Product Placement / Emplazamiento publicitario

[versión en castellano sigue a continuación]

Product Placement

“Designed by Apple in California. Assembled in China.” The underside of the laptop computer I’m using to write this displays those very words alongside the model name, serial number, and safety norm compliance symbols. Funny, because until not too long ago a product usually only stated where it was made. But now it is evidently just as important—if not more important—to say where a product was designed. Could this be because the list of countries that still actually manufacture things has shrunk to a mere handful, necessitating other criteria for distinguishing one product from another? Does this mean that design is increasingly the basis upon which goods and services compete in the global economy, confirming once and for all the supremacy of form over content? Curiously, my laptop does not say which country it was designed in, but which state; California, no less. Now why would that be? What might the difference be had it been designed instead in, say, Massachusetts? Perhaps this information is intended for no other reason than to induce some California Dreamin' and good vibrations. Californication über alles.

One of the differences between architecture and industrial design, I once learned in school, is that the former is contextual and site-specific, while the latter is industrial and place-less. But this is not so. While the same Apple product can be found all over the world, the brand’s identity is very much associated with a specific culture. Indeed, global brand-names increasingly include place-names, exploiting the cachet that places—themselves often carefully branded—are able to confer. Think “Custo Barcelona” or “DKNY”.

Barcelona’s new Disseny Hub, as its name suggests, is a building whose program is none other than to assert the centrality of the Catalan capital within the contemporary design world. But curiously the Disseny Hub is not a designer-object-building, like some others nearby, but a piece of urban infrastructure designed to contain a variety of programmatic activities (design museum, the FAD design institution, a local library...) and to mediate between different neighborhoods, topographies, and  transportation corridors, most notoriously an elevated viaduct.

MBM's DHUB building comprises two main elements, one on top of the other: a large, semi-buried longitudinal volume containing offices and a vast exhibition hall, and a taller sculptural element with smaller gallery spaces and an auditorium. Reminiscent of Melnikov’s Rusakov Club in Moscow, the auditorium volume is cantilevered over the viaduct, invading public airspace. “La grapadora” (the stapler), as local residents have dubbed the sculptural element, is effectively a hood ornament for the much larger and more discreet volume below. The exaggerated cantilever was originally intended to enable a gigantic LED screen on its end-façade to be seen from the viaduct. But in the meantime the viaduct has been scheduled for demolition, an action which would eliminate the entire raison d’être of the cantilever. It seems that if a computer can exude regional vibes, architecture too can have its site-specificity taken away from it.

[originally published in Arquitectura Viva #153 under the title "Marcas y contextos / The Disseny Hub in Barcelona"]

Emplazamiento publicitario

«Diseñado por Apple en California. Fabricado en China.» La base del ordenador portátil que estoy utilizando para escribir estas líneas contiene estas palabras junto con el nombre del modelo, el número de serie y otros datos. Y esto es curioso, porque hasta no hace tanto en un producto, por lo general, sólo se indicaba dónde se fabricaba. Sin embargo, ahora parece tan importante, si no más, decir dónde se diseña. ¿Acaso lo es porque la lista de los países donde todavía se fabrican cosas se ha reducido a un puñado, lo cual exige nuevos criterios para distinguir un producto de otro? ¿Significa esto que el diseño es cada vez más la base sobre la que los bienes y lo servicios compiten en la economía global, confirmando la supremacía de la forma sobre el contenido? De una manera curiosa, mi portátil no dice en qué país se diseñó, sino en qué Estado: California, nada menos. ¿Cuá sería la diferencia si hubiese sido diseñado, pongamos por caso, en Massachusetts? Quizá el dato no tenga otra intención que transmitir el sueño californiano y las buenas vibraciones a él asociadas. Californication über alles.

En las escuelas se enseña que una de las diferencias entre la arquitectura y el diseño es que aquella es contextual, mientras que este es, en principio,  global. Sin embargo, tampoco esto está claro. Mientras que el mismo producto de Apple puede encontrarse en cualquier lugar del mundo, la identidad de marca está fuertemente vinculada a una cultura específica. De hecho, las marcas globales tienden cada vez más a incluir topónimos, aprovechando el prestigio que los lugares por sí mismos son capaces de dotar al producto. Piénsese en ‘Custo Barcelona’ o ‘DKNY’. 

Como su nombre indica, el nuevo DissenyHub de Barcelona es un edificio cuyo programa es afirmar la centralidad de la capital catalana en el mundo del diseño. Pero, contra lo que pudiera esperarse, no es un edificio-objeto de diseñador, como otros de la zona, sino que forma parte de una infraestructura urbana concebida para albergar un programa de diferentes actividades —un museo de diseño, la sede de FAD, una biblioteca— y para mediar entre barrios, topografías y corredores de transporte, entre los cuales el más notorio es un viaducto elevado. Proyectado por MBM, el edificioDHUB está compuesto por dos elementos principales, uno encima de otro: un volumen grande y enterrado que contiene oficinas y una gran sala de exposiciones; y un elemento más alto y escultural, que alberga una zona expositiva más pequeña, y un auditorio. Recordando al Club Rusakov de Mélnikov en Moscú, el volumen que contiene el auditorio se lanza en voladizo sobre el viaducto, invadiendo, sin tocarlo, el espacio público. La ‘grapadora’ —así se le conoce por los barceloneses— es un elemento escultural, una especie de ornamento de capot que cubre el volumen inferior, que es mucho más grande y discreto. El exagerado voladizo fue pensado en origen para sostener una gigantesca pantalla LED, que podría ser vista desde el viaducto. Entretanto, este ha sido condenado a la demolición, lo cual podría también eliminar, a la postre, la razón de ser del voladizo, un hecho que demuestra que, igual que un ordenador puede emanar vibraciones regionales, la arquitectura también puede seguir siendo específica, aunque sea a costa de su propio contexto.

