Exhaustive Notes on Bureau Spectacular: Science Fiction, Political Fiction, and Cartoonish Architecture

Introduction and the Dual Nature of Work

• Background and Context:     * The speaker is visiting College Station for the third time (first visit was in 2008).     * The talk is structured into five segments, including an extended introduction, a series of stories illustrated by graphic novels, and an epilogue.

• Two Paths of the Work (Bureau Spectacular):     * Cartoons about Architecture: The medium is the cartoon, while the subject matter is architecture.     * Cartoonish Architecture: The medium is architectural (utilizing field condition drawings and zero-degree axons), but the sensibility is cartoonish.

• Professional Recognition:     * The work has been collected by several major institutions: The Art Institute of Chicago, LACMA, SFMOMA, and MoMA.     * Projects range in scale from installations and architectural models to industrial design.     * Notable career markers include recognition by Architectural Record, Art Basel, and the Graham Foundation.     * The speaker represented Taiwan at the Venice Biennale.

Academic Foundations and Science Fiction

• Education at University of Toronto:     * The speaker was part of a very new program (graduating class number 6 or 7).     * The lack of established school identity allowed for experimental space, including constructing $1:1$ models.

• Thesis Project:     * Only one drawing remains due to file corruption.     * The thesis was a work of science fiction concerning the status of teleportation.     * Core Question: If teleportation exists, what happens to transitional spaces (airports, seaports, highways, corridors, doors)?     * It explored the impact of globalization on time, space, and geography.

• Science Fiction as World-Building:     * Taliesin West Influence: The speaker studied under the influence of Frank Lloyd Wright.     * Broadacre City: Wright's proposal for a political/urban model where every family owns $1$ acre and is self-sufficient, reacting against the density and sewage issues of early 20th-century New York.     * Spaceship Analogy: The speaker proposed the "Broadacre City spaceship," where the city is contained within a hull that cannot be extended, inspired by Charles Fourier's nineteenth-century "Phalanstère" (an idea of a city inside a building).     * Biological Clock Project: A room built in LA (Materials & Applications) that rotated once every hour to resist gravity.         * The elevation became a plan every $15$ minutes.         * Every $7.5$ minutes, the occupant experienced a "weak" or transitional state of life.

• The Future Archaeologist Story:     * A story set $10,000$ years in the future where an archaeologist examines the "average taste" of the early 21st century.     * There is a divergence between academic records and archaeological finds.     * MMCA Seoul Project (2039/2019): A project commemorating the centennial of the death of the last king of Korea (died in 1919).     * Unearthing Futures: A platform established at $6\,m$ high to imagine the present from the perspective of the future (analogous to the Roman Forum being $6\,m$ underground after $2,000$ years).

Political Fiction and Urban Analysis

• Subjectivity in Journalism: The speaker posits that all journalism and cartoons are subjective; political cartoons Use caricature to highlight specific assets.

• Downtown Los Angeles (DTLA) Analysis (2020):     * Commissioned by the Business Improvement District.     * Social Context: Occurred during the George Floyd protests and the COVID-19 pandemic.     * Finding: People used vehicular infrastructure (streets) as civic infrastructure, while actual civic infrastructure (e.g., Pershing Square) remained unused during upheaval.     * Commercial Occupancy: Rates dropped by $50\%$. The project proposed a "state of emergency" where zoning/codes are suspended to stimulate economic activity in "occupiable voids."     * The Wealth Gap: In DTLA, the gap is physical; homeless individuals live on the same geographic plane as those in luxury penthouses (visibility vs. invisibility).

• The 12-Kilometer Building:     * A story about a scientist and an experimental subject in an elevator.     * Answering Height: The building's height is determined by when the air runs out, specifically $12\,km$ into the sky.     * Density: The building is an extrusion of Central Park with a capacity for $88,000,000$ people (the population of Germany).

"Super Furniture" and the In-Between Scale

• The Briefcase House (Chicago, 2008):     * Created in a $1,400\,sq.\,ft.$ former warehouse for under $\$1,000$ monthly rent.     * Definition: Too small to be architecture, but too large to be furniture; hence, "Super Furniture."

• Related Projects:     * Exploding Staircase: A retail store in LA where a staircase was divided into nine parts to house programmatic components (fitting rooms, counters, displays).     * Indoor Treehouse: Collaboration with Vox Media.     * Coachella Installation: A project exploring the boundary of cartoonish architecture.

Recent and Future Building Projects

• Stucco Box (2022-2023):     * A budget residential project: $2,000\,sq.\,ft.$, inexpensive stucco box.     * Program: 6 bedrooms and 2 bathrooms.     * Execution: Subdivided into four strips (two private, two public) using "fishbone diagrams" to organize plumbing and structure.

• SEP Project (Arizona):     * Utilizes "Set Theory" logic for superimposed geometries.     * The Math: Superimposing two geometries yields a minimum of $16$ outcomes.     * Explores the "blurriness" of life where people eat, sleep, and work in non-designated spaces.

• Art Omi (New York):     * Small budget project ($\$10,000$).     * Utilized precast concrete septic tanks stacked into a structure.     * Structural Insight: Collaborated with Matthew Malik (Mouse Engineering). The "tapering angles" of the septic tanks (originally for water retention) allowed for cantilevered stacking when rotated $90^{\circ}$.

• Floating Theater: A project in development targeted for the future.

• Citizens with No Places: A research-based studio investigating homelessness in DTLA through architectural site analysis as investigative journalism.

Theoretical Concepts and Philosophy

• Pareidolia: The human tendency to see faces or bodies in abstract compositions. The speaker links this to human evolution (identifying friend vs. foe).

• Posture as a Structural Problem:     * Augustus of Primaporta: Analysis of the contrapposto pose.     * The Tripod: Because marble is masonry, a contrapposto statue requires a third support member (a baby, a dolphin, or a tree trunk) to be structurally sound.     * The Coachella columns were designed as four tripods where $0$ of the $12$ columns are perpendicular.

• Yokai and Monsters:     * Influenced by Taiwanese and medieval Japanese Yokai culture.     * The speaker views monsters as symbols of human ugliness that have evolved into "cute" pocket monsters (Pokemon).

Epilogue and the Office Status

• Bureau Spectacular: Currently consists of the speaker and one part-time person. Use of software and streamlining has made the small team more efficient.

• Home Depot Shed Project: A parasitic object added to a standard utility shed.

• One Wilshire (Final Story):     * Designed by SOM in 1972 as an office building.     * Converted into a data center in the late 1990s due to plummeting real estate prices.     * The Machine Building: It now houses "robot brains" (servers) instead of human office workers. It exists in a recursive loop: a building in a skyline, in a window, in a room, in a model, in a computer, in a file, in a server.