The Recession Diaries

From Tunisia to London

2012-01-15T23:20:00.000-08:00

I've spent the last couple of weeks in preparation for 'Theatre of Protest', which was a response to the many different forms of protest which swept the world in 2011. The series of events held at Camden's Roundhouse and conceived by Kay Ashead,covered the uprisings of the Arab Spring through to the London Riots.

As part of the project I was commisioned to make a film, 'Stones', in collaboration with Simon McCabe and Kay Ashead.

'Stones' was made in the first two weeks of 2012, it comprises web sourced material about the uprisings and footage shot over two storm swept days in London. It draws a line from the Arab Spring to the London riots, linking them with a protester's journey.

The evening comprised, several mainly theatre pieces, presented in workshop form. The commentary on the Arab spring focussed on the treatment of women by the new regimes and culminated in a stunning solo piece written by Kay Ashead and performed by Sarah Niles.

The London student protests and summer riots were addressed by the students of Barking College. Their performances were intelligent, visceral and energetic, incredibly moving, a reminder of what an empowering tool theatre is. Here was a group of 'inner city' kids telling an audience how things are, from their perspective - how often does the adult world really listen? Yet in this space, they were captivated.

The evening at the Roundhouse sold out. It will hopefully be the first of many such Mamma Quilla projects which provide a platform for comment and response to the events shaping our world.

For anyone who would like to view it 'Stones' will be coming to the web soon...

For more about Theatre of Protest the blog:

http://mmqcollective-diaries.blogspot.com/

2011-07-22T00:34:00.000-07:00

Remembering Sam Potts 1978 - 2011

2011-07-03T16:07:00.001-07:00

This evening I went along to RARA studios for a celebration of the life of Sam Potts. It was an evening of music, thoughtful words and beer, a fitting tribute to Sam, who died recently at home with family in Uganda. It was only two years ago that I met Sam for the first time. However it is not understating things to say the effect of that meeting on me was profound. In the midst of a tough year, in which we had both been made redundant along with many other architect's, Sam's optimism and vision were infectious. It wasn't long before I rented a desk space, in the studios which he co-founded.

I have maintained the space, despite having returned to the world of paid employment, which post banking crisis, is a very different place, filled with the fast moving far eastern projects, that fund much of the profession today...The space at RARA is a reminder of a vision of a very hands on way of practicing and architecture, one closely connected to the people one is creating it for. This was something Sam conveyed a passion for in that first meeting, when I arrived at RARA to interview him for this blog. I turned up, characteristically a little flustered after rushing; Sam was, characteristically, cool - he offered me a beer and we went and sat out by the railway line.

I left that day buoyed up by his sense of fun and positive vision...much needed in 2009.

RARA outlives Sam; this is also a fitting tribute to the spirit of the man.

Discussions On Film at RARA - 2011

2011-05-22T23:16:00.000-07:00

So it's all go...Cinema See You Next Tuesday is up and running at RARA and Discussions will hold its first 'season' this July. We're kicking off with some Havana inspired journeys through cities, and then taking a political turn.

Details are now on the 'discussions' blog:

http://discussionsonfilm.blogspot.com/2011/05/postcard-from-havana.html

Look forward to seeing you there for a glass or two, some film and a chat.

...and so...

2010-09-20T16:49:00.000-07:00

Metropolitan Journeys from discussions on film on Vimeo.

Extracts from Films Screened at RARA this summer.

...I did find a job...However the time spent out of work has left a residue of exciting projects, which I continue in my reduced free time.

Over the coming months we hope to hold regular screenings, for which we will be creating a little...(and do excuse the over used term) Pop-Up cinema.

One project is a collaboration borne out of the meeting with Sam Potts;
at this year's London Festival of Architecture RARA played hosts to 'Discussions on Film'. There we screened a collection of films inspired by journeys through cities. These were collected from friends, filmmakers whose work I had previously screened, those who had responded to submission calls and also included my own work.

