Mutations of ideas
Shared resources and tools
For unknown territories
°°°
design representation & communication
production tools & collaboration
creation, sound design & workflows
°°°
ecologies of collaboration
& collective practice in electronic music
towards a labor without work
virtual reality, collective intelligence & post-capitalism
productivity on the grid
ensad
design representation & communication
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Teaching ~ Contractor position
Ecole Nationale Supérieure des Arts Décoratifs, Paris
Design, Architecture & Environment department
2023 - ongoing
Spanning over four semesters in second and third years of the Bachelor program in the Design, Architecture and Environment department, the Communication & Representation course progressively introduces a range of tools used in contemporary practices of design, architecture and landscape studies, for observing, understanding and communicating spatial intentions and analysis.
Through drawing, mapping, photography, 2D and 3D modeling, graphic design and multimedia practices, students progressively build a personal visual language across different scales and media. Alongside technical learning, the course encourages experimentation and critical reflection on the role of digital technologies in contemporary design by exploring their cultural, environmental and social implications - inviting students to question the ways they shape perception, representation and design processes.
Particular attention is given to autonomy and adaptability : rather than mastering a fixed set of software, the students learn to understand the underlying logics of digital workflows and their integration with crafting practices, allowing them to choose and combine tools according to the needs, context and sensibility of each project.
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genius loci
atmospheres & representations
L2-S1
The first module is a week long workshop focused on the concept of ambiance and its representation, as a first introduction to production tools. In partnership with the Project course run by Marion Nielsen, it explores the idea of space as a locus of sentience to develop an installation and micro-edition, questioning the empathic relations with a given space or place, and trying to find mediated ways to refine the perception of its atmosphere, sublimate its spirit and present it to a broader audience.The starting point is the concept of Genius Loci in ancient Rome, where spaces were believed to be inhabited by a spirit or soul. While this belief and its associated rituals faded away in the West during Christianism, the recent theorization of the Anthropocene, non-human consideration and the ecology of the Living seem to bring back questions about sentience and consciousness, as well as our sensible relationships with living beings, but also places and inanimate objects.1,2,3 In architecture, the second half of the 20th century marked the exploration of the concept of ‘place’, as well as the introduction of phenomenology in the discipline. Progressively, interests moved towards the relationship between individuals and their environments, with a holistic and practical approach.4,5 Today, considering the atmosphere of a place, its ambiance, its character - dare we say its spirit? - has become part of the design process and analysis of a space or territory, via a diversity of tools and methods.6,7 Grandiose architectural projects manipulate ambiance in a perfect orchestration of sensitive details - but a strong atmosphere can also be found in the ordinary, helped with a delicate sensory perception, detailed observation and attentive practice of the space and its built, moving or living components.
The workshop then encourages the students to refine their sensory perception of a given space, and represent its ambiance through various media (drawing, photo, audio...), culminating in a mixed media installation and micro-edition. They are first invited to explore their project site, using a "compass" introduced in class to investigate the different components of its Genius Loci. Particular attention is given to the different layers that shape a place, including historical, technical and psychogeographical dimensions, as well as to the recording of its atmosphere using custom tools and experimental surveying protocols. The students then determine which components to focus on, to create graphical pieces that question points of views, modes of perception, narrative construction, interconnections and the relation to time and emotions.
1. Gaston Bachelard - La poétique de l'espace (1957)
2. Donna Haraway - Staying with the Trouble (2016)
3. David Skrbina - Panpsychism in the West (2017)
4. Aldo Rossi - L’architettura della città (1966)
5. Christian Norberg-Schulz - Genius Loci: Towards a Phenomenology of Architecture (1979)
6. Nicolas Nova - Investigation / Design (2021) - Nicolas Nova - Exercices d’observation (2022)
7. Soline Nivet - Quand les architectes mènent l'enquête? (2025)
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celestial breaths
cycles & dynamics, temporal cartographies
L2-S2
In the second module, the students learn the fundamentals of 2D CAD drawing, its convention and ways to use it to develop expressive representations. In partnership with the Project course run by Marion Nielsen, they are invited to explore the notions of time, movement and environmental cycles, by creating symbolic and experimental cartographies, temporal diagrams, experiential collages and subjective plan drawings.
