Experience and Imagination in Transdisciplinary Design: The FabPod

Abstract

This article examines how techniques for imagining atmospheres are conceptualized and practiced in architecture, anthropology and acoustic measurement in order to advance discussion of how transdisciplinary theory and practice might be realized. Building on research into the experience of atmospheres of already existing architectural spaces, it discusses how architects, anthropologists and users of designed environments imagine atmospheres. This is explored through an examination of the processes of design, making, quantitative measurement and ethnographic study of an acoustically designed prototype meeting space, the FabPod. It is argued that transdisciplinary dialogue and collaboration offers architecture a new mode through which to participate in imagining and designing atmosphere.

Keywords:

• transdisciplinary design
• anthropology
• architecture
• video ethnography
• acoustics
• imagination
• atmosphere
• perception

Acknowledgements

The FabPod research was undertaken at RMIT University, Melbourne. The ethnography and the publication of Essaying the FabPod formed part of the Design + Ethnography + Futures research program funded by the RMIT. Sarah Pink and Yoko Akama led the ethnography with research assistant Annie Fergusson. The authors are grateful to everyone who participated.

Notes

1 Mike Anusas and Rachel Harkness, “Different Presents in the Making,” in Design Anthropological Futures, eds. Rachel Charlotte Smith, Kasper Tang Vangkilde, Mette Gislev Kjaersgaard and Ton Otto (London: Bloomsbury, 2016), 55–70.

2 Here we refer to ethnography, the study of “real-life” situations in a way that conveys the subjective reality of those involved, as informed by the design anthropological approach discussed in this article.

3 For documentation of the FabPod, see RMIT University, Spatial Information Architecture Laboratory, “Fab Pod.” Available online: http://www.sial.rmit.edu.au/portfolio/fabpod-sial/ (accessed August 20, 2017).

4 Trevor H. Marchand, “Place-Making in the ‘Holy of Holies:’ The Church of the Holy Sepulcher in Jerusalem,” in Ritual, Performance and the Senses, eds. Jon Mitchell and Michael Bull (London: Bloomsbury Academic, 2015), 63.

5 Ibid.

6 Edward S. Casey, “How to Get from Space to Place in a Fairly Short Stretch of Time: Phenomenological Prolegomena,” in Senses of Place, eds. Steven Feld and K. Basso (Santa Fe, NM: School of American Research Press, 1997), 13–52; Tim Ingold, Lines: A Brief History (London: Routledge, 2007). For our own work, see Sarah Pink, Doing Sensory Ethnography (London: Sage, 2015); and Sarah Pink and Kerstin Leder Mackley, “Video as a Route to Sensing Invisible Energy,” Sociological Research Online (2012). Available online: http://www.socresonline.org.uk/17/1/3.html/.

7 For example, Ann Heylighen and Greg Nijs, “Re-articulating Prevailing Notions of Design: About Designing in the Absence of Sight and Other Alternative Design Realities,” in The Routledge Companion to Design Research, eds. Paul Rodgers and Joyce Yee (London: Routledge, 2015), 101–113; J. Malnar and F. Vodvarka, Sensory Design (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2004); Juhani Pallasmaa, “Empathic Imagination: Formal and Experiential Projection,” Architectural Design 84 (2014): 80–85.

8 Pallasmaa, “Empathic Imagination,” 82.

9 Heylighen and Nijs, “Re-Articulating Prevailing Notions of Design.”

10 Chris Rust, Judith Mottram and Jeremy Till, Research Review, Practice-Led Research in Art, Design and Architecture (London: Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC), 2007); Peter Downton, Design Research (Melbourne: RMIT Press, 2003).

11 Trevor H. Marchand, “A Possible Explanation for the Lack of Explanation: Or, ‘Why the Master Builder Can’t Explain What He Knows:’ Introducing the Information Atomism against a ‘Definitional’ Definition of Concepts,” in Negotiating Local Knowledge, eds. J. Pottier, A. Bicker and P. Sillitoe (London: Pluto, 2003), 30–50; Trevor H. Marchand, “Making Knowledge: Explorations of the Indissoluble Relation between Minds, Bodies, and Environment,” Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute 16 (2010), S1–S21; Sarah Pink, Andrew Dainty and Dylan Tutt, eds., Ethnographic Research in the Construction Industry (London: Taylor & Francis, 2013).