Over the coming months we hope to hold regular screenings, for which we will be creating a little...(and do excuse the over used term) Pop-Up cinema at the warehouse. It will feature screenings by RARA and Discussions on Film respectively...submissions calls will be up on Death By Architecture, Shooting People and other websites...and I suspect we'll be looking for volunteers to help realise the vision. So, well watch this space>>>>>>

Protozoa & Jellyfish

Other projects have included working with Kay Ashead, whose play Protozoa opens, this week at the Jellyfish Theatre - The first ever built out of recycled material...more about that to come.

http:// www.oikosproject.com/

Space for Making

2009-11-29T05:32:00.000-08:00

I meet Sam Potts, co-founder of RARA (Redundant Architects Recreational Association). At the organisation’s warehouse on an industrial estate in East London. The unit is filled with the sound of making, of projects in progress.

RARA is a design facility for creatives set up by Sam following redundancy. The project is one of the latest ventures by ELDB (East London Design Bureau), the practice started with friends Joe Swift and Dan Nation after graduating from university. RARA grew out of frustrations with office based design processes and a desire to be proactive about and actively engaged in making.

Prior to being made redundant he had worked at Levitt Bernstein for two years. He had also spent his year out there before embarking on a Barcelona based masters in International Cooperation in Architecture.

As specialists in housing and regeneration his employers were ‘hit hard, making several waves of redundancy’. This meant that by the time it cam to Sam ‘the signs had been on the horizon for a long time’.

The shock of leaving work was therefore mitigated slightly; there had been some time to think. In fact within about three days his mind was ‘spinning with opportunity’. The direction he took followed on from a project for the London Festival of Architecture, which had been undertaken by ELDB. So when he left work he had‘already been doing stuff outside the office for a while’. Redundancy created the space to explore this further.

The project for the festival had been designing and building furniture for an installation called ‘Bop to Architecture’. It was enabled partly because Levitt Bernstein sponsored ELDB’s contribution; allowing them to use the company’s workshop for free. The experience of this project, the opportunity to not only design but build a had made the restrictions of trying to create things without dedicated workshop space acutely apparent. Whilst one can run a desktop business from home, making things presents challenges; ‘obviously you can’t do this in your living room’.

The this experience of working on ‘Bop to Architecture’ was to be the impetus for renting the unit that would become eventually become home to RARA. ‘We found some cheap industrial space and built a mini workshop’. Though the shared facility did not emerge immediately. ‘Initially it began with making things based on a few sketches I had that I wanted to materialise’. However they soon saw the a potential project. ‘After a while we realised that if we stuck our necks out a little bit we could probably rent out the whole of the space and if we were able to manage it, this would create a place that people with the same ambitions or frustrations as us could use as well’.

Thanks to this moment of vision there now exists a fabulous little facility in East London, which is affordable and flexible it what it offers. It is places like this that allow the fertilisation characteristic of recessionary periods to occur. It offers the opportunity to continue developing their way of working. ‘My friends and I were very interested in making things, getting away from the computer, not just for the sake of it; we found there was a lot to be learned from making’. This is why they ‘rented 180sq ft of air’, put some partitions up and gradually created RARA.

We had a feeling in our bones that it was a good idea, we imagined it would run on a non-profit model, a bit like a social enterprise’.

We do a tour of the warehouse, which is ‘low cost and modelled on an architecture school studio’. Indeed it does the have the feel of somewhere that offers the same sort of opportunity; there are desks, spaces and machines for making stuff, drawing, exhibiting; the things a young studio might need to get started.

'...this is a time where ideas are built’

The process of creating RARA and it’s evolution have been illuminating for ELDB, ‘we are attempting to create a sort of club or an association’. The process itself has taken them beyond the typical architect's function. ‘It’s a project which mixes designing a space with being a Landlord and making a manifesto or a direction for a practice'. This Manifesto he says is ‘about grabbing hold of the fact that we are in a recession and that this is a time where ideas are built’. The intention was to ‘create a place where people can do that and maybe bump into others with whom they can create future practices of their own’.

