The Possibilities and Limitations of an Extreme Environment - An Interview with David Garcia

PAPER: What is the background behind MAP, how did it develop as an idea leading up to its first issue ‘ANTARCTICA’?

David Garcia: The idea of the publication was mainly to try and transfer the discussions, the methodology and the design methods that we had in the studio and move them outside our practice. This was a way for us to get it out for a public discussion, and eventual feedback. So the intention was just to expose our actions. That meant that we wanted to represent what the studio was about and how it worked. The way our practice, MAP Architects (previously David Garcia Studio), works is to collaborate with the scientific community in its widest understanding to inform architecture with the challenges it has today which I think are quite specific, they’re much more complex than what they have been before. Mainly due to our denser cities and spreading communities, we are in touch with natural and artificial challenges which are quite extreme, whether it’s pollution, derelict infrastructure or political frontiers. The idea is to represent how we tackle those problems in a publication which for me had several aims; it should be very affordable, I wanted something that if you were just slightly curious, price would never be an issue. I wanted our questions to spread so that there was a feedback. That meant that magazines and books were out of the questions because of the amount of time it takes to produce but also the expenses involved. Very quickly I saw that the publication could express how we work; first we engage in research, and then we engage in design. It should have an aspect which was very objective, just a collection of data on a particular theme, and one which was subjective, with the language of architecture to engage with questions that came up from the research. That duality asked for a two page format. Facts. Design. Because it was called MAP (Manual of Architectural Possibilities) and it is linked to a map, the two concepts merged together very quickly into a folding map format. That’s how it came to be physically. We use three months of research with contact with experts and scientists. Then we take a pause where we debate questions that have risen from that research, and then we do series of three to four projects that take up those questions from a very pragmatic point of view or a very critical point of view, or even sometimes a cynical point of view.

The research side of MAP 'ANTARCTICA', the first issue of Manual of Architectural Possibilities.

P: So the studio was doing these kind of projects before you established MAP as a publication, was it just an extension of your previous work?

DG: Yes, it is an extension of our methodology. The only difference is that what we did at the studio were competitions or commissions and sometimes research projects. With regards to MAP it is almost solely speculative projects. Although some of those projects, funny enough, have then become real projects. Because there was interest and they have transformed themselves, but that was the only difference, it was a form for research and speculation without a necessary permission, but it has been a strange boomerang where sometimes those speculations have become studies and commissions.

P: The topics of extreme environments and disasters is something that seems to appeal to many, which is also mirrored in popular culture in recent years where films, tv-series and video games have been treating similar subjects as MAP; Contagion, Pandemic, Chernobyl Diaries, S.T.A.L.K.E.R., The Day After Tomorrow are just a few examples. What makes these extreme environments and disasters so interesting, and is it more relevant today than 50 years ago?

DG: I think that all themes rise from present contemporary concerns and sometimes they are very abstract, sometimes they are very concrete, sometimes it is a geography that we are interested in, such as Antarctica. It was an area that would be interesting to know what it was like as a continent and how it would compare in terms of its challenges. Some are a bit more abstract, like ‘ARCHIVE’. The transition that we have had in the past 50 years from analog to digital, what are the implications with regards to information and the built environment? Others are very physical but their apparent expression is much less tangible, which is the idea of ‘QUARANTINE’ for example. Although once we have picked up on a subject we touch on all these different histories and implications, I have to say we have never been influenced by a film or a fashion. I think it is just things that are in every one’s concern, whatever creative, or non creative, realm it is. The ideas of radioactive pollution has obviously had very imminent results from Chernobyl and Fukushima. That becomes part of the general consciousness and with regards to quarantine, I think it has been a constant concern throughout humanity literally. The fear of extinguishing through epidemic. It has also very direct implications today mainly due to the way we are interacting with nature, but also because we are moving and are in touch with the world in an overwhelming scale and speed. So I think that our themes come from general concerns that are also touched upon by many other fields.

P: The studio is, as mentioned, doing collaborations with many different institutions in various scientific fields. The research aspect is touched upon in a university environment, but many times in a problematic and naïve way, treating the research only as a justification for form or programme. How important is research in architecture, both in practice and in the university?

