SPEED AND TIME

“The English travel writer Bruce Chatwin wrote about a group of white explorers who were trying to force the pace of their African porters. The porters, within sight of their destination for the day, sat down and refused to move. As they explained to their frustrated employers, ‘‘we are waiting for our spirits to catch up with our bodies.’’-  John Thackara, In the Bubble: Speed

From the invention of the spinning jenny onward, the Industrial Revolution has concerned itself with speed and efficiency. We wanted to "make products efficiently to get the greatest volume of goods to the largest number of people, turning labor to mechanization…" as William McDonough aptly stated in Cradle to Cradle. Without criminalizing technology and our desire to improve our quality of life, I think it’s worth questioning the effects of efficiency on our lifestyle.

Thackara raises many important questions and ideas:

• Speed is not free.
• Chronos, absolute time, is different than Kairos, qualitative time.
• A speed society might create the precondition for psychosis
• Italians have an expression for the ‘sweetness of doing nothing’; dolce far niente. Do we have a word for that?
• We have moved into REAL TIME ENTERPRISE, a rapid pace of business that used to be determined by the speed of hand delivered mail. 
• We are ‘always on’. Does this give us time to reflect?
• Nemawashi is a Japanese term that means the creation of trust through time. It is thought to be the groundwork for understanding. If we skip this step, how do we understand one another?
• Social capital takes time to grow.
• Slowness doesn’t have to be a drag on civilization.
• In Israel schools, time is taught as a concept and a way of understanding other cultures. Do we consider time enough?

Speed and time are related to architecture, though it seems counterintuitive. Architecture is not frozen music, no matter how still it appears to be. For instance, intimate spaces all of have a sense of time. At my own house, we haven’t owned a television in years. It’s not that we don’t enjoy it, or that we judge those who have one, but the temptation to be drawn into hours of semi-conscious watching is too strong. By design, we wanted the furniture in our living room to be arranged in such a way that encourages conversation—something articulated to us by a good friend one day and we adopted. How many people arrange chairs around their wide-screen tv, with no sense of a communal circle in which to engage? By design, spaces can encourage slowness even on a small scale.

Industry poses a larger question; how can a factory support slowness? Should it? In business and industry, constant acceleration is unsustainable. Whether we consider the draining of oil wells, over-fishing, clear-cutting, or massive monoculture farming, it’s clear that there needs to be a balance and moderation in order to support the replenishment of natural resources. It’s redundant and overstated, but true. Acceleration through 'brute force' is ripe with negative consequences, but we are a system based on growth.If we slow down, we also need to remain prosperous (see above, `slowness doesn't have to be a drag on civilization').

The site of my inquiry is a peninsula that cradles Prince’s Cove, Eastport, Maine. There have been generations of fishery buildings at this site. The earliest structures (at the height of sardine and fish-based fertilizer production in the region) were large and rambling. There were a series of small outbuildings that created a kind of village, a testament to the level of activity that once took place. Eastport at one time had the largest sardine factory in the world. Clusters of sardine packing plants were scattered over the island. As time went by and the fishing industry flagged, the buildings at Prince’s Cove became fewer, and today, three uniform concrete structures are the last remnants of a golden age. As the proposals for new commercial fisheries roll in, plans to demolish the remaining structures are in full swing. What could these new forms be? How might they consider the speed of sustainability, the temporality of enterprise, and their place among the ghosts of buildings past (or to come)? 

Agency and (Temporary) Architecture

What is Agency? Two very motivated grad students here at RISD developed, proposed, and then received permission to teach a grad studies class- aptly named `Design Agency’. Our first task? To define what agency is. As designers, we have abilities (learned and inherent), or a set of competencies that allows us to problem-solve in a way that others might not be able. We also have vision; original ideas and creativity that are channeled through our abilities. Finally, we have an impulse to act. As designers with abilities, vision, and a desire to use both, we can be a catalyst for change.

ABILITY + VISION + ACTION = AGENCY

The crux of agency, though, is that at the heart of each community… at the grass-roots level… agency is required for meaningful change. Agency within a community, that is. We, as designers, might find our best work as the catalyst for the agency of others.

Everyone Designs. These are the words of John Thackara, author of ‘In the Bubble: Designing in a Complex World’. This basic human activity is common to us all, and according to Thackara, we need to develop an appreciation for what people can do that technology can’t.

Thackara talks a lot about efficiency, and how our obsession with it has lead to dehumanization. He charges us to consider these points:

• ·         Consider MATERIAL and ENERGY FLOWS in all design
• ·         Human AGENCY is a priority (humans are not a `factor’)
• ·         Deliver VALUE TO PEOPLE, not people to systems
• ·         Treat CONTENT as something we DO, not something we’re sold
• ·         PLACE, TIME, and CULTURAL DIFFERENCE are positive values, not obstacles
• ·         Focus on SERVICE, not things

The focus of this blog has been architecture, and its temporality. This is the forum and tool I have used to explore community engagement through architectural installation. After all, architecture is designed to be used—for the express purpose of the needs of humanity. Without needs, we would have no architecture. Need is a loaded word that encompasses all the subjects of past, present, and future blogs about temporary architecture: the need for shelter, the need for safety, the need for a free state, the need for beauty, and the need for agency.

Our architecture is a reflection of our agency.

Our Place and Our Time: Architecture and the Temporary

Temporary architectural installations are all around us. The houses we live in, the roads and bridges we traverse, and the places we worship and mourn. Human constructions can last thousands of years, but on some level we quietly acknowledge that constructions are simply a stage for culture that will one day see an end. Our constructions serve us through their temporality and locality. Our diversity of shelter mirrors our diversity of culture; a panoply of houses for the body and soul. To locate ourselves in this vast temporality, we can identify our own communities. We are linked by time and space to our dwellings.

How do you define your community? It could be where you were born. It is more likely where you live, work, learn, play, raise a family, or have close friends. Through a loosely defined process, I located for myself eight communities that I call home. And in one of those communities, there is a sister community; one that has breathed it’s temporality with the changing landscape and the rising and falling tides for twelve or thirteen thousand years before colonization. 

The town of Eastport and the Passamaquoddy Pleasant Point Reservation in Maine share a road, a landscape, and a vast ocean bay; not to mention a storied past. Blogs upon blogs could be dedicated to the swift march of European colonists claiming lands, fighting each other, sickening, converting, and oppressing the native people of Maine. The Passamaquoddy were the indigenous tribe of this particular region, traveling in small family bands between fishing grounds of summer and winter camps slightly inland for hunting game. The temporality of their architecture reflected the seasons and their uses—highly transportable and lightweight, the summer structures came apart easily. Winter dwellings sometimes incorporated a heavier foundation of logs much like the log houses of today, as a base to keep snow out. But the upper portions of the winter dwelling were every bit as temporary, a physical manifestation of an embrace of change.

Today, we build with less of an embrace of the unknown. Colonists built to settle and lay claim. Foundations are a mark of this attitude. While it is true that Native Americans in Maine had territories—and sometimes fought over these lines—ownership of land was not considered in the same manner. The resources of the land were considered to be communal. In suburban and rural communities today, we deny change as much as we deny death. Family homesteads are cherished, belongings are stockpiled whether or not they are useful, and resources are compiled to ward against uncertainty. This is a much safer, more comfortable lifestyle for us. We have our assets gathered against misfortune. But in reality, these are temporary also.

Temporary does not mean lightweight (though it can). To design or plan with a sense of temporality is to acknowledge being HERE. Active participation is the genetic marker for your existence. Your active awareness expressed through design is the quality and inherent order of a space. Temporary architecture might just be architecture with a greater awareness for its life (and death).