Swimming upstream: Repositioning authorship and expanding the agency of the architect

Author: Blair Satterfield and Marc Swackhamer (HouMinn Practice) Year: 2018 Source type: chapter (Ch. 11 of The Interior Architecture Reader, ed. Gregory Marinic, Routledge)

Raw file: raw/chapters/satterfield-swackhamer-2018-swimming-upstream.md

Summary

Practitioner-educators Blair Satterfield and Marc Swackhamer (HouMinn Practice) state interior architecture's twelfth disciplinary self-conception in the wiki's numbering: the process (agency) conception — design authority repositioned within the production stream rather than exercised on the finished object. Borrowing the upstream/midstream/downstream model of work-organization from the petroleum, software, biotech, metals, and pharmaceutical industries (with an explicit disclaimer of non-endorsement of their products or politics), the chapter argues that "designers can no longer afford to operate outside the flow of production": digital tools paired with digital fabrication have eroded industry's hold on construction, opening production territory the design disciplines had "long lost." Four practice models illustrate the repositioning — Jenny Sabin's shared collaborative authorship with bioengineers (upstream), Gehry Technologies's authoring of new tools (upstream), SHoP's authorship through labor management for external partners (downstream), and Neri Oxman's Silk Pavilion where design authority is handed to 6,500 silkworms as the construction team (midstream). An extended case study of the authors' own VarVac Wall (HouMinn) states the conception's core: "We did not actually design the wall itself. We designed a system for managing information and a new approach to material fabrication." The chapter's paradox: "By relinquishing control in an area of a project where they traditionally seek to maximize control, the designer can paradoxically seize greater control."

