Notes on pre:fab: Episode 3 - Life After Style
MAY 2024
A wildly discursive and overly theoretical argument in five or more parts for a new way to gather in the post-individual, later than late capitalist, cultural production service industry.
TLDR: For thousands of years style functioned as a ‘proof of work’. The clothes we wore and things we had provided a trustless verification mechanism that proved we were who we said we were without the need to really say anything at all. Trustless networks depend on the identity of authenticity and verification. Technological and political developments since 1750 created a world of extreme material abundance and cultural diversity that broke this equivalence. Separated from verification, authenticity is moralised as an aesthetic proposition and becomes a style. Decoupled from context and supply chain, authenticity as style is commodified and becomes meaningless—a reference with no referent. Any distinction between the market and life disappears.
Keywords: crypto; clothing; technology; branding; authenticity; late capitalism
Have your say here or download in journal format below.
Notes on pre:fab: Episode 2 - Wave Equations
MAY 2024
Notes on pre:fab: A wildly discursive and overly theoretical argument in five or more parts for a new way to gather in the post-individual, later than late capitalist, cultural production service industry.
TLDR: Where once the domain of our expressive potential, our personhood, was a loosely defined function of where we were raised, who raised us, and what we looked like, today we have infinite selves. New forms of promiscuity and precariousness demand new forms of connection, collaboration and meaning making; new mixtures of technology and culture that are beyond the reach of existing institutions designed for another era. How do we gather now?
Keywords: pepeha; promiscuity; precariousness; connection; collaboration
Have your say here or download in journal format below.
Notes on pre:fab: Episode 1 - R0<1
MAY 2024
A wildly discursive and overly theoretical argument in five or more parts for a new way to gather in the post-individual, later than late capitalist, cultural production service industry.
TLDR: Architecture has become a service industry to the supply chain. The hyper-local emerges as the only practical alternative. Consequently, alternative practice is atomized into isolated operations, often just one or two people, working on seemingly unique issues. Isolation and unscalable outcomes lead to burnout. With limited resources and little potential for greater influence, the debt borrowed from our future selves becomes so large that the fleeting achievements of the present can no longer meet our interest payments. Welcome to the logic of the Creative Production Service Economy.
Keywords: alternative practice; competition; subjugation; exhaustion; futility
Have your say here or download in journal format below.
Questions For Your Architect - A Tony Watkins Collection
MAY 2024
pre:fab out-Fielder, architect, activist, friend and inspiration Tony Watkins has contributed a collection writings on climate, density, responsibility and regulation from 2022 for publication under the pre:fab label
Falling in love with the climate crisis
"The climate crisis is interesting precisely because it has almost nothing to do with
climate."
"Density is the problem not the solution"
16 Questions To Ask Your Architect
"Does my architect have any problem with anyone building themselves a house?"
in:situ 2024 Review
FEBRUARY 2024
pre:fab member Tessa Forde attends Te Kāhui Whaihanga New Zealand Institute of Architects' annual conference 'in:situ' and has a few thoughts...
You can read and comment on her review here.
Te Kāhui Whaihanga Board Report_002
FEBRUARY 2024
pre:fab is pleased to offer this update of activities to the records of Te Kāhui Whaihanga NZIA Board Meeting for February 2024.
Report Contents:
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Crises and Complicity
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Architecture Beyond Capitalism
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[Detecting] The Darchive
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Mud Mixing
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Thank you Judith Taylor
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What's Next?
pre:fab Xmas MiXer
DECEMBER 2023
pre:fab held an end of year Mixer to celebrate the milestones achieved over the previous twelve months and to thank all of our members and supporters for their efforts in contributing to and building the pre:fab community. Attendees were asked to dress in old clothes and come prepared to participate in an interactive demonstration of mud mixing, earth brick making, and hot dog assembly.
pre:fab supports the adoption and development of natural building methods by the architecture discipline. This event was an opportunity to promote this cause to our members, as well as give attendees a tactile experience of the materials and process in a low stakes environment. The event was made possible with the guidance and expertise of master earth builder Alan Drayton of Biobuild.
Pizza Palar
November 2023
"Kia ora koutou Everyone, welcome to the inaugural pre:fab Love Triangles Pizza Palar Journey Person Associate Employee Workshop!... We are gathered here today to practice our sacred obligation and ritual responsibility to invigilate over the dark matter of our colleagues and community, and to locate this material on to the pre:fab pizza base as our contribution to the mahi of those who will follow us."
pre:fab in:fielder Simon Glaister helps participants locate darkefacts on pre:fab's terrain map >The Quattro Stagioni < in a workshop designed to draw out connections between the archive and personal experiences within our shared environment. The workshop is a pilot study for a proposed open source map Tāmaki Makaurau > a love letter to the city < revealing local insights and experiences, making personal places of ritual appreciation available to all.
