Between blueprints and Bruno Latour. A conversation with architect and ESPhil-alumna Willie Vogel (28) on the occasion of the recently issued interactive artwork ‘Oosterschelde Negotiations’ by creative collective Studio Inscape.
Interview by Stijn Voogt
It is Friday afternoon, just before Christmas, and in the midst of the umpteenth lockdown. Willie tunes in from Berlin, where she works for architectural firm Barkow Leibinger. Graduated only a little while ago, I meet Willie at the beginning of her professional career. During her lunch break, we talk about her study time, the combination of architecture with philosophy, and how her background in philosophy influences her work.
After obtaining a Bachelor’s degree in Architecture at TU Delft, she graduates from ESPhil with the BA Philosophy of a Specific Discipline in 2020, while also finishing her MSc Architecture in Delft. “Deciding what to study has always been difficult for me, I think I have considered almost all kinds of study directions. However, Architecture – the programme, as well as the activities hosted by the Architecture Faculty in Delft – turned out to be most appealing to me in the end. Actually, it was only later through the stories of friends and roommates that I got more interested in philosophy.”
“One of these roommates was studying Nanobiology at the time, and was also enrolled in ESPhil’s second degree programme. She advised me to also start studying philosophy alongside my BSc Architecture. Once I had started this programme, I very much enjoyed being able to approach matters I was taught about in Architecture from a different perspective, and vice versa. Although I was used to people talking about philosophy at my faculty in Delft – for example, the works of Martin Heidegger are referenced in manifold – during my philosophy studies I started to suspect that only a few architects had actually read Heidegger.”
It appears to be a common phenomenon in architecture. In general, philosophy is a broadly welcomed reference frame for thought and narrative. Whereas, at the same time, every now and then it results in a mystification of the architectural discipline, and a subsequent ‘inner circle’ of architects who only understand each other. “It is a funny phenomenon. We talk about this habit a lot, among ‘us architects’. And yet, we tend to keep doing this.”
Mind and matter
So, the challenge is to think architecture and philosophy together, not only in form, but also in matter. For Willie, this opportunity presented itself for the first time during the course Ecophilosophy, which was still taught by Henk Oosterling at the time. This course made her interested in the works of Gregory Bateson, from whom she would take Steps to an Ecology of Mind (1972) as the main object of studies in her bachelor thesis, supervised by Sjoerd van Tuinen.
“In that thesis, I started looking for matter in Bateson’s ecology of mind by asking how our material environment is constituted, assuming that human beings constitute themselves in relation to their direct environment.” This relation between abstractions and tangibilities, perhaps to be called fundamental to the work of an architect, is what Willie would elaborate on into the direction of New Materialism. Such interests, as Willie explores them in her bachelor thesis, would later also become an important part of her work with the collective Studio Inscape.
Just like the choice to study philosophy, this initiative was born at the kitchen table together with friends and roommates. Three or four years ago, Willie, together with co-founders Charlotte von Meijenveldt and Eileen Stornebrink, started to sign up for several design-competitions – which are quite usual within the field of architecture – under the name Studio Inscape. Where it once began with a design for a part of the new sports complex on the campus of TU Delft in 2018, the collective now features with an art installation in the Watersnoodmuseum in Ouwerkerk, Zeeland.
Oosterschelde Negotiations
In response to a competition organised by ‘Embassy of the North Sea’, Studio Inscape started focusing on the work of Bruno Latour, and more in particular his book The Parliament of Things (2020). Together with two philosophers from Groningen and Wageningen, Maarten Meijer and Dennis Hamer, the collective took off for a new project in which philosophical abstractions aim to (re)form their direct environment. However, this time the end product would not be so much as a constructional design, but a so-called “serious game”.
Thus, a kind of game, being an in-between variant of a board game and a negotiation table, with a primary goal that is beyond sole entertainment. “For this project, we started looking for a way to restore the distant position of the human being, in relation to its environment, to the centre of that environment. To speak with Latour: from a modern society to a Gaia-democracy.” Willie explains that the game attempts to make people aware of the position of non-humans in their environment through the acts of carefully listening, representing, and finally negotiating.
In the game, participants get assigned their role based on the different actors appearing in the environment of the Oosterschelde, a delta area inhabited by both humans and animals. “The game consists of eleven actors. A participant can be assigned a role as plant or animal, living in the water or on land, but also the role of farmer or tourist manager.” Through the eyes of these different parties, the possible interests for the area at hand are shown to be very diverse. What is good for the fisherman might impede the living environment of migrating birds, but the preservation of sandbanks in favour of these birds is expensive, and does not, for example, contribute to the circumstances of the bee population that generally thrives on higher dikes.
By means of the network through which the different actors are connected with each other, the game connects participants and evokes them to engage in a ‘parliament’ for a debate on a range of practical dilemma’s. “Already, I have attended some test sessions, and it is funny to notice how well people can carry out the life of a clam. The game intends to show how little one is aware of its relation with non-human beings, putting emphasis on the wrongful conduct humans have been causing on different elements of their environment.” The ‘parliament of the Oosterschelde’ opens up hierarchical political, administrative, and scientific systems, and most literally attempts to put conflicting interests to the table in a playful manner.
Architect in the Anthropocene
After a minor interruption by a German colleague, Willie moves to a spot in the photo studio of the architectural firm. I ask her about the role of the human being in relation to its environment. Although Oosterschelde Negotiations gives a voice to clams, the problem remains that real clams cannot speak for themselves. By means of this game, the relation between humans and non-humans remains to be mediated. Is nature emancipating here from the human being, or is it us who try to emancipate nature from itself?
“What I find interesting is that contemporary architecture is utmost concerned with ecological awareness, but that action based on these ideas often remains absent. A while ago, for example, a big exposition was held here in Berlin. It was an art and architecture project in cooperation with Bruno Latour, called Critical Zones, but at the firm where I am working such ideas are not leaving any traces yet. Costs, time pressure, regulations, but also incomprehension about urgency or the lack of knowledge seem to be factors that cause the prioritisation of economic interests and fast decision making.”
Willie explains how she would like to see not only the framing of contemporary architecture shifting interests, but also the architectural practice to alter its focus. For the time being, she does not foresee such a shift of method and interest representation in the business of architecture, a world that Willie still describes as driven by big ego’s and money. “At this point, mostly younger and smaller firms show the courage to put other interests on top, even though they are still often outpaced by bigger firms.”
“Sometimes it feels as if Charlotte, Eileen and I need to maintain Studio Inscape for quite a bit longer to battle for new (moral) standards.” And for now, this role seems to suit Willie well. It remains a challenge to keep the philosophy that Willie applies in her designs, projects, and research understandable for different stakeholders, and find solid ground in architectural practice as well. “It is important to keep thinking and communicating for who you are creating something, for humans and non-humans.”
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With special thanks to Jord de Kat Angelino (photographer).