I wonder how he thinks the experience of doing this will affect his future practice as an architect? He thinks he'll be a lot more hands on and have more input from the start of projects, maybe making them happen. Something he feels should be more common. 'Architects should start off a lot earlier in the process, identifying the need and then finding finance for it and building it’. These ideas come in part out of the Masters Sam did in Barcelona. Its philosophy was to 'go into situations that were developing, in the broadest sense, so maybe a post conflict or regeneration situation' and engage in the process from the early stages. 'We studied on some large estates in Barcelona, we travelled to Sarajevo and I did my thesis in Uganda, in a refugee camp’. This proactive energy to effect change in the urban context seems exciting to me, however, though it may be possible in developing countries to identify a need and build quickly in response, what about a place like London where legal structures and frameworks mean that architectural production happens in a very restricted way? He thinks it is ‘up to the architect to change that', to initiate potential projects in response to particular contexts and 'work with local authorities’ to achieve the desired outcome. 'It’s up to the architect to, dare I say it, to become a bit of a developer'.

For Sam Recession has allowed him not only to think about but test, in microcosm, entrepreneurial models and ways of practicing. Hopefully this will also be the beginning of an exciting hub which will foster the creativity of others.

Leaving London

2009-09-27T16:25:00.000-07:00

LiPeng Law

It seems recessions precipitate great movements of people; it feels as if a mass exodus of London is occurring with many of my friends amongst those leaving. Lipeng Law is one of those; she and her partner are going to Peru to take part in a hands on re-building project. We meet at Dalston’s Arcola, a favourite haunt for both of us. The café has the rough charm of a much loved community space, its painted brick walls are covered with postings about recent approaching events. We sit on a well worn, tan leather sofa and begin our conversation.

Having worked here for several years, Lipeng chose to take voluntary redundancy in June. Her office was going through a redundancy excercise and not having been too happy in her job, when the opportunity came, she took it. Had she been thinking that she might leave for a while? She says it may have been a ‘latent’, ‘deeply buried’ thing. ‘I was unhappy but not entirely sure what about.’ The redundancy exercise, she says, made her question a lot of things and ultimately whether she really wanted to work in a large commercial practice. ‘Of course there were questions like is this the best time to stop work?’ But at the end of it she chose to be ‘happier.’ So for her leaving was a proactive thing she had decided ‘not to wait for a letter to arrive’. But having left without an explicit plan, how did she cope in the immediate aftermath of loosing the certainty a job brings?

After a week or so the reality started to sink in and she realised she needed to make plans. The current decision to leave London for Peru came out of this process. Her partner, also an architect, had been made redundant too. Their initial decision was governed by the London job market. ‘It seemed there would be few ‘good work opportunities’ and those there are, are chased by a large volumes of people. ‘So we thought how could make use of this time to enrich our experience as architects; as people who are interested in design’. They decided to look for ‘the kind of experience a commercial practice could not offer, a rather more hands on experience a kind of learning opportunity. We thought it could be a good chance for us to learn about how people build, not how we work learn from schools or offices but actually learning more about how you build with local materials; really down to the bare necessities of what architecture really means to certain people. There was no opportunity cost at this point.’

'we asked, how can we make use of this time to enrich our experience as architects, as people who are interested in design?'

‘It was’, she says ‘like an adventure, we sat down and thought if we could do anything now what would we do?’ This is for many a dream question and to be able to furnish it with a feasible answer is quite a luxury. What they have decided to do is travel, despite not having jobs they ‘do not want to stop learning’. They want their travels to be more than a holiday but rather quite directed and they want to do ‘good things’, community related work.

‘We started looking for places we could live cheaply and volunteer and make use of what we have accumulated our school and work experience. Hopefully we can contribute what we know but also learn from, what might be, much better indigenous solutions’. What they are hoping to achieve is an educational ‘exchange’.

It seems that for Lipeng, the world has literally opened up. She has become part of a huge outflow of ideas, training and experience. ‘We’, she says, ‘were not restricted by anything’, there were ‘no geographical’ boundaries. ‘After months of searching we finally found an organisation in Pisco, four hours outside Lima, Peru. The town was destroyed by an earthquake about two years ago and there is a local organisation whose focus is on rebuilding the stricken areas. We are going for a couple of months to see where it leads us and what we can do.’

I wondered what her criteria were when searching for a project, beyond it being construction related and the opportunity to learn? She says it was quite a task, initially, to find construction related programmes, ‘most are medical and teaching’. But eventually they found there are quite a number doing humanities work. Beyond that, they were concerned with the organisations, set up; they were keen to find organisations that did not treat [volunteering] as a ‘holiday package’.

