| True
prototyping is rare in architecture. R&D and
product development is performed by manufactures,
of course,
but usually on the component level of the system
with little sensitivity to architecture nor intent
to produce it. Most system level designs, in this
field, have to work
“one-off.” Some architects with some
clients get to push the state-of-the-art. These are,
usually,
patronage sponsored, very high profile and expensive
buildings that have their own peculiar constraints
and risks. Developers, particularly with production
housing, can learn and
improve the
breed, incrementally but consider themselves highly
constrained by the market. Because the (so-called)
industry is fragmented with
organizational
barriers
between design, engineering, building, financing,
sales, use and ownership, it tends to be conservative
in
approach making innovation slow. The process is also
fragmented geographically and by size. There are
few big players who play in many markets and who
have the resources to do systematic R&D. Most
of these large enough to do R&D suffer
the symptoms
of
any
large corporation, with a supply chain they cannot
control, faced with strong local competition and
the need to meet quarterly figures. They also suffer
a low grade form of the innovator’s dilemma [rbtfBook] if
innovation is a word that can be used at all in this
field as
it is presently constituted. This simply is not a
business where innovation happens easily. Since
the
time of the Case Study Houses [link],
there has been an almost total want of prototyping
of any significance. |
| In
1988, I was sitting in the office of the head of
strategic planning for GM. He was talking on the
phone to a friend of his who was a recently retired
and very angry GM engineer. They were talking about
the difficulty GM had gotten into when they had rationalized
their companies into new product groups. At the
time of this discussion, Ford was killing them with
an ad campaign that hit directly at this mistake.
It showed a bunch of people outside an event waiting
for their cars to be brought around from parking.
GM cars of different brands came one after another
and the owners were arguing with one each other whose
car was whose - they all looked the same. Confusion
reigned. Finally a totally distinctive car came up
(a Lincoln, of course)
and a couple, dressed completely differently from
the rest, confidently stepped forward to claim it.
The message was loud and clear. It was very embarrassing
to GM. What made the episode particularly galling
was that, under the sheet metal, the various brands
in these groups (in the case of the add, Cadillac,
Buick and Oldsmobile) were different. When
the reorganization took place there remained enough
power
in the individual car companies to defeat component
and manufacturing standardization and, thus, the
very purpose of the move. At the end
of the dialog, the head of strategy turned to me
and, frustrated, said “we standardized the
wrong things.” “They all look alike,
but under the hood where the
customer would no know or care, they are all different.”
“We are not getting the economy-of-scale advantage
we sought and we are getting killed in the market
place for having no distinction between our brands.”
In
fact,
this was so chronic that a couple of years later
two brands
that
shared
a
platform
had
a large
station wagon in common. One brand’s version
sold like hot cakes and their factories could not
produce
enough.
The other’s failed in their market and hardly
sold at all. The technical differences between the
two
brand’s versions, that the customer could not
see, were enough so that
the
successful
brand could not backfill from the other’s unused
factory capability. The platform never achieved enough
production
to be economically successful and the platform was
not renewed after three years even though it was
still selling well for one of the brands. To add
insult to injury the reason the Ford product looked
so distinctive was that they had not yet redone the
Lincoln platform.
GM had at least built a much more advanced platform.
The difference between the two was striking - it
looked like ten years. The detail, fit and sophistication
of the GM products were clearly superior. Nevertheless,
they looked like fools. Less you think they were
fools let me assure you they were not. These were
very
smart folks who got caught up in their own size and
organizational shoe laces. Bringing an eloquent product
to market and fitting a time and economic circumstance
that meets a buyer’s requirements is not easy.
GM reorganized on a set of rational assumptions.
They
destroyed a network of internal work relationships
that had taken generations to create and nearly paralyzed
the corporation’s ability to produce. They
pushed the use of technology and the technology of
the car
itself and lost their touch with their customer.
