Here and there – Satoko and Kok-Meng's office mixes inside and outside spaces.

Thanks for inviting us over! How did you end up in Shanghai?

Satoko Saeki: I first came to China in 2000 for an internship, as a result of studying architecture under the guidance of a Chinese professor in Pennsylvania. Having lived in Tokyo and New York, I immediately felt that China was different. I was not interested in its architectural scene but more the atmosphere. Instead of being established and “ready”, there was an air of dynamism and potential – something was about to happen.

Kok-Meng Tan: I came in the end of 2003 to work on a large conservation project in the former French Concession. Then I met Satoko in a café where we both used to hang out. She had started her own practice a little earlier and asked me to join her.

Which café was that?

SS: It was a small casual café called Le Petite, run by our Japanese friend Noriko. Since then, she has made the place more private and moved it to her home. She used to work as a designer for Muji and has lived in Shanghai for many years. I can call Noriko if you would like to visit her.

We would, thanks (see the interview with Noriko)! Could you tell us about your design approach?

KMT: We are not interested in the kind of design that is currently hyped all over. We rather believe in the genres of “under design” (design that falls below conventional contemporary design as deemed too simple or too banal) “super design” (design that exceeds the conventional because it may be too extreme, too personal or just useless) and “non-design” (functional and straightforward items and ideas that were developed before the advent of “design”).

SS: We are also interested in creating experiences and affecting behaviour in spaces instead of designing expressive buildings.

“We believe in the genres of under design, super design and non-design.”

What kinds of projects do you carry out?

SS: We mainly do interiors and small-scale architecture because, as foreigners, it’s difficult for us to get hold of bigger development projects.

KMT: Lately, we’ve been working on a small housing project for two families based on the ideas of sharing and interconnection.

SS: The project is called Minus K House. In Japan, homes are often described as 3LDK (3 x Living Dining Kitchen rooms) or 4LDK, etc. But for these two houses, the kitchen is shared, and therefore not fully a K. In practice, all the 19 rooms of 3 x 3 square metres also function as passages: to move around the building, you need to pass from one room to another, and there are many ways to experience the house. One of the families uses their part of the building as a weekend house and the other part is used as a regular home. The openness allows each family to be aware of the other.

KMT: In the Minus K House, we also wanted to mix inside and outside spaces – to make the whole concept of ‘inside and outside’ insignificant so that the relationships between this and that, and here and there would become more important. When this happens, the walls become less important, even unnoticed, emphasising a communality in the space.

KUU is working on interiors and small-scale architecture for sharing and interconnection.

We definitely feel that Chinese culture is more inclined to sharing than our own. Could you tell us more about your view on the concept of sharing in Chinese architecture?

SS: After the Communist Liberation in 1949, families typically had to share their bathrooms and kitchens with others. This was not very convenient but people got used to it. Nowadays, Chinese people are wealthier, but through urbanisation, like in most of the other big cities, people have to move to tower blocks which diminish communality. We wish to bring the concept of sharing back to Chinese architecture, but in a more comfortable way than before.

KMT: We think that sharing, or the presence and recognition of somebody else, makes people more in touch with reality. In our office, a partially roofless space built in the 1930s for residential use, we can smell the cooking of our neighbours, see their underwear drying, and hear them chatting. We really like the setting because it reminds us that we are working in a real context, mixing the inside and outside spaces together.

“We wish to bring the concept of sharing back to Chinese architecture, but in a more comfortable way than before.”

How do you find clients and collaborators?

KMT: In China, everything happens through the people you know. Satoko just visited a really nice indigo dyeing workshop outside Shanghai which we found through Noriko.

SS: It’s a workshop run by a 75-year-old couple who use natural indigo and cotton and dye everything by hand. In fact, China is a great place for a designer exactly because of this: the craftsmen and manufacturers are near and it’s possible to work with them closely.

KMT: Basically, you can just make a drawing and take it to the product-makers yourself. In Japan and Singapore, we usually use catalogues for picking up construction material for our projects while in China we can work in close collaboration with the makers themselves.

