Walter Benjamin and the One Way Street

Leeser Architecture's 'Glass Bar' Chelsea, NY, 2002. Description on website extracted below*

Currently reading:
Eric Howeler, 'Anxious architectures: The aesthetics of surveillance' (1 March 2002) Archis. 

This is a gorgeous piece of writing looking at the 'erosion by surveillance technologies' of the role of architecture in being an active intervener and the threshold between the realms of what is private and public.



I'm particularly attracted to his take on Thomas Leeser and Marco Bevilacqua's 'Glass Bar' in Chelsea (originally published in Architectural Record, 'Leeser Architecture explores notions of the everyday in three different New York city venues: Glass bar, as well as Bot and Pod restaurant' (September 2001) Interiors, 134). Howeler observes that the Glass bar evokes the 'asymmetrical gaze' that exemplified the mediation of power through the threat of constant surveillance in Bentham's Panopticon. But given the recreational context of the space, this asymmetry is given an additional dimension of performance, where the act of surveillance is coloured by the voyeuristic desires of the observer.

Howeler notes this as a maturing of the shopfront: where at the conception / early stages of capitalism, these were sites of commodities of desire, they are now transformed into a 'late-capitalist surveillance peep show'... which is not to say that these spaces are no longer sites of desire - but perhaps Howeler is noting that that there is a transformation of the act of consumption such that even the action of this 'gazing' (or surveillance itself) is also now commoditised and valued. This transformation pushes Benjamin's theories of these spaces (pieced together from his notes by Buck-Morss (1989)) from (as it was in the interwar period of the 1930s) being merely a part of the arcade and the 'interior dream world of seductive commodities' (Dovey (1999)), to new sites for which the desired, and the act of surveillance can be consumed. In other words, architecture has been made complicit in creating spaces for desiring surveillance

Kim Dovey (who I had the privilege of studying under a decade back), highlighted Benjamin's linking of these mythologising arcades and the flaneur who '[consumes] street life as a spectacle'. Dovey notes that these enclosed arcades 'constructed a protected place for [individuals] in the city, both as consumers and as subjects of the [gaze of others]' [Brydon note: edits to separate out Dovey's consideration of gendered spaces here]. And in a manner, this enclosure of the uni-sex bathroom in Leeser and Bevilacqua's work, re-creates the spectacle that continues the evolution of the arcade.

*Located on Manhattan’s west side reorganizes the conventional bar layout bringing typical back of house element, the restroom, to the forefront. The main wall of the restroom is a one way mirror—giving users on the inside a view of themselves, while giving passersby a full view into the unisex washroom. The activities which are usually hidden behind closed doors are exposed, transforming the façade into an intimate performance space. (extracted from the Leeser Architecture website)

More on Jane Jacobs

Mike Joyce's clever campaign in 2009 pushing back on gentrification*

Currently reading: Saskia Sassen, 'How Jane Jacobs changed the way we look at cities' (5 May 2016) The Guardian.

Nathaniel Rich, 'The Prophecies of Jane Jacobs' (November 2016) The Atlantic.

Sassen describes meeting with Jacobs and the line of inquiry she was subsequently subjected to by Jacobs, who reframed Sassen's thinking on urban policy in reference to 'place' and the consideration of the 'loss of neighborhoods and erasure of local residents' experiences'. Sassen describes this approach of considering the built form / urban policy as a thinking about the city at the 'micro' level.

Sassen considers that the scale and enormity of what cities have become makes it easy to depersonalise and generalise data on the city; diversity and the individual lived experiences that produce 'sub-economies' within global metropolises are 'now seen as irrelevant... or belonging to another era'. But Sassen states that Jacobs' works indicate that this macro approach to viewing the city is erroneous as it neglects consideration of displacement and the impacts of gentrification.

'Indeed, I can imagine she would have affirmed without a quiver of doubt that, no matter how electronic and global the city might one day become, it still has to be "made" [ie. that it exists and impacts urban behaviour through its physical form] - and therein lies the importance of place'. Sassen argues that this sense of place permits further understanding of the role a city plays in its own economy, returning to the analytical framework so dominant in the earlier half of the 20th century where (from the 1900s) 'the city was a lens for understanding larger processes' and, which permitted sociologists observing the city to understand the 'major processes of [the] era', namely, 'industrialisation, urbanisation, alienation, and... urbanity'.