They prototyped the cars but not the entire
process of how the ValueWeb made up a marketplace. |
| This
story illustrates the condition of housing today
only, more or less, in reverse. Superficial differences
of design - all competing and shouting - while on
the
component
and build-process level most of it is all the same,
all served up by local enclaves of power mixed with
left-over cultural icons and myth. The modern house
is essentially a creature of manufacturing
assembled in the worst conditions possible. It would
be like Buick selling you a car, buying components
from all over multiple industries (based on the lowest
bid) and having the local mechanic assemble it, one-off,
in
an open
field.
Neither GM’s
approach
in the 1980s, nor the way the housing industry functions
today, works. Each case is different but what is
in common
is that the system design does not match
the variety equation [link] of
the customer and local conditions with the standardization
(thus attenuation) requirements of the producers
in the right way. This
is what Lean
Production principles and practices [link] seek
to do. I was tempted to say “in the Wright
way” because
this one of the many problems the Usonians brilliantly
solved for their time. |
| The
prototyping process cannot be just the modeling of
a thing - a specific piece of architecture
as architecture is narrowly defined today. No, the
prototyping process
has to model the entire production and use cycles,
in a location, solving both general and
site specific problems in a way that feeds knowledge
into a solution
that can be adapted to many conditions across a broad,
cultural, economic and ecological landscape. This
is why several prototypes are required. Each has
particular contributions to make to the postUsonian
program. Each can be successful in their own terms
and serve a specific time, place and circumstance
with economy. It may take several, however, until
all of the elements of the solution we seek are found. |
| The
fact that each of these four candidates for prototype
can serve a specific local need [link] takes
a great deal of
the risk and sunk costs out of the prototyping process.
Each is sufficiently different from the other so,
together, a broad range of architectural problems
and solutions can be explored. Each has some grammatical
element to add to the postUsonian pallet. Two of
them are designed to be manufactured/built by lean
methods in a variety places and circumstances. The
features of each that pertains most to the postUsonian
Project are outlined below. |
click on the drawings/icons to
go to the projects themselves |
|
| The
WorkConservatory, I expect, will share many grammatical
elements with the postUsonian, as well as, fabrication
and construction methods. In size it will be smaller,
however, a large WorkConservatory and a small postUsonian
may come fairly close in actual square footage. |
| Home-work
aspects will be common to both WorkConservatory and
postUsonians. Many Usonians had areas for work. Wright
always worked
and lived
in the same environment. Today’s solution, however,
will require a far greater emphasis on this aspect
of
life-work
integration than in the 30s to 50s period. EcoSphere
is a living environment with a work-studio element.
The Bay Area Studio is a work environment with a
living and guest room element. In this regard, all
four projects can inform one another. |
| The
WorkConservatory will have many shop- fabricated
components - both interior and structural - and an
equal to
or slightly greater portion of its work done locally
and in the field. The postUsonian will be designed
to be built this way or entirely owner-built in the
field. |
|
| EcoSphere
is a radical design. Radical in the way that Mr.
Wright used the term meaning “to the
root.” The form-factor of EcoSphere allows
the study of a number of issues that a building
employing more traditional forms cannot. It also
creates an intimacy between occupant and the site
that is not easy to reach by other means. As is
always the case, however, what is leaned in one
experience can be brought back to and applied to
another. The point of view of EcoSphere and it’s
radical relationship to the site (including the
ability to be moved) will fund the postUsonian
concept with many idiomatic, iconic and technological
means. |
| One
of the most controversial aspects of the Usonians
was Wright’s insistence that storage be kept
to a minimum. He often said that most people didn’t
want a 5,000 dollar house (remember this was 1936)
that wanted a 10,000 dollar house for five [link].
The Usonians were small. This was part of their
economy
not only in capital costs but in maintenance,
heating and cooling. This was not, however, the
only reason they were small. The size forced a
level of family and nature intimacy very much gone
from the modern housing experience. It also focused
their owners
on what
possessions meant and made them choose what
they surrounded themselves with. When Mrs. Leighey
first moved in to the Pope Usonian, she called
Wright and complained about the closet space an
asked
him to provide more storage. He told her instead
to “throw the stuff away.” This has
often been quoted as an example of Wright’s
arrogance and how he “dominated” his
clients but this is simply not a valid conclusion.