OOC Drawing and Poetry
FEBRUARY 2024
A workshop hosted by pre:fab in:fielder Ollie Brockie
Memory dark matters > What dark matter do we carry with us daily? These memory spaces/objects are the corners of suconscious thought that inform our creative practices, control our imaginations, and to which our personal, moral compasses adhere. This workshop hosted by pre:fab in:fielder Oliver Brockie at pre:fab's 2024 conference [Detecting] The Darchive engaged participants to construct a ‘blind drawing’ that spatialised previously unsurfaced and out-of-control memory spaces. These spaces were constructed of sensory details, emotions, and experiences in which the memory holder had no control. Participants were also invited to constructed ‘blind poems’ from found text, perhaps personifying their memory dark matter, further elucidating these spatial memories, before sharing insights or revelations about their memory spaces with the group. Following the workshop the memory spaces remained as dark matter, once again depersonalised but forming a new collective imagined environment of space and language that describe a collective, creative subconscious.
The Fabric of Reality
NOVEMBER 2023
Do we live in a holographic universe? Is gravity an emergent effect of 2 dimensional strings interacting on the surface of a hypersphere, combined with the tendency of the universe toward increasing disorder? What does the darchive mean and how do its affects effect us?
pre:fab in:fielder Sakina Ali helps us pull together and process the many threads of the Darchive through this embroidery based workshop at at pre:fab's 2024 conference [Detecting] The Darchive.
Agua Oasis
NOVEMBER 2023
"Welcome to the Agua Oasis. This workshop will be part burning man, part survivor, and part sleepover fort..."
A workshop hosted by pre:fab in:fielder Leonard Hobbins at pre:fab's 2024 conference [Detecting] The Darchive. The workshop invited participants to join together in a series of activities designed to build collective meaning through ritual experimentation. Typical workplace furniture, such as a water cooler, mobile seating, plastic potted plants, bean bags, and polyester cushions we combined with camping equipment into a 'Survivor style tribal council' setting. Guided by a series of collective ritual space making activities and prompts, participants were invited to share stories about objects of personal importance, habitual behaviours, and reflect on success and frustrations in the workplace.
Detecting the Darchive - pre:fab Conference 2023
NOVEMBER 2023
pre:fab conference 2023 explored the concept of the Darchive—the dark matter of architectural practice: the undeclared, undiscussed, unacknowledged, uninspected, or otherwise hidden people, objects, spaces, events, and ideas that have had an enduring effect on our individual or collective imagination, and through that, our creative practices and built environment. The things that make alternative practice alternative.
The conference was free, open to anyone, and attempted to reveal the Darchive through a combination of quickfire presentations, participatory workshops, and shared conversation over a potluck lunch. The original public call for contributions is here.
The conference was organised and run by the pre:fab Team with the support of our sponsors:
Flight Coffee; Florets; Groupwork; Lamplight Books
The following 20 invited speakers gave presentations at the conference:
Andreas Muller; Aphiwat Pengpala; Binh Minh Ha; Cindy Huang; Eugene van Dalen; Evelina Lolesi; Farzad Zamani; Joseph Mcauley; Judith Taylor; Katie Braatvedt; Leith Macfarlane; Nathan Walker; Nicola Chang; Oliver Brockie; Tane Pamatatau-Marques; Thom Gill; Tom Collins; Shan Yu; Vanessa Werder; Zali McMahon
Additional contributions of Darkefacts were provided by:
Anonymous; Dank Lloyd Wright; Daniel Ho; Sharon Lam; Stacy Vallis; Tony Watkins
Participatory Workshops were designed and run by
Leonard Hobbins; Oliver Brockie; Sakina Ali; Simon Glaister
Based!
NOVEMBER 2023
The pre:fab Quattro Stagioni Shaktipata: A pizza[1] based [terrain map] locating the structure and ambitions of pre:fab–-the quadrants: tools, school, pool, and field—against its predominant modes operation—the axes: Johns, Ritual workers, potluck gatherings, and Discord (plus Google Workspace). The quadrants and axes provide a crispy base that supports the seasonal toppings [activities, actions, and interactions] of the pre:fab field.
