STUDIO AGENDA

Live.game is a platform to collate conversations about contemporary living, to broaden its audience and to promote architectural solutions and social enterprise to address the opportunities and problems therein. It attempts to construct an agency for cumulative, collaborative and research-led architecture. The effort was borne, gestated and given flesh by the work of graduate researchers of Nahmad-Bhooshan Studio at the Architectural Association Design Research Laboratory (AADRL). It is curated and guided by Alicia Nahmad and Shajay Bhooshan. This short exhibition provides a peek into the avenues and issues being considered.

Live.game is most digital

Live.game is pro human

Live.game is most communal

Live.game is pro data

Live.game is most analytic

Live.game is pro humans pro robots

is most intelligent

s pro robots

is most intelligent

is pro market
is most user-choice

is pro solutions

is most-equipped

is pro-history

is most cumulative

is pro collaboration is most disruptive

The four year research-project is motivated by the following observations:

—Digital design and fabrication technologies is maturing with significant progress being made in computational architectural design [1], computational geometry [2], structural design [3], robotic manufacture [4] etc. 

—Social, economic and political conditions in large, high-productivity cities such as Tokyo, London, New York etc. have evolved [5–7]. Thus, the market conditions  are now suitable [8] to engender a demand for mass customised housing [9,10].

The two observations together yield the premise of the research: developing real-estate solutions for contemporary living in high-productivity cities are a prime avenue for application of the maturing domain of digital architecture and fabrication. A roadmap of the effort so far is summarised below.

Revising the Maison Domino: a new tectonism (2016-17)

2015 marked the centennial year of the invention of arguably the most influential architectural diagram –  Le Corbusier’s Maison domino. One of its principal contributions was the folding of technological sanguinity and attendant world of opportunities of the time within a discourse of architecture. In the first year of research, we recognised the opportunity to revise the diagram - to fold in new and rapidly maturing technologies of digital design and fabrication and to seek a new tectonism providing a wider, performance-based vocabulary to address the complexities of the 21st century.

A tinder for housing and subscription living (2017-18)

In 2002, the seminal AADRL(2002) project of RAMTV [11] and the foretelling article of Patrik Schumacher [12], together outlined the need and detailed the mechanisms of achieving a community focussed architecture – recasting social condenser ideas from the 1930s in the new century. In the second year, we set out to renew and upgrade the conversation with new found capacities and technologies above. The resulting proposals ranged from co-housing for long-term communities and co-living solutions for short-term communities.

Negotiated solutions and game-mechanisms (2018-19)

In the third year, we extended the enquiry to the socio-economic dynamics that might be enabled and played within a housing architecture: questioning by design, if central planning and policy can be minimised in favour of enterprise and dynamic social negotiation, and thus evolving a robust, socially and economically successful architecture. Technologically, we began to adapt the game-theoretic foundations of user-choice and negotiations, along with gaming and digital-twin technologies. 

Acquire, design, deliver (ADD)– integrated solutions for urban densification (2019-2020)

Significant debate and resource – political, economic and technological – is devoted to the twin issues of affordable and mass, high volume housing. Invariably this entails new, sprawl developments, satellite cities, large corporate stake-holders etc. Alternatively, or complementarily, there is the necessary, sustainable and vibrant model of urban densification with digitally empowered, small and medium entrepreneurs – consumers, architects, developers, contractors, tradespeople etc. This involves far greater variables and thus a tight fit for data-driven and game technologies to acquire physical and social information of sites and consumer communities, digital technologies to design for the briefs so acquired and robotic manufacturing to efficiently deliver the design solutions. The effort has to be multi-disciplinary and collaborative.

REFERENCES

1. Thomsen, M. R., Tamke, M., Gengnagel, C., Faircloth, B. & Scheurer, F. Modelling Behaviour: Design Modelling Symposium 2015. (Springer, 2015).

2. Adriaenssens, S., Gramazio, F., Kohler, M., Menges, A. & Pauly, M. Advances in Architectural Geometry 2016. (vdf Hochschulverlag AG, 2016).

3. IASS Symposium. in Proceedings of the International Association for Shell and Spatial Structures (IASS) Symposium (2015).

4. Reinhardt, D., Saunders, R. & Burry, J. Robotic Fabrication in Architecture, Art and Design 2016. (Springer, 2016).

5. The guardian. How we live now. The guardian (2016). Available at: https://www.theguardian.com/cities/series/how-we-live-now. (Accessed: 7th May 2017)

6. jon earle & irene pereyra. ONE SHARED HOUSE: a radical experiment in communal living – an interactive documentary. 2016 (2016). Available at: http://onesharedhouse.com/thestory/. (Accessed: 7th May 2017)

7. IKEA. Smart spaces | Small communal home - IKEA. Ikea.com (2017). Available at: http://www.ikea.com/ms/en_AU/rooms_ideas/small_spaces/small_communal_home.html. (Accessed: 7th May 2017)

8. Bardakci, A. & Whitelock, J. Mass-customisation in marketing: the consumer perspective. J. Consum. Mark. 20, 463–479 (2003).

9. Chong, A., Lee, J.-H. & Park, J. A web-based 3D system for home design. in International Conference on Universal Access in Human-Computer Interaction 29–38 (Springer, 2009).

10. Gann, D. M. Construction as a manufacturing process. Similarities and differences between industrialized housing and car production in Japan. Constr. Manag. Econ. 14, 437–450 (1996).

11. Dekleva, A., Gatto, M., Gregoric, T., Sedlak, R. & Stroumpakos, V. Negotiate My Boundary!: Mass-customisation and Responsive Environments. (Birkhäuser, 2006).

12. Schumacher, P. Autopoeisis of a Residential Community. in Negotiate My Boundary - Mass-customisation and Responsive Environments (eds. Steele, B. & RAMTV) (AA publications, London, 2002).