He was saying if you wanted
to live in this house, at this economy,
with this lifestyle,
then the baggage (physical and metaphysical), that
would prevent you from doing so, has to go. Mrs
Leighey
followed
his
advice
and
later regarded this feature of the house one of
its greatest assets [link].
Neither Wright, nor would I, claimed that everyone should
live this way. It was, however, in part, what the
Usonians
were
about and it will be, in a restated form, what
the postUsonians
will be about. Some people do have other requirements
that demand a larger space configured in a different
way. Mr. Wright (and so would I) would have been
happy to design a house that served those needs
- and he did. They were not realized at the cost
of a typical Usonian, however. It should be noted
that in all the classes and types of houses that
Wright built they can be seen, in retrospect, to
be small for each of their kind. Most of this
need for storage is a consequence of un-thoughtful
habit and over-consumption and if
we were, in our times,
to
error
a
bit
I suggest
it would
be worthy to error toward the Usonians. Living
in a Usonian is much like living in a very well
appointed luxury sailing vessel. EcoSphere takes
this to the extreme. It is literally a “land
Yacht.”
Out at sea, if you run out of something you do
without. If you run out of electricity you can
use the engine
to generate more but you have to weigh this against
a possible future need like navigating near land
in a storm. For all these “constraints,” living
on a boat is a strangely luxurious experience [link].
Camelot taught me this [link].
With EcoSphere a great deal of the energy and food
production is integral
to the building. It is a self contained “homestead.”
This requires a different attitude about consumables
and a different relationship to the building, its
technology and the site it is on - you work the
environment much like sailing a boat or running
a small farm. This touches issues of stewardship,
morality, economy
and the
degree that someone wishes to be engaged in
life-making itself. These have to be brought into
harmony
with the legitimate demands and opportunities of
modern urban life. Finding the synthesis between
comfort and homesteading, in its most primary form,
is what EcoSphere is about as
a prototype.
This will be EcoSphere’s contribution to
the postUsonian. As a deployable second rural or
wilderness house/cabin,
these issues are central to its designed function.
Technology integration is not done well in most
buildings. It is, typically, stuck in - or on.
The presence and use of our technologies has done
little
to
alter the form-factor of buildings nor to seamlessly
augment what goes on inside. Because buildings
are big (compared to boats, automobiles and airplanes),
there has been little driving need to fit technology
into the structure in an economical and maintainable
way. Imagine if you had to tear the side of you
car off because the wire to the taillight needed
fixing. Think about this a bit. Neither EcoSphere
nor the postUsonian has the space nor maintenance
budget for this kind of careless engineering. Nor
would we want to do it that way even if we did. |
|
| There
are four primary aspects of the Bay Area Studio
that will inform the postUsonian Project: The verticality
of the structure [link],
the interior/exterior space relationships [link],
the integration of edible and ornamental
landscaping [link],
and the structural system which employs minimal
footings and prefabricated, attachable “arms” [link]. |
| Another
inportant aspect of the Studio concept is how it
is design based on a life-cycle economy/ecology
[link].
This also will be important to the the postUsonian.
Affordable housing will never be accomplished by
cheep housing. What is economical about putting
people in ugly enclaves that isolate them from
successful society and tell them in all the language
possible to architecture that they are failures?
Affordable housing has to be economically affordable
to the individual, the family, the state and to
the ecology of the planet [link]. Otherwise it cannot
sustain. |
|
| As
has been stated, our goal is to have the first
postUsonian study-plan ready for sale by September
of the 2004 [link].
This event can come before, during or after a prototype.
To move to our second product
offering, a fully engineered and priced manufacturing
and building Manual [link],
we will have to either build a prototype or spend
as much money on paper design,
engineering and costing exercises. Clearly, the
best way to get this information is by building.
