Recently, I’ve had some fascinating conversations about the relationship between politics, digital media, the built environment, and how we perceive reality in the ‘post-truth’ era. One particularly striking observation was how architecture and science both exist as a kind of black box from the outside; even when the result is a tangible object, how we interpret, perceive, or believe it depends on a given narrative. Storytelling becomes a critical part of how we understand or envision complex ideas and objects outside our immediate realm of experience—the ‘fiction’ of science and technology.
With that in mind, scroll down for a fascinating excerpt from an interview with science fiction writer Kim Stanley Robinson by Matthew Allen. Full text is online.
Although technical and logistical difficulties besieged widespread event coverage this past week, Phillip Denny reports on Max Kuo’s “Architecture of the Post-Digital Frenemy” lecture at Syracuse. We also have a lovely letter to the editor and architecture news, as well as our usual list of events.
For more on the topic of narrating futurity, community, and sustainability, here are some highlights from the week ahead:
Monday 4/5 V. Mitch McEwen’s “Dysbeing” lecture at Princeton SoA; Tuesday 4/6 Black Radical Space: The Black School and Bryan C. Lee Jr in Conversation at Harvard GSD; Wednesday 4/7 Rebecca Choi’s talk “White Man’s Got a God Complex” at Harvard GSD; Thursday 4/8 Mariam Kamara on How we narrate our yesterday determines how we imagine the future of architecture at MIT; Friday 4/9 The Land We Would Like to Be with Gordon Brent Brochu-Ingram at Cornell AAP.
Of special note: Saturday 4/10 Talking Race + Architecture: A Teach-In with Irene Cheng, Charles L. Davis II, Justin Garrett Moore, Jerome W Haferd, Mabel O. Wilson, Quilian Riano hosted by R+MAP, DMU, and AIA NY.
#DesignForAtl is an AAPI and design-based fundraiser organized by Jenny Nguyen of Hello Human and Arati Rao of Tantuvi with help from Jean Lee of Ladies and Gentlemen Studio. There were over 80 designers who contributed objects for this fundraiser / design giveaway with all proceeds going to Advancing Justice Atlanta who are directing financial aid to the families affected by the Atlanta shootings. Advancing Justice is still accepting donations; please consider giving what you can. Thanks to Esther Choi for bringing this to our attention.
Finally, NYRA and a83 are working hard on risograph-printing No. 19. Copies will be mailed shortly. If you need a subscription—for yourself or your frenemy—sign up here. We are very excited to share this issue with you. Stay tuned for more announcements in the coming days, and thanks for reading!
—Carolyn Bailey
Interview with Kim Stanley Robinson
“In something as integral to civilization as architecture is, doesn’t that mean city design and therefore human ecology and biosphere management? I’m thinking of bio-architecture: building your buildings out of giant genetically modified sequoia trees or seashells. The weird interfaces that are going to look like science fiction stories—this idea that you “architect” space itself.
I also think of this culture’s idea of charismatic megafauna…. It’s a model where you personify a field by an individual in it—so you have Louis Sullivan or Frank Lloyd Wright or Frank Gehry. There’s only room in the cultural imaginary for one or two per generation. Rem Koolhaas is one, I think. Why they get picked is semi-random, but also there’s a reason. One thing I’ve noticed—and maybe Koolhaas is the best example of it —is that these charismatic figures all turn out to be good writers and good storytellers. They’ve projected a vision in stories that strikes people as new.”
DISPATCHES
3/30—KEEP YOUR FRENEMIES CLOSER
How does an architect find their way in this dizzying world whose constituent elements run the gamut from cows wearing virtual reality headsets to armed and angry mobs of far-right trolls radicalized on Twitter? Architect MAX KUO, who gave a provocative lecture titled “Architecture of the Post-Digital Frenemy” on Tuesday, March 30 as part of Syracuse’s spring lecture series, casually described the present’s disturbing incoherence as the “weird eclecticism of everyday life,” but this understates both the gravity of our predicament and the brilliance of Kuo’s argument. Let me explain.
The post-digital refers to the moment after digital technologies have become ubiquitous infrastructure; in 2021, the world—effectively and literally—is digital. For Kuo, this moment’s significance for architecture follows on its radical transformation of the sociological imaginary. Seen in this light, the advent of the digital is a grossly contradictory development: even as the digital world becomes more responsive and interconnected, it paradoxically ushers in new degrees of mass alienation. Kuo’s exceedingly original response is to reimagine design’s worldly disposition in explicitly social terms: architecture in the role of friend or foe, either predictable or not. Buildings as friendly façades and enemy edifices and everything in between. (More on that in a minute.) It’s a sincere attempt to explain what the hell is happening, and also a clever effort to chart a way of working in the interstices of the post-digital matrix.
“Infinite, crowded, and plural” is how Kuo described the current shape of architectural practice, but it’s clear that compelling design remains possible nonetheless. The architect’s work with ALLTHATISSOLID, the firm that he co-founded in 2008, is similarly diverse, including a “creaturely” cabinet with elastic handles and borderline zoomorphic legs, and a mountain lodge that is in fact a curated assemblage of gable-roofed buildings. Both projects resist categorical criticism in the old sense; neither is exactly reducible to traditional frameworks of style or design genres alone. In a word, it’s complicated.
Anyone can tell you there’s a vast middle ground between friends and enemies. The “frenemy,” Kuo’s title character, dwells in this purgatorial zone. The frenemy is a modern invention and a profoundly ambivalent figure. It is a hybrid of friend and enemy, an object of affection and rivalry; in short, a mode of disingenuous being. Here, the term is used to refer to buildings, if not to architects themselves. Modeling theory after human psychology always poses challenges, but even a figure as undecidable as the frenemy raises some urgent questions: is frenemyship a condition to embrace, or one to swear off? Can we choose sincerity over cynicism? I hope so – after all, you can never trust your frenemies.
—Phillip Denny
IN THE NEWS
… in Solidarity
The graduate student worker strike at Columbia University—which has resulted in the postponement or cancellation of most recent GSAPP events—is on pause as of April 3 as the union enters mediation with the university. Student workers will resume their duties while negotiations are ongoing. You can read more about the issues at stake here and here, plus a bonus quote from one of Columbia’s lawyers.
… in Climate Change
The Swedish Space Corporation canceled a test flight that was part of the controversial Stratospheric Controlled Perturbation Experiment (ScoPEx), a geo-engineering research group based at Harvard University. Using a high-altitude scientific balloon, the launch intended to investigate the possibility of disrupting the Earth’s stratosphere in order to deflect sunlight and “reduce ozone loss.”
… in the Metaverse
Artist Krista Kim, who recently made headlines with the first virtual house to be sold as a non-fungible token (NFT) for 288 Ether (500k), told the Toronto Star last week that Mars House “will outlive any condo…It will live forever.” Amid concerns about the environmental impact of NFTs and digital currencies—including claims that Ethereum “uses about 31 terawatt-hours (TWh) of electricity a year, about as much as the whole of Nigeria”—the question of eternity raises the stakes for calculating the lifetime carbon footprint for architecture involving blockchain.
… in Books
The newly launched Open Architecture and Urban Studies initiative from MIT Press allows open access to classic and previously out-of-print texts from Galen Kranz, Constantinos Doxiadis, Martha Pollak, Peter Rowe, and Mark Jarzombek, among others. Many of these recently digitized versions include new forwards.
LETTER TO THE EDITOR
I subscribed to the NYRA in late 2020, for your issue edited by Matthew Allen feat. Kim Stanley Robinson, whose Mars trilogy entirely defined the trajectory of my childhood. Those books made me want to be a rocket engineer, so much so that as I write this I have sectional aerospike engine models printing on the Prusa in my COVID 'office.'
Only a couple of days ago, I received an offer of acceptance to pursue my Masters in Architecture. Not to be too shmaltzy, but reading through the NYRA sometimes feels like tracing my finger along past and future geodesics describing my passage through a physical (and socio-political) spacetime.
It's a lovely feeling.
Virtual regards,
Daniel Lewycky
Have a hot take? Read something you liked or disagreed with? Write a letter to the editor. Letters run weekly in SKYLINE.
THE WEEK AHEAD
Monday, April 5
V. Mitch McEwen, “Dysbeing” 6:00pm, Princeton University SoA
Book Talk – Radical Architecture of the Future with Beatrice Galilee, Andrés Jaque, Nelly Ben Hayoun-Stépanian, Indy Johar, Toshiko Mori 6:00pm, AIA New York
Jaskiron Dhillon and Macarena Gomez-Barras, “On Land & Relation” 6:00pm, RISD
Wright and New York: The Making of America’s Architect with Anthony Alofsin 6:00pm, Skyscraper Museum
In Conversation with Norman Foster, Vishaan Chakrabarti, John King 9:00pm EST/6:00pm PT, UC Berkeley College of Environmental Design
Tuesday, April 6
Deanna Van Buren, Matthew Countryman, Yodit Mesfin Johnson, Jessica Letaw, Anya Sirota, “Designing Justice + Designing Spaces” 11:30am, University of Michigan Taubman College
Black Radical Space: The Black School and Bryan C. Lee Jr in Conversation 7:30pm, Harvard University GSD
Wednesday, April 7
Rebecca Choi, “White Man’s Got a God Complex” 12:00pm, Harvard University GSD
Baumer Conversations with Germane Barnes, Shawhin Roudbari 5:30pm, Ohio State University Knowlton SoA
Kent Bloomer, “The Language of Ornament: Rhythm, Movement, and the Cosmos” 6:30pm, Yale University SoA
Thursday, April 8
Matija Strlič, “Good pollution: Smells in museums” 1:00pm, Columbia University GSAPP
Mariam Kamara, “How we narrate our yesterday determines how we imagine the future of architecture” 6:00pm, MIT
Kate Orff 6:30pm, Yale University SoA
CetraRuddy Design Studio in Housing Discussion Event 5:30pm, City College of New York Spitzer SoA
OMA New York (Jason Long): Sharing is Daring: POST Houston, Post Civic 7:00pm, Rice Design Alliance
Friday, April 9
The Launch of the Student Visa Review (with Digital Exhibition) 9:00am, RISD and Canadian Center for Architecture (CCA)
Harvard Indigenous Design Collective: Native Housing Round Table with Chris Cornelius, Joseph Kunkel, Johnpaul Jones, Selina Martinez, Tamarah Begay, Theodore "Ted" Jojola 12:pm, Harvard University GSD
American Roundtable: Brownsville Undercurrents, Texas 12:00pm, The Architectural League NY
Gordon Brent Brochu-Ingram, “The Land We Would Like to Be: Renewing Biodiversity Conservation Planning Strategies as Part of Joint Management with First Nations Around the Northern Salish Sea” 12:15pm, Cornell University AAP
Saturday, April 10
Talking Race + Architecture: A Teach-In with Irene Cheng, Charles L. Davis II, Justin Garrett Moore, Jerome W Haferd, Mabel O. Wilson, Quilian Riano 1:00pm, Race and Modern Architecture Project (R+MAP), Dark Matter University (DMU), and AIA New York
Please contact us if you would like to write up any of the above events for SKYLINE: editor@nyra.nyc. See an example here. Write-ups always start out as notes & quotes.
Five desk editors run NYRA: Alex Klimoski, Phillip Denny, Carolyn Bailey, Samuel Medina & Nicolas Kemper (who also serves as the Publisher). They rotate duties each month — the current SKYLINE editor is Carolyn Bailey, and the Managing Editor is Alex Klimoski.
If you want to pitch us an article or ask us a question, write us at: editor@nyra.nyc
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