DG: It is naïve to think that you will become an expert at the fields that you are going to be touching, because they are very complex. But at the same time it is vital for any designer to come close and to collaborate with those who are experts in the fields of study that your design touch. Mainly because your design decisions are informed decisions that become much more robust, and I don’t believe in the pure artistic fancy as the only submission for any architectural design. I’m not saying it isn’t vital that there is a spatial quality that goes beyond the functional, I think it is. But I think just as strongly that it is important that building performs beyond the phenomenological. I think it also has to, as an element in the environment, be more than just a passive, static shell. It can be a performative shell, and that performance can be active or passive, meaning that it can engage with its challenges, not because it’s moving around but the way that it is implicitly designed. I do not that think those two aspects need to be put against each other but I think that ethically and for design robustness it is vital to understand as much as you can about the challenges of the context.

P: Is it different though in a university? Should the approach be different compared to practice where you have more resources and possibilities to contact the experts in these various fields?

DG: I think it is actually easier in the university because you have more time and dedication. In practice the resources are very limited, and even though there is an income from projects it is seldom the case that you can convince the client to invest in that type of research. Normally what you create is a parallel platform to the project so that it can be invested via public funding or alternative funds. The resources are again very specific and pigeon holed into what they should go in to. So for us it is a challenge to convince the clients that we should have more time and more resources.

P: What is the process like when it comes to deciding the themes and topics of MAP?

DG: The decision regarding what theme to explore is always on going, there is a constant discussion at the studio about ideas, projects and themes. There is a catalogue of possible themes which we brainstorm, it is an on going process.

P: One thing that we particularly enjoy about MAP as a publication is the way you can read it in so many different ways and different scales, as a poster on the wall as well as a small booklet for example. How important is the graphic layout of MAP, both in terms of readability as well as its visual impact?

DG: I would never call the publication a poster, although it can be used as one. Nonetheless, the graphic detailing is vital for us because we feel we would like to communicate at different levels. One is more immediate, where info-graphics is one very important tool to communicate basic facts through a graphical lens. We are very careful about the way MAP forms a single open page, a double page, a folded element and how you can read it from fold to fold. It has the power of the map as an object, where you can choose segments that you would like to read, and the index is actually expressed as a coordinate system, indicating longitude and latitude. It is also important how one issue of MAP visually connects with another. If you put all the issues that we have done so far next to each other the project pages communicate. There is always a territory that bleeds into the next, the rivers become fields that transform and connect the publications when aligned next to each other. For us it is very important that it is not only about content, but also about form and that they work together as well as possible. It is one aspect that takes a lot of time, we normally design five or six radically different proposals for each MAP, apart from the hundreds of versions during design development. There are many that are thrown out and redone and so on, so there is a lot of work on that level, and if we are not happy with the result, we postpone printing. A printing deadline is not a major factor for us and we would rather postpone it for a month than compromise the standards.

P: How do you approach information and come up with new interesting ways of presenting it?

DG: When we research, the most difficult part is cooking down the data we have gathered. We have to get down to the essentials so that MAP becomes a gate into information but not an encyclopedia. When we find the most relevant aspects we try to combine them so that someone rather quickly can come to terms with what we are dealing with. Once we have selected those parameters it is just a question of experimenting with different ways of communicating that data. There is only a small team working on how to present the data visually.

P: How many people are working on each issue of MAP?

DG: It changes during its production but I would say an average of four to five people. Sometimes there are twelve and sometimes three.

P: You mentioned that the publication is separated into a subjective and an objective side. Is there ever a danger that the research will become design-centered if these aspects are not separated?

DG: We are not allowed to design when we research because we do not know what we are going to be designing. At that stage we just want to know what is ‘Quarantine’, what is ‘Antarctica’, what is ‘Chernobyl’? It is only when we have identified some of the questions, problems and challenges that interest us that we engage with design, and that happens after the research is done. Once the design phase begins there is once again feedback from the experts in the specific field. Some of the projects are extremely pragmatic. Others are much more subtle and are critically aimed at construction methods and social or political aspects, and some of them are in fact satirical and cynical in their approach.

