I'm very very delighted to introduce Fran Fran
edgely is an initiator of the new transdisciplinary
action research group network a
b a decentralized
organization of people practicing more Equitable worlds
through this they're trying to
build knowledge around the invisible structures and
dispositions of that produce and are
reproduced by our social and physical architectures.
Projects investigate in this includes projects investigating
the means and possibilities of land distribution
redistribution the real reorientation of
power through the delivery of capital projects improvisation in
housing and hostile UK Asylum system.
Prior to working as a
b Fran was a founding partner of the architecture and
design Collective assembled with whom they worked
for 12 years to look critically at the processes built
producing our built environment.
Through work with assemble an interest in how the physical
world is made evolved into a commitment to build projects with
communities expanding that experience
of making and remaking the world.
This motivation has been a driving force behind many
projects including Oto projects Baltic Street
Adventure Playground one of my favorites.
Granby Workshop transnational Interstate
art agency
pioneering places and House of anetta which some
of you may be familiar with
friends practice includes work with Democratic education
Collective somatic explorations of
space and filmmaking
the the keynote was due to happen alongside Sophia
Daria, but sadly Sofia
is unable to be here today. So
the the kind of
introduction and the framing of the event was very much
Fran and Sophia so over to
you.
Thanks see and
Yeah, I just wanted to say Sophia and
I wrote a lot of this together and
thought about the structure. So yeah, it's a
shame that she can't be here today and
she's also an advocate for chaos, so she
would have really enjoyed this morning as well and
Yeah, before I start I just wanted to say that.
I guess this is the first time I've ever been to a
thing that is around systems design
or thinking and and so it's really
it's been amazing this morning just
to
Yeah, kind of.
And I mean I already felt I
mean I was playing a bit about it in in the presentation, but I
already felt like yeah, maybe these are my people and then today I'm
like, wow, it's even you
know, this new other layer of like familiarity. So it's
yeah, it's really exciting to be here. So thanks for having
me and
Yeah, I would say like and the Sea end up doing
like strange diagrams with
expanding fields and I actually haven't done really any
of them today. So, yeah, but
Yeah, I feel that.
impulse
Yeah, so it feels really kind of euphoric to
be here. And also yeah,
I've excuse me if I do a lot of squinting at my
paper because this morning I've also been like writing over all my notes and adding
in an extra words changing into
disciplinary to trans disciplinary. So, yeah,
and yeah,
it's interesting I guess and
It's making me think a lot about education and names and
language and I always struggle to think talk about
what I actually do. So maybe one way of talking about it
is kind of systems worker and I also wanted to
say before I start I'm a proud member of the
anti-growth Coalition. And for those
of you who aren't following Liz trusses and
whatever it is that she's doing
she recently and I've
been thinking about a lot this morning as well because she's constantly basically
has kind of categorized all people who don't agree with
her politics and policies as the anti-growth Coalition
and given some of the you know,
Poignancy and power of what we've heard about this morning. It
feels like just totally dissociative that
is what the leader of our country is talking
about. But that's where we are and today.
so my intentions with the
well, my legs just start shaking.
Yeah, we're just talking about nervousness in
public speaking. So I feel fine until I like cross edge
of the stage and
Bit weird. So um
Yes.
I forgot them are two of them. So yeah,
my intentions with this presentation is basically
I wanted to use the
context of being here with all of you to talk about this new
organization that has started up over
the past couple of years and which has
evolved out of my time with assemble which
is a kind of design and architecture practice. I've
been working with for the past 12 years and I
guess this organization is the kind of evolution of
That work into a more focused and kind
of political Critical Agenda
a more transdisciplinary.
Approach and then I'll talk a
little bit about that. And then the second half I'm going to talk about House of
anetta, which is one of the projects that we're working
on through that Network and I will talk a little
bit about
What Sophia and I understood as like where
we're thinking about systems in the approach to
that project and yeah.
so
yeah, I guess through the talk. I'm going to be presenting different
forms of information.
perspective and process which is
obviously not necessarily like cutting me but different quality
of information and
at different scales and timeframes to kind of moving back and forth.
and
helpfully because I'm very honest person.
There's also going to be a bunch of slides which have explicit placeholders
in where I didn't do the diagram, but
it will happen in the future. So it's kind of like a nice working process
to have also had to articulate a lot of
this stuff.
Yeah, I wanted to start basically by.
through process trying to also dissolve kind
of properties relation to
ideas and in honor of Fred's moton
who isn't actually listed in the slides and but
This act is kind of inspired by him and I wanted
to give thanks to all the references as a precursor
to talk in the way that you might do a friend
who's kind of told your tail. So this is
a story that I've been told by Anne is being told
by strangers friends and lovers none of
the ideas of mine. But I share with you where the ideas are and current
moment and through this
telling they can then move through and with
you and to new moment and yeah,
constellation of voices and people that have kind of
fed into the presentation and today
so I'm gonna start with architecture.
and some perspectives on the current
state of the profession and
lots of excerpts from an essay drafted by my friend
Lee. He's also one of the founders of ab
so
For a long time and in different ways. I've
always tried to talk about architecture as a as
a kind of both significant output produced by
an actor in reproducing the systems and Societies in
which we live and particularly because it's a
form that takes so much time and resource. It's a kind
of powerful mirror to the shape of its contemporary kind of
dominant values and forms of power that exist
at that moment and
in our current time in this country.
I'm going to speak from my experience, which is largely and
growing up and living in the UK.
And architecture Architects face
focused their surfaces on the demands of
clients and who normally have access to significant
amounts of capital and as a motivation
those clients often aim to compound existing wealth and
the industry narrative is to accept
this project framework as a mutable and to operate in a state
of determinism.
So as a result Architects often are mainly
worked concretize wealth inequality as an acute
spatial form. So yeah, I
wanted to show this graph just really striking
housing expenses are the most significant expense
for the average British Citizen and the primary cause of
wealth inequality. The UK is the most considerable inequality
Gap among all G7 countries, and the
average income to property price ratio is one to
eight representing. I mean, this is also, you know,
Went to yes, probably totally different
now in the last couple of weeks as well.
representing the most significant Gap in housing access since 1830
which is you know, it's just really astounding
and a lot of the problems in architecture are
the terms and conditions of the way finance and subsequently available
forms of work that we use to
build are already predetermined by the time we start the role as
Architects and and the housing market
in the UK is a
Or they call it. I could never say this word only God poly
whether it just six house builders
and who makes 95% of all the housing
and which of which also then means that the
kind of credit and tendering processes are so favorable
that it's almost no other competition can gain a
foothold and that goes for
so Insurance regulation. So then
non-standard construction is unmortgageable.
And you know that you
get this from like repetitive what people sometimes
call the Noddy house. I'm not sure why.
