Eric Hunting on the Drive To Build:
There is an instinctive compulsion to architecture in the human being. Left to their own devices, as children more often were in the recent past, they build. Growing up in the suburbs of the NY metropolitan area at a time when American children were not quite yet relegated by their parents’ paranoia to an existence as juvenile inmates, I was witness to an interesting phenomenon that emerged in response to the cultural squalor of the suburbs. Contrary to the common delusion that suburbs are designed for child raising, there has generally never been a place for children in that environment. Suburbs are made for cars, not kids. (as if the number of them run over by their own parents when backing vehicles out of the driveway hasn’t made that fact obvious) The problem with suburbs, of course, is a distinct lack of spacial identity. There is no ‘sense of place’ anyplace, let alone places for kids. And so kids of the time were inclined to create this themselves in spaces adults overlooked or abandoned, most commonly the ‘green belts’ and other fractured bits of natural landscape in the surrounding areas. Thus throughout the wooded areas of the metropolitan fringes one was (and still) likely to find -aside from the piles of trash, abandoned cars and appliances, and mysterious masses of rusting unmarked chemical drums, a variety of makeshift encampments, tree-houses, shacks, ‘forts’, skate board ramps, and ‘dirt bike’ courses, all created by and for kids using whatever cast-off materials they could scrounge up from the trash around them. Adults (those who actually owned these forgotten bits of land especially), of course had no respect for such endeavors and these constructions were routinely declared Dens of Iniquity, raided, and razed whenever some less intelligent child managed to injure himself in a sufficiently dramatic manner or when the local generation of children reached That Certain Age, only to re-appear in some other location once the ‘heat was off’.
Clearly, invention and building represent essential human forms of play that are sadly unfulfilled in our contemporary culture, manifesting among children in activity adults seem to compulsively suppress as ‘dangerous’ and would rather redirect into the safer forms of ‘hobbies’ they can better control. The DIY and craft industries, the customization of cars, the fanatical adult fans of building toys like Lego, and the more recent Maker movement certainly seem to reflect this suppressed desire for making and building as play that isn’t exclusive to the child or the specially talented. But often the social dimension is missing. What point creativity without an audience? What point invention without others for it to benefit? Thus in the communities that emerge around these hobbies a compulsion to gather exists, realized through conventions, expositions, and competitions.
A Sandbox for Architectural Recreation:
We don’t normally think of architecture as a form of play. Assuming the task beyond us or simply too important for failure and thus beyond personal experimentation, we relegate the creation of our built habitat to professionals. To a certain extent this is quite practical. Without some degree of engineering knowledge employed to insure their integrity, large buildings would be quite dangerous. But for most of the history of human civilization, most construction was conducted without the benefit of such professionals and, since adopting the dependence upon them in modern times, our instinctive desire to express ourselves through our built habitat goes unfulfilled. What if we could better integrate this form of play and constructive/creative socialization into our built habitat? What if we could create an environment specifically for casual ‘architectural recreation’; for building as social play? Recently, the P2P cultural community has begun to explore the notion of P2P Architecture and Open Source Urbanism. But these are concepts hard to move beyond the level of theoretical discussion -particularly in a world where the structure of the built habitat is so often under the control of people incapable of comprehending much of this intellectual discussion. It would be extremely valuable to have a venue for physical experimentation with principles of P2P Architecture and the technologies of adaptive architecture and I think the key to that may rest in this notion of architectural recreation, in the idea of creation a place where one builds space for fun. Thus we arrive at a proposal I call the Vivarium.
The Vivarium is a simple idea. It is a place whose functional purpose in fun and comfort, intended as a public meeting and lounge area -a social club- where people go to relax and amuse themselves in a casual social venue. Nothing unusual there except that in this place all the structures used for these purposes are created by the users of the space. Thus they get to collectively/interactively decide how the space is used and they create the structures they want for that. The participants decide what ‘fun’ and ‘comfort’ mean and it’s up to them to implement that.