P: What projects have been developed into real life projects?

DG: The Maldives Habitations is a project that has become an ongoing subject of research for the government, which in turn has produced other small projects. The Iceberg Habitation has received focus of attention and has also been tested at different scales. We believe that all of the projects that we create could be realised. We do not think that we are doing any science fiction. Even the most radical ones, such as the Iceberg project. All you need is a caterpillar and then start by making a whole into an iceberg. I feel that all of the projects that we have designed, even if they might appear very strange or unusual, are possible. All you need to do is to engage technologies. The Zoo for contaminated species is the most radical one, but it’s not science fiction, it’s just a big hole in the ground with a dome. Some of these projects are just the most simple solutions to the problems approached, the ‘Ready Made Antarctic Base Station’ for example is a project where you would just land a series of retired air crafts on Antarctica instead of Arizona to create a work station. For us they are just alternative  ways of engaging with the built environment, but I don’t think we make any of our buildings float in the air or stand by wishful thinking. I think what we challenge are other aspects, we challenge ways of design and building that are not necessarily traditional ones.

The Maldives Habitations - a project by MAP Architects that is now materializing.

P: What is the next extreme environment for MAP to investigate?

DG: The next MAP is focusing on Greenland. It is special, because it is the only MAP so far that does not only present projects designed by us. It takes the work that we have done for the Venice Biennale this year where the Danish pavilion selected four architectural teams to tackle different challenges on Greenland. We thought that the research was so thorough that it could easily be a MAP. It is essentially going to be about Greenland and its challenges and at the same time a collection of projects by the different teams. MAP Architects and Henning Larsen Architects formed one team, BIG (Bjarke Ingels Group) and a Greenlandic studio called Tegnestuen Nuuk formed a second one. Another one consisted of Vandkunsten, Qarsoq Tegnestue and Clement & Carlsen. It was a one year long research process where we visited Greenland twice and collaborated with the local architectural practices.

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Architect David A. Garcia is founder and principal of MAP architects. He is the editor and publisher of the international publication MAP (Manual of Architectural Possibilities). www.maparchitects.dk

He was interviewed by Samuel Michaëlsson and Hugo Losman on the 20th of November in Lund, Sweden. 

Hugo Losman is a third year architecture student at the School of Architecture in Lund, Sweden.

On Public and Private Space

From ‘an Interview with Cedric Price,’ Issue 1, Polytechnic of Central London Architecture Society:

The assumption that hobbling over the cobbles round the backside of a Barbara Hepworth sculpture is going to cause rich, random, social intercourse amongst the populace is foolish. I think a traffic jam in a square in Rome is probably more humane, even if its on the nasty side; at least the emotions are roused.

The University of Westminster used to be called The Polytechnic of Central London and in those days its architecture school occasionally produced a publication, it was called Issue. The first volume of Issue was published in February 1979, its theme was ‘Public Life - Public Place’. Not surprisingly, it is a theme which continues to fuel architectural discourse to this very day. However, what has changed since those days is the rise of the personal computer, or to be more precise of digital technologies more generally, as an active ingredient in the way life is lived in the modern city. Since, as we shall see, the notions of ‘public’ and ‘private’ already were hopelessly inadequate as a means of articulating the organisational patterns of the modern city, the value of using them today seems doubly doubtful. One item featured in Issue 1 was an article by Richard Goodwin, consisting in an interview with Cedric Price. In answer to the question ‘what is public life’ Price offered the following, important, observation:

I do think that public life, as a general term, is difficult to define. I don’t think, necessarily, that the congregation of a crowd has anything to do with public life: you can have very lonely people in a bus queue. The only common factor is that they all want a bus, and there’s a certain amount of unspoken manners being operated, that they make a queue. But it isn't a very public activity. 

Here Price was making the point, there are numerous places in the modern city, necessary to the functioning of the city, that have been designed to support activities that are essentially private and personal. Price gives the example of the bus stop to make his point, but other contributors gave other examples.