The money is better spent, it provides enhanced
utility and preserves capital - it also produces
far more accurate and viable results. |
| This
can prototype be accomplished with a carefully
selected client, as a custom home would be produced,
or by some
other
financial
means. The issue will be acquiring the construction
money because, once built, the intrinsic value
of the
building, even if undervalued, can be borrowed
on - for this all we need is an occupant who can
afford the mortgage [link]. |
|
General
Prototyping Criteria |
| The
purpose of any prototype is inform the building
process, as well as, the actual utility and beauty
of the to-be-manufactured product. In the case
of the postUsonian, all aspects of the
project have to be prototyped. A prototype is usually
distinguished from the final end manufactured product
by the fact that it is usually not economical nor
even possible to build the prototype with the same
manufacturing process that will be employed at
scale. In the case of the postUsonian this is
not so great a factor because the end process will
always
involve a distributed system of many players and
because a considerable level of adequate manufacturing
capability already exists at AI [link]. |
| There
are several criteria that must drive this process:
we have a user who will occupy the prototype when
complete and that an economy for this use exists
[link].
The user will live in the prototype and document
the experience as well as the performance of the
building [link].
The prototype will be constructed so that different
solutions to generic problems
can be tested from time to time. The feedback
from this - as-built drawings to record keeping
of engineering criteria - will be employed in a
direct and timely way in the creation of papers,
drawings and engineering manuals, services, components
and turn-key projects that make up the Enterprise’s
product/service offerings [link].
The information will be posted, in real time, and
shared with ValueWeb members according
to the terms of the various networks and clam shells
of which they are a part [link]. |
| Each
prototype and the set of prototypes will explore
the edges of the system so that the production
buildings can be executed based on designs, engineering
and methods that are solid and economical. The
prototypes will always embrace more risk
than the production buildings even through they
also
have to function well for a user in an affordable
way. |
|
postUsonian
Public BLOG Goals
|
| First
a comment on what the blog is not about. It is
not a vehicle to get a bunch of folks opinions
about what a house aught to be. This may be useful
and amusing but not an affordable [link] dialog
for our organization to engage in at this time. |
| The
purpose of the blog is to FORM a ValueWeb
[link] and
to get the members of this ValueWeb productively
employed
in those aspects of this Enterprise that
interest them, that they can contribute to,
and that
they are willing to invest time and resources
into. The ideas of those who are willing to do
this are directly relevant to the project - they
are enterprise forming not idle opinions. |
| The
goals, then, are to harvest this large
interest and energy that seems to exist about the
Usonian
ideal, and discover what people with this interest
want to do and then to create a means that focuses this latent capacity into projects
that
will really
get built, enhance people’s lives and advance
the art of sustainable habitat. |
|
A
Final
Prototyping Challenge
|
| Many
of the original Usonians were built in a community
of Usonians [link].
These communities were planned, in part, based
on Wright’s Broad Acre City concepts [link].
To what extent this is critical to the full expression
of the Usonian concept is not entirely known. Personally,
I believe it is very critical. No question it is
better to have these homes in a community of like
minded
people. Several of these communities did not get
off other ground because of financing problems [link].
Others made it because they pooled community wealth
to defeat the clear bias of the times against this
kind of architecture [link].
Today, there are many financing and community model
[link] options
that did not exist in the time of the Usonian.
The time will come
when we will have to advance the prototyping process
to this community level and, thus, work with a
broader set of social, economic issues [link]. |
|
| For
several years now, since 2001,there has not existed
an Enterprise role for Camelot. This has been a tragedy.
She has
languished tied too much to a dock, waiting for the
attention and use that once was her norm. The are
many personal, economic and time-demand reasons for
this unfortunate circumstance. The postUsonian project
can change these circumstances and Camelot can become
its flagship. There are experiences to be had, and
lesions to be learned on her decks, that have direct
relevance to the success of the postUsonian effort.
Camelot is not a prototype of design or construction
- although there are things to be learned from her
in these regards - she is a prototype of
attitude and use [link].
She has been waiting, impatiently, to be put back
into service. |
|
With
a half a month to go... |
| This
sketch, of a postUsonian (to be built someday at
Elsewhere [link])
from page 489 (post 9/11 series) [link] of
my Notebook, will be my candidate project for the
prototype. It remains my goal to have a schematic
level design, by mid September, based on this concept
proposed for a lot now available [link] on
the Tillers’ property [link].
