June 2018
Critiques
by Sara Stevens
Design and capital in the work of Gerald Hines.
by Vittorio Lovato with Peggy Deamer, Quilian Riano, and Manuel Shvartzberg on behalf of The Architecture Lobby
Mapping prize funding for research in architecture.
Leah Meisterlin in conversation with Samantha Parsons from UnKoch My Campus
On expelling undue influence.
By Eric Wycoff Rogers
The National Municipal League and the rise of architectural expertise.
by Masha Panteleyeva
A Soviet guide to funding transparency.
by Richard L. Hindle
A history of innovation in physical infrastructure and large-scale complex systems.
By Frédéric Schnee
Nicolas Schöffer’s Maison Spatiodynamique à Cloisons Invisibles.
Projects
An interview with Sweet Water Foundation’s Emmanuel Pratt
How funding shapes work. How work shapes funding.
Dong-Ping Wong in conversation with Archie Lee Coates
Staying afloat with + POOL.
by Jonathan Tate and Travis Bost
Retaining value and reimagining idiosyncrasy where two markets meet.
by Skylar Bisom-Rapp
Escaping the false binary between public and private property regimes.
by Joseph Dahmen and Amber Frid-Jimenez of AFJD
Mycelium architecture and ecologies of practice.
![“At stake in the new chapter of their age-old tug-of-war is not just the answer to be proffered to the question ‘who is in charge?’ but the very meaning of ‘being in charge’—its purpose and its consequences.”[acp footnote] Zygmunt Bauman, Does Ethics Have a Chance in a World of Consumers? (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2008), 207. [/acp]Courtesy of Bertrand Cavalier.](http://www.arpajournal.net/wp-content/uploads/2018/01/bertrand_cavalier_004-1-e1516776868842.jpg)
by Common Room
A statement on conducting conflict.
by Stephen Zacks
The use of influence for advocacy and production.
Conflicts of Interest
“Conflicts of interest” are said to compromise the impartiality of research, but what would it mean to be disinterested? Ethical codes warn us that researchers’ objectivity can be corrupted by a clashing set of interests—those of funding agencies, clients and publics, as well as researchers’ self-interest in professional advancement or personal gain. If the resolution of such conflicts might typically call for avoidance, recusal or disclosure, what would such strategies mean for the design disciplines and research on the built environment? What varied interests, expressed in the form of money or other manifestations of influence, do designers contend with? Who does impartiality protect, and when are conflicts of interest productive?
Issue 05 asks how researchers define an ethics of interest and disinterest across diverse structures of research funding. How do designers reify, leverage, alter or sidestep the constraints of financial support, and from what vantage points? How is the value of research assessed, and in what marketplaces?
cover image: Letter from Rem Koolhaas to Miuccia Prada, 1999. Courtesy OMA. Exhibited in “The Other Architect,” at the Canadian Centre for Architecture.
LABORATORY SERIES. No.20. Valve Corporation Handbook for New Employees, 2012. “Why does your desk have wheels? Think of those wheels as a symbolic reminder that you should always be considering where you could move yourself to be more valuable. But also think of those as literal wheels, because that’s what they are, and you’ll be able to actually move your desk with them.” Photo: Valve Corporation