In an article by Stuart Knight the problem of the use of the terms ‘public’ and ‘private’ is confronted head-on: 

Problems seem to emerge when definitions of activities related to public and private life are articulated. Problematic because what are now seen as attributable to public life are in fact aspects of private life. Consumer goods, and the variety of buildings housing them, are related to the necessities of life and, therefore, part of the private domain, as are the consumption of food and drink, the purchase of clothing etc. Indeed, the buildings which house these ‘activities‘ display the ‘intimate’ qualities of domestic life, boutiques are redolent of dressing rooms, restaurants of family dining rooms, and department stores construct domestic interiors in anonymous volumes. ‘Advanced factories’ are designed with ‘T’ groups in mind in order that workers can ‘relate’ to small production groups - modelled on the family - working at their own pace, in ‘personalised’ zones. Similarly, London Board schools of the 19th Century - one of the many ‘public’ monuments of the Victorian suburbs - are demolished to make way for schools arranged and articulated as a series of home based units, complete with pitched roofs and domestic interiors. A domestic ‘image’ which has been destroyed in order to build ‘rationalised’ ‘social housing’ at whose base the school hovers as a bathetic irony. The categories have become reversed the ‘private’ housing has become ‘public’ and the school has become private. Just as the hospital, associated with sickness - a private concern - and from the 15th Century located in a domestic building, even in the 19th Century the cottage hospital was the rule, is now located in a public building complete with airport lounge foyer and attendant ennui, escalators and shops. A third category has interceded here - the social...

The ‘social realm’ gathers together all those characteristics of the ‘private realm’ which are capable of rationalisation - a continuous and ever expanding project - into a society of collective, and assumed, unified interests. The model utilised is that of the family, the purveyor of norms and standards, and is projected as the paradigm for all organisations from the school and commerce to local, national and international institutions and governments. This begins with monarchical rule which posits the ‘royal household’ as the principle and ultimate family of the state who sanction - in the constitutional variety - the apparatus of government; and culminates in the modern bureaucratic state in which no one rules but many manage. In Sweden for example, one third of the working population manages the remaining two thirds, who engage in productive work (About the same proportion as the Polytechnic of Central London). In the democratic state no theoretical debate takes place in public or private since there is no theory only the pragmatic elucidation of norms, standards, procedures and conventions applied mainly to the issues that are the preserve of the private realm...

Instead of ‘private’ and ‘public’, Knight was suggesting the concepts of ‘social’ and ‘intimate’ as more appropriate if we want to theorise the kinds of places and their functioning that arise in the modern city: 

The rise of the ‘intimate’ takes its place in opposition to the rise of the ‘social’, particularly in the last hundred years, where ‘modern individualism’ asserts itself as an incapacity to be at ‘home’ with the conventions and conformism of society or the nihilism implied in existing outside it....This unhappy dialectic accounts for the rise of poetry, music, certain forms of ‘modernist’ art, and that uniquely social form of writing - the novel; and the subsequent decline of the most public of arts - architecture, dependent as it is on characteristics derived from the public, rather than private domains.

Fortunately for architecture, the unhappy dialectic, to which Knight refers here, is based upon a misunderstanding, on the ideal of a perfect state of being, in which human life elegantly unfolds into activities and places that are uniquely and absolutely ‘private’ and ‘public’. However, just because it is based on a misunderstanding, does not mean that architecture is immune from it; the ideal of public & private is a problem for architecture and needs to be addressed, in theory, before it can become effective in practice. Unfortunately - and this is where Knight is correct to draw attention to the domain of the ‘social’ as a specifically modern phenomenon - since theory is not an issue for ‘social’ space, so has it tended to disappear from architectural education. But, without theory, architecture has no place in which to work away at its concepts, testing their validity and asking if they are true or false. The lack of theory in architecture schools makes architecture vulnerable, leaving it incapable of accounting for its productive value, either in the past, the present or the future.

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Doctor Watson teaches Architecture at the University of Westminster and she is the inventor of Air Grid, a colourful but mute lattice structure that has recently evolved into an animated population of flying computers, known as beetles. The record of the change is the subject of her new book: UTOPIAN ADVENTURE: The Corviale Void.

