Continuing a series of studios that investigate Universal Architecture, this studio will engage with questions of technology, structure and tectonics in relation to the city and current economic realities´ impact on architecture. We will discuss in what way structure is a carrier of content, addressing questions of construction and serial production within the contemporary city through the design of a research facility for immaterial labor.

Structure and content: Literalism and the Bare Frame

The studio will begin with the examination of precedents, studying buildings from late 19th Century in Chicago. During 1850-1910 the city of Chicago experienced a radical transformation in its city fabric and economic reality of architectural production. Following advances in the development of steel production in the rail industry and the advent of the elevator, the big Chicago fire brought the necessity of a rapid reconstruction that was embraced by the open minded matter-of-factness of the Chicago entrepreneur and subsequently the architects. This gave way to new forms of practices in the United States and architectural offices grew rapidly from the first professionals in the 1820´s to 110 employees in the 1890´s.

In his essay “The Chicago Frame” Colin Rowe describes the Chicago structural steel frame construction as a non-ideological application of its contemporary economic and material reality assembled into a carte blanche for life to unfold, where uniqueness is replaced by reproducibility. As opposed to the European avant-garde of the early 20th century, where the structural frame was heavily connected with ideology, the Chicago frame was not imbued with meaning, it was the product of a structural revolution without a stable theoretical support. The Chicago Frame was austere and the Chicago architects “frankly accepted the conditions imposed by the speculator”.

Taking this two opposing ways of understanding structure as a point of departure, we will expand this discussion by investigating a direct and literal architecture: an architecture of matter-of-fact who´s aims and agency is clear and stated. Literalism, as Mark Linder describes in his book “Nothing Less Than Literal: Architecture After Minimalism”, originated as a discourse in art but influenced by architecture, which later had architectural implications and manifestations in works such as John Hejduk´s Wall House.

Later, in his essay “Generic City” (1995), Rem Koolhaas reveals the impact the sedated homogeneity of the 21st Century city, generating a “hallucination of the normal”. This normality, understood as the absence of the special, can be likened to a literal condition where there is no more than the thing itself.

Further Alejandro Zaera-Polo connects the work of Lacaton Vassal to literalism and cheapness in his essay “Cheapness: No Frills and Bare Life” of 2010:

“Of all contemporary architects exploring the idea of value as a projectual argument, Lacatón & Vassal comes closest to the idea of actual bare life, where building is understood as an assemblage of systems arrayed in an ad hoc manner, suspending the representation of a qualified life in architecture. The buildings are barely conditioned, austere, and semi-exterior environments, again using a neo-Rousseauian aesthetic of community with the natural, reminiscent of several aspects of Arte Povera (and to the installations of Lucy Orta or the clothing lines of the Japanese brand Final Home). Unlike Gehry's cheapness, where double skins, pochéd spaces, and complex geometries produce a sophisticated envelope with frills at relatively affordable prices, Lacatón & Vassals veritable no frills strategy appears to be working more with ephemerality, transparency, and continuity between inside and outside, lacerating expense across the entire project and driving the budget into the enviable terrain of the literally, truly cheap.”

To further expand this discussion of literalism, the studio will carefully study techniques from other disciplines, such as the Oulipo group; reading concrete poetry and studying the paintings of Wade Guyton to explore their potential in architectural production. Also in the work of Kenneth Goldsmith we can locate new forms of artistic production which through its direct and uncreative way manages to reinvent writing.

Form and content

The studio will delve into the relationship of form and content, creating architecture which serves as a frame that has tolerance for change and conversion.

In architecture, the neoliberal economy has broken down the relationship between form and content, as projects are planned and built with an unstable future where the twists and turns of global economy render an accurate projection of occupation difficult.

In this world of speculation and rapid transformability, there is a potential for shifting the focus of architecture away from symbolic image making and into a literal domain: Building is just building and the structural frame, details, materials and manufacturing is the architecture which allows for contemporary life to unfold.

Research center

Participants will work on the design on a research facility in an high density urban setting in Chicago, which should hold a sense of generality to allow for future change and transformation. Learning from Flavio Motta´s recognition of “meaningful spaces with no name” we will develop architecture which goes beyond function and through that seek new types of spaces for learning.

Research centers, in this case a space for immaterial labour, work on production and validation of knowledge, and students can choose to focus on facilities connected to the sciences, political, economic or art research. Guided by studious curiosity and economic interests, these are spaces that host highly specialized study.

In the design of the building we will work with the industrial process of productuction to build “tailor made” industrial products or investigate the potential of “off the shelf” elements, such as building parts and details. We will then look into contemporary modes of construction, slip casting, 3D printing, CNC milling, other manufacturing technologies. In their projects, students will engage in architectural production through detailed design and crafting of both buildings, employing drawing, model making and writing as essential means to produce architecture.

By the end of the semester, the students will have produced architecture which proudly can be pointed to and exclaimed: this is this!