With the rise of digital savvy architectural practices speculation on what constitutes an architectural program has expanded beyond mere reaction to the old form follows function dictum. Seeking to further disarticulate form from function or users from spatial designations, program has recently become a realm of experimentation within the design process. Armed with technologies and media techniques – new and well tested – that permit, for example, the programming of materials, the idea of sticking to a brief outlining functions is left to those lacking ambition. For a wall or lighting system programmed to react to climate, touch, to the presence or absence of bodies, is thought to overcome problems of symbolic form or the representational conundrums that so worried a previous generation. Rather than represent, programming explores the supposed pure contents of action and activities as transitory signifiers within the built environment, often despite the brief. Program as a fixed entity to be measured in the success of built form, so last century, is challenged by programming as an activity within design that continues into the future use of environments.

This thinking about program as dispersed through various articulations of programming builds upon and moves beyond challenges to the brief as a list of uses. The playing with or re-reading of the idea of program forty years ago was aimed, as it is today, at dodging so-called formalist solutions. Such an approach invokes more socially high-minded goals such as user friendliness. As with more recent investigations into the programmable this interpretation somewhat over valued the notion of organizational strategies. Architects speak more readily of strategies that accommodate unforeseen contents – architectural or otherwise – and refrain from the direct articulation and or disposition of form. These speculative strategies await activation by the economy, the weather, or demographic shifts to name just a few motivators. The language invoking the social ideals of the mid-20th century, such as user participation, flexibility, indeterminacy, or purposefulness has been replaced with the apparent neutrality of techno-computer lingoprotocols, of writing scripts and codes, of data collection. This language and these strategies tend to shift from the behavioral idea of interactivity within user-friendly flexible environments to focus on the activities of the designer and designing. Perhaps most interesting is the shift in focus from the purported social, economic, or constructional benefits of programmatic flexibility or adaptive structures to architectural agency that figures the designer as protagonist.

Nearly forty years ago challenges to the architectural program did, as they do now, aim to disrupt any static configuration between function and form. However, in the work of architects such as Cedric Price, questioning the role of program did not seek an expanded role for the designer. Rather, quite contrarily, he challenged traditional thinking about the centrality of the architect to architectural affects and focused on users and clients. It is not out of context to mention Price, for after all    ` he is frequently cited as source of inspiration, his work now admired by a new generation of designers.. Exerting designer agency over the program or within it, however, had little to do with his architectural thought and practice. . Better known for his unbuilt projects such as the Fun Palace (1960s) or Potteries Thinkbelt (mid-1960s) or the computationally inspired Generator of the 1970s, he did persistently question the relation of program to purpose to user and resultant built forms. Technology played a significant in facilitating these challenges. However, for the most part he enlisted rather ordinary technologies and only in the Generator project did he dabble with computer based programming of site, activities, and materials. . Price privileged the clever design solution over any particular means of realizing a project. In the end only one built example substantiates his claims on programmatic and material flexibility. This was the Inter-Action Center (London, 1977, c1971-2001) which no longer stands.

The project that became Inter–Action Center began in the early 1970s as an informal conversation between Price and an entrepreneurial client. Ed Berman, an American expatriate ran a grassroots volunteer group that incorporated as a charitable organization under the name of the Inter-Action Trust in 1968. The Trust loosely defined itself as a community arts group willing to provide services that ranged from professional training, community development and self-help services. Throughout the early 1970s Inter-Action Trust expanded its charitable activities to include, horse-riding, sewing lessons, youth programs, a licensed pub, and educational programs that included media and video studios. Initially Berman, familiar with the much-publicized Fun Palace, asked Price for a flexible building to house the ever-changing activities of the Trust. Price recalls receiving a verbal brief for a building that was not a building. The outcome, a kit of parts steel structure resulted from a collaborative building process where both client and architect agreed, at least initially, to suspend conventional thinking about program and built form. From the outset they also agreed that whatever the building, if that is the right word for it, could offer in terms of sheltering activities, its usefulness was of a limited duration. The programming for activities open to change, the charities lack of funding which put serious strain on materials, and the construction process, were also rather practical reasons for a design that could accommodate change.

