Arch 562 Design Studio Faculty: Kathy Velikov
University of Michigan Taubman College
of Architecture + Urban Planning
Introduction
2020 Studio
Gibson Davis + Brian Pekar
Liyah George, Torri Smith, Hallee Thompson
Claire Shue + Danrui Xiang
Nick DiDonato + Alan Escareño
Cynthia Castro + Adrian DiCorato
Christine Darragh + Siamak Saadati
Chun Cheung + Thomas McCormick
Xixi Chen + Mollie Karasch
Xingyue Sun + Wanrongmaiao Zhang
Jiayao Chen + Yanfeng Chen
Meredith Bickett + Audrey Hunt
2021 Studio
Jasmine Wright + Gina Laudato
Fernando Rosas + Madison Wong
Austin Vogelsang
Jutang Gao
Ray Majewski
Alex Vernon
Zoë Faylor
Dan Shen
Kayla Hawley
Akima Brackeen
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*SF: science fiction, speculative fabulation, string figures, speculative feminism, science fact, so far...
- Donna Haraway
What if SF novels were the missing thought experiments, the missing art of consequences…What if such novels were exploring, and experimenting with, the settled, authoritative distribution between the possible and the impossible, the acceptable and the inacceptable? – Isabelle Stengers
Science fiction is a tool to help you think; and like anything that really helps you think, by definition it doesn’t do the thinking for you. It’s a tool to help you think about the present – a present that is always changing, a present in which change itself assures there is always a range of options for actions, actions presupposing different commitments, different beliefs, different efforts (of different qualities, different quantities), differnt conflicts, different processes, different joys. It doesn’t tell you what’s going to happen tomorrow. It presents different possible images of futures...
– Samuel R. Delany
I introduce the term ‘diegetic prototypes’ to account for the ways in which cinematic depictions of future technologies demonstrate to large public audiences a technology’s need, viability and benevolence…These technologies only exist in the fictional world—what film scholars call the diegesis but they exist as fully functioning objects in that world….The performative aspects of prototypes are especially evident in diegetic prototypes because a film’s narrative structure contextualizes technologies within the social sphere. Technological objects in cinema are at once both completely artificial—all aspects of their depiction are controlled in production—and normalized within the text as practical objects that function properly and which people actually use as everyday objects.- David Kirby
Climate SF cultivates ways to think and work on the condition of
climate change that go beyond the technological mindset of conventional
environmental design.
Climate change is going to be this generation’s condition. Many would argue that it is already the global condition. Yet climate change and environmental
violence are not merely technical problems in search of “action” or a “fix”.
They are also problems of the imagination and require realignments in thinking
humankind’s relationship to the planet
and to other species; different attunements to the matters we are
entangled with, and the need for new narratives and imaginaries we tell to
ourselves. It behooves architects and urban designers to offer much more to the
transformation of culture than technical solutions. In particular to use our specific
media—drawings, models, videos, material constructs—to make climate change, so
often represented in the incomprehensible abstraction of big data graphs and
charts, feel instead visceral, intimate, and present as a cultural condition
and matter of design.
Design disciplines speculate, envision, and materialize the thought
experiments of the possible and the plausible.
The studio starts with stories that make worlds in the context of a changed climate. Climate SF novels by authors such as Ursula K. Le Guin, J.G. Ballard, Bruce Sterling, Octavia E Butler, Margaret Atwood, Pablo Bacigalipi, Kim Stanley Robinson. We consider these texts not as futurisms but as “the realism of our time” (Robinson). They critically explore not only the possibilities of technology but the political, social, ideological, and ecological systems within which it is entangled. We immerse ourselves in the worlds of these narratives as a design site and milieu. The work of the studio operates tendril-like, trading strings with these authors in multiple directions. We learn to tell new stories of being with, and develop prototypes for architectures, objects, and urbanisms that prototype possible fragments in relation to Climate SF.
If architecture is to think beyond its current condition, it is our prerogative to pull open the spaces of our world, to imagine alternative possibilities, to prototype these fragments and to explore their implications. Worldbuilding is the art of creating the plausible contexts and environments in which stories of new or alternate possibilities are able to emerge, and we will learn about this art by studying and operating within Climate SF novels. In SF novels, worldbuilding focuses less on plot and characters and more on alternative worlds through which they are able to understand our own world in new ways. In this way SF writing is as much about the present reality as it is about a future or other imaginary. Seo-Young Chu, in her Do Metaphors Dream of Literal Sheep?: A Science-Fictional Theory of Representation (2010) argues that science fiction is a “form of ‘high-intensity realism’ capable of representing non-imaginary objects that elude more traditional, ‘realist’ modes of representation.” SF novels perform this through critical “cognitive estrangement,” thus differing significantly from both fiction and fantasy.