Interactions between neighbouring and opposing axes provide each quadrant with its unique character—improvement [basil], application [olives], Delivery [artichoke] , and creation [mushroom]—and a subtle complex of differentiating flavours—automated & utilitarian, apollonian & anthropocentric, dynosian & zoomorphic, and rhizomatic & autonomous. Movement across the pizza, from one slice to the next, sees a continuous change in the flavour profile and consequent agency/affect of the polyphonous toppings.
1. At pre:fab, we include the category ‘pizza’ within the supercategory ‘Mandala’: A carefully constructed microcosm, or ecological model in miniature of a larger virtual reality rendering engine of alternative spaces for ritual collaboration and experimentation—in this case the pre:fab universe.
Te Kāhui Whaihanga Board Report_001
SEPTEMBER 2023
pre:fab is pleased to offer this update of activities to the records of Te Kāhui Whaihanga NZIA Board Meeting for September 2023.
The previous Board meeting - prior to the annual general meeting hosted in May - featured pre:fab as invited guests to advise on the future of the institute. We hope the board has continued to reflect on this conversation as we have. We have attached the post-meeting pamphlet for your records...
ABC School - Demotic Ritual Practices Workshop
SEPTEMBER 2023
pre:fab team member Leonard Hobbins ran a workshop “Demotic Ritual Practices: What do you Reckon?” as part of the Architecture Lobby’s Architecture Beyond Capitalism School 2023. Leonard Collaborated with horticulturist Jesse Melville on the workshop that explored the history and qualities of the site of the abandoned alternative lifestyle commune “Prana” on the Coromandel Peninsula. The workshop took place via Zoom live from Prana and invited participants to participate in a series of ritual activities that were designed to respond to the history of alternative and collective living arrangements on the site - and also reveal the ways in which ritual activities formed the basis of both everyday life in the disparate locations of the participants, and the way contemporary collective living arrangements and collective organising practices in architecture may function. The activities included shared meals, shared work stories, collective movement, and voodoo sacrifice.
Radical Retrofit: FG Wilson Fellowship
SEPTEMBER 2023
pre:fab was shortlisted for their submission to Te Kahui Whaihanga NZIA’s F G Wilson Fellowship—a $20,000 one year research grant for public housing. This proposal was the work of a diverse group of pre:fab members who gathered around two questions in response to this opportunity:
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“Where is public housing absent today, where it might be possible to expand its location both physically and conceptually?”
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And “How can we use this opportunity to connect architecture with the epochal challenges of our era - housing unaffordability, spatial and social inequity, ageing populations, finite resources, and the climate crisis?”
pre:fab’s answer, ‘Radical Retrofit’, proposed retrofitting clusters of existing single family dwellings in well-serviced neighbourhoods for collective living using minimal construction intervention, maximum re-use of onsite materials, and experimental ownership models, This research proposed to stretch, test and supplement those ideas already present in public housing discourse, and aimed to reveal new ways of thinking and doing public housing.
pre:fab submitters were particularly interested in how inner-city neighbourhoods with heritage overlays or other limits on development can be made denser with minimal intervention through co-housing approaches and better integrated multigenerational living. Many of these historic neighbourhoods, like Ponsonby, Grey Lynn and Kingsland, appear to be off limits for new public housing supply, and yet they are some of the most desirable, and well serviced locations in Tāmaki Makaurau, Everyone deserves to live in such places.
Te Kāhui Whaihanga NZIA Board Meeting
MAY 2023
On Wednesday 31.05.2023 at 10:25 AM pre:fab members met with Te Kāhui Whaihanga Board members at their annual in-person meeting in advance of the institute's AGM later that day. pre:fab was invited to develop ideas already shared with the board in their presidential nomination application and advise the institute on how it can remain relevant to both the profession and all those who call Aotearoa home. All current and incoming board members were in attendance including the incumbent President Elect Huia Reriti and CEO Teena Hale Pennington.
Read the full script of pre:fab's presentation here:
Campari Club
APRIL 2023
Pre:fab, a known architectural group, held an aperitivo and discussion at the Cox’s Bay West End Rowing Club in Tamaki Makaurau about a month ago. The local architecture community came together for an evening of Campari Spritz, laughs, and conversation.
The main topic was "labour exploitation under capitalism". Attendees shared views on this challenging subject, keeping the atmosphere friendly and constructive despite the seriousness of the topic.
They explored issues like labor rights and economic disparities, and potential solutions to these problems. The environment promoted respectful dialogue and understanding, proving to be more than just an ordinary social gathering.
