Leaving Space for the Non-Human: In Conversation with Mariana Ibañez and Simon Kim
Vegesonic. Image courtesy Mariana Ibañez and Simon Kim
Jimmy Bullis (JB): How do you see your research and advancement of robotic integration in design, which is in some ways at the boundaries of architecture, challenging what you elsewhere describe as a wildly unequal society?
Mariana Ibañez (MI): For a very long time, we’ve been interested in the effects and opportunities of technology in architecture. Finding the extent to which technology engages with architectural ideas and arguments has been at the center of our agenda. Sometimes it's about interaction, how our bodies and people interact with technology; sometimes it’s about material culture, or how we might translate technology into matter. More recently, we’ve been interested in larger questions of access and affordability. In this trajectory, the user is not only seen as an enabler or a receptor, but as an agent interacting with architectural space as equals. Right now, there is the two-fold question of the technical aspect of things and the social parameters in which that culture takes place. In these paths of inquiry, the process of defamiliarization, familiarization, and refamiliarization is important to understanding the inclusion of differences beyond people and towards others.
Vegesonic. Image courtesy Mariana Ibañez and Simon Kim
Simon Kim (SK): This points towards non-human agents and others. We are interested, not just in mechanical or machine-like technology, but also in biological receptors. In one project1 we had mushrooms growing on top of carbon fiber. Using custom shapes, we allowed mushrooms, or mycelium, to proliferate on the surface of carbon fiber shaped like a speaker. The speaker cone sat at the base of it. The carbon fiber is conductive, and it turns out so are humans, and so are mushrooms. So, we had a closed feedback loop where the sound would change as we touched or approached the speaker. The mushrooms altered the timbre of the sound with the receptivity of the carbon fiber via capacitive sensing. So, the instrumentation changed through our interaction, but also through the interaction of mycelium or other non-human biological agents. The work was basically our version of a theremin.
MI: We've been thinking a lot about how the idea of machine is changing as we move away from mechanical paradigms into electromagnetic, then into biological, and then finally into lifelike paradigms. In a lot of our teaching, we've been thinking about non-human agency and what that looks like. Is it flora and fauna? Is it other kinds of beings?
SK: Atmosphere...
MI: Is it the atmosphere? What is an architecture that includes the agency of the non-human, and how should that be defined? And what are the visual and spatial circumstances through which we engage with the world? Does it have a tectonic language with which we are familiar? Does it have an organizational underpinning that relates to ours? We don't yet have answers, but these questions put pressure on the natural world we have endlessly classified and made into discrete units of knowledge.
We are still very much interested in the core of architecture and disciplinary knowledge while experimenting in this realm; we want to understand which buttons we’re pushing, which plans we're redrawing, and how these disruptions produce a sort of measurable change for which we can argue.
SK: What then is the criteria for, and definition of, Beauty in non-anthropocentric design?
MI: I don't think the concept of Beauty exists for non-human agents, but instead something about performance—having the best conditions to succeed in a certain way, and for a biological system, performance would probably be about survival and reproduction. If we are making architecture for the mushroom, then the larger question is why? The mushroom left alone could create its own environment. I think architecture has responsibilities that go beyond problem-solving for humans. You need to be able to engage with the needs of the non-human.
SK: The other thing, regarding the foray into Synthetic Nature, is a kind of fallacy in thinking we need to save the planet. The planet is going to be just fine without us. In fact, it will probably recover.
MI: To clarify, are we ruining the planet for us?
SK: One take on this would be of seeing Nature as something that needs to be preserved—a romantic and nostalgic human-centric project—and that we are ruining it. Another positions Nature as a fungible and synthetic network constantly changing through our engagement with it. In this sense, architecture is for us but also not for us. It could also be for birds, mycelium, or microbes. The way for architecture to be more than just human-centric is to have spaces that are not for humans. Spaces could be bathed in purple light because it works well for flowering. It is not for us but is equally architecture. Now the idea of Beauty becomes an entirely different thing, and I love where that takes us.
MI: We are interested in the idea of Synthetic Nature. It produces a type of ecology in which different participants have agency in design processes and decisions. We have been working with Synthetic Nature to try to understand our work as a part of a larger ecology of participants and agents with equal agency.