You’ve also taught at the Shenzhen University’s architecture department as guest studio masters.

KMT: Yes, last year, we carried out a design studio called Shenzhen Super Stir with our students who were encouraged to give modern architecture a proper stir through a series of exercises. We asked them to rethink the idea of “clarity” – a common architectural notion that has been inherited from the early European modernists. The idea was to ask if an estrangement from clarity or definition could inspire us to new thinking about privacy, communality and boundaries – and ultimately to new kind of architecture.

What did the students think about the stirring?

KMT: The students seemed resistant at first, they wanted to make new things. In China, traditionally, students are taught to create form – and if the project doesn’t involve creating new form then the results are not considered new. We wanted to make the students see the value in designing new experiences, too.

SS: We also wanted them to experiment how cities might become interesting and more functional through the “misuse” of space. In the end, the students came up with great ideas for an old industrial block where spaces with different functions, such as education or trade, overlapped encouraging sharing and interaction.

Like you’ve discussed in your writing, in the West, people are also obsessed with new forms.

KMT: Yes, according to François Jullien, a French Sinologist (The Great Image Has No Form, or On the Nonobject through Painting), this has to do with the foundations of Western, in other words Greek, thinking where something conceptual or abstract always has to be manifested as something else – a presence of “this” means the existence of “that”. In traditional non-Greek thinking, such as the Chinese, there is no obsession with presence. Whether something is present or not is never asked, because it’s not part of the question. Presence and non-presence, form and formlessness, good and bad, past and present, big and small, you and me, and here and there all exist in the same dynamic continuum. According to the non-Greek logic, we shouldn’t even ask questions about form or non-form – it’s not about one or the other but they come from the same pre-differentiated source.

“In traditional Chinese thinking, presence and non-presence, form and formlessness, good and bad, past and present, big and small, you and me, and here and there all exist in the same dynamic continuum.”

How do you see the current mindset of creative professionals in China?

KMT: When we first came to China, there was understandably no layers – no historical thinking or understanding behind architecture and design. The work and discussions were either stuck in Chinese traditions or random references picked from the Western world – and these ideas carried no meaning, they were not progressive. But then things started to change rapidly.

SS: In the last ten years, big money entered China and there was a lot of development, a lot of big projects. But at the same time, more subtle cultural things developed, too. Chinese people started opening cafés with unique local character. Before, people always referred to foreign examples, but the younger generation has gained confidence – they look at their own culture, society and roots and take ideas from them to the modern context.

KMT: I think that many Chinese creative people feel like they don’t need to live in the West anymore. They’re making meaningful things in their own context and recognising their own environment as authentic. This is great because, in the end, people want real things. The fact that people are starting to be their own selves in China is a good starting point for newness.

Kok-Meng and Satoko's office is a partially roofless space built in the 1930s for residential use.

We agree, and it is interesting to see how many contrasting ways of living and working seem to co-exist, for instance, in Shanghai. It’s not so settled yet.

SS: Yes, many people live in a modern way familiar from Western contexts while many neighbourhoods also hold on to the old spirit of sharing and porosity.

KMT: We’re attentive to the behaviour of people in Shanghai – how they behave in different environments, at different times and with different types of people. Things are in a fuzzy and seemingly contradictory state. For example, Shanghainese interact with their family, colleagues, and shopkeepers in a very natural way, but at the same time they formalise their homes into abstract symbols of social status and taste. Our young clients don’t cook, but they still want a designer kitchen. They will move out in three years time, yet they worry about radiation from the marble. We need to understand this phenomenon in order to work with it.

Could you name some other things that interest or inspire you about China at the moment?

SS: Well, we’re interested in traditional Chinese landscape painting: how the use of ink on paper, a single simple medium, can create a world of many things based on gradations of tonalities, densities, dryness and wetness, becoming present and fading away, hazy and distinct, here and there, this and that. In the paintings, we can sense an atmosphere of an all encompassing world before things became differentiated.