The theoretical framework draws on the Daoist understanding of change that permeates Chinese philosophy to explore time, movement and interdependence, introducing a cosmological view of the world as a continuous process of transformation in which architecture is inscribed - and questioning how temporal dynamics and environmental relationships can be perceived, conceived and represented.1,2 The course considers three different scales to which confront architectural and design projects. The short time of immediate experiences, ambiences, materiality and sensations. The medium time of cycles, seasons and calendars, and how they shaped the perception of time and space across different cultures and epochs. And the long time of transformation and history, questioning the becoming to ruins, restaurations and cultural traditions - opening doors for speculative design and prospection. This approach invites to (re)consider various aspects of a project with new perspectives, allowing for deep conceptual rearrangements, practical modifications or representations - from technical tools to abstract diagrams, experimental cartographies and graphical artworks. 3,4,5,6
After a brief introduction to CAD tools and conventions, the students are invited to develop an expressive and experimental cartography of their project which connects the three temporal scales, using various 2D graphic documents, such as plan drawings, sections, axonometries, diagrams, collages or photographies, as well as physical models. A specific importance is given to the exploration of media related to printing techniques available at the school, such as serigraphy, cyanotype, or sublimation, in order to familiarize them with a digital-analog workflow.
1. Cyrille J.-D. Javary - Yin-Yang. La dynamique du monde (2023)
2. Francois Cheng - Vide et plein (1979)
3. Junichiro Tanizaki - Eloge de l’Ombre (1933)
4. Mario Mainetti - Diagrams - A Project by AMO/OMA (2025)
5. Frédérique Aït-Touati, Alexandra Arènes, Axelle Grégoire - Terra Forma (2019)
6. Anthony Dunne & Fiona Raby - Speculative Everything (2013)
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common ground
collaboration, collective practices & the commons
L3-S1
The third module proposes an insight into shared spaces, commoning practices and collaborative workflows, to introduce the tools of 3D modelling and rendering. In partnership with the Project course run by Victor Meesters, the students develop their abilities to create and transform simple forms, volumes and assemblies in a collective manner, governance models and resource sharing, before extracting conventional architectural representations.
In the past couple decades, we've witnessed a resurgence of community thinking, as a response to current global challenges. The commons, cooperatives and guilds are shared governance models or structures that have existed through humanity history, but which drew a growing interest from the 1990's, thanks to the development of the Internet and cybernetic thinking.1 Indeed, the history of digital technologies has always been filled with radical social models, such as the open-source and free software movement, offering alternative ways to navigate the multiple layers of a totalizing network infrastructure and the logics of enclosure driven by mega-corporations.2,3 The digital tools available to us have given rise to new models of production and organization, greatly helping counter-cultural models based on cooperation, resource sharing, decentralization and interdependency in the ruins of the capitalism.4,5,6 In architecture, this dynamic can be found both in the processes of the discipline itself, and in the considerations of the spaces it creates.7,8,9 Nowadays, shared space design can be approached in a more systemic and holistic way, questioning a wide range of characteristics such as resources management, governance models, physical thresholds, adaptability, appropriation or intimacy.
The course then seeks to explore the richness and fragility of collaboration, via the collective creation of a shared space and its spatial implications, communicated through traditional architectural representations, as well as atmospheric renderings and collages. After an introduction to collaborative methods and practical advices, the students are invited to develop 3D shapes and models related to their project, which are then regrouped and transformed in collective sessions - using governance roleplay and creative games inspired by various artistic currents, such as the surrealist exquisite corpse, to provide a space for playful exploration under given constraints.
