Disobedience vs. Resourcefulness
At one end-of-semester presentation, a student categorized types of one particular object with temporary vs. permanent on the vertical axis and typical use vs. atypical use on the horizontal. I thought it would have been more objective it the horizontal axis was “used for the purpose for which it was designed” vs. “used for a purpose for which it was not designed” but, on the whole, it wasn’t a bad way of categorizing things whether objects, spaces or buildings. Things of course have other properties such as material and cost, but all of them have a lifespan and a purpose for which they are designed.
Of course, the meanings of temporary and permanent are relative to the thing in question but quantifying them will create graded divisions. The horizontal axis is a bit more difficult but, at the very least, there are the three divisions of things being used for the purpose for which they were designed, things being used for some purpose other than that, and things that are a bit of both.
Whatever the scales, we’ll have a grid that will probably only be partially populated. Clusters of observations might tell us something of the ’shape’ of our thing in those two dimensions, but unfilled gaps in the framework might be equally informative and prompt us to search for what kind of thing would fill it. Something like this happened with Mendeleev’s Periodic Table that organized far more information than was actually known at the time.
In the top left corner of our far less ambitious table are temporary objects used for the purpose for which they are designed. Single-use plastics are a good example. We don’t like these. In the bottom left corner, the Philip Starck Juicy Salif lemon squeezer (US$54.05 from Alessi) is an example of a long-life single use object. At the top right corner are long-life things used for some purpose for which they weren’t designed. We like these, but there’s much resistance in a world where either physical or aesthetic obsolesce has held sway for decades and where the design and knowledge of it are both forms of temporary gratification. If somebody wants you to buy a product specially designed to do only one thing but you insist on using something not designed for that specific purpose but does the same job just as well, then they might think you are being disobedient when you are just being resourceful and not wasteful. We’re encouraged to think anything designed for only one purpose must be better and this is one reason why we have such a glut of objects and also why there is such competition for our attention to choose one over another of many things designed to do the same thing. Think about how many types of bookends or doorstops there must be in the world. Mobile phone covers. How many times does a house need to be redesigned, whether it’s art or just for you at your current (and foreseeable) stage in life? We’re led to believe that buildings that tightly fit some rigidly defined program is a good thing when it only sustains architectural (and aesthetic) churn.
As ever, it’s tricky with buildings. Is the need filled by the clever repurposing of a building a real need? the representation of a need? or the generation of one out of air? In the case of the two repurposing in the above diagram, one could say that the thing with longevity isn’t the building but the property, and clients (and their architects) always abhor a value void. The disused gas station has longevity in terms of the value of its enclosed space even if the materials used to extract that value don’t. But let’s not talk about the purpose of design today.
It’s not always about disobedience. Sometimes you don’t have any choice to make do when something designed specially for that purpose simply isn’t available. Instead, you use something else at hand that does the job more or less the same. Lacaton & Vassal were impressed by how people in Niger could make impromptu repairs to a car engine using only – I don’t remember – a toothbrush and some pantyhose. Australians are infamous for being able to open a beer bottle with practically anything at hand and some people make a party trick of doing it with their teeth. There are many ways to open a bottle of wine without using a corkscrew, but these are improvisations and besides, it’s not as if bottle openers and corkscrews are rare or expensive. Alessi aren’t the only culprits.
Many years ago, I had no CAD program or drawing tools or access to them but was asked to make a proposal for re-cladding a building and adding two rooftop residential units. It’s not easy to use Photoshop as a drawing too but it can be done. I’m not sure what resolution I used to draw this but I think the railings on the balconies were probably one pixel wide. The results weren’t bad and these drawings made it into my first folio, but I’ve ever used Photoshop as a drawing tool again.
Not too long ago, and just to see if it could be done, I used a CAD program I’m familiar with, to draw shapes for laser cutting as successive sectional cuts through a building – much like a CAT scan. The ultimate object was to assemble the model layer by layer in the manner of 3D printing. There was no pressing need for me to draw vertical sections one on top of the other as if they were floor plans with a very small floor-to-floor height but, if ever I need to use plywood to fake 3D printing, then I know how to do it. The giveaway won’t be the plywood but the fact the model is built up sideways – from back to front in my test. The reason for this is that too many untethered pieces are created if the model is built up bottom to top using horizontal layers. The real point was to see if something with a particular use designed into it could be used in a way for which it wasn’t designed. The world doesn’t seem to be moving in this direction.
At one university I used to teach at, a certain kind of student was proud of using specialized applications according to the task at hand. A site plan for a simple villa might have plans drawn in Autocad, colored in Illustrator, textures added in 3D Studio Max and objects added in Photoshop and so on. I’ve seen as many as six. It’s interesting that all these tools designed and marketed as increasing productivity have the effect of reducing it when more than one of them is or has to be used. Worse, incompatibilities aside, every time a file is exported increases the possibility of errors or corruption, while extensive revisions mean starting the process again. Implementing changes becomes many times more time consuming than it needs to be. Once again, I’m feeling that applications are again being compartmentalized, with image data being swapped because one package might do better lighting effects, another better texture mapping, etc. Meanwhile, with increasing software/application/package specialization, it becomes increasingly difficult to use any one of them for a purpose for which it wasn’t designed. One reason why Photoshop is a core application is that all it does is change the colour of pixels. Every release brings new ways to isolate and select pixels for color change, and expertise lies in creative ways of using those ways. I suppose Photoshop could be used as a drawing tool in the same way as David Hockney uses an iPad, but Photoshop is never going to be a drafting tool. (“Hey Granddad – what’s drafting?”) Photoshop’s new AI capabilities do make it better at second-guessing what it is you want to do.
A couple of months back I tried using a text-to-(architectural)image application as a tool for drawing an architectural idea I had in my head. As a control, these weren’t my own ideas but known buildings. I had to have this as a condition, otherwise I’d have no idea if “AI” was anticipating my thoughts until I agreed that whatever it came up with was what I was wanting. I suspect this is how it’s being used. The groundwork for this way of working has been decades in the making. It all began when people began asking architects produce “options”.
We’re now well acquainted with Large Language Models second-guessing what it is we want to write. Predictive text input is much better than it used to be. I’m using WordPress to write this and it does catch most of my typos. I’ve noticed now that, if I want to insert an image, one of my choices is to insert an AI-generated image. Here goes.
I wasn’t expecting that and now feel a bit stupid for not expecting that. I did however expect to supply prompts but choosing what image I’d like and what “style” (whatever that means) I’d like it to be are the difficult bits. A choice of image based on everything I’ve written above would be far more useful and, going by the image at right, above (and that just appeared in the sidebar today), it seems that WordPress is on the case. Sadly and without me ever having used “AI Assistant”, it seems I’ve already reached my free requests limit.
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