Session 1 in CRAC, Creative Room for Art and Computing, www.crac.nu/session1 at Liljevalchs, Stockholm
Session 1 is an interface prototype for SERVOLINES which provides an innovative venu for commerce between designer, manufacturer, and consumer. SERVOLINES will be released for a test bed of users in November 2000 at www.N2Art.nu. SERVOLINES - Nurbline, Speeline and Cloudline - are electronically purveyed spatial architectural commodities which appeal to a consumer who demands a higher degree of influence on his or her immediate environment (extending beyond appliances, vehicles and clothing into an envelope which increasingly usurps objects and architectural surroundings into the domain of consumer influence). These electronically purveyed product lines accelerate the effects of a tendency which sees the relationship between consumer and manufacturer becoming reconfigured by the integration of digital technologies such as rapid prototyping and e-commerce into architectural practice. The site is designed as an interface which provides tools for the design of architectural products (architoys) via a series of operations and transformations of input drawings. The interface guides a non-design professional through initial input or ”sketch” stages. For the exhibition N2Art, for which the site will be further developed, the ”sketch” stage or the raw material is prepared for output and distributed to a manufacturer. The finished physical product is then sent to the consumer. The construction site catalogues a series of components or aids for design. Servo provides an interface for non design-professionals to develop and distribute their goods. The site in attempting to open the design process to a wider audience in which the consumers become active participants, provides the infrastructure for refining sketches into manufacture-ready material as well as for launching the contact between a manufacturer and public display in the www or gallery.
servo
How can one begin to
speculate on the negotiations between commercialism and design? To what
extent can architecture and design begin to address commercial trends
and mass production? These and other questions are central to Servo's
investigations into urban inhabitation and development in the 21st century.
Servo is a research and design collaborative that integrates critical
research with commercial strategies of organization and production, thereby
responding to the various and seemingly disparate forces that shape contemporary
design culture. The ambition of this effort is the creation of a hybrid
practice, one able to successfully navigate the complex relationship between
academic research and market viability. Since its formation in 1999, Servo
has concentrated on the development of system or product lines, adopting
methodologies and modes of practice utilized in contemporary product design.
This approach is in response to both historical precedents of the integration
of mass production technologies into architectural practice, as well as
emerging digital fabrication technologies which make this kind of integration
increasingly viable, such as CNC milling. Three lines-Cloudline, Speeline
and Nurbline-are currently in development and allow potential practical
applications at various scales, ranging from domestic products to architectural
and urban systems. Through the continuing development of these and other
lines Servo intends to create a catalog of systems to sample from. This
strategy is primarily in response to the simultaneous influence of standardization
and customization in contemporary design practice. While the catalog allows
for degrees of standardization through the accumulation of pre-designed
products and systems, a practice of sampling produces customization through
the mixing and re-mixing of those products and systems as they are applied
to various architectural and urban conditions.
Ulrika Karlsson, Marcelyn gow, David Erdman, Chris Perry
design team:
Jonas Runberger, Daniel Norell, Nina Lorber, Ulrika Wachtmeister, Alice Dietch, Prototal AB
Liljevalchs september 2000