Noriko in her home and Le Petit Xiaoxiao café and shop.

Originally from Tokyo, Noriko, 42, has lived in Shanghai for 7 years. She first visited the city through her work for Muji, where she designed interior products and dealt with many Chinese manufacturers. “I have always been interested in production,” Noriko tells us. “The Shanghai area is special as there are many small factories here. I came to China because I wanted to learn the language and get to know the local producers and their thoughts.”

“I came to China because I wanted to learn the language and get to know the local producers and their thoughts.”

Noriko explains that she felt as if she was going back to her own roots when she moved from Japan to China. “Many cultural traditions in Japan actually come from here,” she notes. “I was also intrigued by the fact that Shanghai was so chaotic, so unfinished, and much more aggressive than Tokyo. You know, life easily gets shallow if everything is just beautiful. Here, it’s harder, but more interesting. However, Shanghai is starting to get more organised now, and people are getting more gentle. The city is developing, and maybe becoming less exciting than before, too.”

Noriko’s house is small and white. Built in 1948, it consists of two rooms – a bedroom and a living room where we sit drinking tea from cups hand-made by the host herself. The same cups are sold in Noriko’s home shop: a shelf of items from pottery to woodwork and textiles, most of which are designed by her and made by Chinese artisans – just like almost all the furniture in her house, too. Moreover, the shop selection includes some traditional Chinese everyday objects Noriko has found in random street shops around the city – beautiful and practical things that are often underestimated, and thus hard to find, in the globalising city.

Le Petit Xiaoxiao features ceramics crafted by Noriko and other products designed by her and made by local artisans.

“I’m very interested in primitive design and production methods,” Noriko explains her interest towards Chinese crafts. “In my own work, I try to combine traditional methods with new design.” One of her projects, factory-tshirt.net, sets out to create an online platform for designers and manufacturers to collaborate and learn about different design and production methods through the medium of a classic white t-shirt. On the website, Noriko presents her own T-shirt project involving indigo dying in a farmhouse in Zhoucheng, Yunnan and printing with plaster and soya in Tongxiang, Zhejiang. “It’s nice to know about things,” Noriko says.

The garden in front of Noriko's place is taken care of by her together with her neighbours.

In addition to more traditional crafts, Noriko is also interested in web design and programming. “I don’t like to distinguish between different fields of creative work – people are more complex than that,” she notes. Working at home and for herself, she also likes to experiment with the boundaries between labour and leisure. “I hate the office,” she says. “It’s the most uncreative place in the world.”

“I hate the office. It’s the most uncreative place in the world.”

Like us, many people found their way to Noriko’s through a friend’s recommendation. We heard about the place from Satoko and Kok-Meng, a Shanghai-based couple who met each other at Le Petit Xiaoxiao and later founded KUU design office together. “I wanted to create a small creative community by making my home a meeting place,” Noriko tells us about her activities resonating Chinese communality. “I have made many new friends at my place.”

Work and leisure in Viiskulma, Helsinki.

The demographic divisions of past eras have evolved into divisions in time, a schedule: periods in life – short or long – when we assume different roles. The industrial revolution set the base for mass consumer society, and formulated the ingenious equation: a week’s labour equals a weekend as a consumer, a free man. Here, money earned in servitude translates into different kinds of freedoms, securities and commodities – waypoints in a pursuit of happiness and a meaningful life.

Oivallus report I: "New ideas originate in the boundaries of different fields. In the future, challenges will be solved in learning networks."

The goal of Oivallus is to make governmental decision-making in education policies meet the future perceptions and needs of the Finnish industries. What will the working life be like in the 2020s? What kind of knowledge and skills will the labour market and entrepreneurs need? The project seeks to explore and outline future operating environments and learning networks.

“If you are not in real time, you’re dead.” – Kevin Kelly

Waves of development, such as globalisation, climate change, growing complexity and dynamics of systems, as well as changes in life values shape the operating environment – how we work, what companies do, what industries produce, and what sort of housing and urban conditions we will live in.

