Flux Navigations: Envisioning the Southeast Asian City

Journal of Art and Architecture Research Studies, 2020

The purpose of this invited editorial article is to contribute an inclusive insight into some of the key aspects of arts-based research and methodological approaches in architectural and spatial design research. Following ontological and epistemological interpretations, the article is conceptual and involves critical analysis which is based on reviewing and categorizing classical literature while highlighting substantial number of contributions in relevant research developed over the past five decades. Premised on three philosophical positions—positivism, anti-positivism, and emancipationist— a discussion on arts-based research as a form of qualitative inquiry and the associated trilogy of art, craft, and knowledge making was instigated. Six frames of reference were identified: systematic, computational, managerial, psychological, person-environment type-a and person-environment type-b. Technically oriented research (TOR) and conceptually driven research (CDR) were categorized as perspectives of inquiry and were scrutinized together with their developmental aspects. Whilst the article is a brief reflection on some of the key contributions in this edition of JAARS, it captures an understanding of arts-based research, architectural and spatial design research, and their essential qualities. and can be viewed as an enabling mechanism by which researchers can identify the unique particularities of their research and the way in which it is pursued.

Archdaily, 2019

2016

Beginning as a project to protect and advance personal dreams in artistic pursuits, the Floating Projects Collective (FPC, 「句點」, 2010) has evolved from a group of 4 into a collective with 20 additional members in 2015, and its activities renamed Floating Projects (FP「據點。句點」, literally “occupation point”). FP takes on a spatial turn by occupying an 1800-square-foot industrial unit in a fading industrial district, Wong Chuk Hang (WCH黃竹坑), on the southern part of Hong Kong Island, where the increase of disused and vacant flats forces their owners to open up to atypical manufacturing usage. The spatial turn has fueled our imagination and soon evolves into a series of experiments around a central question: what can we artists do with an empty unit in an industrial building with institutionally and physically defined constraints? How does what we do connect to the premise that art is by definition a form of radical thinking, thus an indispensable force in nourishing our humanness? At the point when FP inserted itself into WCH, the district was already the home for several commercial galleries in addition to two new boutique hotels on top of various independent art spaces and artist’s studios. The rent FP is now paying could have been 30% less a year earlier. The question of art is the question of space in a milieu when art and design are heavily appropriated to be the supporting pillars of what is known as “creative economy,” an aggressive agent for gentrification, the flip side of which reads the problematic transformation of urban surfaces. FP is not only an experiment, but it seeks to be experimental, in the sense that it strives to re-open up many known normal artistic practices to assert questions of art must be understood also as those of non-artistic nature. Issues of how to keep making art, and of how to scramble for resources to sustain survival, become a new series of questions. Can artists working with different artistic media work together, and how about artists of different generations and expertise training? Who is the artist – only those who received formal studio art education in an art school? Are there modes to publish and share art other than the white cube model? How does a collective accommodate individual aspirations and desires? What possible modes of survival and sustainability are there beyond the commercial versus charity support binary structure? Rooted in Critical Theory concerns, FP’s production of space (Lefebvre) is considered the impetus for the reproduction of social relations. FP asks: how do we sustain the progressive posture of art, preserve art’s non-conforming and implicitly anti-establishment character in the age of gentrification, when art increasingly becomes a decoration, or a kind of added value? These questions all point to the need to re-imagine and re-invent a different sort of creative economy, called “the space of creativity.” (Hui Yuk, DOXA) At this point, FP is answering to the demand of a relevant model – one that (re-)generates singularity (of the individuals) and promotes new collectivity, or the enactment of co-individuation. (Simondon, Stiegler) What does it mean to be an artist in a hyper-capitalist digital age in which our feelings and temporal being are the main targets of moderation and control through broad-scale commodification of art and design (Lukács, Stiegler) in the name of urban progress through gentrification (Hui)? As many government-initiated local projects highlight heritage re-enlivening and/or are implicitly imbued with a social work concern or rhetoric, what does FP as a collective conceive to be the new relations between the politics of art, de-proletarianization (the regaining of one’s place in knowing and in producing new knowledge), and the practice of love and care? In the short period of seven months, a few signature event series have emerged to be place-holders of individual desires and the practice of care for others. The conference presentation (and the full essay) will elaborate on how our purposes are realized in the following programs – WCH Assemblage (on re-purposing dumped material into art installation and object performance), Work-in-progress Inspection, Spatial Pressure Calibration (improvised sound-making), Floating Teatime (an on-line writing platform), and other free contribution from FPC members specific to their talents -- all occurring on an open-to-all indoor space furnished with a charity café with a free wi-fi reading environment to encourage person-to-person conversations, and a growing library and digital archive to promote the culture of documentation as many of us are media artists. FP is not just an organization, but itself an art project that interrogates questions of space and being. Re-orientation of art is central to the re-orientation of everyday life, which must begin with spatial re-orientation.

