What is the economic context of the research projects discussed in this issue?
In “Task Environment,” Arindam Dutta has demonstrated a shift in architectural research from a state-funded research-industrial-academic complex to ‘creative economy’ funding structures dominant today. While some projects shown in this isssue are rooted in the legacy of military and industrial interests (see Wisnioski and Zacharias) and the research university (Günel, Barber), others operate within the structure of clients (Brugger), the art market (Leung, Riano, Armstrong, Hoang), the design studio (Kaseman and Smith, Hovenkotter and Lamphier, Ponte and Zhai and McGown), multinational corporations (Ponte, Carver), marketing research (Montgomery), volunteer workforces (Orff), public-private partnerships (Zhai and McGown), municipalities (Jaque), regulating agencies (Geiger, Heindl), and non-profit funding (Buonocore, Miller, Oyarzun and Fernández-Muro). What funding and labor systems do these projects operate within, and where is there room for experimentation with these structures of research?
Janette Kim
ARPA Journal
LABORATORY SERIES. No.16. Model Replica of Stanley Kubrick’s War Room from the Stanley Kubrick Retrospective at LACMA, 2012-13. Fortified within a concrete bunker, the War Room in Kubrick’s “Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb” imagined cold war political strategy as a giant poker table around which world leaders gambled the fate of nuclear fallout. Photo: Wikipedia