The Oivallus report asserts, for example, that in the future work will require more creativity and interdisciplinary thinking and doing, the motivation behind entrepreneurship will lie in purposeful life instead of mere profit, the collaboration between different generations will become closer and the public sector will increasingly develop services together with citizens and companies.

“You are what you share.” – Charles Leadbeater

In many areas, the future remains a mystery. However, one trend is clear: we will respond to the waves of development by networking with and learning from a range of experts and actors in different fields. These systems of interconnected people and organisations are known as learning networks.

In addition to taking part in the project as thinkers representing the creative sector, OK Do designed the communications concept and the visual identity of the Oivallus interim reports – the first of which, published in November 2009, is presented here. The work was done in collaboration with graphic designer Jonatan Eriksson and photographer Kaarle Hurtig.

“Anticipating the future is not about guessing, but about creating it.” – Oivallus

While the first part of the Oivallus project focused on the content of future education, the next part will explore how to teach and learn the required know-how. Oivallus is funded by EK, European Union and Finnish National Board of Education.

Currently forest industry provides around one third of the net export revenues of Finland (The Finnish Forest Industries Federation, 2009). What will forest (www.upmforestlife.com) mean to Finland in the future?

"What is Oivallus ('a sudden insight' in Finnish)?" – A project exploring the future of education in a networked economy.

"A new target or method of use is as good an innovation as a completely new one." Experimental cooking mechanisms and mixes of ingredients make the cornerstone of the molecular kitchen at restaurant Luomo in Helsinki.

Tuula Pöyhönen caught by the ONNI shop's security camera.

What made you take your work home in the first place?

It felt ridiculous to keep the flat empty the whole day and rent a space for a shop where I couldn’t work on my products. This way, I can combine design work and shop-keeping just like the clothiers, shoemakers and other similar professionals did in the olden times. Also, it makes integrating family and work life easier.

Are there any downsides?

Sometimes it feels like a burden to have the laundry and other homework around. But I like to take care of that business during the day. When my children come home from the nursery, I want to spend time with them.

Tuula's son Mosse in his workshop. Photo by Tuula Pöyhönen.

ONNI is open by appointment or whenever you’re at home, and you have also lent the space for other purposes (like the OK Do launch party). Does it ever feel uncomfortable that your home is open to the public?

I don’t think about it that much. In addition to the shop, the apartment has been used for photo and film shoots, and if I take on design commissions, I often invite the clients over. My husband doesn’t mind either. Sometimes I’m wondering if it’s dumb to open your home and life, but then again, I haven’t got anything to hide. If a visitor gets uneasy to enter a space that is my home, it’s not really my problem. Once, as a student, I made a performance with my friend wearing our designs in a shop display window. I noticed that rather than feeling uncomfortable myself, many passersby felt uneasy about the fact that they were watching. For me, it has always been easier to invite people to my place and give rather than go to others’ and receive.

“If a visitor gets uneasy to enter a space that is my home, it’s not really my problem.”

What are the best things about having an open home?

As a creative professional, if you’re going to meet new clients, it might be difficult to convey your views and sense of style in an office meeting. I prefer to invite them over in order to show them the atmosphere of my home. It conveys what I’m like and how I work; the mentality that underpins my design. In my opinion, it’s nonsense to claim that a design professional is someone who is able to adopt to different clients’ wishes. I think that clients should go to designers who are on the same wavelength to begin with.

Do you think that it’s significant for the ONNI customers to see where the products come from?

I haven’t started the home shop in order to blazon that instead of child labour ONNI products are home-made. However, I’m personally fascinated by disclosed processes. I like how, in his new book The Interior World of Tom Dixon, designer Tom Dixon reveals his production methods, the materials he uses and what makes him inspired, instead of just displaying a polished end result.

Work on the dining table.

One designer I asked to interview refused because he thought that by revealing how small his home studio is, the brand would suffer. For you, it’s quite the opposite, I guess.

