Episode Transcript
Speaker 0 00:00:02 Welcome to failed architecture, breeze blocks, where our editors share their thoughts on works in progress, urgent matters, and current happenings in architecture and special politics. My name is Joshua McWhorter. In this episode, I'm joined by Juliet. Rogano a professor of architecture and urbanism at Parsons school of design in New York city and the editor of a recently published book called design and political dissent spaces. Visuals materialities the book examines, the relationship between design social movements and the visual and spatial culture of protests and near the end of a year, filled with mass protests on streets across the United States and the world. I wanted to speak with Julie about the book's themes and their significance. During a moment when many architects are thinking about how to leverage their skills and the services of social justice and the recent past your research has focused on the Olympics in Rio de Janeiro and elsewhere as a particular set of conversions for material, culture, spatial politics and activism. Tell me a little bit about that work and how it has fed into the current project design and political dissent. What
Speaker 1 00:01:03 I found was, um, in the Olympics, um, design was not only a tool in the hands of the Olympic organizers and those designers, architects, or bunnies that were commissioned to create the Olympic projects, uh, but actually much more, sometimes more exciting type of design was produced in the hands of the Olympic activists. And this was on the one hand, a design that you can see in its expressive qualities like, um, putting demands for change or asking to stop the Olympics. And of course, communication design, graphic design help express these demands in a very, you know, visually attractive way and interesting way. Uh, but what was even more interesting for me was to see design being used, um, especially after, during the London Olympics, uh, in ways that, um, involve communities in a bigger way, uh, communities that were mourning for their addictions, uh, projects like tent villages and, you know, uh, protest camps were kind of, the material engagement was engaged, uh, collected in order to produce some different forms of society.
Speaker 1 00:02:18 Similar to those we saw in occupy. So you understood that in this reality of opposition, the social movements, there is a lot of what we can call designery action that is happening mostly by people who would not necessarily associate themselves with the profession of design. And sometimes even if you ask them in the user design, they were designed when you talk to them, they would not want to associate with this term. However, from the point of view of design studies in from my lens is my eyes. I would see this very much as a type of design that was of interest for those who theorized design, but also for those who practice design for not to say, of course it's in, especially after the London Olympics. And today, of course, in the social movements, there was a great numbers number of designers, architects, and everyone is that were directly engaged in this reality over opposition.
Speaker 0 00:03:13 And tell me about how design is framed here, how notions of professional versus informal design capacities are related to the various social movements and political projects described in the book.
Speaker 1 00:03:23 Yeah, so I think one thing that is also important is something that is seen in the title of the book, um, to exemplify the notion of design that, um, for many people design is associated with objects and this, when we say design, especially in the communities, but the public design studies would mean, of course, a much broader definition of design. That includes from, uh, architecture, urban design, uh, visuals, uh, communication and materiality at large, not only the design of objects products, but also engagement with material things and assembling material things. Um, and there is some important definition that, um, you know, that you see very often in, in the field of design studies, by Herbert Simon, who said that to design is to devise courses of action aimed at changing existing situations into preferred ones. And so what is it for habit? Simon design was not something, it was more of a systemic category that you don't see only in the active designers, but in, in the act of though on those who want to devise courses of actions to bring some kind of improvement.
Speaker 1 00:04:31 And when we see social change, of course, as a type of improvement political change, then we understand that this courses of action can be seen and studied. So the point of view of design, even sometimes when they don't necessarily bring material chains, um, and we see design of course today, expanding beyond the, the production of material forms. We see a lot of service design design for social innovation design of protocols, et cetera. And for Herbert Simon, even lawyers, even doctors who wanted to improve to, to, to see it, to improve the existing situations into preferred ones, they were all in fact inherently designing. And this is something that then has been taken from more contemporary thinkers in design, like a German CME, for instance, et cetera, who uses thermal, the national diffuse design, where design is being seen, not only in the rehab professional practice of designers, educated designers in schools, et cetera, but also in the everyday life.
