Research Agenda
Photo credit: Sakchai Lalit/AP, via the Boston Globe’s The Big Picture.
ARCHITECTURE + ADAPTATION
DESIGNING FOR HYPERCOMPLEXITY
Research Initiative
Principal Investigators: Dr. Etienne Turpin and Professor Meredith Miller
Introduction to Research Initiative
The Architecture + Adaptation: Designing for Hypercomplexity Research Initiative examines the intersections of extreme environmental circumstances and creative architectural production. Focusing on highly-dense urban locations that face the regular and damaging occurrence of inundation, the project will document the constituent forces and effects that pose challenges to normative architectural production. Relying heavily on situated research and observation through visual production, we conduct intensive site-based research and produce visual documentation and analysis of inundation effects on urban and architectural compositions.
The primary aim for the research initiative is to locate potential moments for architecture to intervene, as a mediation, adaptation, or coordination with ecological circumstances that operate at such a large scale and level of complexity that architecture tends to be disregarded as a potential agent of influence. As architecture struggles to find ways to exercise agency through socially and environmentally responsible practices, and as the discipline attempts to reorganize its commitments in the face ecological collapse, the Architecture + Adaptation: Designing for HypercomplexityResearch Initiative 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.
Our research initiative is driven by primary site driven research, seminar and studio course development, publications and exhibitions. The first in a series of research courses - INUNDATION Jakarta/Bangkok - is described in greater detail below.
INUNDATION Jakarta/Bangkok
Principal Investigators
Assistant Professor Meredith Miller
Sanders Research Fellow Etienne Turpin
Research Coordinator
Farid Rakun
Student Research Team
David De Cespedes
Jared Heming
Joshua Kehl
Catharine Pyenson
Andrew Kaczmarek
Allen Gillers
John David Ewanowski
Geoffrey Salvatore
Lucas Peter Bartosiewicz
John R Hilmes
Elizabeth Nichols
Nathan Oppenheim
Research Funding
Taubman College of Architecture and Urban Planning,
University of Michigan
Center for Southeast Asian Studies,
University of Michigan
International Institute, Experiential Learning Fund,
University of Michigan
Research Partners and Affiliates in Bangkok
Professor Danai Thaitakoo (Chulalongkorn University)
Dr. Waew Chittawadi Chitrabongs (Chulalongkorn University)
and Chusak Voraphitak
Matthew Maudin, Assistant Vice President, Sales and Marketing Department, PACE
StudioMake
Professor Nilay Mistry (Chulalongkorn University)
Chuta Sinthuphan
Research Partners and Affiliates in Jakarta
ruangrupa artists’ initiative
Universitas Indonesia
Institut Technologi Bandung
Professor Adam Bobbette,
Faculty of Architecture,
Division of Landscape Architecture,
University of Hong Kong
Research Blog
Architecture + Adaptation: Designing for Hypercomplexity
Background to INUNDATION Jakarta/Bangkok
As Southeast Asia’s most populous and most dense metropolitan conurbation, and the second largest urban footprint in the world, Jakarta is undoubtedly a city of hypercomplexity. Likewise, Thailand’s most populous and most dense metropolitan conurbation, Bangkok, is a city of hypercomplexity. Recent trends in weather intensification, sea level rise, pollution, and river and coastal inundation through multiplicative effects, make these two key sites for researching the combined effects of ecological and urban transformations as they influence 21st century Southeast Asian metropolitan existence.
For architecture students to advance an understanding of these hypercomplexities, they cannot be treated as abstractions or experienced through mediated means; in order to begin to apprehend the material and spatial reality of Bangkok and Jakarta’s ongoing negotiations within an ecological and political economic contexts seemingly so distant from our own, this project positions situated research as its key methodology.
The INUNDATION Bangkok/Jakarta studio places architecture students from Taubman College into an interdisciplinary exchange with Assistant Professor Adam Bobbette and his landscape architecture students from Hong Kong University, as well as colleagues and students from the University of Indonesia. Collectively, we will be studying the hydrological infrastructure of Bangkok and Jakarta’s metropolitan regions. The objectives of this collaboration is to produce an image of the city’s hypercomplexity and unstable geography of water and secondly, to specify the localized effects of the problem to act on them through design.