SK: This is tied back to A Cyborg Manifesto, the writing of Donna Haraway, whom we valorize quite a lot. Her piece was about simians and cyborgs. It argues that you can become anything. You can be a woman, in the skin of a lion, at the interface of a powerful device that projects you into the world to be any number of layered creations, or what we call the Compound Being.
MI: In the piece, she talks about allegiances, the importance of being an ally, and how we identify groups of belonging. These, in a sense, can be seen as a kind of social theory—the way that the summit affects space-making, and the questions around beauty, craft, and tectonics. For us, they are all interconnected, and they are so extremely central in how we develop ideas about form, materials, and organization. I've noticed that in the past five to ten years, particularly in an academic context, there has been an incredible resistance to talking about form. As if talking about form was something superficial. I think it would be very problematic if we cannot talk about form as one of our central devices. In the end, if we have to produce space, we have to make decisions about form.
Returning to your initial provocation for the issue when you talked about other disciplines and whether the architects should take a step back, we would say no. We have already lost so much territory. Now you have Google and Facebook designing architecture which is helpful, but we still believe in expertise and having these conversations. Instead of removing the architect, we should educate ourselves and evolve as a discipline.
SK: We had a project that was called Step 7: Our Fathers. The work was essentially a wall—a wall that expanded or inflated to allow for a room within itself. Through some deviations, the wall would open up and you'd be able to pass through. The reason why we called it Our Fathers was, and this is something that Mariana was interested in, to look at how the feminine, or the female author, is largely marginalized in contemporary architectural culture. More than half of our students are women, but less than 10% become licensed. Why is that? It's because the field is not inclusive for women, and so, for this project, we wanted to address female roles. You enter into this room and the doorway isn't fully seven feet, so you have to stoop to enter—to bow to enter into this holy space. As you do so, a sensor realizes that someone has entered and blasts an over-clocked LED, a light that is brighter than bright, into your eyes to blind you temporarily. And as you stumble around there are proximity sensors that activate various speakers. Depending on which trigger, the voice of a dead, white, Modernist, male architect comes over the speakers telling you their vision of architecture. So, we had recordings of Walter Gropius, Mies van der Rohe, Philip Johnson, and others. Basically, it's an indoctrination chamber that you enter into, and then you leave having been brainwashed by the patriarchy.
Step 7: Our Fathers. Image courtesy Mariana Ibañez and Simon Kim
JB: I think what’s important is this idea of blurring between what the field is and what the subject of architecture is. What you're looking at has something to do with blurring identity lines, so that we weren't thinking in such strict and narrow ways. This idea of kinship beyond what is blood and what we think of as generational kinship. So, could you consider your project Step 7: Our Fathers as a call for kinship beyond what we think of as this linear progression from architectures of all dead white men, who still speak to us every day in schools and readings and instead looking in different directions for whom we consider part of our architectural family?
MI: This touches on other interesting questions for us that are related to academia and pedagogy, which are, “With whom are we in conversation?” And, “How do we produce and consume knowledge?” The old European men are still important, but they cannot be the only ones, and they don't necessarily need to be at the center. So, it's not about a process of removal or the process of accumulation, but one of curation. So, I think the conversation of moving or expanding the notion of the Western canon is very much present. We should all continue figuring out how to do it and in ways where it's not one solution fits all.
Kim McGlone (KMG) : In 2015, you predicted in five to ten years “everything will talk to everything else, including their spaces and all the elements that make up those spaces.”2 How do you think that plays out today?
MI: Well, I think we're still going on that trajectory. Now, it's very easy to turn things into data and information. At our office, we plug carbon fiber with black rocks, concrete with wood, everything to the computer. The moment that it becomes information, you can manipulate it, and you can translate it. It's not hard anymore to do those things. The one thing that I would say with a lot of conviction is that data is not agnostic. Data is not neutral. Which data we collect, how we collect it, how we organize it, how we manipulate it—all of that is subject to our own biases and the biases of the technology that we use. Everything is imbued with the biases of the person that wrote the algorithm. For us, this idea of hyper-interconnectedness is the space of design.