It strikes me that this will be a positive thing for the architecture profession, in the long run. The release of skills not required here must be good for the projects they help in other countries, particularly if people are willing to participate in bottom up programmes, in the way Lipeng is. But perhaps more interesting is what might be brought back. She may not return, London may have lost her, but others doing similar things will and thus there might truly be an international ‘exchange’ of architectural thought and physical experience, more so than occurs in less tumultuous times.

I ask about the wider implications for her future practice as an architect, how does she think her ‘adventure’ will feed back into this? ‘First and foremost’ she thinks ‘it will be amazing to learn how people build contextually. And what about that relationship with commercial practice, where she has come from? ‘Design is a very elitist [practice] in some ways’ it is almost as though it is a ‘luxury’ but, she thinks ‘that architecture especially if it affects the way people live has a much more importance than a luxury item. Everyone should be able to afford good architecture, not necessarily ‘star’ designed architecture’. And she thinks this journey may be a way to find out how to make good, inexpensive architecture that can change people’s lives.

Follow Lipeng's progress in Peru:

http://shiokwave.wordpress.com/

A Picture For A Story

2009-09-18T12:20:00.000-07:00

James Whitaker

It’s a breezy, near autumn, day along the River Thames and I’m heading to meet James Whitaker at the Festival Hall; five months ago James was working for a prominent design studio in London, where he’d worked for two and a half years. Now, after being made redundant, he is a freelance photographer. His current project is to record in pictures other architectural professionals who have been through redundancy and are now doing other things. As part of this he is going to photograph me, by the river, which is the site of a film I have been working on this year, and I and will interview him; a picture for a story, it seems a fair exchange:

The festival hall bustles with people, mainly tourists I suppose, and in here amongst it all one could forget there is a recession happening. We seek a comfy spot, conducive to conversation, find some sofa like creations near the bar at the back of the foyer and with afternoon life continuing around us begin talking.

Most redundancies are precipitated by sudden changes or unfortunate combinations of circumstances, decisions made by clients, remotely, which then have a ripple effect that is felt by individuals. James had been working on a development in the middle-east which was put on hold; the determining factor in this case had been politics. Combined with the loss of other projects in the practice it meant that, as if in a rather high stakes game of musical chairs, ‘when the music stopped’ he was ‘caught without a chair’.

For a practice having to loose staff who may have been committed to them for a long time is tough - there is no easy way of delivering or receiving redundancy news. James takes a pragmatic view of the circumstances, feeling that for employers making these decisions and delivering the news can’t be easy. ‘It’s possibly harder for a boss to lay folk off than it is being laid off. For me It was a brilliant job, something I really enjoyed doing but it was a job and one day I’ll have another job. Whereas my boss was having to get rid of some prized talents and skills’.
He is philosophical about his own situation. ‘I figured worse things happen at sea; we’d already had a set of redundancies and when my time came I started looking around the office at people of a similar level and realised that either I would be going or a friend would. There is no particular happy solution to it.

‘It seems that redundancy has this liberating effect on people’

In some ways I’m quite pleased at the opportunity to go out and have another adventure. I had been starting to feel a little bit stagnant at work. Maybe they picked up on that’. Did he, I wondered, have an immediate sense of this? Did it feel like a possible adventure from day one? He says possible redundancies were declared on the Friday and that by the end of the weekend he had already decided to set out as a freelance photographer. This palpable sense of optimism seems to have framed his approach to the whole business of being redundant.

By midweek he was already considering photography seriously. 'I didn’t know where the clients would come from or how the logistics would work but knew I wanted to seize the opportunity and have a go'.

The first thing was to try and reduce outgoings to a bare minimum. He talks about ‘stretching’ money and therefore and giving himself ‘a little bit more time to chase the dream’. There were dramatic changes in his living circumstances, for example he decided to downsize. Making these changes has created a chance to realise a new year’s resolution. ‘For the last two years I’ve made the resolution that this year I want to earn some money from a photo. I always thought that it would be great to have someone think highly enough of a photo to want to pay money for it’.