Yes, I don’t feel the need to hide the scale of my business. But perhaps some companies want to appear big because they believe that people want to buy success, that people wish to be part of something bigger. At the moment I’m hoping to grow my company, too – I wish to employ a sewer.

Does working at home set limits to collaboration?

In my case, collaboration is close; people come to my place and we barter. I sew curtains for my photographer and I’m also lucky to have a graphic designer as a husband. Despite working at home, I don’t want to isolate but work with other professionals.

“In my case, collaboration is close; people come to my place and we barter.”

I think people’s homes are some of the most inspiring places one can find. How does your home shape your work?

I have two sons (3,5- and 6-year-olds) and especially when they spent the days at home I had to choose techniques that allowed me to work in short spans. There was no way I could have made patterns, cut or sewn, so I started knitting products with thread. I’m also really inspired by the woodwork of my older son. Having started with making toys two years ago, he is now exploring how pieces of wood can create a space when nailed together. And without him, ONNI shop wouldn’t have its wooden security camera.

Sometimes reality takes its own course. A pool turned into a skate spot in Southern Finland.

3. Reality

When ideas, plans or proposals become the basis for thought or action, and thus participate in the production of reality, they choreograph changes in society, the city and nature; in human and natural habitats. From this point of view, all creative work becomes an investment, potential shares in future reality. Through work, what kind of future can we imagine and possibly create? Leaving a mark, making a difference, and having offspring are basic human traits, necessities of a meaningful life. If the aim is to participate in the contemporary condition and influence the future, what methods will yield the best results? How big or small can we frame this involvement? Each human has limited time and capacity. How to spend our efforts wisely? How to define success?

Ines Kaag + Desiree Heiss = BLESS. Illustration by Manuel Raeder.

Dear Ines and Desiree,

We see your work as something in between art and fashion design. What do you think about this description and how do you see your position in the fields of fashion and art?

I & D: Honestly, we don’t think in categories. We simply do what we do and everybody is free to interpret and categorise it. In general, we see our work as creation of everyday products that are made to be used. However, art projects are welcome since they allow a certain freedom, budget and time to create new products that we wouldn’t have been able to develop otherwise.

BLESS seems to us as something very unconditional, and something genuinely based on personal interest. What is the motivation behind your work?

I & D: To earn our living in doing something we like to do and that makes us advance continuously on another, human level.

How did you get together in the first place?

I & D: We met in Paris in 1993 through a fashion competition and later started a penfriendship. After having visited each other for our graduation shows, we became close friends and started to discuss each other’s work as well as work on small projects together. We slowly slided into a more serious ground when Martin Margiela discovered our fur wig advertisement in i-D magazine and hired us to make wigs for his show.

How big is the company altogether and how do you share the tasks between the two of you? How does it work to do creative things together?

I & D: We have worked in two different cities, Berlin and Paris from the very beginning. In both cities, we have one fixed and one freelance employee, plus in Berlin a person that takes care of the shop. We share all the tasks between the two of us. Our creative work is like a hobby somewhere between the lines of hundreds of administrative emails.

“Our creative work is like a hobby somewhere between the lines of hundreds of administrative emails.”

Could you tell us more about your design process?

I & D: There are no fixed rules or schemes in terms of how we work. Everything is imaginable – it just occurs. Sometimes we develop the ideas 100% together, sometimes 100% separate. At times, one person starts and the other one ends, one person comes up with an idea and the other one makes the prototype, or one person makes something and the other person destroys it. Our tools are mainly words and hands. We never draw.

What are your studios in Paris and Berlin like?

I & D: Both are quite special, somehow like private houses, quite green and charming.

BLESS shop Paris, 14 Rue Portefoin. Photo by BLESS.

BLESS shop Berlin, Mulackstraße 38. Photo by BLESS.

What do you feel are the differences in working in Paris vs. Berlin? Is it difficult to work from two cities?