The Vivarium would be based on appropriating some relatively large clear-span whether-sheltered ‘purposeless’ space -an empty industrial building for example- that is in a relatively convenient location for its community of users and which would support the creation of light free-standing structures inside it. The basic space supplies little itself; basic toilet facilities, electricity, basic heating and cooling, access to Internet and television. Everything else is up to the users to make. To facilitate the project, a companion workshop and storage facility may also be provided so as to eliminate the need to fabricate parts for structures within the Vivarium space, limiting work there to simple assembly and disassembly to keep it clean, comfortable, and relatively quiet. The ideal community would be a group of creative people, artists, and their friends with some inclination toward making things and perhaps some experience with some of the common adaptive building technologies currently available; Matrix/Box Beam/Grid Beam, T-slot profile framing, simple space frames. tent structures. creative cardboard construction, etc. The club would be invitation-based with building access limited to the membership in order to reduce the potential for theft and vandalism. However, regular open houses would be conducted to provide a public demonstration of the project.
The key to the experiment represented by the project would be to impose as few rules as possible on how the space is used, leaving this up to the imaginations of the participants and their negotiations on use of space. But a few simple ‘house rules’ would be useful as a starting point.
1) Employ Common Sense. A pretty obvious rule. No open fires. No hazardous material. No blocking emergency exits. Use electricity safely. Etc.
2) No Nails. All the structures deployed in the space must be demountable, assembled without nails or glues except with the fabrication of subcomponents. Structures of two or more levels may be allowed given the ceiling height, but for safety without serious engineering approvals two or three storeys may be a practical limit.
3) Space is alloted on a first-come-first-serve basis moderated by consensus. Members propose an amount and use of space and the collective membership approves or rejects this proposal. Relatively small private personal structures can be built without approval as long as there’s no dispute over the location. Larger structures will require more active negotiation with and consensus approval by the group -and most likely group participation to build them. Initially, space may be alloted to initial members as a percentage share of the overall volume and they can contribute all or portions of this to group-built structures.
4) All built structures have a 30 day ‘lease’. At the end of 30 days, the members of the club vote on whether to give them another month or remove them to free up space. They can also vote to adapt rather than remove, giving the creators of a structure the option to adapt it to accommodate specific issues the group may have in order to gain another 30 days lease. And, of course, the creators of the structure can, for as long as the structure is allowed space by the group, adapt it or remove it as they see fit. This 30 day lease is intended to insure members maintain the structures they build and that underutilized space is continuously freed-up for other uses.
5) Habitation is limited to 48 contiguous hours in any week period. It may not be practical to let people actually live in this experimental project, though later this rule could be dropped if it seems like a functional cohabitation is possible. In later larger scale Vivarium experiments, continuous residence would be the key objective.
These basic rules would be intended only as loose conventions. As the members of the Vivarium gain social experience, they may add or drop house rules as they see fit by consensus. Since all structures would be demountable and adaptable, free and dynamic negotiation on space would be no particular problem.
To facilitate brainstorming at the start of the project by helping people easily visualize possible structures, an initial common building system may be proposed, with Grid Beam or similar post and beam systems a likely choice based on economy and recyclability of parts and materials. This would be helpful where the project is largely supported on grants. Structures with common building systems would have the advantage of structural integration, allowing participants to link up their structures and trade in components and their fabrication.
Many of the issues associated with P2P architecture -social, logistical, and technical- on larger scales would potentially be represented in this simple experiment. Cultivating systems of negotiation over space use, public and personal property, management of noise, energy efficiency, and much more would need to be worked out, with this casual venue offering ‘low stakes’ environment to explore this. Technology and designs developed in this experiment would also have many applications elsewhere, particularly for relief architecture, public art projects, and exposition structures.
The Vivarium has the potential to generate many imitations or spin-offs and produce progressively larger projects using more sophisticated building technology, eventually moving beyond the limits of repurposed pre-existing enclosures to the use of independently weather-tight structures in an open environment. Clearly, this idea of group architectural recreation -of building adaptive structures and evolving complex environments as art and play- has much potential and could become the impetus for many projects and experiments. Certainly, events such as Burning Man, increasingly focused on inventive temporary structures as artistic installations, hints at the potential a continuous venue for such creativity might afford. This seems an accessible project, well within the means of any sufficiently motivated and creative group in most location, though likely better suited to urban areas with a concentrated community of art and design enthusiasts able to casually access this space like a local social club.”