[Originalmente publicado en Arquitectura Viva bajo el título "Marcas y contextos / The Disseny Hub in Barcelona". Traducción: Eduardo Prieto]

El País, 7.7.2013

Collective Intelligence, or Collective Stupidity?

Detroit?  Bangkok?  Manila?  Manaus?  South Africa? 

The above image is circulating on the internet accompanied by all sorts of captions of all sorts of cities on all sorts of continents, showing us how images, so easily appropriated and manipulated today, are deployed toward all sorts of ends, all too often sensationalist, demagogical, and misleading.


According to "Del Tirador a la Ciudad", the architecture and design blog of El País, this image is of Detroit, Michigan. Last time I visited Detroit, in 2001, there weren't any palm trees to be found, but who knows, maybe global warming has somewhat altered the flora of the Motor City over the last decade.


I suspect the author, Anatxu Zabalbeascoa, pulled the image from this post at Decrece Madrid, a grassroots environmentalist, anti-consumerist and anti-capitalist organization in Madrid calling for the "degrowth" of that metropolis. 


In both of the above websites, this image of "Detroit" serves to highlight the built manifestation of extreme socio-economic contrast, which is certainly visible in this image, and which can certainly be seen in parts of Detroit. Except that this isn't Detroit. Poverty in that city actually looks very different, occupying run-down 19th and early 20th century houses originally built for a white middle class that fled to the suburbs in the 1950s and 60s.


A reverse image search (conducted by talented architect and photographer Manca Ahlin) reveals a list of further cities which this image supposedly represents: Manila, Manaus, South Africa and Bangkok.


Is this collective intelligence, or is this collective stupidity? You can take your pic(k).

The Virtue of Reality: “Puntos de luz”, the butterfly effect, and (web) site-specificity

The butterfly effect, first formulated by meteorologist Edward Lorenz in the 1970s, “refers to the idea that whether or not a butterfly flaps its wing in one part of the world can make a difference in whether or not a storm arises one year later on the other side of the world.” It is therefore impossible, even in theory, to make predictions about the behavior of chaotic systems such as the weather system. Or artist Chema Alvargonzalez’s aleatory installation project titled “Puntos de luz”, whereby anyone with access to the internet can turn on the lights that he has attached to the exterior walls of the recently inaugurated CaixaForum in Barcelona (originally the Casarramona textile factory, by architect Josep Puig i Cadafalch, 1910-11).

The two sites of this project—the building and the web—are each vital to the idea and functioning of the installation: without either, the electrical circuit would be incomplete. In other words, this web site is not just a promotional or explanatory accompaniment to the art, but a component that makes the work interactive, dynamic, and therefore unpredictable. Furthermore, this web site makes it possible to cause a real (albeit minor) change in a real place: to turn on a light bulb in Barcelona. Very few web sites are “really” interactive. Most so-called “interactive” web sites enable only virtual interaction. 

The installation “Puntos de luz” can be seen, then, to be reversing the usual roles played by so-called “real” and “virtual” realms: the web site is a physical switching mechanism; while the building’s blinking lights are a transmitter of information; a “web-o-meter” that indicates the amount of (inter) activity on the web site, not unlike the way a modem’s LEDs blink to indicate the sending and receiving of bytes.

This reversal between the real and the virtual complicates the notion of site-specificity in art. As is by now well known, site-specificity became a central concern in art with the emergence, in the 1960s and 70s, of new artistic practices such as installation art, land art, minimalism, conceptual art, and performance art. While expanding the field beyond painting and sculpture, these emergent practices also sought to engage the physical context of a work of art. The notion of ‘place’ and the tectonics of a particular building or landscape—or a particular type of building or landscape—became an inseparable component of the art. A marked preference continues to exist in contemporary artistic practice for physically integrating works directly with the ground of landscape or the floors and walls of buildings, obviating the traditional role of the pedestal in sculpture and the picture-frame in painting.

Since the emergence and recent popularization of the internet, the web is becoming another important site and form of artistic practice. In addition to the many “virtual galleries” that can be visited on the internet, many established art institutions run web-based programs in addition to their building-based programs. Unlike museums made of bricks and mortar, virtual museums stay open 24/7 and are much less expensive to build, maintain and program. Despite references to “firewalls” and “portals”, the internet has no physical architectural elements, of course. It is an abstract, atectonic space that is nowhere in particular and yet accessible from anywhere; a tabula rasa that is virtually free of contingency—the perfect non-place. Nothing, it seems, could be further from the notion of site-specificity and the idea of place than the internet.

Yet one could say the same about the idea of the paradigmatic “white cube” gallery space a type of space that has been the subject of much artistic investigation and critique. This kind of gallery space is generic and architecturally abstract, appearing, often, to set itself apart from its urban context. Just as the traditional frame and pedestal were used to separate and “elevate” the work of art from the architectural chaos of the salon-type exhibition space, so the white cube gallery separates the work of art from the urban chaos outside. The white cube is hardly any more conducive to site-specific art than the internet, then.

We might see “Puntos de luz”, perhaps, as a “web site-specific” installation that capitalizes on the enormous outreach of the internet precisely to induce reflection on the very idea of site-specificity in the age of the internet. When you turn that lightbulb on in Barcelona, think about what the flap of a butterfly’s wing has been known to cause on the other side of the ocean.

[Originally published in www.puntosdeluz.net]