Creating cities the Philip K. Dick way
I went to the OMA Progress exhibition at the Barbican which was a great insight into, in my opinion, the best contemporary architecture practice going. Having been tutored by the director of OMA France during my study period in Copenhagen, their way of viewing the city and it’s complex urbanity has been ingrained into my DNA as a designer of urban space. I came back from Copenhagen a different designer, I am scornful of what I once was and returned to my education establishment in the UK with a new vigour and ethos of how to approach urban design. Unfortunately they didn’t get it, and it is for that reason I find it hard to be proud of the work I completed under their tutorage. This quote from science fiction writer Philip K. Dick, which opens the exhibition, underpins the way OMA sees the city.
“It is my job to create universes, as the basis of one novel after another. And I have to build them in such a way that they do not fall about two days later. Or at least that is what my editors hope. However, I will reveal a secret to you: I like to build universes which do fall apart. I like to see them come unglued, and I like to see how the characters in the novels cope with this problem. I have a secret love of chaos. There should be more of it. Do not believe – and I am dead serious when I say this – do not assume that order and stability are always good, in a society or a universe. The old, the ossified, must always give way to new life and the birth of new things. Before the new things can be born the old must perish. This is a dangerous realization, because it tells us that we must eventually part with much of what is familiar to us. And that hurts. But that is part of the script of life. Unless we can psychologically accommodate change, we ourselves begin to die, inwardly. What I am saying is that objects, customs, habits, and ways of life must perish so that authentic human being can live. And it is the authentic human being who matters most, the viable, elastic organism which can bounce back, absorb, and deal with the new.”
- Philip K. Dick, ‘How to build a universe that doesn’t fall apart two days later’, 1978
Tape installation : Une Toiles
Within the urban environment there are places we forget to look. Often they are hidden from view, invisible by day and protected in their solitude.
The city is full of forgotten treasures and these imaginative webs, use everyday sticky tape to animate the places where only night walkers visit.
Unusual and fragile like a dream, it is a fleeting trace of what will soon disappear leaving only a memory. It’s these temporary installations that make the urban setting a truly dynamic setting.
Steve Jobs died prematurely today, a true visionary who shaped the landscape of innovative and intuitive technology forever. This piece from the Architects’ Journal underlines why he was the best and how we as Landscape Architects should first and foremost be innovative designers delivering an as of yet unknown urbanism to the masses.
Apple co-founder gave us what we want, before we knew we wanted it – a skill the best architects share
‘People don’t know what they want until you show it to them,’ Steve Jobs once said. The innovative Apple co-founder died today at 56.
When he said it, Jobs was explaining why he didn’t use focus groups for product development, preferring to go it alone.
The ability to intuit what people want is something Jobs did well, inventing aesthetically-beautiful personal computers, iPods and iPhones before we knew we needed them.
It’s a skill shared by the very best architects. Discerning what a client really wants, even when they can’t express it. Delivering a design that intuits their future needs, as well as the present ones. Putting in that little bit extra, to exceed their expectations.
My father worked in the automotive industry, and he used to call that little bit extra ‘a surprise and delight’. This referred to the reaction you got as a user when you found the perfect slot in your car for your sunglasses, or a cup holder just where you wanted it, just when you needed it.
Intuiting a client’s needs takes a certain measure of ego – the confidence to put forward something that hasn’t been requested, to presume that ‘architect knows best’.
It’s a confidence that the current education system and culture of architectural practice tries its best to undermine, with dismissive design critiques and tutors who are all too often verbally abusive. Not to mention procurement panels, design frameworks, community engagement, etc.
Jobs’ lesson for architects and architectural students is to hold your nerve. If you can intuit what your client needs, design in ‘a surprise and delight’. If you get it right, success is certain. If you don’t get it right, each failure shortens the learning curve. Nothing risked, nothing gained.
(CHRISTINE MURRAY: Architects’ Journal)