I & D: The secret is that it´s not Berlin “vs.” Paris, but “together with”. We never actually ended up working in different places but the other way around: we started working like this and haven’t stopped so far. It’s like a long distance romance – it has its pros and cons like any other form of being together. The main advantage is that we remain our own bosses, free to work in our own personal way in each city. The cons are the additional costs and loss of time through internal administration and communication. However, we do meet up at least every ten days in Berlin, Paris or elsewhere.

“Working in two different cities is like a long distance romance.”

Are there any special charateristics of Paris and Berlin that affect your thinking and doing? And how?

D: Living in a capital means that you can get really everything you need. I like that, as well as the light in Paris.
I: I have no reason to move. The sensation of comfort keeps me in Berlin. I have no idea whether it’s the city itself or its trees – and it wouldn’t make any difference.

Despite the fact that you work far from each other you are one as BLESS, always presenting your work together in public. Is this something you make a point of because you are dispersed in different places – taking care of your public presence together?

I & D: You guessed it right. Since we are often apart, it is important that BLESS is clearly a unit. It wouldn’t exist without the both of us: the products, the structure and the vision are a dialogue rather than a master plan.

You’re very mysterious when it comes to your identity and keep your private lives, and even working life, to yourself. We feel that it’s very interesting, especially now that people are sharing more and more in public in general. Why did you decide to do this?

I & D: We are not at all interested in sharing our personal life with the public. Instead, we are very happy to share our products that are made to be shared.

Like your working habits your work itself is also very futuristic. How do you see the future?

I & D: Playful.

Thanks!

I & D: Thank you!

Passion and hardship.

To all hours

In a standard month I work from around 160 to 200 hours. In rare cases I work about 100 hours overtime on top of my standard hours. Compared to my designer peers in Tokyo my working hours are considered modest, sometimes even grinned as European. It is not unusual that architects, interior designers and graphic designers in this part of the world work more than 280 hours a month without receiving substantial benefits or compensation. Some survive hardship with passion, others see passion disappear in hardship.

How hardship is tolerated is difficult to understand when social agreements workers have with their families, friends and the society at large are unfamiliar to me. To understand the logic of hard work however I looked into the effectiveness (producing the desired results) and the efficiency of work (actions to achieve the goals). I found two general notions that in my opinion illustrate reasons for unnecessary hard work; the Peter Principle and the Parkinson Law. One describes that the complacent system of promotion results in people reaching their level of incompetence at a certain point of the corporate ladder. The other one explains that work always expands to fill the time available for its completion.

Firstly, in practice this means that producing desired results with an assigned leader who has not realised his potential as leader, or is incompetent in his job, is difficult. The solution for the problem in Peter Principle could be that promotion based purely on seniority and nominal experience should be rethought with leadership training and inclusion of rules at workplaces where promotion is not the only pattern for advancement and appreciation. Secondly, actions to achieve goals are equally difficult if only one work pattern is assigned to various types of project schedules. Usually more time is required (and desired) in a project because the given framework does not fit into the single idea of how work should be completed. This leads to longer hours at work because there are no alternative ideas on how to finish different types of jobs. Having more time does not necessarily make a difference and therefore if work is prioritised and rationalised with a specific completion plan, busy schedules may seem less taxing.

Take a personal day.

Personal day

Japan has one of the largest number of national holidays in the world. Bank holidays are usually paired with Sundays creating long weekends spread evenly across the year. In Tokyo, the notion of too much work is no doubt accurate but holidays are as serious a business. I learned to champion the scattered yearly holiday landscape by changing my notion of what a holiday is. I am used to few but long chunks of vacation time for full charge ups. Also, I was used to shorter working hours that compensated for less bank holidays. Here, short holidays that are frequently coupled with longer working days create fragility but hard work is compensated with an idea that it does not last forever. A day off is always around the corner making hardship mentally more tolerable.