LIMITATIONS - a panel discussion on architectural zines

Make sure not to miss this event with fantastic guests! 

We will also be launching the ninth issue of PAPER concerning the same theme (LIMITATIONS).

Hope to see you all there:

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London Architecture Diary

Between: Dreams

Post WWII Amsterdam

Imagine a city ravaged by war. Imagine the citizens and their memories, their relief, their hope. The city structure has been ripped apart. Something new has to come, but let us pause at this moment for a while. 

The grid has turned into shambles that create space charged with nothingness, ripped memories, but also potential. The structures still standing were lucky to live through the war, or maybe they have to live on with terrible memories. Either way they will be treated as heroes and will serve as reminders of how the people made it through. The people and the heroes have something powerful in common, together they form a powerful Collective. 

The destroyed city is the collective space. The possibilities and dreams are limitless in number and extent. Until the Strong Individuals launch new plans, sing the songs of their future and take the air out of the Collective’s chants. New monuments of men will be built, no doubt handsome, functional and necessary. But they will be selfish. The architecture is selfish and always will be selfish.  

This is the given climate and it is why it is necessary for the architects to define their roles, to keep their morale and legitimacy.

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Hugo Losman is a third year architecture student at the School of Architecture in Lund, Sweden. 

Water Towers of Ireland, an interview with Jamie Young

Jamie Young is an architecture graduate who attended University College Dublin. Since graduating Jamie has been involved  in various projects working with Dublin City Council. These include a research document on Mountjoy Square for Dublin City Council and a research project on alternative uses for overlooked sites in Dublin’s city centre as part of the group PRACTICE. This work culminated in an exhibition, “space|overlooked”, in Dublin Civic Trust which will run until the end of the month (February 2012). He is currently the coordinator of Waterford Pop-up, Waterford City Council’s new city centre rejuvenation scheme. 

Water Towers of Ireland began its life as an eagerness to engage people with these artifacts which pepper the Irish countryside. Being from Ireland myself when driving through the countryside, I notice these lonely objects which are always distant. They appear to be forever on the horizon which is tantalizing. Some might call them an eyesore on the landscape but I think Jamie’s project has succeeded in bringing these towers to life. His project is reminiscent of the work of the Bechers who documented and are continuing to document industrial structures including water towers. Their work has more of a scientific character, a catalogue of structures before they are dismantled and lost. In comparison Jamie’s project which now includes maps, drawings, polaroids and prints, give each water tower an individual quality. The portraits personalize the towers and invite us to look at them up close. Jamie exhibited his water tower portraits at UCD and a piece is currently exhibited at the MadArt gallery in Dublin. He describes the project as “part inventory, part photographic essay and part history”. The project has gained exposure through notable online publications including BLDG BLOG, Archdaily and Architizer.

Nine water towers documented by Jamie Young

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Fearghal Moran: What drove you to document water towers, and what is it you found interesting in these monolithic structures?

Jamie Young: The role of water towers in society has always fascinated me. Far from being objects of a singular function, they have found ways to be useful beyond their intended use. Through their prominence on the landscape, they force their way into the lives of locals. When I was growing up, the closest water tower to where I lived became a weekend hangout and drinking spot. Now, the same tower stands in disuse, covered in antennae for a mobile phone company. It is their visibility though, through  always being built on high ground, that gives them their most interesting use as landmarks. While this seems obvious, it didn’t fully strike me until I was researching and trying to compile a list of those still standing. One of the ways I located towers was through them popping up in Google searches in property website listings – “continue along that road until you see the water tower.” “straight on through the woodlands and pass the water tower.” “turn left at the water tower for Fennells Bay” This interest, along with a want to find some focus in my photography and the necessary completist personality to track down and photograph 200 of anything, led me to secure some funding and hit the road. 

FM: Your images go far beyond just documenting these towers, they are presented like portraits each with their own unique character. Was this your aim when you first started and how have people reacted to the portraits?