But it can’t be this simple? One can follow dreams but the thorny issue of survival? ‘This has been tricky’. His reaction was swift he sought advice from friends who are professionals in the field and through this connection landed his first client. However despite the advice, it still seemed 'a bit of a black art'. Though the connection did yield his first job, for Oxford University. Since then it seems to have been a matter of being proactive, creating self initiated projects-one of which is the ‘after redundancy’ project.

‘It all kind of started’, he says, as all the best ideas do, ‘in the pub. I‘d been talking to a friend and started to realise the diversity of people’s responses to the recession. When people apply to university in the first place there is this real idea someone who studied who studied French and German at A level is going to be just as good as someone who studied maths and physics’. Architecture it seems is a receptacle for people with a diverse range of skills, James describes it as a ‘melting pot’ of ‘people from different backgrounds’ the diversity he says ‘gives the strength to the course’. The course indeed pulls disparate people in and channels them into this application and the job then it would seem normalises people. ‘They study away for six years and come out [into] very similar jobs and it doesn’t matter whether they are working on the next Opera house or and extension, you’re still drawing the same details in AutoCAD day in day out’.

'you can’t help but wonder how amazing, interesting and diverse our profession would be if people where allowed to use these skills in their day to day work'

‘It seems’ he says ‘that redundancy has this liberating effect on people’. Indeed it does seem that the applied force of this economic situation has released from the box of office based life a plethora of suppressed and underused skills. ‘People’, says James, ‘have been given the opportunity to go back to what they really like. [They] have their little niches that they felt passionate about before that drove their projects through university and all of a sudden they are being allowed to return to these things’. I think ‘allowed’ is an interesting choice of words it is as though recessions give people permission, little chinks of light, or rather time out of the light where they can explore. For him the niche is photography, which he sees as symbiotic with his work as an architect. ‘ I always think all the skills one learns as an architect influence how you work as a photographer and hopefully vice-versa; things like having an appreciation of how the light falls through a space, or the story and meaning of a space; all these things you learn to read as an architect, it becomes quite easy to portray those in a photograph. Knowing that makes it intuitive as a photographer to be able to see how to represent a space or an object’.

His portraits for ‘after redundancy’ are like a collage of people and skills.
‘I’ve met people from every spectrum of life who’ve gone out and found their little passions and are trying to create some sort of enterprise. It’s just terrific to see all these people getting released and you can’t help but wonder how amazing, interesting and diverse our profession would be if people where allowed to use these diverse skills in their day to day work’.

What then of his own return to architecture? ‘I ‘m not entirely sure how I feel but I do want to return on my own terms’. Is this possible? Can the profession really accommodate this? ‘The place I used to work was and still is terrific but at the same time their ethos sometimes jarred with my own. But then I look at places which align closer to my own ethics and they don’t excite me. I am quite excited by the idea that it doesn’t ever have to be one or the other. He cites pluralist Eames; furniture designer, filmmaker, architect and I optimistically contribute Corbusier. ‘There is no rule that says you’ve got to be one thing or the other. I’m excited by the idea of being able to forge a way through the world doing many things and hopefully one thing feeding into the other’. Is this a common thing that these liberated architect’s may return on their on terms? He thinks there is a fifty-fifty split of people just doing things as a stopgap and the rest have used it as real opportunity to reassess. It seems he, like me, is optimistic about what the recession may ultimately mean for the future of the profession.

To come:

Lipeng Law on Leaving London

Sam Potts on RARA

(Redundant Architect's Recreational Association)

And more...

The Exploits of Architect's without Jobs

2009-08-10T04:12:00.000-07:00

Something amazing happened today. After seven months of being without a job, I had a career affirming moment; one I had been awaiting , for as long as I have been practicing. The irony is that it should come whilst I am ‘redundant’.

When I lost my job, it had struck me, that time spent in the hinterland of redundancy might actually be a revitalising time. And it does seem that in this strangest of times, individuals have been forced to re-evaluate and adapt their modes of practice in order to survive; it also strikes me that, as in the last great recession, that of the 90s, the results are wonderfully creative and entrepreneurial . And so the intention of this blog is to collect together the stories of ‘Architects without jobs’ as a record of what feels like quite an amazing period.

The number of out of work architects is staggering, anecdotally I can say that this summer I have frequently had the disorientating experience of encountering people out and about at odd times – during working hours; I have shared what feel like naughty coffees on weekdays; come across whole flat shares of architectural professions without jobs and my group of friends, here in London, is being alarmingly depleted as people literally take flight back to their homes.