Academia Letters, 2021

Urban development is often conceived in terms of infrastructure and demographics, weighing the ability of planning to cope with rapid changes in population as a result of global economic and environmental pressures emerging throughout the region. This meta-level engagement neglects the everyday life of residents, both longstanding and newly-arrived. However, new forms of collaborative research have emerged that promote novel approaches envisioning and representing urban phenomena and the people that drive them. Such models can inform and guide new policy models that consider and value citizen activation and participation in urban planning (Roy, 2005). Focusing on the relationship between the arts and urban development in the Global South, there has been considerable recent research in terms of looking at how cultural districts and other state-sponsored planning initiatives have employed the arts as a means of generating urban development, to gentrify neighborhoods, or to achieve greater international status (Zielke

Pacific Spaces: Translations and Transmutations, 2022

Conclusion to Pacific Spaces: Translations and Transmutations. Berghahn.

2017

With this anniversary publication we celebrate 20 years of urban design at Aalborg University. The contributors to the publication are students, graduates, and faculty members, who have generously sharpened their pens and minds for this diverse collection of essays and accompanying illustrations. The resulting collaborative catalogue celebrates urban design teaching and research at AAU, and the urban design practice by graduates from this program. Authors have been invited to contribute with a brief essay, focused on a pertinent urban design issue of their own selection. Together they form a rich collection of subjects, concepts, objects, projects, and questions, which have been-and still are-on our minds in urban design throughout the past 20 years. The richness and variation demonstrated by the catalogue is in keeping with urban design's orientation towards diverse considerations when addressing contemporary urban challenges. The past years of AAU urban design endeavours have demonstrated that urban design is about acting within networks of multiple interests, concerns, stakeholders, and other actors. Urban design is perhaps well conceived of as a sensibility of the 'urban-minded', as Harvard GSD dean José Luis Sert suggested at the world's first Urban Design conference in 1956. This somewhat indefinite inception for urban design still persists, and clarity of definition seems to be defied. Rather, in the engaged attempts to operate with synthesis in the ever-changing complexity of the urban condition, urban design's elusive mandate and purpose remains in debate. If attempting to stir up this hornet's nest of urban design's contemporary raison d'etre and scope, multiple co-existing positions impose themselves. Just some of these include: Koolhaas' radical Fuck Context and push to leave architectural delusions of potency and splendor, next to Gehl's human-friendly 'let's meet between the buildings' agenda, next to Mostafavi's optimistic call for a cross-disciplinary sensibility to respond to the ecological crisis, next to Harvey's sturdy emphasis on power, justice, and the right to the city, next to Jacobs' and Appleyard's manifesto of e.g., livability, community, and public life as normative goals of urban design. This multiplicity suggests that to be an urban designer demands skillful and flexible navigation across complex issues of cities and countrysides. Urban designers must work with many elements with meticulousness and readiness. We must strive to continuously adapt to situations and to even be at the forefront of change. This also applies to urban design teaching and research at AAU, as well as to the practices of graduates. For these reasons, this publication offers its modest space for engaged professionals and students to address the diversity and variation of urban design through what they determine to be pertinent urban design matters. Thus, the contemporary versatility of urban design is reflected in this kaleidoscopic catalogue, addressing such diverse issues as urban design's social ambitions; affective encounters of urban space; the conceptualisation of spaces, landscapes, and buildings; relationships between local sites and global change; ecology; events and culture in the city; urban design's role in a complex field of interests and actors driving urban development and planning; dreams of the future; technologies; continuous urban change; experimental methods; and disputed concepts. We are proud to present these voices, and we invite you to dive into them. Thanks to all the contributors for sharing! Last but not least, thanks to the Spar Nord Foundation for its generous funding of this publication, as well as to the Study Board of Architecture & Design and to the Section of Architecture & Urban Design at the