12 Pallasmaa, “Empathic Imagination,” 84.

13 Gernot Böhme, “Atmosphere as the Fundamental Concept of a New Aesthetics,” Thesis Eleven 36, no. 1 (1993): 122.

14 Pink, Doing Sensory Ethnography.

15 Böhme, “Atmosphere as the Fundamental Concept,” 123.

16 Gernot Böhme, “The Art of the Stage Set as a Paradigm for an Aesthetics of Atmospheres,” Ambiances: International Journal of Sensory Environment, Architecture and Urban Space (February 2013). Available online: http://journals.openedition.org/ambiances/315/.

17 Timothy Ingold, “Introduction: The Perception of the User–Producer,” in Design and Anthropology, eds. Wendy Gunn and Jared Donovan (Farnham: Ashgate, 2012), 19–33. This is quoted in Sarah Pink and Kerstin Leder Mackley, “Moving, Making and Atmosphere: Routines of Home as Sites for Mundane Improvisation,” Mobilities 11, no. 2 (2016): 176.

18 Pink and Leder Mackley, “Moving, Making and Atmosphere,” 176, original emphasis.

19 Pallasmaa, “Empathic Imagination,” 84.

20 For example, Arjun Appadurai, Modernity at Large (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1996), or Vincent Crapanzano, Imaginative Horizons (London: University of Chicago Press, 2004).

21 Pink, Doing Sensory Ethnography.

22 David Sneath, Martin Holbraad and M. Axel Pedersen, “Technologies of the Imagination: An Introduction,” Ethnos: Journal of Anthropology 74, no. 1 (2009): 17.

23 Ibid., 24.

24 Jane Burry, in Jane Burry, Daniel Davis, Brady Peters, Phil Ayres, John Klein, Alexander Pena de Leon and Mark Burry, “Modelling Hyperboloid Sound Scattering: The Challenge of Simulating, Fabricating and Measuring,” in Computational Design Modelling, Proceedings of the Design Modelling Symposium Berlin 2011, eds. Christoph Gengnagel, Axel Kilian, Norbert Palz and Fabian Scheurer (Berlin: Springer, 2011), 89–96.

25 Ibid., 89–90.

26 Nicholas Williams, Davis Daniel, Brady Peters, Alexander Pena de Leon, Jane Burry and Mark Burry, “FabPod: An Open Design-to-Fabrication System,” in Open Systems: Proceedings of the 18th International Conference on Computer-Aided Architectural Design Research in Asia, eds. Rudi Stouffs, Patrick Janssen, Stanislav Roudavski and Bige Tunçer (Singapore: CAADRIA, 2013), 252.

27 Brady Peters, Jane Burry, Nicholas Williams and Daniel Davis, “HubPod: Developing Design Strategies around Acoustic Simulation,” in 2013 Proceedings of the Symposium on Simulation for Architecture and Urban Design, eds. Liam O’Brien, Burak Gunay and Azam Khan (San Diego, CA: SimAUD, 2013), 213–220.

28 Williams et al., “FabPod,” 258.

29 Xiaojun Qiu, Eva Cheng, Ian Burnett, Nicholas Williams, Jane Burry and Mark Burry, “Preliminary Study on the Speech Privacy Performance of the Fabpod,” in Acoustics 2015 (Hunter Valley: Australian Acoustical Society, 2015), 1–10. Available online: https://www.acoustics.asn.au/conference_proceedings/AAS2015/papers/p114.pdf/.

30 Sipei Zhao, Xiaojun Qiu, Eva Cheng, Ian Burnett, N. Williams, Jane Burry and Mark Burry, “Sound Quality Inside Small Meeting Rooms with Different Room Shape and Fine Structures,” Applied Acoustics 93 (2015): 65–74.

31 Qiu et al., “Preliminary Study,” 1.

32 Zhao et al., “Sound Quality Inside Small Meeting Rooms,” 74.

33 Ibid., 70.

34 Barry Blesser and Laura Ruth Salter, Spaces Speak, Are You Listening? (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2007).