Speaker 1 00:05:27 And in my own field of interest, we see a lot of course, in the world of social movements. So when I say the word materiality that in the book and the title of the book, I mean not only the products, but also, um, the different types of things that sometimes people bring together, uh, in order to create and change the material conditions of their life. Um, and very often this other, this domain of action, uh, is seen as a consumption or we call the people, the users, uh, but in fact, uh, this way of thinking so that the impact, even in our everyday life, we are producing even by not necessarily creating new things, even by assembling and putting things together. So this engagement with materiality is what interests me and many of the contributors in the book.
Speaker 0 00:06:20 What would you consider to be a form of diffuse spacial design with the occupation and appropriation of spaces by protestors fall under this definition of diffused design?
Speaker 1 00:06:30 Yeah, for my definition. And it's actually very much part of my current, my own current research interests. Uh, definitely I would think that occupations and special appropriations and squats are very much belonging to that domain of design, according to this wider definition. And, um, so I saw a lot of, uh, tend to villages in, uh, you know, the Olympic movement. And this is where even before the occupy happened, like in Vancouver, there was such a thing in 2010. And I know that there were several such things, of course, in the fifties and sixties with, uh, anti-nuclear demonstrations, et cetera. And then they occupy happen and it was my first time, but I had the direct experience of what it means to what the patient needs. And, um, besides of course the plethora of graphic signs and communication design that one could see there, uh, like from everyday people who were there to express their own demands or their own wishes and their own visions for the future.
Speaker 1 00:07:30 Uh, for me, especially the second time, I think I went there, it felt as if I was in a midterm reviews in a design school. And, uh, this was, uh, because at the same time there were even, it was almost like a fair of a design these yarns or sociotechnical assemblages for the future. So you would see for instance, composting machines and being, uh, you know, using, uh, manpower based on the bicycle and people had brought all these different things they had created, and they were demonstrating them there in some way. Some of them were used for the patient per se. Uh, but also they were like almost, um, as platforms of conversation or expressions showing what, how this used society would be like, how would it, how it would feel like how it would be, you know, it would be built. And it was like midterm reviews because all of them were kind of unfinished and they were all more about the imaginary. Um, other than about the materiality, there was submitter materiality, but very ad hoc, very precarious, and the most interesting thing there was the vision. So that's when I really felt very strongly that these patients are very much about the designerly. What do we call it? Design studies,
Speaker 0 00:08:47 What you're describing almost sounds like a form of a material prototyping
Speaker 1 00:08:50 And actually the word that is being used and for describing type of politics that happen in a protest camp is prefigurative politics. So to my mind, binders figuration is exactly, as you said, very close to what we see design as prototyping in
Speaker 0 00:09:08 Your introduction to the book, you pinpoint the rise of the global justice movement at the end of the 1990s as the start of this pivotal era for enacting and understanding what you call new quote unquote, repertoires of creative, political descent, and spatial appropriation, how have global political dynamics in the last two decades allowed for, uh, you know, material design architecture and urbanism to become important vectors of dissent, or at least to be understood as such.
Speaker 1 00:09:32 So, um, th first of all, what the word, the repertoires, um, this is, um, the way I use it as coming from a reference to, uh, Charles Tilly, who is a sociologist who was a sociologist of social movements, one of the first sociologists who studied social movements and who spoke about, um, the repertoires of, um, collective action or contentious action. And he saw these repertoires are as mostly established and then used by activist, by participants social moments, almost like from a palette. So breaking windows was one such repertoire, what say, and what was interesting to me was that actually, um, when we see the designerly, not only from the designers, we see not necessarily established repertoires, but what is very interesting is to see also new ways of acting being devised. So the particular sociopolitical action that is happening in this work of the social movements.
Speaker 1 00:10:31 So I was not so sure that these are established repertoires and my interest was not so much in the established repertoires, but in this new modes of action that were emerging, eh, now the interest in the last 20 years, actually, this was revealed to me by when I first time red grubbers work on the new artists, I think is the name of it texts. And there, she very clearly says that after the 1999, uh, battle of Seattle, as it is known, I guess the world trade organization, this very, very well known social movement moment in the social movement world. And there was maybe cause it like, maybe I don't think it was the first time, but it was very visible that we dealt with this from that point on with what they call, um, a diversity of action. Um, it was not anymore. Um, so much people going out to the street to protest, uh, using words or using, uh, you know, text-based, you know, demands.
