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Organizing
for Change: Integrating Architectural Thinking in Other
Fields, by Michael Shamiyeh and DOM Research
Laboratory (Ed.).
According to its web site, the DOM
Research Laboratory, based at the University
of Arts and Industrial Design in Linz, Austria, is "a
sort of independent think tank [that] attempts to define
early relevant topics, to show the need for action, and
to formulate a set of future actions" in the fields
of urbanism, architecture and design. These aims are tackled
via research, education, and conferences, the last of which
are documented in a series of books. The most recent book
is for the third and most recent conference held at the
University in 2005, titled Organizing
for Change and focused on the question: "how we
can transfer architectural thinking to other areas and to
initiate a shift from architecture of form to architecture
of organization?"
This question is influenced as much
by Rem Koolhaas and his two-sided practice of OMA/AMO
as it is by advertising executives and managers of corporations.
This avante-garde/corporate mix comes across in the papers
of the book's first half on the profession. Where Ole Bouman
calls
for architects to eschew the current image- and media-saturated
path the profession is on in favor of practice that reaches
beyond architecture, Norbert Bolz and Michael Kieslinger
separately see how global communications and digital technology
intersect with the world of design. Koolhaas's presence
is found in a paper by book author Shamiyeh and Thomas Duschlbauer
on AMO and its apparently groundbreaking work for Prada
stores, if shifting the attention from fashion to style
or from "marketing tools in space" to "space
as marketing tool" is groundbreaking. The theory- and
business-based essays of this half of the book make for
an enlightening and frustrating read, one that seems to
pull in multiple directions at once, though perhaps this
condition is symptomatic of conferences in general, and
the multiple voices they entail.
Regardless, the second half, focused
on "space," is a more consistent read, at least
for this reviewer, an architect and therefore only one part
of the book's intended audience. Dealing with space in its
various definitions, and the designs that address them,
this portion of the book finds reconsiderations of practice
put into, well, practice. Andreas Ruby's lengthy presentation
of various works that question how architects not only respond
to design programs but also how they actually get and make
work (without clients, for example) could be the core of
the whole book. The 14 projects range from a "non-design"
for a plaza in Bordeaux by Lacaton Vassal to stereo platforms
for the Berlin Love Parade by realities:united,
showing in these cases how architects can choose to preserve
an existing design in favor of a new one and take on a design
without a client in order to improve the social functioning
of a popular event, respectively.
Ruby and other authors understand
that a conference and book on theory and practice should
include design, even if what design is is changing. For
one to fully appreciate the voices included in these pages
they must accept that architecture must change what it is
doing, something the authors spend less time doing than
explaining how the profession can and, in some cases, must
change.
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