A kind of form of architecture which is basically essentially Regulatory
and insurance requirements following the
kind of like bare minimum outlined in like approval documents and
policy.
and having this type of housing as
a significant output in the last 30 years limits to
input from the end user and results in community stagnation
isolation loneliness and also Reliance on
cars and
Architects have this. I
don't know how many people actually how many people in the room.
Are like really Architects or
architecture adjacent related? Okay, it's Phoebe.
And so you'll
know that I guess there's a level of
self-importance
that comes to
working in and
talking about architecture as a practice or as a profession
and
and yeah, I guess there's
an idea that there's this kind of grand professional narrative
that perhaps they're the
kind of intellectual backbone of the construct in the construction
industry and
because of that there's a kind of assumption I guess akin
to like doctors and lawyers that there's an active role
there put forward by them for the Frameworks that
the industry practices but in contrast these
other professions Architects have
forsaken their power over the industry failing the
users of the built environment and the process and ultimately we feel
we maybe
ultimately but
architectures uses need protection from
brutal exploitation driven by a capital prioritization and
and another kind of
aspect of architectural practice
Critique of it I think and also the evolution of the profession, which is
amazing.
piece of
Very intricate and
lengthy research by Brazilian theorist and
architect Sergio pharaoh. Who?
writes about
architecture and relation to labor and the idea
that the role and it's Tools in particularly
drawing evolved as a way
of disempowering craft laborers and removing the marks of
the Masons and that the actual evolution of the professional practice
of architecture demanded a kind of division of labor in order
to generate higher profits. So it's kind of like built into
the Inception and development of the profession.
So yeah, I guess as a response to
actually got about slides say this
is the construction of Brazilia where Pharaoh
was kind of radicalized in his relation to the ideas
of construction and
the experience of the laborers.
And yeah in in response
to this and kind of organic response
in the professionas that this and this
power imbalance many practitioners have
been adopting a trend of kind of moving from physical to
social organizational cultures looking at dark matter
or cognitive development as the primary architectural
practice.
And this approach is advancing with practitioners developing
like new skill sets and different Frameworks of practice as
well.
And people give it many different names and you know,
we've talked a bit about non-nucleature and professional silos
this morning. But yes, sometimes
it's called spatial agency or social architecture
social practice critical spatial
practice, maybe meta design
might also fit in there, I guess as a
Yeah, but often people doing the same work and challenging
the same issues, but only able to engage with siloised professional
contexts.
So AB is trying to start a community of workers.
That doesn't just sit within one field, but can speak from and between
many the community that can share knowledge and
thinking and resources as well.
So
maybe it's grown from conversation started in 2019
and having
I guess.
For my own personal perspective having spent 12
years kind of learning and working adjacent to architectural
field.
I did I studied philosophy Psychology and
Physiology because interested in Consciousness and then
became.
like was blown away when I had my first experience on like a construction
site and and access into understanding like
the labor and time that goes into
constructing the world around us. And so then
I kind of got involved in assemble and that was
yeah process of kind of like self.
Education, I guess through kind of technical processes.
and through that work really have been
developing social projects concerned with design not only
about physical and material concerns, but also working through
organizational structures and the kind
of conditions that certain spatial infrastructures can
provide for
And so working as this is
the new works with Granby four streets Queensland trust
and on housing on a kind of
actually constellation of different projects and the prior slide.
This is buttock Street credential playground, which is in delmonic and
he's Glasgow.
and was yeah in the
in the kind of was actually a product of the Commonwealth Games
and was trying to create a space where
children had autonomy and access to the evolution of the city around
them that was otherwise being regenerated in on a kind
of scale both TimeWise and like in
plan that was totally irrelevant to their lives
and or just wasn't thinking about them at all and
So yeah, I guess other people in
the group have also been doing kind of architectural adjacent work
in different ways. So
one person Louis was
also prototyping new Community Resources that
could lead to better public services. So he worked on
establishing the national food service, which some
of you may have heard of
And we've yeah, I guess a lot
of the work has been a Malik Community Access to space.
And another person in the network.
Has been spending time trying to think about how we can
develop practice in the interests of the workers. So
initiating the first architectural Workers Union since
the 70s for a profession, which was often deemed unused
on unionizable.
Yeah.
I've got to some scribbles spot processes with
looking. Yeah, I guess so having spent
12 years in assemble and
trying to essentially kind of being
having like a form of political education through spending
time in these different communities.
and also in parallel to that assemble going
from a kind of like least constellation of friends and then becoming
different forms of kind of legal structure and like consolidating
into a partnership with which has
produced over time multiple different like
organizations or companies that kind of manage or
are a part of different projects as they get done. So
it kind of like yeah depositing of other like satellite
organizations.
In parallel to that a lot of the group have become qualified
Architects and has been a lot of time in.
institutions and in Academia
and I think yeah, there's been a
real kind of a shift towards like
just
an inevitable way of like reproducing certain
types of behaviors and like languages and like
Risk conception and methodologies that even
though assemble is still doing like
quite yeah.
Unusual architectural practice. It is definitely doing architectural
practice and now and I think yeah, this
AB is a kind of like step to try
and set up some chains of
activities or like infrastructures that can
unfold over the next like 10 12 years. We'll see that
hopefully can start to yeah have
this more political and trans disciplinary approach and
hmm. Yeah kid who's getting out so over the past
pandemic years different groups of us have discussed and
learned about how kind of positively impactful spatial
social projects have the potential to be
and yet how short-sighted and damaging architectural development
currently is
those connections share a kind of common appreciation that
yeah.
architecture is reproducing these kind of
Is a mechanism for reproducing?
Social systems and values and
I guess you know, I think didn't mention it in its
relation to and contribution to
climate change. But also in the way that the space
shapes are lives and and the privatization
of land and concept of property, you
know, so tightly round up with so many
of these things that are really fundamental to the way in
which
the normative status quo kind of unfolds currently.
And so if architecture singular reproduces the
existing order might there be ways to reorient the
practice fertilize it in order to navigate and
skipping too short and dismantle oppressive
systems and makes space for different forms of living
together.
And so yeah, this is really a question of
trying there's like people quite a range
of people says like architectural workers Fabricators doctors
land workers organizers sound practitioners
artists teachers researchers. So it's yeah,
it's about form of practice not like genre or
profession or medium or technique and
and this is our business plan, which is
somewhere between a kind of like
17th century philosophy AIDS and a carpet page from
an illustrated manuscript, but it kind of
gives it's actually yeah really extraordinary
drawing. It's not this big and it contains like all of the things
that we're kind of been talking about over the
past few years
Yeah, and I can share more on that with people are interested in
terms of how maybe is actually going to work. There's a
kind of
Group, like set of different kind of autonomous working clusters
with overlapping members supported by
a shared infrastructure. So these clusters might
be Project Specific or research trans specific or
an evolving mixture of the two over time and also
trying to acknowledge that some people just want to work with other people
more than others like with we're not it's not
just in this group that we're all like mutually excited by each other,
but trying to make space for
Yeah between difference and four difference
in distinctiveness and that that will be the thing that creates.