What is the agency of architecture in cities that fighting inundation? In what forms do architecture and design “appear” within compositions of hypercomplexity? And what are the variations of architecture and its operations among cities with a common crisis?
Photograph of Jakarta courtesy of Adam Bobbette.
Site-based Learning_
The site of the research is the dual construct of the city and its ecological milieu. Differing from environmental science or ecology, architectural research in this area emphasizes the particular and synthetic interactions of built form, social patterns, and natural systems. In general terms, this research will work to define architecture’s agency within metropolitan and environmental hypercomplexities, seen as the compound instability brought about by climate change, human migration, failing infrastructure, population concentration, among other factors. In this regard, the research initiative is designed to achieve two important aims: first, to analyze the circumstances of impending disaster through inundation that make this problem central to South East Asian coastal cities; second, to render this condition explicit and spatially specific to sites in Bangkok, Thailand, and North Jakarta, Indonesia, that will be experienced first-hand. The ability to apprehend this these emergent forms of hypercomplexity is a precondition for architecture to have agency within and among them.
Working with NGOs, specialists, and researchers at sites along the shorelines of Bangkok and North Jakarta, students will create a conceptual and spatial armature along which we will organize our daily interactions and site visits. As a single line on the map, students will examine how the shoreline represents a complicated fiction in that its reality is much less clearly defined and demands closer engagement. Along this organizing structure, we have identified particular sites of interest such as the flood-control infrastructures and a new large-scale land reclamation project. We’ve also engaged various individuals and organizations to consult (from local NGOs such as the Delta Alliance and Jakarta Water Advocacy), as well as representatives of private interests (developers from the Cipta Cakra Murdaya company and builders in the flood-prone and affluent Pluit neighborhood). These are a few examples that represent the wide range of perspectives that will contribute in distinct ways to our larger picture of the inundation and adjacent water-related issues in Bangkok and Jakarta.
Notably, the problems of inundation have general features, but are also highly specified according to the history of cities and their resource use practices, waste water management, environmental issues, cultural practices, illegal settlement patterns, etc. Understanding these consequential difference is a key goal for the research studio. INUNDATION Bangkok/Jakarta will begin to introduce these aspects of comparative urbanism with site visits organized to parallel research in both cities. Working with researchers, water specialists, municipal planners and NGOs in Bangkok will allow students to develop an understanding of the complexity and specificity of inundation through a comparative urbanism approach. Future phases of the research initiative will alternate between Jakarta, Indonesia, Bangkok, Thailand, and Manila, Philippines.
Photograph of Jakarta courtesy of Adam Bobbette.
Course Philosophy_
With an emphasis on observation as an active design methodology, a large component of this work is the result of collaborative research design with the student team. Through the structure of the Spring Travel Courses offered by Taubman College of Architecture + Urban Planning, the student research will be led by Professor Miller and Dr. Turpin, but the research and design effort with be one of collaborative and mutual dependence – each student will rely on each other to produce base maps, core research components, and site models.
As architects, observation is an active practice, closely linked to visual representation. Throughout our fieldwork in Bangkok and Jakarta, we will use the production of various visual artifacts (maps, drawings, diagrams, photographs) as tools for documentation and analysis. But the nature of our research topic and the “sites” of inundation are in themselves resistant to fixed representations, such that our work will invent new methods of recording and classifying our observations. This aspect of the work is not simply a creative exercise but an important means to remaining open to new arenas of architectural concern that do not fit easily within conventions of drawing and other familiar forms of spatial representation. The students will come to value drawings not just as visual artifacts or conclusions to a conceptual process, but as an important tool for “seeing.” In this case drawing are a means of “seeing” the circumstances of inundation that could only be produced from an architectural standpoint.
Students cannot learn about the potential agency of architecture from studio course work or lecture theatres alone. The impact of field research, on the ground collaborations, site-based and intensive analysis, and first hand site investigations cannot be overstated for the improvement of student learning. While architecture has recently witnessed the emergence of incredibly powerful computational tools for modeling, scripting and projective design research, these tools cannot replace immersive, experiential, and collaborative learning practices.