This deadline has become a stretch goal given the
fact that there are 10 client projects [link] in
the various stages of development and all clamoring
for attention. |
|
| The
two sections below adapt the Elsewhere sketch to
the Tiller’s site. Page 527 of my Notebook
works on the relationship of Core to suspended Hull Link:
for large scale drawing. The second sketch
version, further develops the mast, that holds the
Hull suspension cables; the mast is articulated to
fit the loads and reach (keeping the appropriate
angle for each cable) required by the configuration
of the hull Link:
for large scale drawing. These two drawings,
together, approach the solution I am seeking. |
|
section
study September 12, 2004 |
sketch
of usonianOne - september 15, 2004 |
| The
computer model, below, illustrates the basic structural
module of usonianOne (minus the laminated ribs).
The Core is built, the mast put in place, then each
hull section is raised and attached. The laminated
ribs are structural, act as collars and take the
shear produced by the suspension cables. |
|
Computer
model
of usonianOne - september 20, 2004
by Matt Fulvio
|
| This
concept incorporates many elements from the Conservatory,
EcoSphere, the Bay Area Studio and Camelot: pre-assembled,
structural and finished components; minimal foundations
and site disturbance; green materials and natural
finishes; use of cantilever and suspension
systems; the structure counter balancing itself;
use of greenhouses; site and solar orientation; curved,
spherical and articulated floors; ship-like detailing.
It stays true to the Usonian tradition: small scale;
extreme
sense
of shelter and horizontality; the basic floor plan
configuration; relationship to site; use of wood
and simple materials; non pretentious posture; owner
build-able. |
| The
concept, in principle, meets the goals of the usonianOne
project. In principle. There remains some
serious design development and engineering ahead.
The next
step is scale plans, sections and a computer model.
These will demonstrate that the functional requirements
can be met within the square footage that the budget
allows. |
| To
get a sense of the grammar of Usonian one, a look
at the Master’s Academy Collaboration Studio [link] -
which was “commissioned” September
24 through October
first - is worth while. Although they are different
in mission and scope (the Studio being a commercial
space and a remodel of an existing building) many
elements of the Studio indicate the character of
the usonianOne interior: the use of prospect and
refuge, light treatments, the general character of
the finish. |
| The
NavCenters and AI WorkFurniture systems are examples
of Usonian principles applied to the
workplace: use of wood, plywood/laminated “platform;”
natural materials designed to sustain high activity
use over many years; distinct grammar that can be
successfully adapted to different situations and
contexts; strong integration between all functional
elements of shelter, arrangement and beauty; adaptability;
not stylistic - intrinsic design that remains fresh
and relevant. |
| The
RDS created for the World Economic
Forum 05 Annual Meeting approaches the scale and
complexity of the
postUsonian design. This is a good test of structure
and technical systems integration, as well as, shipping
and erection capabilities [link]. |
|
Master’s
Academy Collaboration Studio
Radiant Room - September 24, 2004
|
click on drawing to go to description of the project |
| In May, a “postUsonian” Studio and Guest House Addition for Stan Leopard was designed and approved to advance to the Design Development stage. This project will explore and prototype many aspects key to the postUsonian Project notably the totally shop built interior. It will be the process of producing the environment which will be the most informative because this will address the outrageous costs, waste and poor workmanship now dominate in the booming California housing market. Can a disciplined process be put in place that produces fine workmanship, unique design and the use of quality materials at reasonable costs? This is the exercise. Both the Studio and the Guest House - shown above - will be small, basic environments build of simple beautiful, natural, materials. The beauty is built in a consequence of their materiality, setting and geometry; it is not something “added on” to a dull and mundane box. These are Usonian qualities. This project offers the opportunity to test them in today’s circumstances. The two buildings, together, total 1,200 square feet. Their cost will indicate what a basic living environment can be built for today. |
|
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| Return
To postUsonian Index |
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|
| Return
To Master’s Collaboration Studio |
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|
Matt
Taylor
Eslewhere
April 21, 2004
|
SolutionBox
voice of this document:
VISION • PHILOSOPHY • PROGRAM
|
posted
April 21, 2004
revised
October 2, 2004
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(note:
this document is about 97% finished)
Matt
Taylor 615 525 7053
me@matttaylor.com
Copyright© Matt
Taylor 2004
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