You know richness in in whatever it might be.
Yeah, so AB will not have one voice or one way of doing
things processes will be multiple and will be derived
organically and autonomously through the actions of people working within the
network.
with the number of us
in the network have been a part of other kind of architectural collectives
and so learning from
that. We really want to use this.
this organization now to kind of
think more carefully about multi-stakeholder and design
and management and some of
the references that we've been looking at which are really interesting
is there's this group called neuromancers, which is
a community exploring neurodiversity consisting of
smaller kind of self-organized constellations focused on
building relationships around particular experiences access is
a subscription platform.
That supports artists particularly like artistic social
practice with insurance advocacy and
opportunities.
herbalists Without Borders is an international world
globe Global International member network of herbalists
that you pay is more subscription and
you get covered by their public liability insurance for members, you
know, no matter where you're working in whatever kind of
conditions which is quite extraordinary and
Yeah, we've been talking about basically.
And using the fair share structure, which I
don't know if anyone here knows about but it's a new
form of kind of governance organizing for for shares,
which is really interesting and also takes into
consideration like users collaborators workers
clients investors. So the
users will also become a part of this kind of like stakeholder group
as the organization moves forward.
And the shared infrastructure
in terms of financial resources that were developing is
going to include Insurance shared subscriptions
to computer programs basic Financial Administration welfare
and Community wealth funds.
and
Feels like it's really important that.
and maybe the non-institutional
legitimization of framing research might not seem like
I mean, we've kind of all been talking about research in many
different guises here, but I think for a lot of people who are just like
Political or thinking critically and you know doing carpentry or like
working with kids. There's often not time or space
or like permission to be able to like use to do
that work in with respect to the quality
of what they're bringing to it. So, yeah, I'm really excited to see
how that can start to play out and
and yeah, this was a
is a
series of maps of the Mississippi River as
it moves over time and I think this element
of time as well and timeliness has something that
has been mentioned a few times this morning and is something that's
I think is yeah is really
important, especially when you're trying to be critical of a current situation
and system and profession to think about
like why that
The technology is that led to a certain type of work being the
kind of dominant form versus like where
we are now and like how what would you do if you were starting with
all of this other inherited kind of
conceptual?
like yeah
history
and
I guess the question. Yeah a b and why
is it called that and then comes
from the concept ad testing and the
idea of being able to practice alternatives to the current system and
parallel with the status quo. And obviously that is normally a
kind of binary test but the idea is the
name is always written as AV with this kind of
And underscore as a signal that this
is not a binary situation, but continually open and my multi-dimensional
that Alternatives can be
conceived of as continuing to emerge in multiple ways continuing along
different alphabets.
Or even through non alphabetized language
as well.
So
yeah, I wrote something recently about what architectures of
what and there's in within some of the practices.
I mentioned in this kind of movement towards different forms
of more expanded forms of work. There's people
like zero zero who talk about relation of
architecture to software and Hardware Dark Matter forensic
architecture talk about the architecture of Truth.
and I think yeah ABA doesn't that
I it's more about kind of trying to create
a structure in a set of conditions for many different kind of
yeah, and can architectural kind of research practice
be a form of therapy if you're thinking about
like
Interacting with societal issues or can it be a practice
of social science or can it be Auto Theory?
So yeah, what are we doing at the
moment? There's a number of different clusters that are emerging and
a few key projects alive the way
that clusters emerge and projects are kind of Being Framed is
not as problems, but as questions and then the
questions are a way of going into like
an infinite number of other questions
so one of these projects what
kind of lines of inquiry that has started and
the initial question was how do we create infrastructures for hospitality
and sanctuary?
yeah, working in partnership with the city of
sanctuary Sheffield, which is an amazing space and and kind
of advocacy service for refugees in
Asylum because in in Sheffield and it's kind
of in a design project looking at both their space and
then also trying to think about
in a more expansive way.
How do we understand the current assignment system
Asylum system?
add something which has been you know is explicitly
something that is described as
purposefully hostile and is you know
now being led by someone who's
Lying about the reality of
the situation for people experiencing modern
slavery and having like violent
dreams about sending people.
And so yeah, I
think
this
there's been a kind of like
Series of work which is like gone in like basically specifically looking
at institutional accommodations. So finding out
where like all over the country. There's just like
hotels everywhere that's just been booked out by the home office for the
last few years and trying to look at that as
I can kind of different system of like building typologies. Like where is
it actually kind of
Quite a good situation for people. Where is it? Like
Yeah, where is it actually?
Not an ideal situation and using a kind of process and
practice of your user stories, which we've been kind
of building up three different projects.
And another line of research is working
which is one that has come out of working with
the friends of the join his arms, which is a campaign group who've been
organizing for the past seven years around the gentrification
and closure of queer spaces in London after
being displaced by housing developers. They've
now crowdfunded
Resources to establish a new venue for queer
performance and we're working with them to develop a kind of delivery process
to co-design and construct the project with their
shareholders.
And yeah, I guess this there's a quote that we
were.
Inspired by this Bible hooks,
which is about queer not being about who you're
having sex with though that can be a dimension of it, but queer about
being it.
being about the self that is at odds with everything around
it and has to invent and create and find a place to speak and
to thrive and to live and I yeah, I personally
don't feel like it's
associated with I mean it's related to
sex but I think I mean, I'm sure a lot of people here have
already talked about this like feeling of like, you
know, really having to find ways of carving out space in the world to
try and like find a way to
to live as particularly in this moment in time. And so
yeah the question that was guiding this kind of
research process is how do we reorient power through
design and delivery of construction projects?
And so we've produced the
chromosine that basically looks at the different elements of that and delivery and
construction how those things like care and
like language and process and how
we navigate the different kind of planning systems and documentations and
stuff like that and can be looked at
in a different way. And this process is also really
drawing on auto Theory
as a practice. So Auto theory is a is most
often identified with form of literature.
One where with his powerfully kind of challenge the traditional authority
of literary academic and theoretical knowledge
with their day-to-day experience and kind of weaves them together by combining
autobiographical information and
theory and it offers the
raising show like kind of yeah modes to
kind of shift and expand and reimagine the
course of our daily lives. So it feels this is kind of like a
method that we're trying to work through as we are.
developing this project
and
and it's something that we've also been trying to think about more broadly
in terms of like building narratives. It's something
again that's come up again today and telling stories
and
How you can bring attention to different norms?
and understand it's like
the intricacies of the ways in which people are organizing and
living and working and
So one of the things that's also been feeding into a b
as a kind of like Network.