1. Elinor Ostrom - Governing the Commons (1990)
2. Benjamin Bratton - The Stack : On Software and Sovereignty (2016)
3. Geert Lovink - Principles of Stacktivism in triple C Vol 18, No 2 (2020)
4. Michel Bauwens, Vasilis Kostakis, and Alex Pazaitis - Peer to Peer: The Commons Manifesto (2019)
5. Sam Hart, Toby Shorin, Laura Lotti - Squad Wealth (2020)
6. Anna Lowenhaupt Tsing - The Mushroom at the End of the World (2015)
7. Stewart Brand- Whole Earth Catalog (1969)
8. P.M. - Bolo’Bolo (1983)
9. Stavros Stavrides - Common Space : The City as Commons (2015)
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hyperlinks
building stories, narrating space
L3-S2
The fourth module offers more autonomy and experimentation, with a focus on the creation and articulation of a narrative by using the wide range of tools they acquired in their Bachelor program. In partnership with the Project course run by Victor Meesters, it introduces the students to narrative design and contemporary digital tools to create a mixed media installation, using experimental representations and rich narratives to build a coherent emotional discourse related to their project.
Stories and narratives have always shaped our understanding and perception of the world around us - from myths and legends to political, historical and even scientific fields. In art, narration has played an obvious role in certain disciplines such as literature or cinema, but writing techniques continuously evolve and transform, influenced by changing cultural and technical contexts. Each new medium has therefore drawn from existing narrative tools, while reshaping our ways of telling stories. More broadly, in the age of pervasive neoliberal capitalism and social networks, everything becomes a narrative, even (and especially) at an individual scale.1 The collapse of the collective discourses that long structured Western societies has encouraged the multiplication of perspectives, political and cultural polarizations, as well as personal micro-narratives.2,3 In architecture, the fictional and speculative approach, popularized during the Renaissance, develop stories to question the present, its societal context and the state of the discipline itself.4 Since the 2010s, we have witnessed a renewed interest in speculative architecture and spatial narratives, taking into account the complexity of the built environment, both through the topics explored and the media employed. 5,6,7
The course then invites students to create a story in the form of a mixed media installation connected to one aspect of their project, such as site analysis, design process, usability projection or speculative thinking. Using a set of narrative design tools introduced in class, they finetune the characters, environments, narratives structures and their associated representations, with great importance given to coherence and immersive strategies to captivate the audience. The format of the final production and the chosen subject are intentionally kept as open as possible, in order to embrace the different interests and individual crafts : texts, videos, drawings, collages, photographs, models, sculptures and sounds are then combined to nurture fictional, documentary or expressive narratives.
1. Adam Curtis - Hypernormalization (2016)
2. Shuman Basar - The Laws of Lorecore (2022)
3. Valentina Tanni - Vibes Lore Core. Esthétique de l'évasion numérique (2025)
4. Superstudio - Twelve Cautionary Tales for Chirstmas (12 Ideal Cities) (1971)
5. Jack Self - Home Economics (2016)
6. Liam Young - Where the City Can’t See (2019)
7. Eyal Weizman - La vérité en ruines : Manifeste pour une architecture forensique (2021)
design workshops
production tools & collaboration
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°°
assembling - revealing
details, ornament & reuse---
with Clémence Frot
ENSA Paris Malaquais
Computational Workshop L3
2025-2027
The Assembling - Revealing workshop introduces third-year students in architecture to 3D printing and its possible applications in their practice, while questioning the role of assemblies, ornaments and material reuse.