Speaker 1 00:11:38 Uh, but besides what was with people knew the black blocks that were like the violent, you know, most of the bad actors in protests, there was a variety of types of protesting. So for instance, we can see the think blocks with our using kind of a queer languages, every performer performative, or sometimes carnivalesque languages or protests, or they were using puppets or, you know, sculptures. And we can see this in the street action, but at the same time, we see this other type of action, which is the prefigurative, which is not necessarily on the street. And with sometimes is in kind of interstitial spaces where different types of action are being used, which are not so much about the expressive, but also about generating, you know, different ways of acting or embodying the new society. Um, now why this started happening so much, you know, after, since in the last 20 years, some people might say that this happened social because design has developed in a way being more open source. So design has become, and creativity in general has become a tool that is open and used by the wider society. And not so much only by people who are professionals or educated in these fields. So this might be one explanation.
Speaker 0 00:12:59 So right now we're against this backdrop of social unrest, economic hardship, the pandemic, and there's this increasing desire among designers, architects, and scholars, to engage in activism and to even express and enact descend within their own fields. Do you see design and political dissent as a potential resource for architects and designers who are interested in collaborating with social movements?
Speaker 1 00:13:22 Well, the book was finished. There could be this book during the first week of the pandemic. So it is a pre COVID book, but after COVID, I mean, of course, as we know, it's almost like the flood gates were opened and we see so much of what we described here, you know, from maybe sporadic examples across the world. And now we see this everywhere and it was much bigger force. Um, I mean, I didn't even there to stop to start recording all the instances of, you know, designerly, designerly, the sand I saw during the protest of the summer during the summer, you know, where we would see the masks being used as platforms for, you know, projecting images, messages, and, uh, you know, all this kind of a very ad hoc and spontaneous expressions of, you know, the sculptures that people made on the street based on the things that they found from the protest.
Speaker 1 00:14:23 So some amazing things in Fort Greene with the acids of a car that was burned, and it was putting to a Memorial, um, there on the street, on the desk of the pavement, uh, there were amazing things that were produced. And then of course, even this kind of prefigurative reenactments at Capitol hill in Seattle, or this occupation across the, the, the city hall in New York, uh, which were short lead. But at the time, of course, they were very powerful and they became platforms of a lot of conversation. And the fact that they were temporary and sorted it's even a strength for them, I think because you can see seeds of this being spread. And of course, being these things to say, ideas will develop in different iterations later on. It might be not protest camps anymore. There might be other formats that will be, will emerge out of that.
Speaker 1 00:15:17 Recently, there was this student pre-dissertation the other day, this cancel around protests. And there was, there were several of them, of course, in the city and everywhere in the world and the industry, one of them recently, New York, and it with in front of the city hall with creating almost like a theatrical stage of, uh, of a home pulled out of the street. So they had brought a sofa and a table that was from my living room and, uh, and things that it was almost like, um, you know, what, what it means when people are evicted, you know, and this was such a powerful, uh, engagement with materiality of the home and what it means to bring this out to the street. Uh, that was really, I think extremely it is this kind of a thing that this book was, you know, concerned about. And we see this happening a lot.
Speaker 1 00:16:09 Now, the students, of course, inevitably and rightfully so, they're very interested, not only to see what can be done from the point of view of design architects or bunnies, but also to associate themselves with the social movements and political movements and do work in, you know, in coalition and from within. Um, and, uh, I think for me, what, what I think is important for students when they do a project, which usually, you know, it might be a small scale or a very specific situation to sink as a scaffolding that, uh, this thing that they produce can have an effect, and it might be very local. It might be in a very small scale, but it's very important to also think of the scaffolding of possibilities and over engagement that one has to do in parallel to the work as designers or as urbanists. So it is not just this one project we were part of, but while what else does, is it necessary in order to achieve this kind of change, you know, in a bigger scale and in a broader level, the tool that design habit design possesses is the possibility to create the spaces of justice to, to, to show a possibility, even in small scale in the real world.
Speaker 1 00:17:23 So not only to fight injustice, but to create some kind of a real palpable, you know, space or moment where we see things restored, we see things improved, which comes to this kind of very early definition. We discussed about design, the courses of action to prove a situation, to bring it to a preferred state. So this kind of active power, I think, is something that designers know.