Organization is a phase of kind of experiential research
that we understood last year looking at
working with communities engaged in the world building in
different very like locally specific contexts.
So yeah trying to
scope out implicit Norms by looking at them from
the perspective of like very different contexts and also
trying to
find where the gaps and the holes are that people find their ways in
to thinking out different ways of living or working or
educating each other.
So I'm gonna have some water this is
like
I actually didn't turn the timer on I just really how am
I doing now?
How am I doing?
Yeah.
Perfect. Okay,
cool.
Yeah, that's good.
So the third project.
that I wanted to mention and this is the one I'm going to spend the remainder of
the talk talking about is House of
anetta, which
is a way of trying to think the through how we design
projects to redress the imbalance and land distribution.
And so the project is a
collaboration between assemble and a B.
I guess I'm kind of using it as a stepping stone and then
it's yeah, it actually works
for any well because historically when we've
set up new organizations and someone's kind of left to become the director
of that place or then like
It's a way of kind of like supporting and nurturing something whilst also
still having a connection to an organization that has
a lot more.
Stability and like infrastructure and you
know and you kind of like understand how it works.
So it's yeah, it's just really great to be doing it.
together
Yeah.
And it's been quite.
anyway, I'll talk about that in a minute and
Yeah.
so the project is
I'm friends with Street, which is just a Brick Lane.
here
and
it's like I mean, it's just
that yes, so it's just for those
of you who don't know. It's
yeah, East London.
North of the river just outside of the
city. You can kind of see the city like rising up
at the end of the street and and it's in this.
neighborhoods of kind of old
like early 18th century the
house was built in 1705 and houses.
And that were developed.
mainly for like kind of rich
Merchants like huguenotes coming from France fleeing
persecution when they changed the law about the
fact that yeah and
yeah, so
It's it's quite an extraordinary place.
When you spend more time there and
understand the kind of
layers of different histories, and these kind
of like large Civic and
Spaces that's kind of
based around like large kind of Victorian industrial
infrastructure. So you've
got like the goods yard at the top just like used to be a rail terminal
but the fruit and will exchange
this actually doesn't mention. Anyway, there's also a
bit for Market there and then this kind of stroke you
bit is the true memory
and this is a map made by the
saybreak lane campaign looking at all the kind of
large-scale development projects that happening in this area.
And there was actually I mean it's kind of this is
this is the city like creeping out
right on the edge of this that huge power
and and there was
over there's this there was like a this
like almost like a secret kind of initiative that
over the which they called like operation Glasgow because
it was a city expanding North where over the
course of 20 years. They basically bought up all of these Parcels of
land where you can see this like orange thing there Norton
full gate and
Slowly over the over the years and then it became
this kind of like huge like development. So it says
it's yeah a space which is
always had quite like
yeah has been the kind of
I guess.
and
more often a kind of
place of like independent
shops and like working class activity and quite industrial
has these like layers of
colonial history in terms like the way that the the spaces also
been developed and famously has been
a place where waves of different kind of migration have have
found a home. So there's like the Hugo nose and those
a period of time and there's a lot of Jewish people living
around there and then more recently at the end of the
21st
20th century and a lot of Bengali
people came over at the end of
when yeah.
when the empire was was ending and
so
I guess yeah, then now there's this kind of more recent Trend
where there's this kind of gutting of a
lot of these large spaces.
not for people necessarily to move into but it
was mainly for kind of capital to to
thrive
and over the past 40 years the area particularly
where we are has gone from having like leather factories in
the top.
like a lot of their Relic houses into very
gentrified area with like huge kind of private homes
and
yeah, so we've it's the biggest house in
the street. It's
got basement and four floors, and it's
very beautiful building and we were
approached by.
Basically assemble was approached by an organization
called the Edith Marion foundation in
2019.
To basically with the house and to say
like what do we do with it? And they're really fascinating
organization because they were set up by some students
of Rudolph Steiner as a kind
of like exercise of trying to think like what the world needed and their answer
was oh, we need some kind of mechanism for holding land and
property away from Market speculation to the commodify
it and so they've been operating for 30 years
and they've got over a hundred different projects around Europe.
Which they take quite a hands off approach to you, but
just kind of like we'll never sell this offers them kind of
long-term security and yeah the
importance about land and property
and Security in relation to that is something which has been
a huge.
And ever present like factor in the work that we've been
I was ever doing and as assembled so this is yeah in
Glasgow when we did builtic Street thinking about
you know, how to secure that space and who has access
to what and then also with the community and Trust in Liverpool.
and this is also in The Hague and where we opened up
the
former US Embassy as a space kind of Arts platform and
experimental space for people affected by the migration system
there so,
it felt like this was a really
you know.
incredible opportunity and we propose to basically kind of work in
residency in the house as we had done in other
projects before and try and use our
time in the space to basically kind of
open it up and build a kind of I guess
this build social relations around
the project and and conversation and the kind
of culture from occupying the space and seeing how that unfolded.
And so this is the house.
It's quite dramatic and in the very beautiful state if any of
you in London.
From Thursday, please. Get in touch come and see
it. It's really amazing place.
and
yeah, so yeah, this
is
yeah, it's
And and while being there, I mean,
I guess earlier the time we've done been occupying it and
cleaning up organizing things
to happen in it. Oh, yeah and
trying more than organizing so just
facilitate and so not like, you
know, we're not taking active role and necessarily saying
what should happen in it unless it's in response to something
particular from the house.
and so whilst we've
been in the house, we also have had some this completely
incredible experience of
yeah getting to know and that's pedroetti who was living
in the house for 38 years
and
Up until the point when she passed away and then the house
was given and to the foundation by
her family who here in
Switzerland and she was yeah. She was Swiss and
But yeah, we didn't know anything about her before we before we
got in the house and I'd never heard of cybernetics before
then, but she was yeah an amazing
woman who was doing so many things in the
house. She set up this printing press and
she was publishing books really beautiful.
Really beautiful Publications under the name principal editions.
And yeah, there's
lots of
really fascinating and sometimes quite hard to
grasp for me and different things relating
to mathematics and language and cybernetics and design Theory.