JB: Do you think of this idea of the unfamiliar as a way of muddying the idea of technology and data as something that's purely objective?
MI: We continue working with the ideas of estrangement, bewilderment, and immersion. We don't believe that data is neutral. I was reading about how scientists can now differentiate the deep fake image from a regular image, and it's through a specific type of reflection in the eyes. Very soon we won't be able to identify the truth—whether human or machine. I don't know if truth will be available to us for much longer, and in a post-truth world, what remains are effects. So, yes estrangement and bewilderment are very much still part of the world of technology and its effects.
SK: Also, who has agency in working with all of these advancements. I tell my students that architects must be purveyors and traffickers in this upsurge of technological innovation, rather than being the recipients. Because without that power we will simply be consumers rather than creators. We teach our students and our employees that we must be able to work with new media, because they are fundamentally architectural, like compasses and rulers, if we choose. And if we don't, then we will lose out on the production of new modes of living and kinship.
MI: And then somebody else is going to be designing the spaces where we live and the atmospheres we inhabit, and why would we want that? That's what we do. That's our area of expertise. So, we need to be able to claim it as architectural and be part of it, otherwise we won't be the spacemakers of the future.
Mariana Ibañez is an Argentinian architect involved in practice, academia, and research. She is Associate Professor and Chair of UCLA Architecture and Urban Design, and co-founder of Ibañez Kim. Before joining UCLA, Mariana was Associate Professor at MIT and Harvard University Graduate School of Design. She is an external examiner for the Architectural Association, and is on the awards jury of the Boston Society of Architects, the MacDowell Colony, and the Rotch foundation.
As an academic and editor, Mariana’s research is in the disciplinary core of architecture and its growing periphery, with a focus on the relationship among technology, culture, and the environment. Her recent publications include Paradigms in Computing by ACTAR D, and Organization or Design, published by a + t.
Mariana has a Bachelor of Architecture from the University of Buenos Aires, and a Master of Architecture and Urbanism from the Architectural Association in London where she received thesis honours. Upon completing her graduate studies, she worked at the Advanced Geometry Unit at ARUP before joining Zaha Hadid Architects where she was Project Architect for the London Aquatic Centre for the 2012 Olympic Games, among other projects.
Mariana has exhibited work at the MoMA New York, the MAXXI Museum in Rome, and The National Art Museum in Beijing, with projects for the Smithsonian Museum in Washington DC, the Philadelphia Museum of Art, and the Seoul Biennale of Architecture and Urbanism.
Simon Kim, AIA, OAA is an architect registered in California, Massachusetts, and Ontario, Associate Professor at the University of Pennsylvania School of Design, and Director of the Immersive Kinematics Research Group. As principal of Ibañez Kim, he is interested in the integration of architecture and urbanism with active and emotive behaviors. In particular, Simon works to bring meaningful and sensate agency into our objects, homes, and cities.
Simon has collaborated with artists, theater groups, and performers such as the Dufala Brothers, Grace Kelly Jazz, Carbon Dance Theatre, Pig Iron Theatre. He has also curated shows at the Slought Foundation, Traction Company, and SINErgy Gallery. His work has also been exhibited at the ICA, Storefront for Art and Architecture, and MoMA New York.
After completing the Design Research Laboratory Master of Architecture and Urbanism programme at the Architectural Association, Simon worked as a designer and project architect for Zaha Hadid and Frank Gehry. At MIT he worked as a Research Associate with Bill Mitchell on modular, networked energy for buildings and landscapes, and was awarded a Master of Science.
Simon has taught studios and seminars at Yale, Harvard, MIT, and the University of Toronto. He has also provided workshops at Smart Geometry, the University of Calgary, and the Architectural Association.
1Mariana Ibañez & Simon Kim, “Vegesonic,” https://www.ibanezkim.com/vegesonic.html.
2Modelo in conversation with Mariana Ibañez & Simon Kim, “Mariana Ibañez & Simon Kim of IK Studio Pt II of II,” Modelo, August, 2015, https://modelo.io/blog/index.php/design-manifestos-ibanez-kim-2.html