Photograph of Jakarta courtesy of Adam Bobbette.
Course Production_
In addition to the immersive, site-based pedagogy, the INUNDATION Bangkok/Jakarta studio encourages engaged student learning through the practice of collaborative exhibition and catalogue. The development of material for publication and exhibition, in addition to the engaged, on the ground approach, enables students to have a direct connection with both the site and the results of their research, making a tremendous impact on both the overall value of the course for students and the pedagogical commitments the course advances.
As the repository for field observations, the field guide is an invaluable form for the dissemination of research. As the product of Phase I of the Architecture + Adaptation Research Initiative, we will work with students to produce the A Field Manual for Postnatural Inundation: Jakarta. This research document will consolidate the constituent forces of inundation into a legible visual project, making this research available to our colleagues Taubman College, as well as to those whom we worked with in the field. A Field Manual will serve as both a record for the urban investigations but also as a source of information and conceptual basis for subsequent research in the Architecture + Adaptation sequence. We are confident that student engagement, situation-based learning and collaborative research will produce excellent work (see below for assignment details).
Photograph of Jakarta courtesy of Adam Bobbette.
Preliminary Readings _
METHODS OF INQUIRY
AbdouMaliq Simone, “Towards an Anticipatory Politics: Notes from the North of Jakarta,” City Life from Jakarta to Dakar: Movements at a Crossroads (London: Routledge, 2009), 61-116.
Michel Foucault, “Space, Knowledge, Power,” in Power: Essential Works of Michel Foucault, edited by James D. Faubion, translated by Robert Hurley et. al., (London and New York: New Press, 2001), 349-364.
Thomas Markussen, “The disruptive aesthetics of design activism: Enacting design between art and politics,” Nordic Design Research Conference, Helsinki (www.nordes.org), 1-8.
Yates McKee, “Haunted Housing,” in Grey Room 30 (Winter 2008), 84-113.
Isabelle Stengers, “A Cosmopolitical Proposal,” in Making Things Public, edited by Bruno Latour and Peter Weibel (MIT Press, 2005) 994-1003.
‘Understanding Urban Risk: An Approach for Assessing Disaster and Climate Risk in Cities,’ Urban Risk Assessment: Jakarta, World Bank, 2011.
COLONIAL + POSTCOLONIAL
AbdouMaliq Simone, “Securing the Majority: Living through Uncertainty in Jakarta,” International Journal of Urban and Regional Research (2011), 1-21.
Anna Lowenhaupt Tsing, Friction: An Ethnography of Global Connection (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2005), 80-170.
Johannes Nieuhof, Voyages and Travels to the East Indies, 1653-1670.
NATION + CULTURE
Rudolf Mrázek, “Bypasses and Flyovers: Approaching the Metropolitan History of Indonesia,” fromSocial History Vol. 29, No. 4 (Nov., 2004), 425-443.
Abidin Kusno, The Appearance of Memory (Durham and London: Duke University Press, 2010).
FORMAL + INFORMAL
Mike Davis, “Planet of Slums,” New Left Review Vol. 26 (March-April 2004), 5-36.
AbdouMaliq Simone, “On Intersections, Anticipations, and Provisional Publics: Remaking District Life in Jakarta,” 2009 Urban Geography Plenary Lecture, Urban Geography 31.3 (2010), 285-308.
Rudolf Mrázek, Engineers of Happy Land: Technology and Nationalism in a Colony (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2002).
MANIFOLD ECOLOGIES
Matthew Gandy, “Rethinking urban metabolism: Water, space and the modern city,” in City, Vol. 8, No. 3, Dec. 2004, 363-379.
Peter Brosius, Anna Lowenhaupt Tsing, and Charles Zerner, “Representing Communities: Histories and politics in community-based natural resource management,” Society & Natural Resources: An International Journal 11 (1998), 157-168.
Tim Forsyth, “Industrial Pollution and Social Movements in Thailand,” in Liberation Ecologies(Second Edition), edited by Richard Peet and Michael Watts (New York and London: Routledge, 2004), 383-398 .