And actually what's been really amazing about being here
as well. As a lot of the books are made as a kind
of like a conversational feedback process and some
of them were produced as a response to
your during the American Society
for cybernetics conferences. And so
it's quite interesting because I've seen the books. I've
seen some of the footage from those events and so being here today. It's
been like a little bit
the kind of flavor of that which has been really nice and
and
yeah, she anata called them living books and the
idea.
being that there was an exchange which would often be a process
LED production of the book by more than one person
and that took many different forms,
but then there was an intention that potentially
the conversation would continue and that these these books
would continue to expand and some of them were much more
experimental than others like
to be worn as outfits or to be refolded in
the narrative changes or to exist
as a huge role of paper that is quite difficult to
interact with and
yeah, so during the time of
like reading bits and pieces and and learning
more and more about anetta I guess we've started
to do this kind of social context study, like
understanding the theoretical landscape of cybernetics and
trying to be able to like
like share that amongst the people who are working on the project or using the
house and and
that led us thinking more towards. Yeah, I
guess thinking about actor Network Theory which has
been a really interesting way into thinking
about like how we're experiencing the space because it really feels like
And that's always you know, she was publishing books. She
was making films in the house. She was doing lots of local
campaigning. She was basically rebuilding the house a lot
of it by herself like doing the craft and with
her in hands. Apparently, she had like really incredible hands
and
she's doing beekeeping and there's this kind
of like mostly layered.
Jigsaw puzzle that as you are in
the house and a lot of it's like, you know, there's just like piles of stuff everywhere and
slowly like things kind of unfold around you and you find
something and that leads you to a person and then you have a conversation that is used
another object. And this thing has you know, is this kind of
extraordinary web and often things have happened or unfolded where?
You feel like she's kind of yeah set things
in motion like decades ago and we're kind of like now finding
these things and links and what's also amazing is
that you know, so many of the ideas as I said earlier are things
that we were already practicing with and talking about a lot
but we just didn't know any of the language around that we
didn't know like about cybernetics existing or like this
material so it's been yeah, sometimes just completely. Yeah
quite
And just amazing.
and like experience one of the other things that we're
doing is this is some images of making a
kind of
I guess.
Artistic kind of cybernetic interpretation of
the house as an archive. So it will be on the website that people
can then explore and like access a lot of the ideas and some
of the content remotely because you know, everyone can
come to London but there's just so many so much richness and
that's the kind of overlay of like both things projects and
that was working on and also kind of architectural features that
were being made in the house and
And yeah, one of the things coming up this week is that we're going to be making a kind
of actor Network Theory treasure hunt.
with the support of land in our names which is a really incredible organization
recommend
looking them up and who do a
lot of around a lot of work advocating around access of
black communities to land and
and Countryside in Britain and something
else that we did recently which was there was
a book one of the books anetta printed was
designing.
And designing society, which is a publication.
It's also available. You can get it online from
which was made from Mary
Anne Boone making a presentation about running a
course called school for Designing society and then the kind of
paper that she presented at the American cybernetic conference. And
anyway this book
led to
a series of letters and some conversations and then
eventually the kind of birth of the school for Designing society, which has
been running in Philadelphia since early 1990s. It's
kind of itinerant.
Quite different I think on different years and yeah summer
school. And so we we ran the
first one in the UK and as a way of trying to like, I
guess explore some of the conversations that
were being haven't had in that book at this
moment now and with a different group of people, they're more
connected to the space and
these kind of
relations between objects and people also
is happening through digital objects. So this
was a an attitude this amazing.
kind of
project. I guess like Community project
and which was the question of what would a
flag for a Multicultural Society look like is kind of
an iterative process of
Working together to make flags and which she then
hung in the market and took to lots of
different than other locations. Anyway, the person
who is making the cybernetic house the digital version also made us
this flag for the website, which was a kind of translation of
a lot of the flags that we had found in the house and then someone who
had just seen it online made us made us
the real version. So now hangs outside
the house for me have events and has also spurred
on other activities to happen around the flag mating vladmaking and
we're compiling yeah
film trying to use
letters camera to document different things
happening in the house and there's a lot of different elements
in terms of like the design of the space like this is the door
knocker on the left.
Which takes pieces of annetta's and
drawings and also yeah
kind of notes from her beekeeping
journals and then some of the market tree work
that she was making replacing the wooden panels in the house and
it's inspiring kind of I guess.
Yeah, and I kind of exploration of
what
furniture that invites feedback might look like
Yeah.
feedback, there's many different ways that we've been trying to think
about integrating that into the process so that
the house really, you know, this kind of idea of cybernetic architecture
isn't just about the kind of whatever is
this kind of solid state of the thing that goes
through planning and gets made but also how we're arranging
the organization and thinking about the building of the culture and so
yeah, I've been trying doing this kind of user stories
process and also kind of regular or
It's fairly regular and feedback from
the team, which is been really
useful as a kind of iterative process, but
is just it's quite hard to get to.
sometimes forget to the really the Deep stuff
that you need to get to and then and yeah, so it's not
It's not.
Yeah, there's still lots of things. We need to really work on
and
yeah, I guess this idea of
culture as fractal with something. I wanted to talk about and
or like how we're thinking about building a system of
cultural. How does the systems we're using relate to what
might be a culture in the space and something which
I've been thinking about more and more is this idea of
yeah the architecture of absence so making sure that you're
explicitly
not making space for certain people
or your explicitly targeting other people as a
way of creating kind of separatist status so that there's this spaciousness
allowed for people that you
know without having to like navigate.
and gendered or racial and
Dynamics which can provide different forms of being or
different ways of like thinking through ideas.
and
yeah, I guess another similarity in terms of like in order
to create a space where lots of things overlapping they need to be distinct. So
to make sure that there's a mixture of those things one of
annetta's friends Steven what there's a
poet he told us that we needed to unfinish the house.
And so that's the kind of also constant kind of thing in our
mind and especially with the kind of the
built fabric of the built as you saw it. It's like, you know,
you can read the like three two hundred 295 years
worth of
patient and like Fabric and in that place and so
it's really
yeah feels really important to try and like maintain that where where
we can as we go through the project.
And yeah, trying to think about fermentation, I
guess also again not trying to create a
situation where people feel like they have to necessarily behave in a
certain way or like relate to us as kind of as an institution.
So then drawing to not have a lot
of the kind of things you might have in a kind of institution, but
then it's a very difficult line to balance because you know, people
also need to build understand what's going on and things need to be
clear and safe. And so yeah, we're still finding that
line.