A convenient weekend vacation destination for me is Seoul as it is close to Tokyo and requires no time difference adjustments. Seoul, where I am currently writing from, offers relaxing environs where I am tucked away at a homely neighbourhood amongst people with whom I feel at ease. The moment I step outside my home, however, I see income gaps getting noticeably bigger together with fiercer battles over job and education opportunities. Even worse, I learned that the highest number of teenage suicides are committed in Korea due to stressful school life and societal pressures put on children. Acceptance of busy, cruel and even deadly working conditions exist because few have palpable action plans for change and many are afraid of losing their jobs, financial stability and status. Therefore work, and its opposite vacation, are topics that need to be seriously discussed in every corner of society. This will help designers, architects and anyone for that matter to build better plans for a more desirable future. I suggest we take a personal day to think things over.

My favourite Japanese holidays

Greenery Day, May 4
Respect-for-the-Aged Day, Third Monday of July
Health and Sports Day, Second Monday of October
The Emperor’s Birthday, December 23

Markus Miessen at his home office in Prenzlauer Berg, Berlin.

I think your multidisciplinary way of working has a fresh approach to architecture and urbanism. Do you have a blueprint for design?

It’s a very difficult question to answer because it’s so generic, and at the same time design is usually something very specific. It can be something big, something small, something physical or non-physical, it can be a policy, something on paper; it can even be a timetable or an event. There are also two paradigms of work: one of them is a self-initiated process and the other is a project commissioned by someone from the outside.

However, looking at the latter paradigm my doctrine is that whenever someone approaches you with a brief or with their own question, the most productive way to deal with it is to ask yourself this question in a more critical way.

Also, when you design, you shouldn’t have a preset format for answering your question. I mean, if someone approaches me with a brief for a building, it might as well be that after some serious testing of ideas the most favourable solution turns out not a physical one. Let me refer to Cedric Price who once said that an unhappy couple might be better advised to get a divorce rather than build a dream house.

“If someone approaches me with a brief for a building, the most favourable solution might turn out not a physical one.”

You operate somewhere in between design and research touching both the academic field and the field of popular culture in your work. What makes you take up certain projects?

Ok, to add to what I just said, there are actually three different kinds of projects: one is the self-initiated kind, the other is the commissioned kind and the third one is something purely economy-related. So, the last one is obviously the most boring and the first one is the most interesting.

With nOffice we do mostly commissioned architectural or urban projects and Studio Miessen is about research, teaching, writing, curating and so on. My problem is that with nOffice we’re a little bit idealistic and we don’t do things for the money. And with Studio Miessen almost all the work apart from the teaching and writing is independent research, which no one obviously pays for. So, most of the projects I do are based more or less on personal interest, me being a curious kind of guy.

One way to maintain my lifestyle is to take up economy-related projects on the side – teach or do some commercial writing for magazines. And in the best case these projects become an extension of my practice. Like when I was teaching at the Berlage Insitute, we did a student project in Brazil where nOffice happened to be building a library. The student project resulted in a thorough exploration of the social context of building in Brazil – something that would never have been possible within the framework of the commissioned project itself.

“Most of my projects are based on personal interest, me being a curious kind of guy.”

What motivates you to work on independent projects around and about architecture?

To my mind, architecture in its traditional sense almost makes you stop doing things. It’s a praxis of delay, which means that whatever you do it will take forever. It’s never on time, it’s usually more expensive than you thought, and there are always fights. There’s this great myth around architecture, e.g. in Germany they have made surveys on what’s the most respected job and for some reason architects always end up in top three after doctors and lawyers whilst I would say it’s a really bad job: you’re being used politically, you work crazy hours and the pay is bad. Of course I’m interested in architecture but at the same time I’m not so sure about the sustainability of the industry, and I guess that’s what motivates me to do something out of the ordinary.

You have said that you are most interested in the political work of spatial practitioners – “projects, where authorships start to blur”. Can you give me an example of a project like this?

In 2007 I was invited to do a pavilion at the Lyon Biennial with a brief to communicate the most interesting architectural and spatial practices in the first decade of the 21st century. Instead of composing a list of what’s hot I decided to do something more topical and think about Europe at that moment. This was right after the constitutional referendum had failed and I wanted to explore why this might have happened – why people mistrusted Europe and didn’t see potential in it. My hypothesis was that if they didn’t understand Europe as a space they couldn’t trust it as an institution either.