This Big City, 2011

XJTLU's Design Research Institute (DRI) is a new transdisciplinary initiative aimed at fostering design research as a speculative and rigorous projectbased form of enquiry that offers the sciences, the arts, the humanities, engineering and society at large valuable insights into processes that lead to desirable futures. Within China and internationally, the DRI sets out to establish itself as a centre of design research excellence, with emphases on advanced practices in developing contexts and on the dynamics of creative processes. It is one of a small number of high priority, thematically focused, research institutes at XJTLU, in recognition of design as a transdisciplinary area of strategic importance. The DRI welcomes people, ideas and initiatives related to design research from XJTLU faculty and students, as well as from academia and industry at large. The Shared Territories exhibition is the Design Research Institute's inaugural event. Its contributions were solicited internationally by invitation, and by an open call across the XJTLU campus. The result is a broad variety of design research areas, methods and media, of local, regional and international projects, from academic and industrial contributors. We envision this variety to stimulate design research interest and discourse across our campus and beyond in the intellectual territories shared between all who rigorously engage in open-ended, creative enquiry.

An online bi-monthly architecture journal interrogating the vocation and activity of those positioned on the fringe of the formal architecture sector, publishing thought pieces from those who work inside and outside of 'architecture-proper'. www.edgecondition.net //CONTENTS //LETTERS: 04 - Sara Seravalli introduces her charity auction project ART MEETS ARCHITECTURE. 08 - Graeme Brooker shares his concerns over the apparent invisibility of the world of interiors in REVIEWING THE FARRELL REVIEW. //FEATURES: 10 - Rachel Anderson, Producer at ARTANGEL takes us through examples of THE PSYCHIC SPACE. 16 - Commissioning editor Helen Castle explores the realm of digital publishing in CANNY COMMUNICATION IN ARCHITECTURE IN THE AGE OF ‘MESSY MEDIA’ - part two.. 22 - Rachael de Moraivia’s essay talks about how Virginia Woolf built feminist discourse on the foundations of modern architecture in A SHOEBOX OF ONE’S OWN. 28 - Philip Hall Patch details his innovative use of salt in art and construction in the article THE INDEFINITE PLEASURES OF SALT. 34 - Andrew Walker and Merjin Royaards delve into the depths of sound and space with their robotic installation, ACID HOUSE. //AN INTERVIEW WITH... 46 - Jennifer Davis, curator at Rearview Projects interviews her friend and commissioned artist Jimenez Lai. //FROM PERSONAL EXPERIENCE: 58 - Liz West gives us a insight into the life of a practising artist in CONSTRUCTING MY SURVIVAL 62 - Bryan Cantley shares the process and thinking behind the cover artwork ....TO BE TRANSFORMED. 70 - Amberlea Neely introduces us to the independent, not-for-profit organisation dedicated to the making of great places - PLACE 74 - Aerospace Engineer narrates a trip San Francisco MOMA in MUTABLE SPACE. //OP-EDS: 76 - Ordinary Architecture take us through the history and it’s use of Supergraphics in BIGGER THAN THE BOTH OF US. 84 - Mia Tagg tells us all about Homebaked, the grass roots art installation and business in MATTERS IN OUR OWN HANDS. 88 - The team behind Processcraft take us through the importance of technical studies and engaging with students in CRAFTING ARCHITECTURE //PHOTO-ESSAYS: 98 - Photographer Paul Karalius and Open Eye Gallery Director, Lorenso Fusi, explore the intricacies of PHOTOGRAPHING ART SPACE. 106 - Photographer Richard Boll shares the concepts behind his shoots in BYPRODUCTS OF CREATIVITY. 116 - Jim Stephenson shares his first hand experience of documenting the construction of the Serpentine Pavilion in UNDER CONSTRUCTION.

Pacific Spaces: Translations and Transmutations, 2022

Introduction to Engels-Schwarzpaul, A.-C., Lopesi, L., & Refiti, A. L. (Eds.). (2022). Pacific Spaces: Translations and Transmutations. Berghahn.