And we've been doing some work with something meditation which something I'm
really into. I don't know if people know about pulling Oliveira's
and
kind of collective practice of it actually
came out of her and
Of her frustration at the Auntie
war and movement against
yeah the Vietnamese or
you know more and in the US and it was
a way of like trying to be in solidarity and
be together and like he's building what's
still being you know, the other side of the world and it's
also interestingly. She's a kind of
haven't got electronic musician and that this was a practice
that she moved towards
And later on in her life, and that was really amazing because
it's that also this idea of this disintegration of like the
performer and the audience like removing that
because everyone is both and so yeah, we've been
doing that in the house and around the area as a way. It
was also trying to understand the space and also to try and like yeah engage
with it in in a different way and also
Yeah thinking about.
the reasons why architectural practices and
design is kind of access Centric and you know, if there are
different ways of of working that can open up other ways
of seeing and
this
was I just wanted to share with you annetta invented
this I guess in terms of thinking about culture and
how the relation between like small actions or
ideas around like language or boundaries can kind
of also build up to other forms of practice or relation
to being in the world or in the house and she
also develops like a whole new way of beekeeping which
was based on building these hives which these
kind of huge but pretty big for hives
and structures and
which
we assume related to her kind
of also cybernetic interests, but we don't we
haven't
You know to verify that because none of us are kind of
knowledgeable enough. So yeah, if anyone wants to look into that.
let me know and
meaning making this was something that yeah, Sophie
and I have talked about and it
feels like the kind of least resolved or
the least kind of thought through but feels important as
well and nonetheless that there are kind of
acknowledging and thinking about these different layers of meaning making and that
sometimes that meaning-making is also
involving community that might not even you know,
they just happen to live on the street, you know, it's not really a volunteering, you
know, it's just the complexities of how
those things intercept with other with people's
like lives day today and it's something
that
Yeah, we're still trying to think through particularly at
this moment. We're coming to the end of the year. We're going to be doing like
thinking about what's happened and what will happen and the house
is got lots of holes and has no insulation. So it's
quite seasonal space. So we're going to go into hibernation in the
in the winter.
And yeah, and then the last
system
Interaction assistant I wanted to talk about was about
spatial Justice and guess that
was our original intention when we like first got
to the house and then it understanding and letters
intellectual landscape has added a whole
new.
world to it, but we're still really Keen that the house can and
be used as a kind of resource and
yeah an asset to stand.
For and with those that are affected by issues of
special and Justice because it's just like the odds are stack so high
against everyone. So yeah,
I guess that's we're doing that on many different levels. So one is
the neta's trust is the charity that
we're setting up to take on the lease for the building and there
was an idea that this would
be you know, something akin to the National Trust but rather than being for
like
it's by Keely spiky Lance on the
seat, you know, you get actually people using the buildings and to kind
of extend the Edith Marion foundations kind of agenda that
like in the UK because they're not really interested in
continuing to expand forever. They've kind of reached their
capacity and the
The legal system here is also like significantly different to
land and then property in.
In the countries where they're working. So anyway, they're really supportive of that. And I
think the conversation has gone from this idea of a national thing to actually
an idea of like really actually just trying
to connect with a lot of the other like in new
land trusts that being set up around the country, which is really exciting.
It feels like there is like really a kind of movement like bubbling
away at the moment in terms of both community and
trusts land trusts around like specific forms
of use and yeah, so
just to try and like
Make it a more like networked.
approach because it feels like they can't be
too much of that and let's say
there are trustees.
The second there are social justice is I guess yeah trying
to create a building that has resources that can be
offered to people who are doing campaigning or education
in relation to anti-identification or
like community and let's projects
and these are
some of the things that annetta was involved with so collecting.
petition real-life petition and some yeah
anti-cross real
Work which is interesting that she's like very well
until recently. You couldn't really find she wasn't
really on the internet so much but one of the things you could find
was her.
Presenting to the House of
Commons about and there's an inquiry into representations
around like where the crossroad which is
I can you train extension and was
going to be built was going to be running underneath their street
and she's you can read
all the minutes and it's interesting. She says in the minute she
says, you know,
this is a kind of fast of democracy because the
only reason why I'm allowed to stand here talking in this
space to you about what's going to happen to my home is because I
own it not because I you know, if I did if I work
there if I rented a then it wouldn't you know, I wouldn't
have that right? So it feels
like she was also yeah.
Consciously engaging with a lot of the stuff that we're also trying
to think about. Yeah, so the space
is kind of
facilitated some local campaigns around saving Brook
Lane
which yeah, I kind of
ongoing and
and the Third Way is a kind
of embodiment through the use of the building.
To provide access for free to those who wouldn't otherwise
have space or property
to use. Yeah.
In that way and kind of experimentally or for
like larger gatherings.
and so that's been happening over the
last couple of years with different food events and talks and
workshops and
and then
it feels and this yeah, I guess this one is like not
hasn't really started so much we did and
yeah, thinking about the idea of like a revenue
model for and experimental space that
is trying to think about special Justice differently
like would
Be good if it wasn't just based on like
extractive rent for the space itself. So then trying to
think about different forms of economic modeling. And
yeah, that's something that we ran like
a kind of knowledge building process over like the course of last year,
but it's
Kind of an ice at the moment because it feels like it's quite a long way off.
Yeah, and then the last part of that is the for the
design and construction of the house to be used as a kind of
expansive educational process and
for women and people of color communities of
yeah people who are normally underrepresented in
construction and craft construction and because to
try and yeah continue and that is legacy of
like really doing really extraordinary quality
of of work herself, so she's kind of
And hand routing all the spindles and she
lived in the house for two years without windows and then was remaking
all the frames. This is a kind of like Garden space
like and
She built.
it's for
and that process is kind of started. I
mean, so the house in its current state is
only really habitable or like accessible for the
public on the ground and first floor.
The floor is just either don't have stairs or they have a hole in
the floor or it's just like full of wood that she
had been gathering over time. And so we've just been
doing and we don't have a lot of money. We're trying to like negotiate with
basically the more money. We borrow from the Edith Maryland
Foundation the more money we
Even as a kind of yield so we're trying
to do up the building through grant funding and which
would then mean that all of the other kind of experimental ideas
could really take hold. So yeah,
we're currently trying to like do fundraising through the
Heritage Lottery fund which is going to be pretty tricky I
think because the way in which we really want to do is by having
this very kind of slow.
Yeah, so and educational educationally
focused like process of
people learning craft skills and kind of
working draw by floor renovating the building but also for
it not just to be about like the
People using their hands, but in order to
kind of in the way that anetta was marrying both that
kind of like physical labor with this amazing like intellectual expense
and to have like
critical.
Conversation and like a program of of kind
of political and social and inquiry alongside.
Yeah, they're like like
trades I guess.
And yeah.
So I think I wanna I did have
a couple of things. I wanted to say at the end.
I was really
Inspired by The Talk this morning,
why'd you buy lots of the talks? Thank you. But I
think if Sophia was here, we would have done it would
have been more music and like maybe some dancing but
as I just instead chose to
focus on Staring at
Paper for it an hour and I
just wanted to invite given open
invitation that because I'm going to be here till Sunday
and I'm sure that's what other people are too that if anyone wanted
to do some Sonic meditations
at some point maybe in the evening go for
a walk and yeah go down
to the CEOs and I didn't know you can go anywhere. But yeah, just
come and say hi, and maybe we can make a plan and
Yeah. Thanks for listening.
Oh, yeah.
Yeah, you want to
sit down?
Okay, thank you. I think
in terms of the conference theme the possibilities and practices
the systemic design, I think.
