WIP-ish : introduction
Follow @wip.ish on IG for accompanying images (Fig. 01 - 10).
The act of making is directly tied to architecture thanks to our education. In school, we make models - lots of them - and the politics of grading makes it so that we are each expected to make our own, whatever that means. In doing so, we gain fabrication techniques, where we each foster this knowledge of “making” to varying degrees - some more than others (I’m looking at you, CNC monitors (Fig. 01)). It’s possible this model production is at one point outsourced, as is popular in thesis, but in general we each come to develop some kind of model-making logic. In other words : We all know how to make a model.
However, once out of school, this one-person-production scenario seems to dissolve - in most cases, almost immediately. Where the model was a must-have in terms of academic deliverables, and possibly the main object of interest, its importance shifts greatly when we start talking about things that are real, or things that will actually get built - not just pinned up. Don’t get me wrong, models still matter outside of school, they’re just not as personally important as they once were. While making a model no longer dictates our sleep (as much) as it once did (Fig. 02), after making so many of them, we are left with the knowledge of making more than just that. That is, our fabrication techniques learned in school for the purpose of producing architecture models very often allows us to begin thinking about making “real” things, rather than the representation of things.
I suppose I’m attempting to bring attention to the illusion of “making” architecture at our desks while we are in school that seems to leave some of us wanting to continue to do it ourselves once out of school. But the production of architecture all by ourselves is simply not possible - or is it?
Having graduated from the GSD a year ago, I’ve struggled with the idea of what architecture looks like when I make it on my own. It’s a question I continue to ask as my topic of interest as a SMArchS AD. However, finding myself out of the wood shop and back in my parents house in Texas (Fig. 03) hasn’t exactly helped by distancing me from the possibility of making one-to-one via milling MDF or pouring scorching aluminum. In many ways, though, it has helped me get a sense for my own personal dependencies and assumptions when it comes to making, and I know I’m not currently alone in asking what making looks like when we no longer have physical access to the space and attached facilities of an architecture school. Even though we will eventually find ourselves back on campus post COVID-19, as students, school is only temporarily our home, so the question remains : How do we make architecture on our own outside of architecture school?
WIP-ish, then, will take an interest in ideas floating around these and other related topics. I’ll share my own research, but I’m also interested in sharing the WIPs of other emerging designers (a combination of close friends, ex-classmates, and people I follow on IG) with an emphasis on their process rather than their completed “work”. As a striving do-it-yourself designer, I’ve taken to IG for many self-taught lessons on how things get made (either conceptually or literally) by shamelessly scouring tagged profiles, hashtags, and even the comments section. As a result, I’ve started to be intrigued by the variation of WIPs online (#wip) and what we can learn from each of them. But mostly, I want to know what architecture looks like when we try to make it ourselves, and I can promise you none of these look like buildings (and are instead more akin to online stores (Fig. 04), furniture, podcasts (Fig. 05), homemade movies, remodeled interiors (Fig. 06), magazines, fashion objects (Fig. 07), paintings, set design (Fig. 08), or retail experiences (Fig. 09)).
Follow @wip.ish on IG for accompanying images (Fig. 01 - 09) and an eclectic source of unrelated WIPs. On that note, I also want to know what, where, and how you make! DM or email me at wip.ishhh@gmail.com with unsolicited WIP images or #wip posts (Fig(s). 10) with an optional caption and IG handle to be featured on the WIP-ish IG.