Rich's article on Jane Jacobs is just a masterpiece - I'll be fortunate if my writing approaches even a fraction of this in my PhD thesis. He weaves the works of Jacobs as a passionate treatise on the 'fragility of democracy—how difficult it is to maintain, how easily it can crumble'... and in our current global political climate with the hounds of the far, far right and the barren left shouting at each other, Rich's curated and thoughtfully chosen observations on Jacobs' works are just delicious.

He references her 'six-month purgatory in Higgins', where Jacobs (then Butzner) spent time with her Presbyterian missionary aunt, who on coming upon on a town isolated in the mountains (Higgins), was 'so staggered by its poverty that she refused to leave'. And while Jacobs only referred to Higgins in Cities and the Wealth of Nations (1984) and Dark Age Ahead (2004), the lesson from her time in Higgins was imprinted in her works: (in the voice of Solon) beware the empire in decline!

Jacobs' study of fallen empires pulled together 'common early indicators of decline: "cultural xenophobia," "self-imposed isolation," and "a shift from faith in logos, reason, with its future-oriented spirit... to mythos, meaning conservatism that looks backwards to fundamentalist beliefs for guidance and worldview." Clearly, these themes resonate in our current global political climate.

Rich then traced the investigation she faced as a suspected Communist sympathizer, beginning in 1945 when she had tried to travel to Siberia. By 1952, Jacobs had declared to the Loyalty Security Board (in 8,000 words no less) 'there is no virtue in conforming meekly to the dominant opinion of the moment' (almost paraphrasing in a way the argument against 'Groupthink', coined by her mentor William H Whyte). This book I'm currently reading, The Death and Life of Great American Cities, is what Rich describes as Jacobs translation of 'principles of individual liberty into urban design'. And I think it makes a great starting point and framework to consider how the principles of individual liberty are compromised / enhanced / manufactured in this world of video / AI surveillance we've now inherited, contrasting this to Jacob's thoughts on natural surveillance and 'the wisdom of crowds'.

But what caught my attention was this paragraph from Rich's article:
'She was sensitive to reader opinion... In 1949, V. Kusakov of the academy of Architecture in the U.S.S.R. complained in a Soviet publication about two articles, uncredited by written by Jacobs, praising the work of Frank Lloyd Wright and other modern architects. Kusakov attacked Amerika for neglecting to cover the more important story: "the ever increasing housing crisis which the cities of America are experiencing." American capitalism, Kusakov wrote, "dooms the majority of the population to a negative existence and death in ill-smelling cesspools, in slums deprived of air, sunlight, and trees or shrubs. / The column unsettled Jacobs, who responded with a thorough investigation of life in America's inner-city neighborhoods.'.. and that 'seemingly narrow question' of how to address this negative experience of living in the city '[broadened] into one of the biggest questions of all: What, really, was the Good Life?' How, in other words, could urban policy promote life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness?'

*Graphic Designer Mike Joyce's clever campaign in 2009 pushing back on the gentrification of Greenwich Village in New York. In his interview with blogger, Jeremiah Moss, he notes that this campaign was not meant to be a personal statement against Marc Jacobs (who he states is 'really talented'). It was merely a play on words reflecting the taking-over of the Village by 'franchises and chains of all kinds'. Read more here.

The Death and Life of Great American Cities

Jane Jacobs and architecture school
As part of preparing for this research class I'll be teaching this semester in the architecture school, I've been re-reading Jane Jacobs' The Death and Life of Great American Cities: The Failure of Town Planning. I remember reading the book in my 4th year of architecture school (as part of our social theory and architecture class), and experiencing (very vividly) that critical distance between a concept you've been taught for so long and felt aligned to (in that case, Le Corbusier's Radiant City) and this arm's length point of view of a critic. Prior to reading the book, I had been quite madly in love with Le Corbusier's masterplan - but it's when I got to this particular quote (quite early on in the book) that I paused:

As in all Utopias, the right to have plans of any significance belonged only to the planners at large. 
(p 27)

UQ has a lovely copy of Jacobs' book that's been re-bound to keep it intact... it is clearly well-used!