As part of the “worldbuilding” analysis of the SF novels, students develop a Situated Apparatus drawing that maps their novel’s network of interrelationships and entanglements between sites, artifacts, humans, nonhumans, climate, agencies, practices, technologies, laws, and any other elements of the apparatus identified as part of the web in the world created by the author. One of the aspects of the Situated Apparatus drawing is that it is quasi-spatial and therefore a cross between a map and an actor-network. This drawing enables the recreation of the world in each SF novel on one’s own terms, setting an attitude, mood, tone, and territories of interest.
If science fiction can be understood as a kind of storytelling that creates “prototypes of other worlds, other experiences, other contexts for life” then a Diegetic Prototype is like an “artifact brought back from those worlds in order to be examined, studied over”, critically questioned. Author Bruce Sterling argues that “It’s not a kind of fiction. It’s a kind of design. It tells worlds rather than stories.”
The SF novels are considered through Umberto Eco’s notion of “The Open Work”, where the “author offers the interpreter, the performer, the addressee a work to be completed”. In each novel, architectures, micro-architectures, and urbanisms are described or referred to. Some are described in detail, while others only mentioned briefly. In dialogue with each novel’s worldbuilding, its socio-political framework, and its environmental agency, students project, propose, and explore one of these architectures or urbanisms in further detail. The Diegetic Prototype expands on the thought experiment of the novel through the medium of design and material speculation. It draws on the practices of “design fiction”. It is a material experiment that develops new fragments of the possible – a possible existence within the societal context of a changed or rapidly changing climate.
It matters what matters we use to think other matters with; it matters what stories we tell to tell other stories with; it matters what knots knot knots, what thoughts think thoughts, what descriptions describe descriptions, what ties tie ties. It matters what stories make worlds, what worlds make stories. - Donna Haraway
The studio starts with stories that make worlds in the context of a changed climate. Climate SF novels by authors such as Ursula K. Le Guin, J.G. Ballard, Bruce Sterling, Octavia E Butler, Margaret Atwood, Pablo Bacigalipi, Kim Stanley Robinson. We consider these texts not as futurisms but as “the realism of our time” (Robinson). They critically explore not only the possibilities of technology but the political, social, ideological, and ecological systems within which it is entangled. We immerse ourselves in the worlds of these narratives as a design site and milieu. The work of the studio operates tendril-like, trading strings with these authors in multiple directions. We learn to tell new stories of being with, and develop prototypes for architectures, objects, and urbanisms that prototype possible fragments in relation to Climate SF.
If architecture is to think beyond its current condition, it is our prerogative to pull open the spaces of our world, to imagine alternative possibilities, to prototype these fragments and to explore their implications. Worldbuilding is the art of creating the plausible contexts and environments in which stories of new or alternate possibilities are able to emerge, and we will learn about this art by studying and operating within Climate SF novels. In SF novels, worldbuilding focuses less on plot and characters and more on alternative worlds through which they are able to understand our own world in new ways. In this way SF writing is as much about the present reality as it is about a future or other imaginary. Seo-Young Chu, in her Do Metaphors Dream of Literal Sheep?: A Science-Fictional Theory of Representation (2010) argues that science fiction is a “form of ‘high-intensity realism’ capable of representing non-imaginary objects that elude more traditional, ‘realist’ modes of representation.” SF novels perform this through critical “cognitive estrangement,” thus differing significantly from both fiction and fantasy.
As part of the “worldbuilding” analysis of the SF novels, students develop a Situated Apparatus drawing that maps their novel’s network of interrelationships and entanglements between sites, artifacts, humans, nonhumans, climate, agencies, practices, technologies, laws, and any other elements of the apparatus identified as part of the web in the world created by the author. One of the aspects of the Situated Apparatus drawing is that it is quasi-spatial and therefore a cross between a map and an actor-network. This drawing enables the recreation of the world in each SF novel on one’s own terms, setting an attitude, mood, tone, and territories of interest.
If science fiction can be understood as a kind of storytelling that creates “prototypes of other worlds, other experiences, other contexts for life” then a Diegetic Prototype is like an “artifact brought back from those worlds in order to be examined, studied over”, critically questioned. Author Bruce Sterling argues that “It’s not a kind of fiction. It’s a kind of design. It tells worlds rather than stories.”
The SF novels are considered through Umberto Eco’s notion of “The Open Work”, where the “author offers the interpreter, the performer, the addressee a work to be completed”. In each novel, architectures, micro-architectures, and urbanisms are described or referred to. Some are described in detail, while others only mentioned briefly. In dialogue with each novel’s worldbuilding, its socio-political framework, and its environmental agency, students project, propose, and explore one of these architectures or urbanisms in further detail. The Diegetic Prototype expands on the thought experiment of the novel through the medium of design and material speculation. It draws on the practices of “design fiction”. It is a material experiment that develops new fragments of the possible – a possible existence within the societal context of a changed or rapidly changing climate.
