If a built environment is a plurality of materialized efforts undertaken by different kinds of actors, the subsequent environment that is built is either conducive of or prohibitive of certain kinds of speech and interactions. If architects see themselves as concerned with the design of the built environment then that task has to include the kinds of sentiments and efforts that have produced that built environment in the first place and the implications of that built environment on the kinds of potentialities made possible from those that affliate, occupy or use them. These issues are design issues and political issues. They are the politics of design.

- AbdouMaliq Simone

Architecture + Adaptation

JAKARTA: Designing for Hypercomplexity

JOINT DESIGN RESEARCH WORKSHOP

University of Michigan

University of Hong Kong

Universitas Indonesia

Ruangrupa Jakarta

/ 14 JUNE 2012 /

FINAL DESIGN REVIEW + EXHIBITION

10.00 Welcome, Opening Remarks

10.15 Introduction

10.30 - 13.00 Student Presentations + Discussion

13.00 - 14.00 Break

14.00 - 16.30 Student Presentations + Discussion

16.30 Closing Remarks

/ TCAUP PRINCIPAL INVESTIGATORS

Meredith Miller, Assistant Professor

Etienne Turpin, Ph.D., Sanders Research Fellow

Taubman College of Architecture and Urban Planning

University of Michigan

/ HKU PRINCIPAL INVESTIGATOR

Adam Bobbette, MA, MLA

Assistant Professor of Landscape Architecture,

Faculty of Architecture

Division of Landscape Architecture

The University of Hong Kong

/ RESEARCH COORDINATOR

Farid Rakun, Cranbrook Academy of Art

/ UI STUDIO COORDINATORS

Herlily

Professor of Architecture

Faculty of Architecture

Universitas Indonesia

Diane Wildsmith, AIA, RIBA

Visiting Assistant Professor

Faculty of Architecture

Universitas Indonesia

/ RESEARCH ASSISTANT

Arum Kusumawardhani, Universitas Indonesia

/ STUDENT RESEARCH BLOG

www.architecture-adaptation.tumblr.com

/ STUDENT PHOTO ARCHIVE

www.flickr.com/photos/taubmancollege/

This public exhibition and design review is the culmination of the Joint Design Research Workshop - ‘Jakarta: Designing for Hypercomplexity’ - with Taubman College, Universitas Indonesia, Hong Kong University, and Ruangrupa Jakarta. 

Examining the intersections of extreme environmental circumstances and creative architectural production, this collaborative workshop focused on Jakarta’s relationship to its water, particularly how this highly-dense metropolis responds to the regular and damaging occurrence of inundation. Students documented the constituent forces and effects that pose challenges to normative architectural production. Relying heavily on situated research and observation through visual production, they conducted intensive site-based research and produce visual documentation and analysis of inundation effects on urban and architectural compositions.

The primary aim for this design research initiative is to locate potentialmoments for architecture to intervene, as a mediation, adaptation, or coordination within circumstances that operate at such a large scale and level of complexity that architecture tends to be disregarded as a potential agent of inuence. As architecture struggles to end ways to exercise agency through socially and environmentally responsible practices, and as the discipline attempts to reorganize its commitments in the face ecological crises, “Jakarta: Designing for Hypercomplexity” mobilizes collaborative, engaged, situated research to advance the pedagogical model of architecture education beyond the studio, and to build new connections for architecture research today. More broadly, the design research works to define architecture’s potential agency within metropolitan and environmental hypercomplexities, which we understand as the compound instabilities brought about by climate change, human migration, failing infrastructure, population migration, and erratic political economic forces, among other dynamic factors.

On display are the results of the three-week collaborative design charrette with six interdisciplinary design teams with members from each University working on six sites in Jakarta: Glodok, Tanjung Priok, Warakas, Menteng, Ancol, and Muara Baru/Waduk Pluit.

Thanks to faculty, students, and staff of the Universitas Indonesia and the Department of Architecture for their generosity in hosting this intensive workshop and supporting this collaborative research.