Bricolabs @ Enter_ 2007

Notes from Bricolabs workshops and Panel at Enter, Cambridge, april 27/28 2007.

Panel 27 Downing College: Stephen Heppell, Kelli Dipple, Joel Slayton, Patrick Humphreys, Rob van Kranenburg

Workshop 27 Downing College: Denis Jaromil Rojo, Matt Ratto, Rob van Kranenburg, Jean Noël Montagné, Patrick Humphreys, John Bywater, Aymerick Mansoux, Wookey, Sher Doruff, Sally Jane Norman, Bronac Ferran, Jaromil, Lucas Evers, Sylvia Nagl, Jim Prevett, James Wallbank, Carl Forsell, Chun Lee.

Workshop 28 Outdoor in the park: Matt Ratto, Jim Kosem, Rob van Kranenburg, Sally Jane Norman, Denis Jaromil Rojo, Jim Prevett, James Wallbank, Joachim Stein, David Garcia, Kelli Dipple

TableOfContents

Panel 27 Downing College

In a talk entitled Grasping the Smile, Matt Ratto used an extended Alice in Wonderland metaphor to describe the need to focus on creative spaces rather than conventional creative knowledge transfers. In this way, at least, his talk echoes that of both Bob Stein with his notion of "frozen" and "unfrozen" books and professor Heppell's plea for an unfinished architecture. In different ways all three advocate ongoing, open-ended projects rather than, as Ratto put it, an "over emphasis on the end product.

( from http://enternetblog.blogspot.com/2007/04/cat-with-many-smiles.html Enter blog by Sean Dodson)

Stephen

So how good might learning be if we take down the structures? - you should slap an asbo on the curriculum

Enter blog

The massive advances in computer technology will "transform into a revolution in physical spaces around the world," said Professor Stephen Heppell in the final session of the afternoon. "In the last century we built big things to do thing for people, but we are not in that century anymore," he said. Professor Heppell went on to say that it is not just, "the old industrial model of a curriculum being delivered" that has long gone, but the architecture of the schools designed to deliver such a fixed curriculum should soon follow suit. New school buildings need to be designed to reflect the "democratically flat" methods of teaching that have being ushered in at the start of this new century.

( from http://enternetblog.blogspot.com/2007/04/schools-out.html )

Stephen

What does democracy look like? What does the state look like, in this 21th century, when we no longer build big things but help people build each other's things? In terms of bricolabs vision of generic infrastructures, Stephen Heppell is surely the pioneer of co-authoring this integral iteration of people's agile space, in his case peer to peer learning by reconfiguring the infrastructures and architectures of buildings where people do learning intuitively and with joy.

Kelli

These 20th century cultural builds with huge expenses have not managed to practice what they preached: participation. Tate is exploring these new architectures for participation, opportunities for interaction exactly at this level of reconfiguring concrete space; unfinished architecture. Yet how do we sustain the human resources, the ongoing investments and community discourse?

Stephen talks about and shows spaces with no staffrooms, build around agility with stairways convertible into lecture theatres, foyers that are kitchens ( that is how and where you enter), kids are paired, inflate bubbles over chairs if they want some privacy, spaces being a mass paired buildings, no hierarchy at all. In the Cayman islands he is helping the nation to rebrand itself a school. The nation is a campus. Keep being reconfigured, keep hearing the building.

In these spaces learning itself might take on qualities of what John Bywater calls social machines, where technological objcts are no longer mediators but pointers to latent centres that can only be articulated by the practices of feeling your way forward.

Where is your policy framework when content is no longer king, museums get people qeueing around the block to add their own objects as threads to the museums, 1.8 million signatures are signed against roadprices, 1orange.co.uk flashes out highly innovative one minute movies made by non professionals, the fastest growing audienc of the teachers tv channel are children who are hungry to learn how they should be properly educated (and playing that back to their teachers), 1 billion euro is paid for user generated video (youtube) and china is adding 200.000 mobile phones every single day? Cause the trouble is, that life and everyday practices move fast, very fast and moving quickly top down is just not possible, because of the very nature of the principles of cautioness in policy.

Joel

If we do not have a thorough grasp of what interconnects space, system and software we might not be able to agree on what we mean by learning. Network architectures favour input, participation, feedback, while public interfaces transform this ultimately into a single channel broadcast model through syndication and maximization strategies.

Enlightened architects listen to the people who are going to inhabit the building, what we need are buildings that can constantly be remade.

So where are we? In terms of ten year cycles there was a zone of uncertainty after each clear focus (1975 desktop, 1985 dtp, 1994 web) and we are just going into another zone of uncertainty after a clear focus has been largely appropriated: 2005 user generated content. The outskirts of the next zone of uncertainty circle around identity, and as the edges are softening we can see the synergy in terms of economics, architectures, psychology of mass and individuals.

Stephen

I think there can be a little more joy, a few more smiles, right?

Rob

Maybe we can turn to complexity science as a new framework?

Patrick

Yes, but complexity science traditionally views the situation form the outside, trying to reduce complexity for someone trying to control things from the outside. Here we are all inside this situation, and then complexity becomes context, and complexity as something that needs to have its richness reduced becomes richness of the context, which we can explore like a labyrinth or rhizome. In the past the idea of "buildings that can constantly be remade" was realised only reactively. New building developments were planned to leave no space or facilities for this, and the "remaking' was achieved only after the original build-plan had been abandoned before completion or what had been built had sufficiently decayed for their motivation - and use-pattern of the original planning and build to ha

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