I am still a fan of Le Corbusier's masterplan - despite Jacobs' misgivings. At the time, I thought a lot of the criticisms she had was rooted in a rather American-centric view and experience of the city (which was unsurprising, given the book's title). But I don't think my initial observation was particularly novel - it's not difficult to walk down the streets of Hong Kong or Singapore and intuit that these are different cities to New York. But with the perspective of having worked in a number of cities, and seeing that global accretion of all cities turning into shades of each other (well, yes, that's a bit of an over-generalisation here) I'm reading Jacobs this time looking for gems on this idea of 'surveillance' and 'trust' (see tweet above) beyond her very well known 'eyes on the street' framework.

How I started teaching Architecture (again)
(I thought here's a good point as any to share how this PhD student in law ended up teaching architecture.)

So it started off with me reading up on smart cities, and one of the criticisms that leapt out at me was this observation that a lot of the architecture / urban planning that's been proposed around these smart city proposals draw heavily from 'New Urbanism'. Much of the criticism that's captured in Jacobs' book can easily be refocused on the New Urbanists... but it did lead me to think of this lecturer I had in architecture school (back in Melbourne), Sandra Kaji-O'Grady. We did a research subject where I explored marine utopias (which led to the book), and I have such a vivid memory of her criticisms of New Urbanism.

Long story short, I googled her and found out she was the head of the school of architecture at UQ, and reaching out to her for a coffee, I got invited to teach. So I return to teaching architecture almost a decade after I had previously taught it. And coming back to some of the incredible material by the greater thinkers of architecture (while I prepare the course notes)... I can't help feeling like this has been a part of the puzzle I've been missing in my life for a while. Apologies if the blog suddenly veers into a stream of consciousness about urban design and architecture. It's been quite a few years since I've had the freedom to really sit and think critically about the city.

Artificial Intelligent Surveillance

Currently reading:
Dave Gershgorn (27 August 2017) 'The age of AI surveillance is here', Quartz.

James Vincent (23 January 2018) 'Artificial Intelligence is going to Supercharge Surveillance: What happens when digital eyes get the brains to match', Verge. 


Vincent notes that video surveillance & CCTV technology are often described as 'digital eyes', but in truth are closer to 'portholes' in that there needs to be a driver behind the technology that is orienting and understanding the feed of images being created by the sensors. However, where these surveillance tools are now powered by artificial intelligent software, Gershgorn notes that the oft-thought prohibitive nature of trawling through volumes of surveillance footage to identify a particular individual, activity or event is becoming accessible to (still to very well-resourced) public and private sector entities.

We've reached the tipping point where AI is now being brought (at perhaps an accelerated pace) into the fold of urban crime prevention strategies. The complexity of images - 'millions of pixels that form unique patterns... [once] too complicated for hand-coded algorithms to reliably work' have been addressed by advances in deep learning. Described as 'deep neural networks', these artificial-intelligent surveillance systems can, where given a sufficiently large body of reference images, develop mathematical patterns that ably identify common characteristics between images. The reducing the rate of error is now allowing these autonomous systems to be 'trusted'.

For now, these technologies are primarily applied to facial recognition purposes, and surveillance of human behaviour. This likely arises from general public acceptance of surveillance for crime prevention purposes - however, I'm suggesting that the technology cold easily be re-purposed to the construction industry and verify (without human intervention and via machine vision) if certain conditions precedent or subsequent have been met, or to certify progress of works on site.

A number of examples of AI surveillance are cited:

• Facebook is seeking to apply the technology to understand who is in a in a video livestream and to be able to ascertain what the subject of the video is doing. Director of applied machine learning Joaquin Quinonero Candela states, 'ideally, Facebook would understand what's happening in every live video, in order to be able to curate a personalised video channel for users'.

• Baidu is employing facial recognition software as an alternative to ticketing infrastructure at large events. Such similar use of facial recognition as a form of admission progress has been tested at Charles de Gualle airport (France) and a programme piloted in Japan in 2016.

• Axon and Motorola has expressed plans to infuse artificial intelligence into its bodycam products, that, when coupled with facial recognition capabilities may aid in the search of, for example, missing persons. 