Welcomed to play with irregularities, accidents, or deformations of reused materials, the students design and build a set of assemblies allowing the fabrication of an experimental piece of furniture from the domestic space, questioning its shape, use or impact on ambiances. After choosing a typical assembly system, they explore the possibilities to make it an aesthetic element of their design, while staying adaptable to the constraints of reuse via 3D modelling and 3D printing. Importance is given to the ornemental aspect, by finding inspirations in historical and contemporary references, as well as collective practices of resource sharing by building a common catalogue.5,6
1. A. Racinet & A. Dupont-Auberville – The World of Ornament (2015)
2. Andrea Caputo, Anniina Koivu (ed) - U-JOINTS – A taxonomy of connections (2022)
3. Mario Carpo - The Second Digital Turn: Design beyond Intelligence (2017)
4. Octave Perrault - Après 2008, vers un écosystème numérique in Archiscopie 22 (2020)
5. Nathalie Bruyère (ed) - Global Tools (1973-1975) – Éco-Design : Dé-projet & Low-Tech (2023)
6. Stewart Brand- Whole Earth Catalog (1969)
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xs / xxl
inhabiting the relics of the anthropocene---
with Romain Curnier
ENSA Paris Malaquais
Computational Workshop L2
2020
The XS/XXL workshop aims to introduce second-year students in architecture to representational tools and techniques, such as 2D drawings, 3D modeling and parametric design, as well as their underlying logics to extract various representation documents such as plan drawings, sections and axonometric views.
The XS/XXL workshop proposes the students to explore ways to domesticate, to tame these gigantic relics with a playful, formal approach. Each group of students is invited to develop an in-situ installation, a monumental intervention on an existing remarkable infrastructure among a selection of different contexts and typologies, using mainly a parametric version of a traditional element of architecture - playing with parameters such as size, shape, repetition or the reinterpretation of its components to arrive at a variable object that can be used to create interesting spatialities.
1. Koolhaas, Rem, Bruce Mau and OMA. S, M, L , XL. New York : Monacelli Press, 1998.
2. Koolhaas, Rem & OMA. Elements of Architecture. Köln : Taschen, 2018.
3. Shibata, Toshio. CONTACTS. Poursuite Editions, 2013.
4. Tabuchi, Eric. EDF - Electricité de France. Poursuite Editions, 2019.
5. Bratton, Benjamin. The Terraforming. Moscou : Strelka Press, 2019.
6. Baichwal, Jennifer et Nicholas de Pencier. Anthropocene - The Human Epoch. USA, 2020.
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exquisite space(s)
forms and figures, cities and architectures---
with Romain Curnier
ENSA Paris Malaquais
Computational Workshop L2
2019
The Exquisite Space(s) workshop aims to introduce second-year students in architecture to representational tools and techniques, such as 2D drawings, 3D modeling and parametric design, as well as their underlying logics to extract various representation documents such as plan drawings, sections and axonometric views.
Inspired by the protocol of the surrealist literary game of the "exquisite corpse", the students collectively compose a common continuous space, made of 12 cubes of 9-meter sides. After using the diagram and its abstraction potential to define a global delimitation between collective and private spaces, each group develops a volumetric handling of partitioning using parametric variables - exploring different variations to fine-tune and qualify one version of the habitable space.
1. airbnb pavilion (AYR). "home", in Fulcrum, Issue 96 (June 2, 2014). London : Bedford Press, 2014.
2. Hardt, Michael and Delia Duong Ba Wendel. Destroying Family (Interview), in Family Planning, Harvard Design Magazine, No. 41, 2015.
3. McGuirk, Justin. "Honewell, I'm Home! The Internet of Things and the New Domestic Landscape", in e-flux, n°64, April 2015.
4. Jack Self, Shumi Bose, Finn Williams with åyr, Dogma, Julia King, Hesselbrand - British Pavilion, Venice Biennale- Venise, IT - 2016
5. Dogma + Realism Working Group. "Production, Reproduction, Co-operation : The Villa from 'Negative Utopia' to Communal House", in Communal Villa: Production and Reproduction in Artists’ Housing. Leipzig: Spector Books/Haus der Kulturen der Welt, 2016, pp 13-31
6. Stavrides, Stavros. "Common Space as Threshold Space : Urban Commoning in Struggles to Re-appropriate Public Space", in Commoning as Differentiated Publicness, Footprint, Spring 2015, pp 9-20.
7. Aureli, Pier Vittorio. "Toward the Archipelago", in The Possibility of an Absolute Architecture. MIT Press : Cambridge, 2011, pp 1-46.
8. Krier, Rob. Urban Space. Academy Editions : London, 1979.
music workshops
creation, sound design & workflows
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+ Analog to Digital - Collaborative Workshop
Impromptu duo creative exercise Preparation and animation with Make It Noise, Nanjichang Hämasaeki Ayûmi & Aeterna
Taipei ~ 2026
+ Inner Landscapes / Creative Landmarks - Production workshop
Album making, production methods and creative constraints
Preparation and animation for Beatmakers TW
Taipei ~ 2026
+ Sonic Playground - Sound Design Workshop
Philosophy of sound design, sound creation and manipulation of everyday objects
Preparation and animation with Non-Etoile
6B Saint Denis ~ 2025
+ Cadavre Exquis - Collaborative Workshop
Exquisite corpse creative exercise
Preparation & animation with ANIMA for Club Late Music & High Heal
Maison Populaire de Montreuil ~ 2020
whitepaper v2
ecologies of collaboration
& collective practice in electronic music
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Essay / book
via Club Late Music
2022
The Whitepaper V2 is the continuation of CLM x GUN Whitepaper. This first version seeked to introduce our vision and to lay the foundation of our upcoming activities. It presented how the music industry and related artistic practices had been shaped by the evolution of techniques and technologies - changing the way music is produced, distributed and experienced - and therefore redefining the traditional figure of the artist, inscribing the individual in various networks and its inescapable entangling with collective practices.
Drawing inspiration from the open-source and free software movements, the Whitepaper V1 introduced the basis of what we defined as an open-source and collaborative music label, trying to draw lines at what could be our own structure and what would be our core values and operating principles, as a complementary approach to traditional structures of major or independent music labels. In 2022, the context surely is very different, but we’re still animated by the same core questions : how can we think of collaboration and collective action in creating musical and artistic content?
More a continuation than an update, this Whitepaper V2 delves deeper into our interrogations and learnings, first by presenting our thoughts about the role, difficulties and importance of independent labels in the current context, as well as presenting our advances with the CLM x GUN project and how it is operated, in a much more detailed and practical way. More a logbook than a manifesto, the purpose of this document is twofold. On a personal level, its existence helps us to lay a cornerstone in our adventure, taking the time to reflect back on our activity and putting some words on abstract concepts, intuitive decisions and empiric processes that emerged during the past few years of activity. But above all, it aims to be a useful tool for anyone sharing the same interrogations, with the hope that exposing our learnings, our practical solutions as well as our mistakes and deceptions will be able to help the creation of improved models and better collective organizations - a compass that we hope can help navigate our troubling times.
((°)) Download [EN]
hyperwwwork
towards a labor without work :
spatial logics of soft-production
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with Romain Curnier
Master of Architecture diploma project
ENSA Paris Malaquais
2018
From the office to the smart home, the diplomat project Hyperwwwork investigates the disappearance of boundaries between work, domestic life and digital infrastructures. Through historical analysis and speculative fiction the project imagines twelve fictional workplaces that expose how everyday spaces quietly become sites of production, control and self-commodification.
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More than a representation of power and capital, the workplace and its spatial organization principles act as a mechanism of value production.1,2 Since its birth in the late 18th century, the white-collar workplace has evolved in response to particular technological innovations, social ecosystems, workers struggle and design principles.3
However, the recent development of information and communication technology - and especially the ubiquity of the network - tend increasingly to blur the differentiation between workplace and domestic space, work and leisure, production and consumption. While network information economy transformed manual labor into cognitive labor,4 the Internet of Things and large-scale adoption of smart objects participate in the creation of a spatialized information economy. We are currently witnessing the rise of a new kind of space of indeterminate nature, in which every daily action that can be recorded, analyzed and used by third parties eventually creates value,5 consciously or unconsciously, in the name of efficiency and well-being. In this context, commodification of the self and every aspect of one’s life are facilitated by an increasing panel of high-resolution smart objects and technologies such as the blockchain and machine learning, invoking a complex mesh of technical, social and political actors.6
The Hyperwwwork project, through the analysis of architectural plans spanning over two centuries and prospective fictional thinking, sheds light on these existing phenomena otherwise hardly perceived. Inspired by the caricatural approach of Superstudio,7 “Twelve Ideal Offices” invites one to take a step back so as to evaluate the consequence and the risks of the implementation of smart technologies by focusing on spaces, interactions and behaviors usually not associated with value production or mechanisms of control. Hyperwwwork thus extrapolates a social, technical and architectonic context in which these technologies are embedded, and seeks to reveal the role of architecture in this new paradigm and its corresponding trends, such as the quantified self, custom space experience, decentralization and 24/7 activity.
