The importance of relationships in producing things

As well as thinking about how we conceive space, it must be said that relationships are the enablers of construction.
How a designer constructs and maintains a relationship in a project has a direct affect on the outcome, both as an occupation and an artifact. This might then suggest the role of communication in the design process, not as a technical tool, but a relationship management tool. The early design crit, the briefing sessions, the consultation with stakeholders has something to do with developing connections between people. They are environments to found relationships and develop them.
In this way the design process can be seen as a resource or fuel for production of a relationship, and thence one sees the potential for community building, or simply team building.
There is a need to better understand what is the real value of a team atmosphere beyond implicit expectations, however it is generally accepted that what produces a thing by many people is the conception of a team, whether it be antagonistic or agonistic, connections between participating parts will assemble a thing both through their own assemblage point, or tunnel of perception, and through the environment in which they connect, or culture.
So if we are assuming the role of the social in making things:
What is social?

My conception of the city is always personal

Jane Jacobs and Christopher Alexander are miles apart really. Alexander reminds us that we shouldn't conceptualise the city as a tree or hierarchical simplified city. Jacobs shares her love of her neighbourhood specifically and personally. Do they just have a difference in personality?
A 'here' concept of the city cannot ever be separated from personality, no matter the exchange. A city is a social construct as is any conversation about a city or a description.
It's like relationships of trust that underpin the success and failure of a project, they key determining factor is a working relationship.
These personal-social aspects will and are ever-present. Alexander can't see past his own rally and academic problematisation, he disciplines. Jacobs on the other hand lets go and speaks from self.
It's messy and contingent

Communication and the capital space of silence

A response to notes on Lauren Brown's Listening and silence in built environment, Architecture + Philosophy RMIT 27 May 2010


Is sound a prerequisite connection plain for individuals? Is silence the zero 0 space in the flicker of life? It seems to me that it is often the realm of sound in which we interact, but as a space which has an common asymptote between people. We can only get so close to the maximum, once the ceiling of sound is broken there is only noise and effect. I refer of course to a conversation between individuals, to make decisions to create thought and projects together. There needs to be restraint, and the most extreme restraint is silence itself - utter opportunity, utter potential, utter space for utterance... I need some  peace and quiet. The noise of the city and its streets is vitality, but we often need the respite of our room, our partners, our earphones to recuperate from the interaction with others. Is this exhaustion the predecessor of antipathy, apotheosis, non participation? Communication seems the commonly-understood ground for exchange. It is obvious. So then, how do we regulate this space, should it be regulated? Is this the role of cultural politeness, /and politics?

What is here studio?

here studio

 

diversity

public

citizenry

local

everyday

humility

strategic

criticality

honesty

process

immersed

action-orientated

values-driven

communicative

initiative / permeability

brave (rarely what is easy)

 

 

we are less interested in solutions than we are processes, that is, we are interested in how to get things done and how valuable the how can be

we become part of the ecology, we do ethnographic practice

we are doing all we can to make our ecology better

we do get things done

we think and do big and small

 


fields of gathering (stages of action)

-       events

o   we stage happenings, make happenings happen

o   we speak things, show things, practice things, exhibit things

o   we bring people together into public conversation

-       places

o   we encourage locations of occupation,

o   we gather local things

o   we mobilize embodied energy, retrofit, reactivate existing public wealth

o   we research processes of making places

o   we work to deeply connect our locations to networks

o   we curate places with space to…

-       research

o   we undertake academic research in a field of literature and practices

o   we do and be case studies

o   we reflect

o   we prototype, iterate with narrative, make mistakes, follow tangents

-       education

o   we communicate our learnings openly

o   we teach studios

o   we publish

o   we facilitate and share – pass on knowledge and skills in our interactions

 

Michelle and I wrote this a few months ago, 2:10, 25 November 2010,

...with kind acknowledgement of all those that have contributed love to 'here' studio the past year!

oh, and happy 2011

draft 1.1?

X

Ammon Beyerle
Director, 'here' studio

Social Capital - the chaotic term

Some reading:

"
Fine’s eleven arguments concerning Social Capital

  1. Social capital ranges across all forms of human interaction and its applications have been “astonishingly diverse”;
  2. Social capital as a term is parasitical on social theory and draws the critical component out of the concepts appropriated by those wedded to the term in their writings;
  3. The term itself is an oxymoron, presuming that there can be a capital that is not social;
  4. The economy and underlying economic theory are unexamined in the context of social capital;
  5. The term offers a quick fix for economists to “explain” such things as differences in economic performance;
  6. Social capital is used so frequently it has moved from being used as a residual explanatory factor to become seen as a leading explanatory factor (see the section in IFLL on “Three capitals: a framework for understanding);
  7. The policy perspective induced by social capital offers the opportunity to improve the status quo without challenging it;
  8. Social capital decontextualises analyses of social situations and loses other components such as class and community resulting in a very fluid set of concepts employed in the literature;
  9. Social capital has been both a symptom of and exacerbates the problems identified in the integrity and funding of research in recent years;
  10. The literature on social capital has not addressed key criticisms of the term itself or its use in research;
  11. As a result of the above, the term has become definitionally chaotic.  see pp2-5
"

Redefining Public Value

Nigel's (Learner-Generated Contexts Research Group ) blog post above brings forward quite a few critical thinkings regarding what I'm seeing as our current- blind wave to social capital.

Defining ideas for me include the specific role of managerialism in the redefinition of public- as a perfectly contradictory state, the redefinition of value as a managerial device, that the contemporary managerial turn on social capital fundamentalises it into an overly simplistic line item or hoop, and that public involvement is more than just investment (or social investment by that matter)- it is about social relationships, copresencing, experiential desire and everyday satisfaction.

I'd like to read more about this in a less assertive fashion, especially when it comes to discussing leadership and action ("you've gotta crack some eggs"), or similarly, how Cameron's UK Big Society sits in a global/local complex. I figure that the switch we are feeling uneasy about is that the redefinition of value means ideological barriers of global-local (or other tropes) might too need redefinition lest they are simply old tools. ??

Waleed Aly on the Future of Conservatism in Australia - Politics - Big Ideas - ABC TV

via abc.net.au

This was place of one of the latest little shifts in thinking. I watched this last week and found more meaning to ideological conservatism, which is often the barrier to design or action. Watching the last 20 minutes and Q+A made me realise just how often this barrier crops up when one is trying to create something, do something good, participate in new ways or paradigms of working, or just communicate.
Both sides of politics want to save the world, or have a good society/public domain, one by changing it, experiment and dialogue, the other by holding things back from developing too fast, too haphazard or untested/considered.
Enlightening article despite his very binary-like reasoning.

resident objections and the urban growth boundary planning

Michelle James WELOVEPT words@50 Architects for Peace (tonight):

There needs to be more avenues for meaningful participation in the planning process. There is only a process for objections.
Often residents will object because they have no other means of participation. They will often object because they don't have any knowledge of the project, they will object because they have no other way to engage.