Machine Vision(aries) and Surveillance

Currently reading:
Patrick Sisson (17 January 2018) 'Your city is watching you: How machine learning and "computer vision" will transform our cities", Curbed.

Sisson suggests that machine vision (which has seen half a billion dollars invested in the technology in 2016) and machine learning (which receives between 4.8 billion and 7.2 billion dollars in global annual spending) offer a further leap in the use of surveillance to deepen our understanding of urban data and to decipher patterns to aid in urban planning. Rohit Aggarwala (Sidewalk Labs) posits that '[t]he ability to transmit images into data, without human intervention, is the single most powerful thing'.

Surveillance in the sensorised building

In sensorised buildings, the application of surveillance technology now permits the 'reading' of occupants' emotion. This has particular relevance in new brick-and-mortar retail experiences (given the current limitations of an app - but watch the 'virtual shop' space). Amazon and the Chinese JD.com are providing unmanned stores powered by surveillance equipment and lines of computer code exploring this new area of entrepreneurial surveillance. And it has implications for manned stores: Walmart's Project Kepler utilises a facial recognition system that 'track[s] consumer mood' and determines how the store's human resources should be allocated to to provide assistance to identified customers. Machine surveillance provided by Standard Cognition can undertake a number of tasks normally given to in-house staff, taking inventory and observing shoppers in real time (and from more perspectives than a single staff member is capable of). In the latter, Standard Cognition's AI 'reads' (from across the room) the intentions and activities of a shopper, assessing what the shopper picks up and interacts with, and is able to recognise when the item is actually purchased.

As the technology becomes increasingly more affordable to implement, the commercial imperative to apply such technology will increase, and in turn produced even greater variety of offerings that will become even more 'invisible' to the shopper. Sisson quotes Daniel Davis from WeWork (coworking entity), the aim of the game is to produce a surveilled environment that 'doesn't look like that kind of high-tech space, it looks homely, inviting, welcoming... [with nothing suggesting] a sophisticated process behind it. The space is performing in a way that suits your needs, without overtly being a space of the digital'.

This wariness of these tech designers/ proponents to human hesitation to increasingly sensorised buildings intrigues me, particularly Ann Sussman's thinking on the 'age of biology' in design - where she has used eye-tracking software 'to look at how humans react to architecture and urban design'.

Urban planning level

This emphasis on creating technology that doesn't read as technology, and that still remains attractive to users (benchmark: if occupants lower their mobiles), is also present on the urban planning / smart city planning level. Aggarwala (Sidewalk Labs) notes that 'If it feels tech-forward, we've probably done a few things wrong.'

Surveillance and urban data gathered could be used to help authorities manage a suburb's facilities to meet the needs of its changing demographics (eg changing park facilities to provide for more mature families as the suburb ages etc), or to even implement urban features that increase safety, encourage or attracts particular demographics to a locale.

Challenges

Surveillance technology is limited to how it is trained. Critics note that where such training is imperfect, the likely users of the technology, such as 'women, young children, and African Americans' are likely to affected. This has particular consequences when used for law enforcement purposes (see 'The Perpetual Line-Up', Georgetown Law Center on Privacy & Technology). Sussin notes that there are commercial applications of such technologies already: Ekin, a company that sells patrol cars with facial recognition technology, provides products that will identify (through facial recognition and analytics) 'suspicious, guilty, or wanted people even the human eye can miss...'.

A lighter-touch version of surveillance ('soft surveillance' - where data is de-identified and processed to only produce object classes) - may be preferred where there are concerns about cost and privacy. For example, Numina creates a counter that attaches to street poles that counts bicycle and pedestrians to provide hard data for urban planners when considering the breakdown of road users.

Blue-sky thinking: outsmarting the smart cities bandwagon

Currently reading:
Laura Bliss, 'If Google Were Mayor' (10 January 2018) The Atlantic. 

Bliss notes that we've reached an interesting tipping point: at the 2018 Consumer Electronic Show, she observed 'more vendors listed as selling "smart cities" technologies than gaming products or drones', reflecting the growing urban-tech focus.

