June 2018

Critiques

Speculative

by Sara Stevens

Design and capital in the work of Gerald Hines.

Follow The Money

by Vittorio Lovato with Peggy Deamer, Quilian Riano, and Manuel Shvartzberg on behalf of The Architecture Lobby

Mapping prize funding for research in architecture.

Research Ransoms

Leah Meisterlin in conversation with Samantha Parsons from UnKoch My Campus

On expelling undue influence.

The Professionalization of Interest

By Eric Wycoff Rogers

The National Municipal League and the rise of architectural expertise.

How to Not Squander People’s Money

by Masha Panteleyeva

A Soviet guide to funding transparency.

Patents, Agency, and Environment

by Richard L. Hindle

A history of innovation in physical infrastructure and large-scale complex systems.

Towards Dematerialization

By Frédéric Schnee

Nicolas Schöffer’s Maison Spatiodynamique à Cloisons Invisibles.

Projects

Harvesting Change

An interview with Sweet Water Foundation’s Emmanuel Pratt

How funding shapes work. How work shapes funding.

Please Own a Piece of It

Dong-Ping Wong in conversation with Archie Lee Coates

Staying afloat with + POOL.

Jumpstart Starter Homes

by Jonathan Tate and Travis Bost

Retaining value and reimagining idiosyncrasy where two markets meet.

Ownership Unpacked

by Skylar Bisom-Rapp

Escaping the false binary between public and private property regimes.

They Grow Without Us

by Joseph Dahmen and Amber Frid-Jimenez of AFJD

Mycelium architecture and ecologies of practice.

Contingent Objectives

by Common Room

A statement on conducting conflict.

Social Impact Criticism

by Stephen Zacks

The use of influence for advocacy and production.

Conflicts of Interest

“Conflicts of interest” are said to compromise the impartiality of research, but what would it mean to be disinterested? Ethical codes warn us that researchers’ objectivity can be corrupted by a clashing set of interests—those of funding agencies, clients and publics, as well as researchers’ self-interest in professional advancement or personal gain. If the resolution of such conflicts might typically call for avoidance, recusal or disclosure, what would such strategies mean for the design disciplines and research on the built environment? What varied interests, expressed in the form of money or other manifestations of influence, do designers contend with? Who does impartiality protect, and when are conflicts of interest productive? Issue 05 asks how researchers define an ethics of interest and disinterest across diverse structures of research funding. How do designers reify, leverage, alter or sidestep the constraints of financial support, and from what vantage points? How is the value of research assessed, and in what marketplaces? cover image: Letter from Rem Koolhaas to Miuccia Prada, 1999. Courtesy OMA. Exhibited in "The Other Architect," at the Canadian Centre for Architecture.