In essence, Pre:fab's event at the Cox’s Bay West End Rowing Club mixed socialization with valuable discussions on a vital socio-economic issue. It strengthened bonds within the Tamaki Makaurau architecture community and highlighted the complexities of labour exploitation under capitalism.
- ChatGPT
APRIL 2023
Licensing in the Future Environment: MBIE Submission
Groupwork submitted this response to the MBIE Occupational regulation reforms in the building and construction sector call for submissions. In the submission we argue that all those working to design the built environment are architects, and that this title should be regulated in a new way by a single authority.
Levelling up through this new scheme is based on project complexity and associated risk (much like the existing LBP scheme), but also on a project’s scale and function as these factors pertain to its present and future economic, social, and cultural significance and environmental impact through an accompanying non-technical ‘Future Environments Endorsement Framework’ (FEE) that supports and validates the relevant competencies.
Alternative pathways for acquiring the competencies required at each licensing level that recognise the wide variety of perspectives, values, experience, and specialist skills of people seeking licensing are proposed with the aim of increasing accessibility to the industry and diversifying what constitutes legitimate content in the discussion and practice of architecture.
pre:fab for President! TKW NZIA
MARCH 2023
Pre:fab is the obvious choice for President of the NZIA, having over 90 years of experience in the expanded field of architecture practice, past and current involvement with over 30 architecture organisations locally and abroad, more than 15 degrees from institutions of higher learning, as well as the ability to operate in many times and places at once. Pre:fab has intimate knowledge about vast swathes of architecture’s past, operates across fleeting and innumerable moments of practice and dialogue in the present, and lays out a collective vision for Future Belonging™.
Pyramid Building / SAAS Campaign Workshop
FEBRUARY 2023
A speculative workshop to develop the content of the pre:fab for President campaign, pre:fab members gathered with the interested public specifically to speculate on the future of TKW NZIA, and more broadly to imagine the form of interactions between individuals, collectives, and institutions through time. The related strategies of Bentoism and Multi-Level Marketing schemes were deployed in conceptual exercises exploring ritual, belonging, and futuring, and a series of campaign materials including slogans and sticker designs were produced.
pre:fab Re-launch Party
DECEMBER 2022
For the pre:fab re-launch/party, Groupwork commissioned a collection of architects to turn themselves into models of Tāmaki Makaurau - public spaces of their choice (because Architecture is ubiquitous, public, accessible and part of the fabric of our daily lives). They were spatially arranged in the room as a map based on their IRL locations, from Freyburg Place, to the Avondale Markets, to the Southern Motorway. By attending, each person became part of this simulated city because we are always already all models of Tāmaki Makaurau.
Alongside this Groupwork also launched a ‘Subjective Perspective Generator,’ where everyone and anyone could contribute a vision for Tāmaki. Groupwork is interested in how this tool makes the design process more accessible - whereby the output can be discovered through iteration; redefined and refined by the user. In this instance Groupwork’s interest in generative AI is its capacity to transform the capabilities of the creative classes from a rare commodity to public infrastructure. Groupwork will continue to develop this tool in the context of community engagement and hope to deploy it as often as possible over the coming year.
Defining, Demystifying, Disentangling Documentation
SEPTEMBER 2022
The Decorative Art of Tomorrow Today >>> The Night School, Social Dreaming, and Groupwork presented a discussion and interactive workshop about COLLABORATION in Architecture. Revealing the contract as a contemporary vestige of ancient practices that both produced and supports our existing social formations, participants were invited to reimagine the contract as a space of ritual experimentation through a series of prompted improvisations. Once invoked, this space was used to collectively examine various explicit and implicit contracts used within schools, studios, and professional practice, and the ways students and designers report on their activities. Further improvised and collaborative performances investigated strategies for how these documents could be adapted or reimagined to encourage more collectivity, hierarchy disruption, and knowledge sharing, in order to make the discipline more collaborative, conscientious, and caring, and more able to facilitate new and different futures.
pre:fab Conference 2022
AUGUST 2022
The inaugural pre:fab conference in 2022 was a free full day conference that workshopped online lectures of international architects, generating discourse and discussion through a series of interactive workshops and over a shared lunch. It was a fruitful and optimistic day that ended with a group of young architects and students discussing the future of the discipline, its challenges and opportunities, and how pre:fab could become a platform for the kind of action and resources that could facilitate a more ethical, equitable and aspirational world.
The conference was organised by a group of founding signatories in response to a perceived lack of access to disciplinary discourse. See the original pre:fab contract here:
