Jeremy Till and Tatjana Schneider
Invisible
Agency
Jeremy Till and Tatjana Schneider call for
a redefinition of the architect away from
the professional who is ostensibly involved
in adding ‘more stuff to the world’. Looking
beyond the business of matter or managing
the impact of that matter on the environment,
they explore ways that designers can use
their intelligence and creativity to shift
existing habits of consumption and patterns
of behaviour. They highlight the work for four
practices who are already operating in this
field: 2012Architecten, 00/:, Arif Hasan and
Morar de Outras Maneiras (MOM).
The standard definition of an architect is
someone who designs buildings. This is an
understanding that has not changed much since
Leon Battista Alberti introduced the separation
between builder and architect in 1452, thereby
effectively severing the process of production
or making from the intellectual process.
Architects are agents for the adding of more
stuff to the world, acting at the end of a chain
of extraction that draws raw materials from the
earth and turns them into the largest of objects.
Creativity is exercised on the transformation
of crude stuff into something that accords with
the architectural virtues set down by Vitruvius
38
all those years ago. This material basis to
architecture makes it peculiarly vulnerable to
the condition of material scarcity. As things
become increasingly scarce as humanity
continues to extract stuff from the biosphere
at an unsustainable rate, then not only is the
scope of architectural creativity (if understood
as the creation of buildings) severely limited,
but the whole raison d’être of the profession
as agents of making is called into question
by the basic definition of scarcity as a lack of
something.
Various strategies are used to attempt
to overcome or mitigate the effects of
material scarcity in relation to architectural
production. First is to fall back on notions
of efficiency, deploying materials and space
in the leanest possible manner, but this does
little more than play into the orthodoxy of
using scarcity as a control mechanism. In
economics, scarcity is used to regulate the
market in order to keep prices at a certain
level or to produce higher demand and
therefore achieve even higher profits; in
architecture the spectre of scarcity legitimises
the limiting and standardisation of space. A
second way of apparently addressing scarcity
is to follow the Miesian homily of ‘less is
more’, in the belief that an architectural
austerity is in some way responsive to the
condition of scarcity, but this only confuses
aesthetic strictures with social and economic
purpose. Finally, the sustainability movement
has attempted to address the scarcity of
energy by using architectural and technical
ingenuity to reduce the carbon load of new
buildings – which is all well and good, but
does not address the existing stock (where the
real carbon penalty lies) nor avoid the very
problem of adding more to the world (which
brings with it its own carbon legacy).
Common to all these architectural coping
strategies is an understanding of scarcity
solely in terms of lack or limits and not
as opportunities for a critical, and at the
same time ingenious, engagement with its
underlying conditions. As the introduction
to this issue of 3 makes clear, scarcity is
more than just an actual lack of material,
space or energy. Yes, there is a diminishing
resource base, but this is part of a much
more complex set of relationships in which
scarcity is revealed as socially, economically
and politically constructed. Scarcity in this
expanded definition gives an extended field
for architectural intelligence and creativity
to operate on and to engage in much wider
discussions on behaviour and consumption,
and the need to alter habits of consumption
and patterns of behaviour. Scarcity thus
conjoins the physical with the social, and the
ecological with the political, which in turn
implies that any operation within the context
of scarcity has to negotiate these relationships.
Through an understanding of scarcity beyond
mere lack of stuff, the context of architectural
practice is widened beyond the manipulation
of stuff into buildings. We have previously
identified this expanded form of practice as
‘spatial agency’, arguing that moving away
from a concentration on the building alone, far
from being a threat to the profession, might be
its very means of survival.
The most radical challenge that scarcity
presents to architecture is that the most
appropriate solution to a spatial problem
under conditions of scarcity is almost certainly
not the addition of something new. The
four examples shown here display different
approaches to dealing with constructed and
real conditions of scarcity. 2012Architecten
looks at the redistribution of what is already
there. 00/: addresses apparent scarcity
through redefining the problem in other ways.
Arif Hasan intervenes creatively in systems
of procurement, and MOM in systems of
production. These acts of redistribution,
redefinition, intervention and reinvention of
processes are the basis for new and highly
productive forms of spatial practice under
conditions of scarcity. These are often
invisible acts and so against the standard
architectural value system that privileges the
visual. However, what this issue of 3 shows
is how the emerging conditions of scarcity
demand a shift in architectural priorities and
introduce new ways of spatial thinking and
different skills. The invisible agents of scarcity
define themselves not through how their
products look, but through the performance
of the processes they have initiated.
The most radical challenge that scarcity
presents to architecture is that the
most appropriate solution to a spatial
problem under conditions of scarcity
is almost certainly not the addition
of something new. The four examples
shown here display different approaches
to dealing with constructed and real
conditions of scarcity.
39
 2012Architecten, Wikado, Rotterdam, The
Netherlands, 2011
Pieces from a former playground together
with rotor blades are reconfigured to form a
new play space.

2012Architecten
2012Architecten is a Rotterdam-based practice that was
established in 1997 around the desire to reduce the amount of
resources used in the production of space. Its designs resample
materials, components and objects in the form that they are

Not the found – an approach that is different to recycling in that it does

not use up further energy and resources to change and remodel

Addition of
an object or product into another object or product. Instead,
2012Architecten designs techniques and processes to reuse

Something New,
existing things and component parts, such as kitchen sinks,
washing machines and concrete elements from demolished
buildings, to make new products, spaces and buildings. These

But Rather the new projects range from playgrounds to public pavilions, and
from educational buildings to housing schemes. The practice

Redistribution
calls this reuse ‘super-use’: by using surplus material which others
would consider simply as waste, destined to go to landfill sites

of What is
or for incineration, the practice’s ingenious designs proactively
and explicitly deal with the issue of finite and increasingly scarce
resources. The Wikado playground in Rotterdam is a case in

Already There point: the rotor blades of a discarded wind turbine were cut
into a series of larger pieces which provide the basic framework
for the attachment of reused slides from a dismantled former
playground.

40
 00:/, Notre Dame RC Girls’ Secondary
School, London, 2010
Competition entry for the reconfiguration
of a school in London in which the existing
corridors were overcrowded. The proposed
solution eschewed expensive (£3 million)
spatial interventions in favour of a revised
school timetable at zero cost.

00:/
Arguably the biggest waste of space and resources is the
production of a building or design that was not needed in
the first place. People often think that the only solution to a
perceived spatial problem might be the addition of something
new when, in fact, careful reconsideration of existing amenities,
facilities, services or processes might prove to be less costly, less RedefInIng of
the PRoblem
disruptive and less intensive in terms of material resources. The
London-based practice 00:/ has been at the forefront of working
with inventive and creative design solutions that often show very
little evidence of what traditionally is considered design in terms
of adding something new. While many architects might simply In otheR wAys
declassify this type of work as ‘writing oneself out of a job’, 00:/’s
approach is one where the invisibility of a physical intervention is
considered to be a successful project.
One example where 00:/ added input as strategic design
consultants was the Place Station, a national Web-based network
aimed at establishing links between owners of land or disused
buildings and local social enterprises. In another scheme, the
Notre Dame RC Girls’ School (London, 2010), where the
practice was approached to redesign the congested corridor of
the existing school, their approach was one of careful watching
of how and when this space was used, rather than immediately
jumping to the drawing board to come up with a physical
solution. Finding that the congestion could be eased by slightly
retiming the break bells, the physical arrangement of the corridor
simply remained as it was. The practice’s minimal but intentional
intervention in the school timetabling provided the desired result
yet used design intelligence to redefine the problem in another
way so that no physical design as such was in the end necessary.

41
Arif Hasan/Orangi Pilot Project Research
and Training Institute (OPP-RTI), Low-Cost
Housing Research Programme, Karachi,
Pakistan, 1987–
below top: A programme in which Hasan
and OPP trained up local masons and
thallas (building material suppliers) to
improve the quality and supply of local
building materials.
below bottom: OPP working with local
masons and agents, teaching them better
construction techniques and new use of
materials.
Morar de Outras Maneiras (MOM), Self-
Building Project, Belo Horizonte, Brazil,
2007
below: MOM learns from self-building,
mainly in favelas. Here they started to
follow Francisco, a local favela dweller, in
self-building his house in 2007.

Arif Hasan
The work of the Karachi-based architect Arif Hasan, in
particular in relation to the Orangi Pilot Project Research and
Training Institute (OPP-RTI), sees people as a resource and
coordinates and assists the poor to overcome the structural,

Intervention in economic and psychological barriers to the development of their

own communities through technical know-how. OPP-RTI

the Systems of
works by teaching communities stuck in a limbo of governmental
non-intervention and scarcity of means and knowledge how they
can help themselves; an approach that includes the self-building

Procurement of sewage and water facilities, schools, clinics and housing. Much
time is devoted to researching how things are built in order to
understand the products and processes involved, which enables
and facilitates the production of effective advice and training.
The Low-Cost Housing Research Programme, for example,
focused among other things on the use of substandard building
components and faulty construction techniques, research
which resulted not only in concrete action to improve building
products, but also the training of local masons so that improved
construction techniques could be employed in the future.

42
MOM, Vila das Antenas Favela, Belo
Horizonte, Brazil, 2009–
below top left: Demolition of existing
houses by government agencies to make
way for a new road. People were removed
with no or little negotiation, often without
fair or immediate compensation, and their
houses demolished.
below bottom left: An online tool enables
the favela community to identify spaces
in their neighbourhood via pictures and
comments.
below top right: Working with the
community, a cleaned and painted public
space was created, which is now used for
screenings and discussions concerning the
production of space.
below bottom right: A partnership between
MOM and a group of dwellers from Vila
das Antenas gave rise to the History Under
Construction project to strengthen the
community’s historical awareness of their
own production of space and enable them
to confront top-down interventions.
Morar de Outras Maneiras (MOM), Self-
Building Project, Belo Horizonte, Brazil,
2011
below: In 2011, Francisco’s house is still
under construction, with a second floor
underway. Almost everything he uses comes
from the external building industry, but he
makes a creative and quasi-autonomous
appropriation of components, materials and
processes.

MOrAr De OUtrAs
The Belo Horizonte-based Brazilian group Morar de Outras
Maneiras (MOM) understands the designer or architect as just
one actor within the broader field. Its systems of production are
open processes and therefore not limited to those who ‘know’,
have the knowledge or know-how, but expanded to include MAneirAs (MOM)
the occupants, who are typically favela dwellers. The group’s

InteRventIon
starting point is Henri Lefebvre’s concept of ‘lived space’: space
that is collective and cooperative and ‘characterised by people’s
engagement and negotiation on non-hierarchical building-
sites, in which design, building and use are simultaneous’.1
To achieve this, MOM engages with the politics of spatial In the systems
production and the processes of how things are produced;
they learn with self-producers, trigger historical awareness of
communities’ production of space and devise interfaces, and
of PRoductIon
ultimately enhance the autonomy of individuals and small
groups. Systems of production are demystified and simplified,
and middlemen are cut out, reducing the economic cost of a
structure or process and at the same time freeing the creative
energy of the dwellers. It is this interrelationship between
abundance of creativity and manufactured scarcity of materials
that is the most important aspect of MOM’s work. The group
helps to match the construction skills of the self-builders with
the available materials, steering these self-builders away from
building products that are expensive and therefore unavailable to
most favela dwellers. Such intervention simplifies the processes
of the production of the built environment, leading to the
democratisation of design/building skills to circumvent capitalist
modes of production and exploitation. 2

Note
1. S Kapp and A Baltazar, ‘Out of Conceived Space: For Another History of Architecture’,
The Proceedings of Spaces of History, University of California (Berkeley), 2010, p 1;
see http://escholarship.org/uc/item/30d070b0.

Text © 2012 John Wiley & Sons Ltd.

Images: p 40 © Carolyn Butterworth; p
41 © 00:/; p 42(l) © Orangi Pilot Project
Research and Training Institute; pp 42(r),
43 © MOM Archive

43