Production Stream

Definition

The production stream is the model by which Blair Satterfield and Marc Swackhamer define the expanding space of design work: the space of work imagined "as a complete and inclusive continuum that has location and directional flow," borrowed from the petroleum, software, biotech, metals, and pharmaceutical industries (with an explicit disclaimer of non-endorsement). The stream has three locations: "Upstream identifies the search for and extraction of a resource. Midstream refers to the storage and distribution of raw materials. Downstream is where a given resource is refined and converted into a product." Conventional design practice occupies a single, narrow segment — conceiving objects whose production belongs to others — which has left designers "increasingly marginalized as participants in the conception of interiors, buildings, cities, and infrastructures."

The concept's programmatic force is repositioning: the designer can relocate practice along the stream to recapture agency over construction. Three practice-model positions are charted. Swimming upstream means authoring the tools and materials research from which design flows (Gehry Technologies, founded when Gehry's office grew "dissatisfied with the tools available" and began "to design the tools that help them design their work"; Sabin's bioengineering collaborations sited "upstream from where an architect typically operates"). Swimming midstream means conflating design and construction into a single process (Oxman's Silk Pavilion, where authority is delegated to 6,500 silkworms as the construction team). Swimming downstream means authoring tools for external partners — "in the case of SHoP, designers look inward to develop new tools for external partners (swimming downstream) in order to help them realize projects more efficiently and cost-effectively" (the Virgin Atlantic Clubhouse's components "numbered and keyed for easy site assembly"). The stream also has a geography: production can move "from the factory (consolidated and centralized) to the jobsite (distributed and situated)."

The concept's governing paradox: "By relinquishing control in an area of a project where they traditionally seek to maximize control, the designer can paradoxically seize greater control" — repositioning is undertaken "not to impact their work less, but, ironically, to impact it more." And its horizon is expansion: "designers might want to swim upstream in order to more meaningfully influence the path of the water downstream" — with Amazon's expansion into adjacent industries offered as the business-model analogy ("What are the corollaries in interior architectural practice to Amazon's expansion into the film, television, music, or home delivery industries?").

Key Thinkers

• Blair Satterfield & Marc Swackhamer — the concept's authors: the stream model, the three practice positions, and VarVac Wall as the built demonstration (system + tool as the designers' real products).
• Jenny Sabin — the upstream practitioner: shared collaborative authorship with biologists and engineers (eSkin, Branching Morphologies); the designer "serves less as a conventional designer and more as an investigative researcher" (not yet paged — see log).
• Frank O. Gehry / Gehry Technologies — the tool-author: an early BIM adopter that "borrowed parametric software and digital fabrication tools from other industries" and grew into a consultancy (acquired by Trimble, 2014) (not yet paged — see log).
• SHoP Architects — the downstream practitioner: control of "assembly at the point of production" for unskilled site labor; tools built "for external partners" (not yet paged — see log).
• Neri Oxman / MIT Media Lab Mediated Matter Group — the midstream practitioner: design-and-construction conflated in the Silk Pavilion's behavioral silkworm crew (not yet paged — see log).

Related Concepts

• Authorship — the concept's stake: repositioning "changed how we define authorship"; the designer as "strategist" whose system and tool are "more responsible for the design of the wall than we were."
• Digital Fabrication — the enabling technology: "a marriage of input and output that become generators of real physical form," eroding "the defining hold industry has had on construction."
• Mass Customization — the economic logic the stream exploits: VarVac's variable mold converts variation from a per-unit cost into a parameter of one mold; SHoP's keyed parts make thousands of unique components buildable.
• Computational Design — the upstream instrument: the Grasshopper script that "translates desired acoustical performance into a pattern of lines"; parametric software borrowed from aerospace and automotive.
• Interior Architecture — the discipline the stream re-arms: the Reader chapter gives interior architecture its process (agency) conception — practice models "built with custom tools that challenge conventional fabrication methods."
• Self-Build — the contrasting re-localization of production: where the Segal method returns production to the inhabitant, the stream model returns it "to the architect" — jobsite control claimed by the designer, not the user.
• Interactive Architecture — the upstream-borrowed science: Sabin's eSkin makes "responsive architectural surfaces" from cellular behavior — responsiveness authored through biological collaboration rather than sensor engineering.
• Prefab Interior — the production geography's counter-case: where the stream model moves production "from the factory (consolidated and centralized) to the jobsite (distributed and situated)," Schneiderman's prefab interior moves it the other way — "Off-site production was specifically chosen because building the structural furniture in a controlled environment permits a higher level of craft and efficiency." The stream's two poles occupied by opposite programs.

Source Support

Sources in the wiki that discuss this concept:

• Swimming upstream (Satterfield & Swackhamer 2018) — the source of the concept: the stream definitions, the four practice models (Sabin, Gehry Technologies, SHoP, Silk Pavilion), VarVac Wall, the relinquish-control paradox, and the Amazon analogy.
• Inside the prefab house (Schneiderman 2018) — the factory-sited counter-case: the Furniture House's off-site production "specifically chosen because building the structural furniture in a controlled environment permits a higher level of craft and efficiency," with its claimed benefits running the stream's own cost logic — "reduced site construction time, reduced leftover materials that require removal from the site, and a reduced amount of labor"; and Ban's collaboration with a furniture manufacturer as production placed inside the furniture industry's stream rather than construction's. Where HouMinn moves production to the jobsite, Schneiderman's prefab register shows the factory as the interior's craft site. See prefab-interior, structural-furniture.
• Technologies: The spatial agency of digital praxis (Carraher 2018) — the tool-knowledge register: even designers working through "layers of filters introduced… by the use of software programs, coding languages, graphic user interfaces, and tooling" have gained "a more direct connection to the production process"; Kolarevic's thesis that "knowing the production capabilities and availability of particular digitally driven fabrication equipment enables architects to design specifically for the capabilities of those machines" (with its limit — tool knowledge "potentially limiting… through their predetermined tools and techniques"); and the open-source maker community "act[ing] outside of the traditional structures of these practices to challenge the defaults of rectilinear form constructed using sheet goods and dimensional lumber" — stream-repositioning as spatial agency rather than as business strategy. See spatial-agency, digital-fabrication.

Open Questions

• Is the stream model descriptive or prescriptive — do all designers face the same choice of position, or does tool authorship (Gehry Technologies) presuppose the surpluses of star practice?
• Does repositioning along the stream change what design is, or only where it sits? The chapter claims both ("changed how we define authorship" and greater efficacy) — but if the system and tool "were more responsible for the design of the wall than we were," has the designer become an author or a platform manager?
• The Amazon analogy comes from one of history's most centralized corporations, yet the chapter's production geography is distributed ("the jobsite… distributed and situated"). Can a business model of consolidation ground a practice model of distribution?
• Does the stream have a politics? The industries it borrows from are disclaimed ("in no way an endorsement of their products, politics, or global practices") — but can the model be detached from the extractive logic of its source?