Formlessness
Spilled toner on a Montréal sidewalk at 07.36 on August 27th, 2004.
Multidisciplinary Thinking
It is not about the history of architecture, but the history of everything.
Complexity
Some of the greatest problems of history come from an over-simplification and over-abstraction of knowledge, models, processes and strategies. We know today that so many factors influence everything that exists -it is the consequence of a new understanding based upon recent developments, research and technological advancements. There is not, however, any intellectual model that can explain or organize everything -especially not a computer model.
Engaged Collaboration
Engage with everyone, from the scientist to the artist.
Global Practice
Being local is not enough, being global and local is.
Multilinguality (sic)
If we know only one language in a world of thousands, we are lost. Invent words, phrases, genres, concepts, speak badly - speak goodly. Think Mash-UP
Critical Perspective
Think like a foreigner arriving in a new city at 03.38 in the morning.
Sustainable Pragmatism
When you can drink all the water from the melting icebergs so fast that the oceans don't rise and flood the Netherlands, please let me know that we don't have a problem -oh yeah, and you need to pee too.
* -geography
Perhaps geography isn't so avant-garde, but it could be. It is a highly effective way to analyze complex situations in the world. Think of all the prefixes: Urban-geography, Psycho-geography, Tectonic-geography...
Economics + Politics
Be aware of everything moving onshore and offshore, the lives of many are coerced by the lives of few.
Structural Geometries
Cellular Automata, L-Systems, Generative Algorithms, Triangles, Mysteries.
Baroque Minimalism
Let form fight together - Minimalism with a twist of Baroque.
New Technologies + New Processes
Computers, Lasers, Hardware, Software, Algorithms, Wireless, Non-Standard, Mobile, Artificial Intelligence, Networks, Pattern Recognition, Complexity, Rapid Prototyping, and all the other emerging technologies.
Parametric Tools
Building parametric tools and models is the most effective way to use technology to create and develop anything. It is the raison d'être of technology.
Design Research
The design processes, while of course highly personalized and at times mystical, is ideally a process or research. While not entirely scientific, it can resemble a method of rigorous investigation beginning with Theory/Hypothesis, continuing with Experiment and Conclusion, and reiterating the process of Experiment and Conclusion, then reiterating the process repeatedly.
Spatial Practice
Dance, Sculpture, Aerospace Engineering, Furniture Design, Digital Environments, Wireless Networks, Architecture, Clothing (and spatial genealogy goes on forever).
Mistakes
Make them early and make them fast - then charge ahead.
Create History
That is what we can do.
Style: The Shape of Content
SK8 with style. Do everything with Style - screw Branding.
#17______________________ of an Incomplete Strategy
As Bruce Mau writes: "Allow space for the ideas you haven’t had yet, and for the ideas of others."
Open Systems
It is a necessity for a system to remain 'open' which is also to say: expandable, shrinkable, multi-directional, mutable. Systems should be open for multiple users/effectors to participate and contribute. It is not always necessary that a system have registered or approved users, but that it is collaborative. This holds in the case of a city, or software, or creative process, or Wiki, and so forth. This questions our notion of individuality, proprietary rights, and so forth. While many sectors of societies are scared of this, remember, it almost always creates a better world.