Key Claims

Designers are marginalized by remaining outside production: construction processes have "left them increasingly marginalized as participants in the conception of interiors, buildings, cities, and infrastructures." The remedy is "increased participation in the construction process, materials research, tool design, and atypical collaborative teams," which increases "formal variation" while making work "more sensitive to program and performance, while decreasing cost." See production-stream, authorship.
The production-stream model, borrowed from extractive and technological industries: the space of work is "a complete and inclusive continuum that has location and directional flow" — "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." Designers can locate practice at any point on this stream. See production-stream.
Digital tools are re-opening lost production territory: "Increased access to information and digital tools is expanding the reach of the designer, allowing entry into areas of production and fabrication long lost to other industries and professionals"; "the compact sizes and increasing ubiquity of these tools relentlessly erodes the defining hold industry has had on construction, and therefore design strategies, up to and through the twentieth century." See digital-fabrication, computational-design.
Software has changed its ontological status: "Software has grown into more than merely a tool of representation. It is increasingly paired with digital fabrication tools, a marriage of input and output that become generators of real physical form" — and these shifts "have opened new areas of discourse in design and changed how we define authorship." See computational-design, authorship.
Model 1, shared collaborative authorship (Jenny Sabin Studio): consultants from materials science, electrical/systems engineering, cellular biology and industry (Nike) co-author research "earlier in the process (upstream from where an architect typically operates)"; in "eSkin," cellular behavior is the model for "generating responsive architectural surfaces" that "actively answer to environmental input at a microscopic level" — "a project that behaves more like a living organism than a building." In "Branching Morphologies" (with Penn's Department of Pathology and Laboratory Medicine), rules gleaned from lung endothelial cell growth generate "a complex datascape of woven textile surfaces"; Sabin "serves less as a conventional designer and more as an investigative researcher." See interactive-architecture, authorship.
Model 2, authoring new tools (Gehry Technologies): born from Frank O. Gehry Architects' dissatisfaction with available tools; an early BIM adopter that "borrowed parametric software and digital fabrication tools from other industries and applied them to building design and delivery," leading to direct collaborations with aerospace and automotive engineers; the lesson — "when architects and designers grow dissatisfied with the tools available to them for project design, construction, and delivery, instead of compromising their work to fit into an antiquated system, they are swimming upstream to design the tools that help them design their work." See computational-design, parametricism.
Model 3, authorship through labor (SHoP Architects): the Virgin Atlantic Upper Class Clubhouse (JFK Terminal 4) is "conceived as a combinatory critique of security (visual surveillance) and privilege (conspicuous consumption)" and realized as "a complex undulating screen wall comprised of thousands of digitally designed and fabricated components." Construction "would have been prohibitive if skilled labor was required. The solution was to control assembly at the point of production": pieces "numbered and keyed for easy site assembly." SHoP is "specifically known for taking unprecedented control of construction and fabrication processes to carefully manage project output and costs" — "swimming downstream," developing tools "for external partners." See digital-fabrication, mass-customization.
Model 4, authorship through behavior (Neri Oxman / MIT Media Lab's Mediated Matter Group, Silk Pavilion): "they give design authority over to those doing the building" — live silkworms deployed over a prefabricated stretched net, an armature that is "first, a habitat for some 6,500 silkworms, and second, a space for human habitation," leveraging "the behavior of a natural system to ensure that the final design is unpredictable and serendipitous"; "the precise nature of the pavilion's appearance is left in the hands (or spinnerets) of the silkworms" — "swimming midstream' to conflate design and construction into a single process." See nonhumans, authorship.
The extended case, VarVac Wall (HouMinn Practice), states the authors' own position: "we resituate control, and consequently the hand of the designer, by developing first, a system, and second, a tool, which together generate the project's formal characteristics. We do not willfully design the project. Instead, its final appearance is contingent upon programmatic circumstance and material parameters" — the designers as "strategists" who "set the stage for the project to unfold as a consequence of dynamic variables." See authorship, production-stream.
The VarVac system: acoustic mapping of the University of Minnesota School of Architecture lobby wall (zones needing absorption vs. reflection/diffusion, with "gradient conditions along their boundaries") combined with a material logic — a variable vacuum-forming mold of cables stretched across a frame, where "the further apart the cables on a given mold, the more porous the panel; the closer together the cables, the less porous the panel"; hills over six inches are trimmed into hole-topped "volcano" forms. A "Grasshopper script that translates desired acoustical performance into a pattern of lines" positions the wires. See computational-design, digital-fabrication.
The economics of identicality: vacuum-formed polystyrene "is an excellent material if the goal is to produce multiple copies of an identical shape" (high upfront mold cost amortized across units), but "if units with any variation are desired, it is a very expensive material and process. Any modification to unit shape, even if minor, requires the fabrication of an entirely new mold." The variable mold challenges this inherent material limitation — variation becomes a parameter of one mold rather than a cost of many molds. See mass-customization.
The chapter's thesis on authorship: "a mapping system was combined with a material logic to produce the shape of the wall… The powerful combination of those two influences was more responsible for the design of the wall than we were as the project's actual designers." Design authority is resituated — "By working upstream, midstream, or downstream from the design of the project itself, the designer is able to more fundamentally, precisely, and responsibly influence the character of the projects themselves." See authorship.
The relinquish-control paradox: "By relinquishing control in an area of a project where they traditionally seek to maximize control, the designer can paradoxically seize greater control" — the repositioning is undertaken "not to impact their work less, but, ironically, to impact it more."
Production re-localized: the repositioning "considers moving the point of production from the factory (consolidated and centralized) to the jobsite (distributed and situated), and returning control of production to the architect." Contrast self-build, which returns production to the inhabitant.
The cost is disciplinary risk: "It tasks designers with stepping outside of their typical disciplinary constraints to learn new skills and to collaboratively embrace the expertise of those from other disciplines."
The expansion analogy: "If we thought of our practices like the internet sales giant Amazon thinks of its business, what opportunities might arise? What are the corollaries in interior architectural practice to Amazon's expansion into the film, television, music, or home delivery industries?" The closing imperative: "designers might want to swim upstream in order to more meaningfully influence the path of the water downstream."
Efficacy claim: the resulting project (VarVac Wall) is "more precisely responsive to its surroundings and markedly less expensive than it would have been using traditional construction techniques."