JY: The first tower I photographed was at Castlemoyle, New Ross. Through this visit and the time I spent editing the images, I began to get an idea of how I needed to exhibit the work. On entering New Ross from the south, the tower is visible above the town. The closer you get to it, however, the harder it becomes to pinpoint as it disappears behind rows of houses. Though in this case the water tower is situated in the middle of a housing estate, it is true that in most instances the majority of people only interact with these objects from a distance. This realisation, together with how the images show up the texture, structure and weathering of the concrete in detail, made me realise that I needed to print the images as large as possible. For the exhibition this turned out to be 24 x 16, which made for a nice poster feel and worked well in that particular space. People were allowed to get close to these large prints and, in effect, get face to face with something they so often would only view on the horizon. 

Stepping away from the hard documentary style of the Bechers, synonymous with water towers, I try to give these images an emotive value and sense of place. I approach the work as portraiture and hope to convey the subject’s personality, as any good portrait would. The response to this has been one of recognition. People tend to look for the tower where they grew up in amongst my photos and leave more aware of passing them on their travels. The most extreme example of this is the set of photos I have received over the past year from a friend in Singapore. Since seeing the project online, he has been photographing any water towers he comes across and emailing me the results.

 Concrete Cooling Towers by Bernd and Hilla Becher

FM: Most of the structures that you have documented are uninhabitable. Could your project be a way to make them more alive and not just landmarks?

JY: It was later in the project when I first started giving this some thought. After Geoff Manaugh’s post about the project on BLDGBLG, other articles started showing up on various sites. Archdaily asked the question, “If no longer in use, what can be done to take advantage of these stand alone structures?”.  While I like the idea of these brutalist structures being left to ruin, it seems like a wasted opportunity given their varied and interesting forms. Though this project will never be about re-purposing the structures, I have given the issue some thought.What the original design offers in each case is height. Giving access to this height offers a view. Offering any view in Ireland immediately brings tourism to mind. These are the kind of points that have come up time and again in any conversations I have had with people about how to make use of disused water towers. I have tentative plans to run a design competition for students later in the year to look at this exact problem. 

FM: Can you see any patterns in the form of the towers? Are they regionally different and are they shaped by function?

JY: The primary patterns in their form are based on technology. While stripped to their basic function the towers are extremely simplistic – made of two parts, a container and a structure to raise this up – how this is achieved has changed over the years. The earliest substantial towers were made of metal tanks raised up on legs or placed on top of an existing masonry structure. These were most commonly seen at train stations across the country, feeding the steam trains of the day. A large number of these can still be seen, with a few still occasionally in use. Early concrete towers were small, had square tanks and between eight and twelve legs. Over time, and with the development of the material, tanks became round, the number of supports grew fewer and the towers became larger. This brought us from the eight-legged tower at Killeagh, Co. Cork (built as apart of an intended Royal Army Airship Station in 1918) to the now infamous, single chuted Sillogue tower of North Dublin. Regionally, the early towers would have differed due to the local ironworks that manufactured them. Nowadays, while there are similar towers, this is down to the same engineering company being used and can happen anywhere n the country. The most distinctive example of this is the tower at Kildalton College, Co Kilkenny and its sister tower at Gaybrook, just outside Mullingar. Both were built by MC O’Sullivan Engineers.  

FM: I was intrigued by how Geoff Manaugh described the water towers as “prisons for water”, is this how you would describe them? And if not what immediately springs to mind?

JY: As part of my first year studying architecture, the class went on a trip to Inis Meain, an island off the coast of Galway. On the west end of the island is an impressive cliff face, on top of which are huge slabs of stone. From here, looking back towards the fields, you can see what at first look like quite inactive sheep. They are in fact small boulders of a yellow stone carried there by glaciers and dropped as they melted. These non-indigenous rocks are known as erratics. When beginning my work on water towers, this memory came back to me again and again. I began to associate the conspicuous nature and otherness of these stones with the towers I now saw everywhere I went. In my writing on the subject you will come across the phrase “erratics of our everyday landscape” repeatedly. This has always summed them up for me. 

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Water Towers of Ireland is ongoing and currently seeking funding. The ultimate goal of the project is to document each of the towers still standing and gather this information into one publication. For further details on the project you can visit:

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Fearghal Moran is a third year architecture student at the University of Westminster.