It has lead me to wonder what recessions do to social networks (but that is for another blog).

At one level these are bleak times but for me, and I imagine for many others, it has also been incredibly fertile time.

My Story:

I was made redundant at the end of 2008; my recession has meant time spent in projects on the fringes of the profession. One such project has been ‘discussions on film’, which I hope will be a series of film and discussion evenings around social issues in the built environment, we held the first evening on August 1^st at The Corridor gallery (also run by architects currently out of work) in London and plan to hold the next at Dalston's Arcola Theatre. Being without a job has also meant time spent developing a ‘position’ as an architect; something started as a student but that I have not had the luxury of whilst working for others. One always tries to align one self with practices that have values and interest similar to one’s own. However mental space is required to develop one’s own interests and position; the space created by the absence of job is perfect for this. It has meant doing competitions, writing, but also simply thinking.

During the few short years I have worked I have often been troubled by a recurring thought. ‘How is what I do relevant’? I am sure that I am not alone in having had this thought. Days spent in that black zoomspace of a Cad programme, following a crosshair, drafting whatever it happens to be - reflected ceiling plans, drainage details, on even the most amazing projects can seem incredibly removed from the things that motivated one to study architecture.

One aspect that is important for me began to crystalised one evening three or four years ago, returning from an evening at the aforementioned Arcola theatre, I had an encounter with a group of youths. It culminated in me being threatened with a knife. At the time I remember being incensed at them for their behaviour, I had, somewhat unwisely, shouted at them that they would all end up in jail. Why weren’t they at home studying? I am now ashamed of my middle class projections and rantings.

The night has lived with me since. At the time I felt incredibly powerless and therefore increasingly frustrated as gun and knife crime have made frequent news copy over the years. I would like, in my professional capacity, to do something relevant to this situation, something which, at the risk of sounding hopelessly gushy will affect lives. I think that good interventions in the built environment can do this - they can be a beginning.

So, it is fortuitous then that a couple of weeks ago I bumped into an old friend from school days. We had been members of youth theatre together and shared a night on the Olivier stage as teenagers. Since then I have studied architecture and he has become a mental health project leader, who is also the head of his local resident’s association, on a large estate in Hackney’s Clapton Park. During our meeting he tells me of his group’s aspiration to create a football facility for the local kids. He asks if I can use Sketch-up and if so could I help them draw up proposals to make a bid for government funding. And there it is, my thing; Can I use sketch-up? How many hours spent (with 3d Max, Rhino, Microstation…actually I can’t use sketch –up) producing visuals of buildings which have now faded in memory. We arrange to meet again at the residents’ association.

I arrive, and as we chat about our relative journeys over the years, sitting in a single storey building on his estate, I am struck by the lack of funding evident in the condition of the building and even more so when, my old friend tells me of the work he does here for nothing. He speaks of the Olympic Legacy money and how it is going to be applied to the park, there has he says been insufficient consultation with locals. Their approach in contrast is bottom up, they in the midst of the estate he says are the bottom, the grass roots, which incidently is the name of the local playing fields, which he informs me are the largest in Europe , these are the ‘Grass Roots’, which fostered talent such as that of David Beckham. And thus whilst his interest still lays predominantly in theatre, he recognises the shear seductive power of ‘the game’, it’s potential to bring funding the area and thus divert the kids from the ever growing issue of social exclusion facing them.

It might be a fair criticism that sport is often offered to ‘disadvantaged’ youths as a distraction but what I am coming to understand here that football is not the point, it is the community structures that grow up around it, or any other mass community activity that are critical. The youth club is also engaged in theatre productions, which it has successfully put on at community theatres and which have a similar cohesive effect. But on this site, which adjoins the famous ‘grass-roots’ pitches, football is appropriate. It just so happens that this site lies between two estates and despite the presence of some public art, plays host to warfare between rival groups of children. We discuss the process of coming up with what will effectively be an outline proposal and the process of making funding applications. His passion and energy are admirable and infectious and I am on board.

So for me this recession has meant, amongst other things, getting my first solo commission, and becoming a curator.

Sarah Akigbogun