Connections

Concepts: authorship · production-stream · mass-customization · digital-fabrication · computational-design · interior-architecture · interactive-architecture · fabrication · nonhumans · parametricism · digital-architecture · self-build (contrast: production returned to the inhabitant vs. to the architect) Authors: Blair Satterfield & Marc Swackhamer · Gregory Marinic (ed.) · Frank Gehry (Gehry Technologies as the tool-authorship exemplar) Debates: interior-design-vs-architecture — Position O: the production-stream claim (agency manufactured at the level of production, not legitimation) · power-and-space — Position K: SHoP's clubhouse as a designed critique of security (visual surveillance) and privilege (conspicuous consumption) Related source notes: Manack — Fabricating interiority — the sibling technological conception: Manack's fabricating conception manufactures the interior's distinction through digital fabrication's products; Satterfield & Swackhamer's process conception manufactures the designer's agency through digital fabrication's means (systems, tools, molds); both concede production dependence and convert it · Webb — Inside out — the two practitioner chapters frame interior architecture by operation rather than object (Webb: the boundary; Satterfield & Swackhamer: the stream) · Campos — Territory and inhabitation — convergent redefinition of the discipline's object as process ("processes of occupation rather than … artifacts of a specific location" vs. systems and tools rather than walls) · Taylor — Shape shifting — eSkin's environmentally responsive surfaces join Taylor's dynamic interior's exemplars, but authored upstream with biologists rather than engineered by the designer · Qureshi — Spatial therapies — Qureshi's "technological innovation through fabrication and material" tactic given a practice-models elaboration · Baldwin — The Sterility of Perfection + The Rule Breaker's Success — the hand-over parallel: Baldwin relinquishes the finished room to the client ("Now go ahead and mess it up"), HouMinn relinquishes the finished form to material parameters and program — two designed cessions of authorial control · Brott — Modernity's Opiate — Gehry appears here in an unfamiliar register: not the star-architect of iconic form (the wiki's dominant Gehry) but the principal whose office authored new production tools

Direct Quotes

Page numbers are not available in the chapter text; quotes are located by paragraph content.

"Designers can no longer afford to operate outside the flow of production." (opening)

"This chapter highlights examples of interior architectural practice models and projects built with custom tools that challenge conventional fabrication methods. Through increased participation in the construction process, materials research, tool design, and atypical collaborative teams, the designers discussed herein have increased formal variation to produce work that is more sensitive to program and performance, while decreasing cost." (opening)

"It offers tactics like the production of custom adaptable tools and processes (applied to a variety of material practices) to transform and aggregate excessively standardized building materials at varying scales from architectural interiors to infrastructure." (opening, on Swimming Upstream)

"It considers moving the point of production from the factory (consolidated and centralized) to the jobsite (distributed and situated), and returning control of production to the architect." (opening)

"each of these industries defines the space of work as a complete and inclusive continuum that has location and directional flow. In each of the examples offered, the space of work is referred to as a stream with distinct locations defined as upstream, midstream, and downstream." (on the borrowed model)

"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." (the stream's definitions)

"Increased access to information and digital tools is expanding the reach of the designer, allowing entry into areas of production and fabrication long lost to other industries and professionals." (on the expanding space of work)

"Software has grown into more than merely a tool of representation. It is increasingly paired with digital fabrication tools, a marriage of input and output that become generators of real physical form." (on software)

"The compact sizes and increasing ubiquity of these tools relentlessly erodes the defining hold industry has had on construction, and therefore design strategies, up to and through the twentieth century." (on digital tools)

"These shifts have opened new areas of discourse in design and changed how we define authorship." (pivot to authorship)

"By developing the design through bioengineering research and collaboratively authoring that research with consultants earlier in the process (upstream from where an architect typically operates), Sabin fundamentally challenges the status quo of conventional design practice." (on Sabin / eSkin)

"These novel systems actively answer to environmental input at a microscopic level. The result is a project that behaves more like a living organism than a building." (on eSkin)

"In the project, Sabin serves less as a conventional designer and more as an investigative researcher, by identifying rules and patterns from another field of study from which she borrows to generate architectural form." (on Branching Morphologies)

"In order to truly push a boundary, the tools used to generate ideas, forms, and assemblies need to evolve as well." (on tool authorship)

"The lesson gleaned here is that, increasingly, when architects and designers grow dissatisfied with the tools available to them for project design, construction, and delivery, instead of compromising their work to fit into an antiquated system, they are swimming upstream to design the tools that help them design their work." (on Gehry Technologies)

"The project is conceived as a combinatory critique of security (visual surveillance) and privilege (conspicuous consumption)." (on SHoP's Virgin Atlantic Upper Class Clubhouse)

"The construction of the project would have been prohibitive if skilled labor was required. The solution was to control assembly at the point of production. The logics of digital fabrication allowed the designers to create idiosyncratic pieces that were numbered and keyed for easy site assembly." (on SHoP)

"Where, in the case of Gehry Technologies, designers look outward to develop new tools for internal design processes (swimming upstream), 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. In both cases, they are operating outside conventional territories of their discipline to create new spaces." (the upstream/downstream contrast)

"In the Silk Pavilion, Neri Oxman and MIT Media Lab's Mediated Matter Group do more than manage construction; they give design authority over to those doing the building." (on the Silk Pavilion)