Sidewalk Toronto (the joint venture of Alphabet's Sidewalk Labs and Waterfront Toronto) is working on the proposal to revitalise a 12-acre waterfront site (Quayside) to test: (among other things)

• '“outcome-based” zoning code focused on limiting things like pollution and noise rather than specific land uses';
• 'sustainable neighborhoods';
• 'autonomous transit shuttle''; and
• solutions that address climate change.

Challenges / legal issues identified include:

• 'all-seeing urban omniscience' and (where subsidised housing is provided) whether those reliant on such subsidised housing have a choice on how much privacy they relinquish in order to stay at Quayside; and
• how data will be shared / sold and the impact of (what Pamela Robinson, Prof. Urban Planning, Ryerson University) the 'blurring [of] public and private interests' in the creation of Quayside will have on the data harvesting processes.

Bliss also notes that other 'top down' approaches to designing smart cities have not delivered in their 'tech-utopian promises' (ie Masdar and Songdo). However, she captures a punchy soundbite from Rohit Aggarwala (Sidewalk Labs) that quite deftly distances the Toronto project from its 'smart city' label (and, in turn, these other less successful projects) by noting that a lot of the planning that's occurred on these projects reflect 'early-21st century arrogance... that all that's gone before is obsolete' (or the overly convenient tabula rasa approach to designing cities).

Introducing Brydon

Climbing new mountains

Hi, I'm Brydon Wang. I've taken the plunge and started this blog to track my progress through the PhD programme at the University of Queensland (UQ). I'm a Technology and Construction Lawyer and used to practise architecture (I now teach in the Master of Architecture course). I've got a background in rail and roads (having previously worked with the Public Transport Authority in Perth, Western Australia, and Transurban in Sydney), and worked in the construction industry for seven years building a range of buildings (a satellite facility, a weather station, schools under the BER, refurbishment and new-builts to train stations, etc) before coming to the law.

As a lawyer, I've really enjoyed working on front-end matters (drafting Major Projects / Infrastructure agreements such as turbine supply agreements, EPC contracts, O&M agreements) and dabble a little with back-end work (construction disputes). I've advised a range of clients including Google, Samsung, Vodafone, nbn, GoldLinQ (light rail), Qtectic (heavy rail), Stadium Queensland (infrastructure delivery) and Acciona (renewable energy).

I'm passionate about cities—in fact, it's really how I stumbled into the PhD programme at UQ. I was wandering around the campus during Brisbane Open House 2017, when I saw that the Forgan Smith building was open for tours—so I went along to see how BVN had refurbished the law school... and decided this was where I'd like to work and grow over the next few years (funnily enough: I currently work in the BVN-designed 480 Queen in the city).

I'm excited about smart city technology (urbantech), infrastructure delivery and the new ways people can come together to live, work and play. While in architecture school, I spent some time researching marine utopian proposals from the '70's (these came about as a reaction to the oil shocks of the time), which led to co-editing a book on Large Floating Structures.

Research focus

What interests me (and what I hope this blog will capture) is this idea of how the law will (or should) respond to infrastructure and the urban fabric that are increasingly imbued or enhanced with technology (whether that's sensors or augmented reality).

I'm interested in the exercise and mediation of power through this sensorised building (which raises privacy and surveillance issues), and how this feeds into larger policy questions of law that pertain to smart cities. In this, I'm hoping that some of the theories I learnt in architecture school will help inform my understanding of the context and drivers of smart city-creation, and the potential impacts on the existing legal landscape.

I'm also interested in exploring the self-aware building and surveillance at the earlier stages of a building's lifecycle; this idea of machine superintendence. Consider a building that's aware of it's own construction process—that is then able to independently assess progress claims made by a contractor, certify and automate payments via smart contracts on the blockchain (security of payment), issue variations and extensions of time and other directions—this raises the question of how machine learning, machine vision and AI can come together to create a code that meets or exceeds the legal obligations of a superintendent under a construction contract.

How I'd like to use this blog

I plan to curate and post a selection of what I'm reading (mostly 'newsy' articles and op-eds, less journal articles and books); thoughts on architecture, law and the city; snippets of where I'm at with my thinking and life as a PhD student... and hopefully find a pattern in all of this and chart a course through my research interests, the conversation I'm having with my supervisor, and my journey to getting a PhD.