2020 Studio
click on student name in sidebar
Gibson Davis + Brian Pekar
Post-Human Transitional Symbiogenesis Outfit
The world has changed in J.G. Ballard's novel The Drowned World; cities and land everywhere have flooded with water due to intense solar flares. The sun beats down constantly emitting radiation, and all of the living species on earth are changing with the environment. In order to survive, humans need to find new ways of living in which they are no longer the dominant species, and instead turn to the renewed idea of living with their surroundings, as opposed to their traditional attempts of dominance and opposition. Reclaiming their spot within the order of natural things, humans are opened up to opportunities to coexist with other species. Possibilities of synthesis and symbiosis with alternative forms of living are explored, seeking positive benefits for all entities involved. Post-Human Transitional Symbiogenesis Outfit (P-HTSO) is a body architecture designed to assist humans and help them adapt to these new ways of living by offering new potentials for humans to survive and interact in this novel and ever-changing environment.
“What happens when the best biologies of the twenty-first century cannot do their job with bounded individuals plus contexts, when organisms plus environments, or genes plus whatever they need, no longer sustain the overflowing richness of biological knowledges, if they ever did?” - Donna Haraway
Post-Human Transitional Symbiogenesis Outfit
The world has changed in J.G. Ballard's novel The Drowned World; cities and land everywhere have flooded with water due to intense solar flares. The sun beats down constantly emitting radiation, and all of the living species on earth are changing with the environment. In order to survive, humans need to find new ways of living in which they are no longer the dominant species, and instead turn to the renewed idea of living with their surroundings, as opposed to their traditional attempts of dominance and opposition. Reclaiming their spot within the order of natural things, humans are opened up to opportunities to coexist with other species. Possibilities of synthesis and symbiosis with alternative forms of living are explored, seeking positive benefits for all entities involved. Post-Human Transitional Symbiogenesis Outfit (P-HTSO) is a body architecture designed to assist humans and help them adapt to these new ways of living by offering new potentials for humans to survive and interact in this novel and ever-changing environment.
“What happens when the best biologies of the twenty-first century cannot do their job with bounded individuals plus contexts, when organisms plus environments, or genes plus whatever they need, no longer sustain the overflowing richness of biological knowledges, if they ever did?” - Donna Haraway
Liyah George, Torri Smith, Hallee Thompson
The year is 2140. Sea levels across the globe have risen causing a global ecological and refugee crisis. New York City remains a vibrant metropolis in a post-flooded world. Streets have become canals and skyscrapers islands.The intertidal—a place of ambiguity with fifteen foot tidal fluctuations twice a day, is where a new subculture has emerged.
The project proposes an architecture that integrates the ruins of a past society into a web of new structures that flow with the tide. Through adaptive mycelium bio-structures which change over time, the intertidal becomes the space for refugees to build an interdependent communal society, free from the slings of capitalism. The design narrative drafts the framework for an intertidal community, crafting a system of symbiotic architectural infrastructures—housing, agriculture, entertainment, etc.—interconnected through a web of carbon fibre and mycelium structures. The project aims to restore the relationship between nature and human beings, improve the living environment and ecosystem diversity in a densely urbanized post-capitalist city in the cusp of climate change.
The year is 2140. Sea levels across the globe have risen causing a global ecological and refugee crisis. New York City remains a vibrant metropolis in a post-flooded world. Streets have become canals and skyscrapers islands.The intertidal—a place of ambiguity with fifteen foot tidal fluctuations twice a day, is where a new subculture has emerged.
The project proposes an architecture that integrates the ruins of a past society into a web of new structures that flow with the tide. Through adaptive mycelium bio-structures which change over time, the intertidal becomes the space for refugees to build an interdependent communal society, free from the slings of capitalism. The design narrative drafts the framework for an intertidal community, crafting a system of symbiotic architectural infrastructures—housing, agriculture, entertainment, etc.—interconnected through a web of carbon fibre and mycelium structures. The project aims to restore the relationship between nature and human beings, improve the living environment and ecosystem diversity in a densely urbanized post-capitalist city in the cusp of climate change.
Claire Shue + Danrui Xiang
Hygge is a project that speculates on a company that addresses the needs of people in a post-sea-level-rise New York City by understanding the collective kinship within the world. In a city, that is home with "living with the trouble," Hygge hopes to lend a helpful hand and to remind one that they are connected to something larger than themselves.
The project was heavily influenced by Donna Haraway’s ideals and values and begins to dissect these teachings. Hygge starts to question what would happen if one were to corrupt these teachings for corporate rather than common gain. The design envisions the company's airship-based factory, products, and website. Hygge is introduced in a podcast by the fictional character Amelia from Kim Stanley Robinson's New York 2140.
hygge website link
Hygge is a project that speculates on a company that addresses the needs of people in a post-sea-level-rise New York City by understanding the collective kinship within the world. In a city, that is home with "living with the trouble," Hygge hopes to lend a helpful hand and to remind one that they are connected to something larger than themselves.
The project was heavily influenced by Donna Haraway’s ideals and values and begins to dissect these teachings. Hygge starts to question what would happen if one were to corrupt these teachings for corporate rather than common gain. The design envisions the company's airship-based factory, products, and website. Hygge is introduced in a podcast by the fictional character Amelia from Kim Stanley Robinson's New York 2140.
hygge website link