1. Pier Vittorio Aureli, “The Barest Form in which Architecture Can Exist”, in A-TYPICAL PLAN : Projects and Essays on Identity, Flexibility and Atmosphere in the Office, edited by Jeannette Kuo (Zurich: Park Books, 2013).
2. Rem Koolhaas and Bruce Mau, « Typical Plan », in S, M, L, XL (New York: Monacelli Press, 1995), pp 334-353.
3. Nikil Saval, Cubed : A Secret History of the Workplace (New York: Anchor Books, 2014).
4. André Gorz, L’immatériel : Connaissance, valeur et capital (Paris: Galilée, 2003).
5. Nick Srnicek, Platform Capitalism (Cambridge, UK: Polity Press, 2017).
6. Adam Greenfield, Radical Technologies : The Design of Everyday Life. (London / NY: Verso, 2017).
7. Superstudio, « Twelve Cautionary Tales for Christmas (12 Ideal Cities) », in Architectural Design, AD #12, Standard Catalogue Co. / Academy Editions, 1971.
+ publications
° Deep City : Climate Crisis, Democracy and the Digital International Latsis Symposium - Open Forum. EPFL, Switzerland, 24th-26th March 2021.
° Architecture and the Smart City, edited by Sergio M. Figueiredo, Sukanya Krishnamurthy, Torsten Schroeder. Routledge : New York, 2019.
° WASH magazine, issue 02 : Definitely post-something. Print/Web, Fall 2018.
° Smartness? Between discourse and practice, 15th Architectural Humanities Reseach Association International Conference. TU Eindhoven, Netherlands, 15-17 Novembre 2018.
° isthisit? issue 05, edited by Bob Bicknell-Knight. London, August 2018.
° Atlas of Places, edited by Thomas Paturet. Web, August 2018.
° 2018 Prize of the Best Architecture Diploma, by the Maison de l’architecture Ile-de-France
beyond virtualization
virtual reality, collective intelligence & post-capitalism
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Master's Thesis
ENSA Paris Malaquais
2018
Beyond Virtualization aims to consider the social and political impacts of the democratization of virtual and augmented reality technologies, as well as their repercussion on architecture and the design process. A particular importance is given to the transformation of social and cognitive modes of organization.
°°°
New technologies are often presented as salutary and emancipatory, before being progressively absorbed by governments or corporations as tools of control, exploitation or value creation. However, the development of Internet in the 1990s stimulated the emergence of new distributed organization models, the democratization of production and distribution tools, as well as the exchange of knowledge and information. In order to assimilate, reinterpret or orient these technologies towards a collective vision, it is crucial to understand their functioning, their implications and their limits. Virtual immersion, praised and forgotten in the 1990s, recently witnessed a renewed optimism following the public launch of Head-Mounted Displays (HMD) in 2016. Following a brief presentation of virtual reality technologies and their relevance in architecture, the paper then considers their capacity to transform human intellect and environmental perception. In the second part, it focuses on the implications of virtual reality regarding architectural practice and radical politics, and questions the possibility to orient its use to facilitate the development of alternative models founded in collaboration and collective intelligence.
Virtual reality, as a representational tool and communication technology, is nothing more than an additional interface allowing us to explore the virtual at large - a concept predating any digital technology. Of particular interest to architecture is the ability to experiment with the notion of space : its perception, its design, its representation, its discontinuity, its temporality or the way it relates to the body. The involvement of the body makes virtual reality a multi-sensory interface, offering new ways to apprehend information and immaterial entities, temporarily distancing itself from reality to better understand it. However, the manipulation and reinterpretation of the psychological, cognitive, identitary, social and bodily notions which make its strength raise some serious ethical considerations, and foresee the possibility of a complete alienation to virtual delights.