ADDITIONAL READINGS
Indonesia in the Soeharto Years: Issues, Incidents and Images (Lontar/KITLV, 2007).
AbdouMaliq Simone, City Life from Jakarta to Dakar: Movements at a Crossroads (London: Routledge, 2009).
Ann Danaiya Usher, Thai Forestry: A Critical History (Silkworm Books, 2009).
Dipesh Chakrabarty, “The Climate of History: Four Theses,” in Critical Inquiry 35 (Winter 2009), 197-222.
Denis Cosgrove, “An Elemental Division: Water Control and Engineered Landscape,” in Water, Engineering, Landscape, edited by Denis Cosgrove and Geoff Petts (London: Belhaven Press, 1990), 1-11.
Yates McKee, “Spectres of Art,” Art & Education Papers, available online.
John McPhee, “Los Angeles Against the Mountains,” in The Control of Nature (New York: Farrar, Straus, and Giroux, 1999), 183-272.
Eyal Weizman, “Political Plastic,” Collapse: Philosophical Research and Development Vol. VI, Geo/philosophy, edited by Robin MacKay (January, 2010), 257-303.
Photograph of Jakarta courtesy of Adam Bobbette.
Recent Jakarta News
Editorial: Respect thy rivers
The Jakarta Post
2012/02/04
Corpse Flower Blooms Perfectly
The Jakarta Post
2012/01/31
Squatters stage bra protest
The Jakarta Post
2012/01/25
Volcanic Mud Threatens Prambanan Temple
The Jakarta Post
2011/01/17
Confronting Colonial HIstory
As we engage in the research, we are confronted with Indonesia’s colonial history and the role of representation in the dissemination of Batavia as a Dutch settlement.
Portrait of Nieuhof from Johannes Nieuhof, Voyages and Travels to the East Indies, 1653-1670.
Course Production_
In addition to the immersive, site-based pedagogy, the INUNDATION Bangkok/Jakarta studio encourages engaged student learning through the practice of collaborative exhibition and catalogue. The development of material for publication and exhibition, in addition to the engaged, on the ground approach, enables students to have a direct connection with both the site and the results of their research, making a tremendous impact on both the overall value of the course for students and the pedagogical commitments the course advances.
As the repository for field observations, the field guide is an invaluable form for the dissemination of research. As the product of Phase I of the Architecture + Adaptation Research Initiative, we will work with students to produce the A Field Manual for Postnatural Inundation: Jakarta. This research document will consolidate the constituent forces of inundation into a legible visual project, making this research available to our colleagues Taubman College, as well as to those whom we worked with in the field. A Field Manual will serve as both a record for the urban investigations but also as a source of information and conceptual basis for subsequent research in the Architecture + Adaptation sequence. We are confident that student engagement, situation-based learning and collaborative research will produce excellent work (see below for assignment details).
Photograph of Jakarta courtesy of Adam Bobbette.
Preliminary Readings _
METHODS OF INQUIRY
AbdouMaliq Simone, “Towards an Anticipatory Politics: Notes from the North of Jakarta,” City Life from Jakarta to Dakar: Movements at a Crossroads (London: Routledge, 2009), 61-116.
Michel Foucault, “Space, Knowledge, Power,” in Power: Essential Works of Michel Foucault, edited by James D. Faubion, translated by Robert Hurley et. al., (London and New York: New Press, 2001), 349-364.
Thomas Markussen, “The disruptive aesthetics of design activism: Enacting design between art and politics,” Nordic Design Research Conference, Helsinki (www.nordes.org), 1-8.
Yates McKee, “Haunted Housing,” in Grey Room 30 (Winter 2008), 84-113.
Isabelle Stengers, “A Cosmopolitical Proposal,” in Making Things Public, edited by Bruno Latour and Peter Weibel (MIT Press, 2005) 994-1003.
‘Understanding Urban Risk: An Approach for Assessing Disaster and Climate Risk in Cities,’ Urban Risk Assessment: Jakarta, World Bank, 2011.