The project was called The Violence of Participation. We invited a hundred artists, architects, curators, writers, cultural producers, politicians, etc. worldwide to send us an A4 visualization of their spatial perception of Europe. Then we designed a big round table, which is typically seen as a space for mediation or negotiation but turned it into something opposite by placing vertical fins on it, making it a space of exclusion with several booth-like sections. The table was displayed in Lyon together with the hundred visualizations that were corrupted by people sitting in the booths, drawing their own perceptions of Europe on top of them.

The Violence of Participation, the exhibition. Photo by Markus Miessen.

The Violence of Participation, the book. Photo by Markus Miessen.

What new do you think a designer can bring into political discourse?

It’s certainly not an exclusive quality that an architect or a designer has, but more an outsider-perspective with curiosity and healthy intellect that makes the discourse more fruitful. I think outsiders are often more productive in terms of interesting thinking than insiders. It’s all about approaching a topic with certain naivety, from the perspective of an amateur. The questions you ask are genuine because you aren’t looking for a consensus but an answer. I actually write about the subject in my new book, Cross-Bench Praxis (out Nov, 2009). The book reflects on a conflictual mode of participation through looking at cross-bench politicians in the British parliamentary system – the people with no ties to the political parties at play.

“I think outsiders are often more productive in terms of interesting thinking than insiders.”

At the moment, you’re working on a new book, doing your PhD for the Centre for Research Architecture at Goldsmiths in London and running nOffice. How do you find time for doing all this, and do you see your professional life take over your private life?

Private life is a very difficult term. I’m totally happy about what I’m doing and sometimes I don’t even feel like I’m working because I’m just doing what interests me. But then there’s also a very different level of private life. For instance the time I spend with my girlfriend. She comes from a totally different background in terms of working so with her it’s easy to make a distinction between work and non-work. It’s almost like we have this natural mode of switching off together. For example, I do most of my work at home in the library, which is located next to the living room where my girlfriend usually spends her time when she comes home from work. This might sound funny but the moment I leave my “work world” to enter the living room it’s like a complete break. All the pressure drops in the living room. My girlfriend also leads a very structured life going to the office at nine in the morning and coming back at eight, and she only works from Monday to Friday. Now, I’ve started to structure my life according to her – with the exception that I always start my days at 5.30 in the morning.

That’s early! It reminds me of a project of yours with Hans-Ulrich Obrist, the Brutally Early Club. Can you tell me about that?

When I was living in London we worked on a couple of projects with Hans-Ulrich, but the problem was that neither Hans nor me had enough time to arrange proper meetings to discuss things during the days. So we decided to do it super early. We would meet at a café at 6am, spend three hours talking and getting things done. This event was soon given the name Brutally Early Club and we started to invite other people to join, using it as a platform to meet people who would for instance be in London for only one night. And we started doing it in other cities, too.

You work very internationally with projects in Brazil, the US, Europe, and the Middle East. However, your office is based in Berlin. What does it mean to have an office here? Does the city have an effect on your thinking and doing?

Well, there are different realities: one is the financial reality, the other has to do with infrastructure and services, and the third one is time. In terms of financial decision making Berlin is pretty straightforward simply because it’s cheap. The infrastructure is also pretty efficient, and this has to do with time as well. Compared to e.g. London, my former home city, where you waste a lot of time in travelling to places, even going to the airport only takes 15 minutes here. London also puts this certain pressure on you all the time. Here, this pressure doesn’t exist. Of course you can look at it in a skeptical way saying that if there’s no pressure, people just hang out, which obviously happens a lot, too. But if you’re very committed to your energy and don’t lose it, Berlin becomes very productive. The lack of pressure, both social and financial, gives you freedom to think in new directions – and play the cross-bench practitioner, if you will.