reflective exchange to discuss the production and exhibition of a collection of drawings and drawing-related artefacts. The varying cast of the bi-annual symposia are participants from the United States, Canada and Europe including Michael Webb, Perry Kulper, Laura Allen, Bryan Cantley, Nat Chard, Mark Dorrian, Arnaud Hendrickx, William Menking, Shaun Murray, Anthony Morey, Mark Smout, Neil Spiller, Natalija (Nada) Subotincic, Mark West, Michael Young and Riet Eeckhout. Surpassing the representational nature of architecture drawing, a group of architects and I consider and discuss the agency of architectural drawing in process and result. Drawing architecture implies materializing an architecture within the drawing, where it can be sought, found and experienced. This refers to an action in the present progressive, an action by the author in the process of bringing into the world through drawing – architectural research through drawing. The artefacts, as drawings, that we are looking at are an end in themselves and not a preparatory means to build an environment as in how drawings are used in architectural practices for buildings. These symposia aim to reveal and come closer to the individual agency of each practice within the drawn discipline of architecture, to establish a way in which we can show this agency in an Exhibition at Montreal Design Centre in August–December 2022. The bi-annual symposium days were structured by round-table conversations and discussions that take place based on drawings or drawing-related artefacts brought in by the participants. In ‘Drawing architecture’ Session 1 in New York, we had an in-depth introduction of each participant’s practice with Michael Webb, Perry Kulper, Bryan Cantley, Nat Chard, Arnaud Hendrickx, William Menking, Shaun Murray, Anthony Morey, Neil Spiller, Natalija (Nada) Subotincic, Mark West, Michael Young and Riet Eeckhout. Participants expanded on their bodies of work, tools and the nature of the drawing practice. For ‘Drawing architecture’ Session 2 in London, we sharpened the conversation between the participants by: (1) establishing an angle from which we talk through the artefact(s) (drawing or drawing practice-related artefact), each participant from the standpoint of their practice. Angle: Talking through the drawing or drawing practice-related artefact, can you expand on the agency of the drawing (practice) within the discipline of architecture? Questions that might be helpful: (a) How does the drawing work as a tool of investigation (technique of leveraging knowledge). (b) Where and what is the architecture within the resulting drawing/artefact? When is the architecture in the process? Is there architecture within the drawing? (2) By placing the drawing or artefact central during the symposium talk and organize a group conversation around it. It might be that you bring one or more current drawings/artefacts enabling you to expand on the specific drawing practice investigation. The artefact might be resolved or unresolved, finished, ongoing or just starting and in the thick of things. The presence of the drawing allows the group to come closer to and understand the agency of the artefact itself, supported by talking us through and unpacking the artefact.

The manner in which we, as humans, define landscape informs the way in which we manage it. This is the fundamental assumption of this article, where I argue that in order to create a truly transdisciplinary practice, we must first create an alternative framework in which to characterize place. The reasons for doing so are founded in response to formalized systems of characterization, which perpetuate single voice assessments through their need to objectify the subjective. Vernacular is flattened into a series of photographs, cultural references confined to lists and tables. The tactile and inhabited place is lost, and design decisions made in response to such characterizations perpetuate static images of place. There is simply no transdisciplinary practice without a transdisciplinary approach to characterization. Therefore, I hope to suggest a new model of defining a place based on the pillars of multiplicity and diversity, one that confronts the problematic frameworks found today, and whose interpretative approach reads character at the point at which it interacts with culture. The model will focus on two concepts: the assemblage and wayfaring. The assemblage establishes a new pluralistic framework through which place can maintain its multiplicity, and through which we can build an equitable relationship between multiple diverse characterizations. Wayfaring consequently relates to how we interpret the assemblage, or how we approach the ambiguous task of finding character in spaces between multiple realities. My explanations of the methodology remain a starting point for further investigation, and in highlighting the research I have compiled to date, and identifying its basic principles, I wish to leave room for the reader find their own story. As such, I will explore the model through an applied study sited at the Alhambra, Granada.

This article presents fragments of an ongoing research enquiry into the opportunities for reconstructing practice as a workshop for potential architecture (Oulipo). The projects presented develop from a completed Ph.D. thesis and explore models for architecture when conceived as an unstable, diverse and fluctuating activity through the theoretical work of my businesses as a-project and a-plot. The work is a constant architectural enquiry that seeks to challenge the persistence of reductive models of the discipline producing singular objects and associated constructions of legitimacy. The research instead reflects on practising as an active and ongoing enquiry for collective reinterpretations, references and opportunities between disciplines and environments – operating as speculative and projective essays that acknowledge the instabilities, contradictions and uncertainties inherent in designing anything. I continue to explore the potential in shifting the emphasis of architectural practice away from a reductive and deterministic model of production (with associated crises of value) and towards a dynamic, flexible and irresolute agency for practice that is reflective and involving. Models for architecture that are continuously responsive and embedded in the fluctuating environment of potential production (a broad interpretation of site as an evolving situation for practice and an ecology of diverse branching opportunities, contradictions and potential resolutions). The research develops these ideas for practice with a constant questioning and reframing of enquiry – an involving essay for practice – that branches across and through divergent material and referential frames and recognizes the inherent transdisciplinarity of any activity. The projects in this article explore the implications of a multiple situation derived from archetypical architectural conditions, originating narratives of architecture and theoretical rules where the apparent confidence that architecture constructs is revealed as a dynamic, unstable and involving translation. Through this process the language of the discipline is exposed – not fixed or certain, but shifting, blending, branching and interacting with a fluctuating network of situations and contexts. Drawing through and within (as digital and analogue mixtures) the complex interrelationships within the discipline of an architectural ecology reveals potential projections for architecture. Projections that recognize the contingent instabilities, elisions, modulations and episodic cadences of practice as a constant unfolding essay for practising. This article therefore argues for a dynamic agency for practice as a diverse, multiple and unstable activity that is constantly reframed, reconstructed and projected within shifting environments and contingent situations. It develops models for practice that are enabling, irresolute and speculative situations rather than fixed products – inhabiting partial, incomplete, transitory and implicit strategies for practising. This might expose architecture, dismantle the artificial constructions of reductive production and project possibilities for a more integrated and multiple workshop for potential architecture?

As architecture and the built environment develops beyond static vernacular traditions to a state where buildings and intelligent environments become more advanced within augmented and virtual realities, this article considers how architecture can expand into a transformative dimension beyond the physical reality of architectural space. My practice utilizes cognitive science in combination with art installation and audio-visual (AV) interventions to create immersive environments.