35 Sneath et al., “Technologies of the Imagination.”

36 Joachim Halse, “Ethnographies of the Possible,” in Design Anthropology: Theory and Practice, eds. Wendy Gunn, Ton Otto and Rachel Charlotte Smith (London: Bloomsbury, 2013), 194.

37 Ibid.

38 David Carlin, Yoko Akama, Sarah Pink, Adrian Miles, Kyla Brettle, Annie Fergusson, Brigid Magner, Alvin Pang, Francesca Rendle-Short and Shanti Sumartojo, “Essaying the FabPod: An Improvised Experimental Collaborative Account of the Uncertain Cultural Life and Futures of the Fabpod, as of August 21, 2014,” Axon, 5, no. 1 (2015). Available online: http://www.axonjournal.com.au/issue-8-1/essaying-fabpod/.

39 Halse, “Ethnographies of the Possible,” 194.

40 William Gaver, Andy Boucher, Sarah Pennington and Brendan Walker, “Cultural Probes and the Value of Uncertainty,” Interactions 11, no. 5 (2004): 53–56.

41 Steven Feld, “Places Sensed, Senses Placed: Towards a Sensuous Epistemology of Environments,” in Empire of the Senses: The Sensory Culture Reader, ed. David Howes (Oxford: Berg, 2005), 185. See also Pink, Doing Sensory Ethnography; and Tom Rice, “Getting a Sense of Listening,” Critique of Anthropology 25, no. 2 (2005): 199–206.

42 Qiu et al., “Preliminary Study,” 4.

43 Timothy Ingold, The Perception of the Environment (London: Routledge, 2000); Rice, “Getting a Sense of Listening;” Tom Rice, “‘Beautiful Murmurs:’ Stethoscopic Listening and Acoustic Objectification,” Senses and Society 3, no. 3 (2008): 293–306.

44 Qiu et al., “Preliminary Study,” 5.

45 For a full discussion of the FabPod workshop, see David Carlin, Yoko Akama, Sarah Pink and Shanti Sumartojo, “Uncertainty as Technology for Moving Beyond,” in Uncertainty and Possibility: New Approaches to Future Making in Design Anthropology, eds. Yoko Akama, Sarah Pink and Shanti Sumartojo (London: Bloomsbury, 2018), 103–124.

46 Shanti Sumartojo, “Dazzling Relief: Floodlighting and National Affective Atmospheres on VE Day 1945,” Journal of Historical Geography 45 (2014): 61.

47 Ben Anderson, “Affective Atmospheres,” Emotion, Space and Society 2 (2009): 79, 80.

48 Yoko Akama, “Being Awake to Ma: Designing in Between-ness as a Way of Becoming With,” Co:Design: International Journal of CoCreation in Design and the Arts 11, nos. 3–4 (2015): 271.

49 Juhani Pallasmaa, “Identity, Intimacy and Domicile: Notes on the Phenomenology of Home,” Arkkitehti – Finnish Architectural Review 1 (1994). Available online: http://www.uiah.fi/studies/history2/eident.htm (accessed August 15, 2015).

50 Pallasmaa, “Empathic Imagination,” 84.

51 Timothy Ingold, Making: Anthropology, Archaeology, Art and Architecture (London: Routledge, 2013).

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Sarah Pink

Sarah Pink is a design anthropologist and Professor of Design and Emerging Technology at Monash Art, Design and Architecture (MADA) and the Faculty of Information Technology at Monash University, Melbourne, Australia. At the time of the FabPod project, she was Distinguished Professor in the School of Media and Communication at Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology (RMIT) University, Melbourne, Australia.

Jane Burry

Jane Burry is an architect, Professor and Dean of the School of Design at Swinburne University, Melbourne, Australia.

Yoko Akama

Yoko Akama is a designer and Associate Professor in the School of Design at RMIT University, Melbourne, Australia.

Xiaojun Qiu

Xiaojun Qiu is Professor in Audio, Acoustics and Vibration in the School of Mechanical and Mechatronic Engineering at University of Technology, Sydney, Australia.