Inspecting its use in arts inform us on its ability to foster collaboration - a crucial component of architectural design, as well as on the stirring complexity resulting from an interconnection between physical and virtual spaces. By offering the ability to navigate across different layers of reality, virtual reality technologies radically change how we relate to the built environment - and thus the role of the architect. While the consideration of Internet evolved from a technical tool to the constitutive technology of a new socio-political context, it would seem incomplete to consider virtual reality for what it is without considering the way it relates to society and the changes brought by its widespread adoption. The social, economical and political context in which it evolves is altered by virtual reality, as much as it influences its development. This research paper aims to consider how virtual reality can promote the elaboration and implementation of alternative models to an entrenched system, founded on collective organization, resource sharing, interdependence and collaboration by its potential to augment our intellectual abilities and deepen our understanding of complex systems. Ultimately, it considers virtual reality as a tool for experimentation, questioning the values we stand for and the very notions of mankind and identity. It attempts to draw development strategies for a responsible and aware use of virtual reality, in order to make the most out of it while limiting its use to ends of control and value creation.
° Cover background by Luka Lavrenci
+ publication
° Virtual Dream Center, edited by Jean-Baptiste Lenglet and Jessica Boubetre. Web, March 2018
privacy policy
terms & conditions :
productivity on the grid
---
with Romain Curnier
Research project
ENSA Paris Malaquais
2017
As work and daily life merge into a continuous digital landscape, Privacy Policy is a speculative research project that questions the invisible architectures of the network. By altering wireless connectivity through physical interventions, it exposes the spatial and political dimensions of contemporary infrastructures.
°°°
The continuous working of global markets and infrastructures inscribe us in a permanent cycle of work and consumption, characterized by the absence of place or temporality in which it is impossible to buy, produce, or browse the network - the 24/7 concept described by Jonathan Crary.1 This annihilation foresees the homogenization of space and time : work, socialization, rest and intimacy are not happening in distinct and separated places or temporalities. Indeed, the multiplication of connected devices and communication technologies change the correlation between interior/exterior, private/public, productive/non-productive and domestic/professional. The significance of traditional architectural elements usually marking the separation between identifiable spaces is diluted in an ubiquitous and reticular network.
While new technologies do not constrain work to a precise geographic location, paradoxically it got relocated into spaces dedicated to family or friendship. The practice of teleworking, popularized with the emergence of mobile phones and laptops in the 1990s, still appears as an alternative to the hierarchical oppression and surveillance of the workplace, despite its own economic advantages - from the reduction of a company's assets to the creation of new rental markets such as coworking and coliving spaces. If these new models appear as an ideal in the mind of most workers, it is precisely because of this mental association of the home and the café as spaces detached from any productive activity. But beyond the relocation of work activities in traditionally non-productive spaces, the new information economy paradigm affirms the productive aspect of the household : value creation is not anymore dependent on an individual workforce, but on an abundance of data. Pure information, extracted from individual behaviors and lifestyles, when analyzed and monetized, has become as valuable as physical or mental labor.
In this context, the network, as the imperceptible support of information exchange, can be considered as a additional layer bending the traditional physical separation of spaces. Metallized PET film (used for the manufacturing of space blankets), when positioned in a closed space, can influence network connection by creating high- and low-bandwidth zones. Such an experimentation is not be considered as a demonstration of the technical capabilities of the tested materials, but more as the unveiling of the political and spatial implications of the network - may that be to create non-productive spaces reproducing the privacy of the traditional home, to protect individuals from surveillance systems, or to standardize the network bandwidth on an urban scale.
1. Jonathan Crary, 24/7 : Late Capitalism and the Ends of Sleep. (London / NY: Verso, 2013).