Architecture Manifesto 2015

1. Architecture is a process, not an object
If you know the end product before you start, what benefit is the intervention? It is simply constructed from your existing knowledge and experience.

2. Use principles, not manifestations of them
Ask yourself ‘why?’ There is no point refilling a bucket with water, when there is a hole in the bottom of the bucket.

3. Everything is connected
Every place has existing functioning systems, processes and networks. Any intervention must acknowledge and augment these.

4. If you’re not innovating, you’re stagnating
Architecture should improve what was there before, otherwise it makes no sense. There is always a better way.

5. The brief has requirements, so does the site
A brief presents an overt set of requirements. The site has intrinsic requirements, which need extraction and interpretation. Genius loci.

6. Listen and learn
“When you talk you are only repeating what you know; but when you listen, you may learn something new.” - Dalai Lama

7. Architecture should be complex, not complicated
Architecture can be seen as the integration of several entities and systems, every part should co-act. Chaos Theory.

8. Acknowledge context, nothing happens in isolation
A glass house in the desert, probably not the best idea.

9. Architecture evolves, adapts, and changes over time
Subject to time - people, circumstance and the built environment change and adapt. Design to promote and facilitate this change.

10. Open, green public space is cardinal space
People are intrinsically interwoven with nature. A healthy environment acknowledges and integrates this fact, providing space for people to be in nature.

11. Think urban
Architecture sits within an urban fabric, recognise that. Infrastructure should be in place at an urban scale.

12. Understand before you intervene
Respond to what the place/people need. Map, analyse, explore, research and immerse.

13. Architecture creates and takes advantage of opportunities
Opportunities exist everywhere. Engage with them.

14. Don’t accept what has been done without challenging it first
Hypothesise. Speculate.

15. Open Building principles make sense
Design with Levels and Orders of the built environment. Design for capacity and disentanglement.

Re-thinking Healthcare in Cities

Neighbourhoods, Public Space, Communities and Primary Care Service

Professor Phil Astley

The four day intensive workshop with Prof. Astley was centred around healthcare and well-being. However, the principles involved in this were extracted and reinterpreted into out current projects, under their respective topics. Many principles came out of this workshop, with the most relevant to my work being:

• Scenario Planning
• Structure with apparent Chaos
• Planning Networks
• Integration of existing networks and services
• Interim projects on site
• Using art for ownership
• Project definition
• User paths
• Stakeholders vs. Users
• Soft Processes
• Complexity Theory
• Reflexivity Theory
• De-centralisation
• Urban Agriculture

User Paths

Factors of Change

Factor Timeline

Information and Communications Technologies (ICT)

Pecha Kuch Presentation

 (turn pages from any corner/click and use arrow keys)

Concept

Infrastructure and Agency

Agency is the capacity of an agent - a person or entity - to act. This capacity does not imply a specific moral dimension to the ability to make the choice to act, therefore moral agency is a distinctly different concept. In sociology, an agent is an individual that engages with a social structure (Wilson and Sphall 2002).

Looking at agency in infrastructure, within a neighbourhood scale context in Johannesburg, one could see the prevalent Trolley Pullers as infrastructural agents. These agents are also transient as traverse the context of the neighbourhood collecting recyclable goods. If they were provided with the necessary tools and incentive to collect the fallen leaves as they walk their daily routes, one would be integrating a new infrastructure into an existing one - thus increasing efficiency.

Infrastructure

Infrastructure is the elementary physical and/or organisational system required for the functioning of a society or enterprise, or the services and facilities necessary for an economy to function. It could be generically defined a system of interconnected elements that provide a framework for the support of a structure of development (O'Sullivan and Sheffrin, 2003:474).

Infrastructure is typically referred to as the technical structures which support a society, namely roads, bridges, tunnels, water supply, sewers, electrical grids, telecommunications, etc., and can be further defined as "the physical components of interrelated systems providing commodities and services essential to enable, sustain, or enhance societal living conditions" (Fulmer 2009:30).

From a practical perspective, infrastructure promotes the production of goods and services, all the way through to the distribution of complete products to markets. Rudimentary social services, such as schools and hospitals, also benefit from infrastructure.

'Hard' infrastructure refers to the physical networks necessary for societies/neighbourhoods to function, whereas 'soft' infrastructure refers to institutions which are required to maintain the economic, health, and cultural and social standards of a country, such as the financial system, the education system, the health care system, the system of government, and law enforcement, as well as emergency services.