"By creating an armature that is first, a habitat for some 6,500 silkworms, and second, a space for human habitation, the team leverages the behavior of a natural system to ensure that the final design is unpredictable and serendipitous." (on the Silk Pavilion)

"The pre-constructed armature anticipates behavioral tendencies, but cannot, with any degree of certainty, predict final appearance." (on behavioral authorship)

"In this case the designers are 'swimming midstream' to conflate design and construction into a single process." (on the Silk Pavilion)

"In VarVac Wall (HouMinn Practice), we resituate control, and consequently the hand of the designer, by developing first, a system, and second, a tool, which together generate the project's formal characteristics. We do not willfully design the project. Instead, its final appearance is contingent upon programmatic circumstance and material parameters." (on VarVac Wall)

"As the designers (or perhaps more accurately, the strategists), we set the stage for the project to unfold as a consequence of dynamic variables. The resulting project is more precisely responsive to its surroundings and markedly less expensive than it would have been using traditional construction techniques." (on VarVac Wall)

"It is an excellent material if the goal is to produce multiple copies of an identical shape. This is because the initial mold presents a relatively high upfront cost, but the cost per unit decreases as more copies are produced. However, if units with any variation are desired, it is a very expensive material and process. Any modification to unit shape, even if minor, requires the fabrication of an entirely new mold. We grew interested in challenging this inherent material limitation." (on vacuum-formed polystyrene)

"The mold is relatively simple and inexpensive, especially when compared to traditional molds. It is comprised of a large rectangular frame the size of the finished panel, and a series of cables stretched across it. The quantity, position, and density of those cables are variable." (on the variable vacuum-forming mold)

"the further apart the cables on a given mold, the more porous the panel; the closer together the cables, the less porous the panel" (the material logic)

"The location of the wires is derived from a Grasshopper script that translates desired acoustical performance into a pattern of lines." (Figure 11.2 caption)

"In short, a mapping system was combined with a material logic to produce the shape of the wall. We did not actually design the wall itself. We designed a system for managing information and a new approach to material fabrication. The powerful combination of those two influences was more responsible for the design of the wall than we were as the project's actual designers." (the thesis on authorship)

"By working upstream, midstream, or downstream from the design of the project itself, the designer is able to more fundamentally, precisely, and responsibly influence the character of the projects themselves." (on resituated authority)

"VarVac Wall and the other examples outlined earlier serve as case studies in how spatial designers might begin to resituate design authority, not to impact their work less, but, ironically, to impact it more." (the paradox)

"By relinquishing control in an area of a project where they traditionally seek to maximize control, the designer can paradoxically seize greater control. This is a risky proposition. It tasks designers with stepping outside of their typical disciplinary constraints to learn new skills and to collaboratively embrace the expertise of those from other disciplines." (the paradox and its cost)

"If we thought of our practices like the internet sales giant Amazon thinks of its business, what opportunities might arise? What are the corollaries in interior architectural practice to Amazon's expansion into the film, television, music, or home delivery industries?" (the expansion analogy)

"designers might want to swim upstream in order to more meaningfully influence the path of the water downstream." (closing)

Open Questions

Does the process conception still produce interiors? The chapter's own examples run from an acoustic lobby wall to an airport lounge to infrastructure — is "interior architectural practice" here a discipline or a business model any spatial design field could adopt?
"We did not actually design the wall itself" — is this the dissolution of authorship or its relocation to the meta-level? The strategist who authors the authoring system (the mold, the script, the mapping) seems to have more control, not less: is relinquished control always really delegated control (cf. authorship)?
The Silk Pavilion gives authority to nonhuman builders whose behavior is only statistically predictable ("anticipates behavioral tendencies, but cannot… predict final appearance"). Is unpredictability here a design value (serendipity) or an admitted loss of control marketed as intent?
The SHoP clubhouse is "conceived as a combinatory critique of security (visual surveillance) and privilege (conspicuous consumption)" — yet it is a first-class lounge. Can an interior critique the power relations that constitute its own program, or does the critique remain rhetorical?
The Amazon analogy: what would the corollaries of platform expansion be for interior architectural practice — and does the analogy, drawn from one of the most centralized corporations in history, sit comfortably with the chapter's distributed-production thesis (jobsite over factory)?
Is "swimming upstream" structurally available to small practices, or does tool authorship (Gehry Technologies) presuppose the surpluses of star practice — the very concentration the wiki's star-architecture cluster critiques?