COLONIAL + POSTCOLONIAL
AbdouMaliq Simone, “Securing the Majority: Living through Uncertainty in Jakarta,” International Journal of Urban and Regional Research (2011), 1-21.
Anna Lowenhaupt Tsing, Friction: An Ethnography of Global Connection (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2005), 80-170.
Johannes Nieuhof, Voyages and Travels to the East Indies, 1653-1670.
NATION + CULTURE
Rudolf Mrázek, “Bypasses and Flyovers: Approaching the Metropolitan History of Indonesia,” fromSocial History Vol. 29, No. 4 (Nov., 2004), 425-443.
Abidin Kusno, The Appearance of Memory (Durham and London: Duke University Press, 2010).
FORMAL + INFORMAL
Mike Davis, “Planet of Slums,” New Left Review Vol. 26 (March-April 2004), 5-36.
AbdouMaliq Simone, “On Intersections, Anticipations, and Provisional Publics: Remaking District Life in Jakarta,” 2009 Urban Geography Plenary Lecture, Urban Geography 31.3 (2010), 285-308.
Rudolf Mrázek, Engineers of Happy Land: Technology and Nationalism in a Colony (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2002).
MANIFOLD ECOLOGIES
Matthew Gandy, “Rethinking urban metabolism: Water, space and the modern city,” in City, Vol. 8, No. 3, Dec. 2004, 363-379.
Peter Brosius, Anna Lowenhaupt Tsing, and Charles Zerner, “Representing Communities: Histories and politics in community-based natural resource management,” Society & Natural Resources: An International Journal 11 (1998), 157-168.
Tim Forsyth, “Industrial Pollution and Social Movements in Thailand,” in Liberation Ecologies(Second Edition), edited by Richard Peet and Michael Watts (New York and London: Routledge, 2004), 383-398 .
ADDITIONAL READINGS
Indonesia in the Soeharto Years: Issues, Incidents and Images (Lontar/KITLV, 2007).
AbdouMaliq Simone, City Life from Jakarta to Dakar: Movements at a Crossroads (London: Routledge, 2009).
Ann Danaiya Usher, Thai Forestry: A Critical History (Silkworm Books, 2009).
Dipesh Chakrabarty, “The Climate of History: Four Theses,” in Critical Inquiry 35 (Winter 2009), 197-222.
Denis Cosgrove, “An Elemental Division: Water Control and Engineered Landscape,” in Water, Engineering, Landscape, edited by Denis Cosgrove and Geoff Petts (London: Belhaven Press, 1990), 1-11.
Yates McKee, “Spectres of Art,” Art & Education Papers, available online.
John McPhee, “Los Angeles Against the Mountains,” in The Control of Nature (New York: Farrar, Straus, and Giroux, 1999), 183-272.
Eyal Weizman, “Political Plastic,” Collapse: Philosophical Research and Development Vol. VI, Geo/philosophy, edited by Robin MacKay (January, 2010), 257-303.
Photograph of Jakarta courtesy of Adam Bobbette.
Recent Jakarta News
Editorial: Respect thy rivers
The Jakarta Post
2012/02/04
Corpse Flower Blooms Perfectly
The Jakarta Post
2012/01/31
Squatters stage bra protest
The Jakarta Post
2012/01/25
Volcanic Mud Threatens Prambanan Temple
The Jakarta Post
2011/01/17
Confronting Colonial HIstory
As we engage in the research, we are confronted with Indonesia’s colonial history and the role of representation in the dissemination of Batavia as a Dutch settlement.
Portrait of Nieuhof from Johannes Nieuhof, Voyages and Travels to the East Indies, 1653-1670.
Image from Johannes Nieuhof, Voyages and Travels to the East Indies, 1653-1670.
Map of Batavia from Johannes Nieuhof, Voyages and Travels to the East Indies, 1653-1670.
Images below from Johannes Nieuhof, Voyages and Travels to the East Indies, 1653-1670.
Map of Batavia from Johannes Nieuhof, Voyages and Travels to the East Indies, 1653-1670.
Images below from Johannes Nieuhof, Voyages and Travels to the East Indies, 1653-1670.