Inter-Action was designed as a frame for events, that is, a participatory architecture adaptable to modifications proposed by the users over time. Until its demolition in January 2001 Inter-Action Center consisted of a double height steel frame - built upon a concrete slab. Steel-decking, British Rail train coach windows, several steel doors and a roll-up garage door enclosed a mid-section of the frame. Industrial storage containers manufactured by Portakabin were at various times craned into place within the steel structure. A daycare area was housed in prefabricated log cabins and responding to user preference, a replica of a traditional British pub was at one time installed. In other words, the desires of various user groups were privileged over aesthetic resolution or designer inclination for invention–other than as problem solver. The community of users as well as the Trust determined much of the facilities. Upon its official opening in 1977 it was celebrated as the first purpose-built community center in England. It stood as exemplar of Price’s philosophy: that material and programmatic dexterity were more significant to architecture than displays of creative dexterity.

The project was from the beginning a rather precarious endeavor. The location was acquired on borrowed time. When a three-acre site designated as Public Open Space became available in Kentish Town, Price advised the Trust to approach the Planning Department and request a temporary use permit. The group was initially granted access to a 100-foot strip of land parallel to the Kentish Town West Rail station. In the summer of 1971 a pilot project symbolically claimed the site for the Trust. After negotiating with competing neighborhood groups the Trust again applied for permission from the planning department. The project was dogged by funding and site leasing problems to such a degree that several years into its development and with contractors all on board, Berman often seemed unsure whether it really would go ahead. Despite this, in 1975, a concrete slab fitted with conduits and drains was finally poured. The site was claimed for future occupation and the community able to imagine various possibilities for inhabitation. However, the insecurity around funding and the land was such that Price prepared a set of drawings for dismantling the structure. Nevertheless the architect and client persisted and by the time they received a twenty-seven year lease construction was already well underway.

In 1976 a memo sent from client to architect -lists various building components, such as steel lattice wall supports, steel staircases and prefabricated modules.  The list includes names of suppliers and installers and stands as the most concrete evidence of anything resembling a brief or program. Price’s simple open frame and construction was well suited to ideas about flexible and socially serviceable architecture. However his off the shelf building strategy was not always able to accommodate some of the Trust’s programmatic changes. He voiced concern when Berman challenged the electrical and material capabilities by suggesting that the TV studios required air-conditioning and sound control. Although the accounts differ, the loose fit of component parts, never intended as an exacting plug-in assembly, were seen by the client as construction deficiencies while the architect understood them to be exactly what was required.

For Price the division of responsibilities was clear. Inter-Action Trust should ensure that their activities performed within specific requirements while the architect limited his duties to those of standard practice. Price maintained that architecture was a process of problem solving and flexible architecture did not imply a building that changed every time the client changed his mind about the program. Price and Berman did not always agree upon the definition of flexibility. For Price flexibility and adaptability were related to what he called operational use and not endless changes of mind about form and activities in advance of use. Flexibility was a constructional attribute, entailing a detailed specification to be followed by a contractor at a particular time.

Price’s belief in designing built environments capable of adapting to change challenged planners, architects and politicians for that matter, who thought it their job to determine specific functions for specific places or worse, sought to plan the future of the built environment in terms of permanent structures. Price had little patience for the problems of form or architectural communication through representation.. The over-estimation of form simply impeded the work toward social change. Adaptable and variable environments privileging user choice were possible without prejudice to building technologies. With the Potteries Thinkbelt, the Fun Palace projects, and evidenced at Inter-Action Center, neither the content, that is, the program or meaning, nor the forms of the built structures were permanent. The meaning of a community or a set of activities were not embedded in unchanging form since the possibilities for as yet unimagined social relations and thus social change were found in everyday use.

Aus der Ausgabe 12-2007