You're you'll talk really spoke to that. So thank you and it's
just so excited beautiful and it's
great to hear.
All of your yeah all of your work.
Thanks for sharing it and questions.
I think we could probably talk for.
ever about this, but let's start with
would you?
Thank you. Thank you for such an amazing and inspiring
talk as Sally sedimentary there could
be so many so many questions. I guess the one on top of my mind
is wondering about you know, how do
you negotiate that tension of working with the space
that has a history and that was something and then imagine the
possibilities of what it could be instead of,
you know, what goes into that process of sort
of what was and what could be which I
imagine is probably very interesting. Thank you.
Yeah, it's a
good question. And I think what's interesting about
it. Well, so really close
to
where we are is there's an organization called The
Society for the protection of ancient buildings, which was
set up in by William Morris at the end of the 18th century.
And and yeah, he has a really good quote about
like not I can't hear something about like bringing zombies back
from the dead or something, you know this idea of like the Pastiche of
like going back to yeah as
a way of like making the real thing and we're not
interested in that at all, and I think
particularly because you know and that's a Huds has
kind of
stripped the house basically the house.
was built as a single and yeah large
kind of home to a wealthy Merchant and
then during the early 20th
century. It was
turned into like different flats and and then
at some point there was a fire and then people weren't living anyone and then to we
think inherited some money somehow managed to
buy it and
and
Yeah, so she had actually stripped out a lot of the
kind of previous Fabrics who can't really see and like
a lot of what would have been there before.
and then she's also added her own stuff and in a
very kind of like particular way that was not like the bare
minimum at all that you saw that market tree like that's
Yeah.
Really stunning and would have originally just been like totally playing
panels. So it's quite nice to have
this.
You know kind of palette of different things where
there's like the historic fabric. There's the
kind of damaged historic fabric. There's like a
netta's additions and then there's like a lot of holes and things
that make the space not that usable which we kind of need to
address in order for people to be able to yeah, and yeah
occupy it and so I
think
Yeah, there's a scent. I mean people get really emotional about it. We
have some ideas about what we want to do. But I've had people like
swear at me on the street where I talk about like not getting
rid of like a cupboard in the corner or something like they get really people get
really upset and
so yeah, I think it's going to be a kind of like
Patchwork and idea of
trying to maintain as much as possible whilst enabling
like
The building to be used in a really Lively way
and if we are making like new insertions, then
we're doing some kind of material experimentation and
testing looking at like material reuse and
waste material and Brick Lane and how you might translate that into
kind of heritage.
And methodologies or like yeah processes.
It's kind of
a new Twist on things. So yeah.
You follow basically. Yeah, it's
great too. Yeah.
No, it's actually more detailed than that.
The whole thing is listed, but then you get like a Heritage impact
report assessment and they basically say which things
are of Heritage value or not. And basically, you know,
it's just depends it kind of depends on
How old things are but also yeah significantly all
of the stuff that they're built has zero Heritage
significance for the people who do the assessment.
I mean that doesn't mean yeah, we still have our own opinion on it.
and you started with
one of your starting points was about property developers,
right and how they are basically looking into maximizing revenues
as the main the main point
and I saw your presentation also a bit as a
Counterpoint to that right? So I'm
wondering about your thoughts on the term
placemaking.
I think that's one way that you could describe what
you're doing. Right like or Reviving The History of a place
or giving a place.
The new meaning but of course, it's also used
by certain people right to to create destinations
and then this in a way of selling a
place right? So I'm wondering what you think if if
that is just another evil capitalist thing
to sell something or if that could
actually be a bit of a middle ground between property developers
and
What you're doing?
I mean, I think it is.
I think as with a lot of the language that
is related to anything to do with development. And
or
movement space whether that's advertising or you know that people
sell houses and
Is you know is things get?
some things have bad connotations because they deserve that doesn't mean
that you couldn't use it in a context and it would be meaningful to
use the words Place making I mean,
I wouldn't necessarily use it myself, but because I
mean as you said, you know this implication that it was not a place before
it's kind of ridiculous, but
Yeah, but I think that doesn't mean that.
It's inherently a bad.
Term to use and yeah.
any questions on Zoom, please just pop them
in the chat and we'll
extract them
Okay.
With questions on Zoom. Yeah. Okay. Yeah.
Okay, so thanks for yeah, really
really interesting. I want to ask, you know, there's that um that Jane Jacobs
quote that's like new ideas must use
old buildings.
And I was interested in like how this kind of do you
think as an architect because I mean at least like, you know, I'm coming I'm
a designer and often it's about essentially starting again
with everything like the assumption is that to do anything good. We've got
to throw away all of the previous stuff and it
seems that like, you're kind of most like staying
with the trouble if you like in a way of like Matilda said
earlier almost like making like working with the
existing kind of thing and then and then trying
to almost like do something new with it. Well not destroying what
made it good in the first place. How does
that affect like your workers as an architect? Like
how do you kind of resolve that sort of new and old?
Sort of aspects because this is like quite a strong statement of saying like work
with things. Don't try and smash them.
Quite a lot of people who are working in this way, but there's basically
like huge incentives not to not just because it's
obviously more expensive and more time.
Heavy to be like dealing with the intricacies or
something which already exists rather than just deleting it. But you
know the some of the slides I showed about the
development in the local around spitalfields and
stuff. There's like this facadeism.
And then it which is happening basically because like if you
know, if you are building a new building,
you don't have to pay VAT on it, whereas if you're
renovating a building you have to pay vat and obviously the footprint will
be smaller. So if you demolish it and grow
Like an extra few or 10 stories then
it's just and so they keep the facade as like a way of
like.
Paying homage to the whatever the cultural capital is of that former building.
But yeah, I mean so it's actually incentivize not
to do that and
But yeah, I mean I think is tricky. I
mean the only the other context in which
I've been
working with all the buildings is in
Granby and you know, it was very much like
the approach to that project was very much Guided
by the fact that a lot of The Terraces have been boarded up
after the housing market renewal initiative and
Pathfinder. And so they were all kind of rotting in a
different states of water Ingress and the idea
was to try and basically approach each house
as an individual and like work with the ways
in which it had been affected by that condition and rather
than this kind of like and copy-paste approach
and that that was an idea of like paying respect
to the communities who are still living in those
streets and
so I think probably the approach to
here is also and
Yeah informed by that, but it's also weird to be
in it. You know, it's quite it's very weird to be trying to
think about like
cybernetics in a context like this because it's like you're
not allowed to like fix a joists because that's like it's
like illegal to like change the building fabric without
making a list of building consent application, which is loads, you
know, it's just like it's not loads, but it's just all extra work and so
to
Yeah this tension between like.
shifting things in change and
fluid or being able to respond to each other plus having
a listed building is quite
Quite and yeah, tricky and yeah.
Thank you. We've got a question from Zoom.
And okay, this is from Rachel Wilson. Hello, Rachel.
I'd be interested to know more
about how you work Oliveira's Sonic
media meditation into your practice.
and the reception of others that you undertake the Deep listening process
with
let's thanks for the question and
well, I guess I've most of it that I've been doing has
been kind of Guided by a deep
listening practitioner are to in the house and who
yeah was the kind of having you
for me learning about the practice but then since
Doing it with him. We've been like Co.
Authoring a series of scores in the house and like running. Yeah
different sessions and then I've been able
to become more confident with using it
in as a way of like also.
in the context of design session starting it
with that or in the context of kind of
movement building and workshops then
using that as a kind of way of getting people
into a different state and yeah,
I mean some people the people
who aren't really into it just
tend to stay upstairs, you know,
but that's fine.
Yeah, but I think is it is interesting like even people
who are a bit circumspect at the
beginning then sometimes, you know do it
once or twice and feel quite like affected by
itself and
Yeah.
I think it would be great to introduce you to
Rachel at some point. So Rachel and I
know Rachel and maybe in the
next few days you could talk about that. Thank you.
It's working. Yeah, so I'm so glad that question came
first because it's gonna say I don't have a question. I mean
I have lots but I have a another piece
of the conversation a kind
of comment about the aloe vera so so intrigued
to hear that you're practicing Sonic meditations
in the house. I've done a lot of work
practicing Sonic meditations myself and and
it is a practice right because all of arrows met
with a group of women, I think weekly for a
period of time it was a feminist initiative
and they were you know, getting to know each
other and working together and the place
that I find where people get start to
get really uncomfortable with it is the telepathy part
because as you know, you know eventually the
acts the meditations which are a series of
exercises go into
Hear a sound in your in your mind and then pass it
to someone else without producing sound.
And it's amazing and you know when you meet week after week
to practice these then you start to.
Get towards a place where you feel like you can do that. So.
So amazing they're doing it in the house and I
haven't been there and I'm really excited to go hopefully next
week. Um, but I was thinking about this idea
of unfinishing you were talking about the house having different
rooms or sort of rooms because it's you
know in a certain State as we've seen pictures
of the people being in different places and there
were practices of Sonic meditations over Zoom,
um, during the pandemic this
wonderful flute flutist Clara Chase
and the US LED them a bunch
of them and so people are in different spaces and it was really different because
that happened what's happening over Zoom. So
there's this idea of that. I think you
could and maybe you
already are exploring by practicing
in the house by people being in different places and you're
sort of inadvertently bridging this
face of of telepathy and passing
sound without necessarily being able to pass it.
So,
Placing people at different places in the house
by exploring the idea of something that's unfinished.
And I'm I'm feeling the magnetic pole
here of George Spence arounds laws of
form and this idea in a
very cursory way of this idea of form and and void and and
moving towards
something that's on something that is is finished and unfinished
something that is sounded and not sounded and the
practicing the meditations in that particular space in
and his house is just it's just brilliant. I'm
really excited to hear about it.
I mean, I think it sounds like we haven't quite got there
but you know, yeah with
that thing.
Great.
Tell us
more about when you live there. I
mean what kind of we have a plan or do you have how many people live there?
I mean.
But more elaboration on what you did that because while
you are living there. All right. Yeah, we're not living
my living there. We're just I guess in Resident see
like being there because
I mean normally when we're working it's in
Yeah in different cities or different countries. So yeah,
you have to really move there. But then yeah, we
will based in London. So just
kind of where they're doing the day and
yeah.
so
you can actually explore and learn
and then well, I mean because the how so
the Edith Marin Foundation they don't have a
plan, you know, they don't want to sell it and so far
they're kind of, you know, very supportive of what we're trying to
do. And so technically if
we can get the money to I mean if we can't get the money to do it up then we'll
have to think about what we do.
I don't know what we'll do and
But if we do get the money to do up then you know,
then it will just you know, if we're then
we can negotiate the lease and the idea is theoretically it
would just be there just be an asset for people to use and
there's still quite a lot of questions around
like how it will be.
Governed and organized. I mean in a day-to-day basis, we know
we have the kind of Trustees of the charity. But I mean,
I don't think there's really an appetite for them to be taking like a formative
role in in the space and so like how can
it be self-organized? What does it mean for the roles? Like, how can we how does
that relate to the economics of the space and these things and yeah,
technically it could be.
But yeah, I don't know.
We got one up there. Hi. Yeah
Ingrid from from Oslo.
I have a kind of difficult question. I
guess you are doing things kind
of with a plan but kind of without a
plan. I mean, I'm an architect and I've also been building myself.
It's difficult to build without a
plan you could go and buy stuff. You're gonna
know more or less what you have to buy what you're gonna do with
it. It's not the kind of improvisation or practice.
So what level
are you able to improvise and how do
you
Kind of work with those different levels between the
very very practical issues of doing up an
old building and the kind of experimental practices
that you're also involved with.
yeah, it's a really good question and
I well because it is listed, you know, there's like as you
know, just like the processes is very
particular, you know, we can't we don't we basically have
to be able to draw everything that we're going to do before we
play planning and we obviously can't start work before then
and especially if we're going through grant funding
it's all going to be, you know have to be entirely done.
With due process. So yeah, I
think it's more about trying to figure out what it means
like one the process that leads up
to the creation of those drawings and how we're informing those decisions.
And then what their limit is like
where we stop.
Then also like, you know, the process of delivery
is going to be really key. And I mean, I'm not sure how
whether they tell if you're going to support that way
of approaching it because you know, they want
you to go out for you know that obviously well.
They give that large sums of capital money for Capital developments.
They want people to be like very accountable and
transparent which is great. But yeah,
it's not really gonna work if we have to go out for tender to like
contractors and things like that. So what we're going to do is try and do a pitch
where we say like, this is the really ideal situation of
like how we would deliver it and this is how much it will cost and if
they don't accept that then they'll have to be a different way and of
working with contractors, but yeah, no, you're definitely you know,
you're right and I think it's going to be I think
navigating that question and relation to different delivery
of different projects. It's gonna really interesting like with
the joiners arms project that could be really different because you
know, we don't really know what kind of form of space we're gonna have access to
and like yeah actively trying to think about
process in this kind of like
More critical way whereas it does not
there's not really space for that in this project. But
we're already doing a lot of other things that feels like yeah, it's not
the focus. And also if it just if it happens,
it'll be amazing. So yeah.
Thanks.
we're gonna have to I
think we're gonna have to wrap up now.
Sorry, we'll let fun go and sit down and like
have a rest.
And we've run out of time, but first I'd
like to give you a gift say thanks for your Keynotes.