Art and the City

2017

With this anniversary publication we celebrate 20 years of urban design at Aalborg University. The contributors to the publication are students, graduates, and faculty members, who have generously sharpened their pens and minds for this diverse collection of essays and accompanying illustrations. The resulting collaborative catalogue celebrates urban design teaching and research at AAU, and the urban design practice by graduates from this program. Authors have been invited to contribute with a brief essay, focused on a pertinent urban design issue of their own selection. Together they form a rich collection of subjects, concepts, objects, projects, and questions, which have been-and still are-on our minds in urban design throughout the past 20 years. The richness and variation demonstrated by the catalogue is in keeping with urban design's orientation towards diverse considerations when addressing contemporary urban challenges. The past years of AAU urban design endeavours have demonstrated that urban design is about acting within networks of multiple interests, concerns, stakeholders, and other actors. Urban design is perhaps well conceived of as a sensibility of the 'urban-minded', as Harvard GSD dean José Luis Sert suggested at the world's first Urban Design conference in 1956. This somewhat indefinite inception for urban design still persists, and clarity of definition seems to be defied. Rather, in the engaged attempts to operate with synthesis in the ever-changing complexity of the urban condition, urban design's elusive mandate and purpose remains in debate. If attempting to stir up this hornet's nest of urban design's contemporary raison d'etre and scope, multiple co-existing positions impose themselves. Just some of these include: Koolhaas' radical Fuck Context and push to leave architectural delusions of potency and splendor, next to Gehl's human-friendly 'let's meet between the buildings' agenda, next to Mostafavi's optimistic call for a cross-disciplinary sensibility to respond to the ecological crisis, next to Harvey's sturdy emphasis on power, justice, and the right to the city, next to Jacobs' and Appleyard's manifesto of e.g., livability, community, and public life as normative goals of urban design. This multiplicity suggests that to be an urban designer demands skillful and flexible navigation across complex issues of cities and countrysides. Urban designers must work with many elements with meticulousness and readiness. We must strive to continuously adapt to situations and to even be at the forefront of change. This also applies to urban design teaching and research at AAU, as well as to the practices of graduates. For these reasons, this publication offers its modest space for engaged professionals and students to address the diversity and variation of urban design through what they determine to be pertinent urban design matters. Thus, the contemporary versatility of urban design is reflected in this kaleidoscopic catalogue, addressing such diverse issues as urban design's social ambitions; affective encounters of urban space; the conceptualisation of spaces, landscapes, and buildings; relationships between local sites and global change; ecology; events and culture in the city; urban design's role in a complex field of interests and actors driving urban development and planning; dreams of the future; technologies; continuous urban change; experimental methods; and disputed concepts. We are proud to present these voices, and we invite you to dive into them. Thanks to all the contributors for sharing! Last but not least, thanks to the Spar Nord Foundation for its generous funding of this publication, as well as to the Study Board of Architecture & Design and to the Section of Architecture & Urban Design at the

Informed by pioneering urban sociologist Robert Park, this study proposes a new layer of investigation of urban practices: the analysis of art projects. The unique story of Ashdod, a coastal city in Israel's southern periphery, made it a fascinating case study for Project Ashdod, a multiscale art intervention. Ashdod, Israel's first planned city, was moulded as an immigrant's city, leading to its current segregated structure, with districts differing along ethnic and socioeconomic lines. Combining urban spatial methods with art content analysis, the article explores the different ways in which Project Ashdod reflects its titular city according to Park's terminology.

Exhibitions as the public spaces in the city are simultaneously centres of economic, social, and cultural, etc. activities with a comprehensive overview can be stated that the exhibitions are urban mixed uses manifested in a complex building. These spaces are born in the industrial age, and have developed a dramatic record in the history of contemporary architecture. Today, in concurrent with the development of industrial societies and the transition to post industrial era, the need to construct such spaces in various scales associated with other spaces in the city has been doubled. In this way, the exhibition architecture features represents the latest enhancement of contemporary technologies and are considered as a real plot of developments in contemporary architecture. From a sensitive aspect, architecture exhibition have a significant part in determining the application of new technologies in developing cities. These research efforts to develop guideline for architectural design...