James Taylor-Foster
Selected writing 2015 – 2020
  • About
  • Category
  • Title
  • Publication
  • Year
  • Projects
  • Planetary Protocols
  • 2018
James Taylor-Foster
editor & writer of essays & reviews,
architectural designer,
maker of exhibitions
Selected writing 2015 – 2020
  • Planetary Protocols

Our lives are governed by interwoven banks of collective customs, civic conventions, and public contracts. Often erratic, sometimes fleeting, and usually deeply ingrained in our patterns of life, these protocols silhouette our choices and shape the structure of society at every scale.

Fig 1. Planetary Protocols at ArkDes
Fig 2. Five events over five weeks

Anna Puigjaner
“Kitchenless Cities”

Response by Maria Lind (Director, Tensta Konsthall)

There was a time in New York when the house was understood as an open system. It was designed not as a single entity but as a set of connected fragments that could change depending on the need. The space was flexible and adaptable on demand, and expanded also by means of collective domestic services and spaces. The kitchen was optional as the rest of the rooms and sometimes it was left apart: kitchenless. This typology blurred the traditional limits between the public and the private sphere, between the domestic and the urban and thanks to its flexibility and share-ability was able to shrink radically housekeeping costs, waste and labour. Still nowadays the idea of home is ultimately a cultural construction whose malleable limits go beyond its physicality. A home and its kitchen is, therefore, a diffuse entity.

Anna Puigjaner is co-founder of MAIO and recipient of Harvard University’s 2016 Wheelwright Prize.

Kim Cook
“Creative by Design”

Response by Ana Betancour (Rector, Umeå School of Architecture)

When we as citizens are intentional about the use of design in the public realm we can nurture, facilitate, and even catalyse creativity, stronger social ties, and meaningful connections to each other – and to the places we inhabit. This event will present a contrast between general urban realities (using the United States as primary reference) and the annual temporary city in the Desert—called Black Rock City and known as Burning Man—which serves as an opportunity to explore how temporality allows us to innovate, test new ideas and enact creative experiments. The lessons of Burning Man offer the possibility of translating those temporary strategies into active choices that make a lasting impact in other environments. From the experiential to the physical: design matters.

Kim Cook is director of Art and Civic Engagement at Burning Man and former President/CEO of the Arts Council of New Orleans.

Durga Chew-Bose
“On Shallow Stairs”

Response by Ann-Sofi Noring (Co-Director, Moderna Museet)

“I think the writer has to be responsible to signs and dreams. Receptive and responsible,” said American author Joy Williams. “If you don’t do anything with it, you lose it. You stop getting these omens.” The potential loss that Williams speaks of is, perhaps, one of my greatest fears as a writer. Imagine that. A lacking born from turning off one’s feelers – those funny, hard-to-define inclinations we might have, those radars and heart beams that keep us open. On Shallow Stairs—although I promise it will be rife with tangents—will explore art as alloy and art as a gathering of signs and omens, as Williams puts it. Topics discussed will include: the writings and paintings of Manny Farber, Mexico City, fonts, overnight fixes, Agnès Varda, Agnes Martin, Abbas Kiarostami, sardines, family vacations, glassware, Peter Doig, Marguerite Duras, Montreal metros, sandcastles and Proust, and of course, shallow stairs.

Durga Chew-Bose authored Too Much and Not the Mood (2017) and is a senior editor at SSENSE.

Cooking Sections
“The Empire Remain Shop”

Response by Lisa Enzenhofer.

Empire Shops were first developed in London in the 1920s to teach the British how to consume foodstuffs from the colonies and overseas territories. Although none of the stores ever opened, they intended to make foods such as sultanas from Australia, oranges from Palestine, cloves from Zanzibar, and rum from Jamaica available and familiar in the British Isles. The Empire Remains Shop, a public installation that opened in 2016, speculates on the possibility and implications of selling back the remains of the British Empire in London today. The Empire Remains Shop works as a platform to investigate and explore postcolonial spatial implications behind the ‘exotic’ and the ‘tropical’, conflict geologies, the financialisation of ecosystems, ‘unnatural’ behaviours, the ecological perception of ‘invasive’ and ‘native’ species, the architecture of retiring to former colonies, or the construction of the offshore and Special Economic Zones.

Cooking Sections comprises architects Daniel Fernandes Pascual and Alon Schwabe.

Beatriz Colomina
“Social Media Urbanism”

Perhaps the most important transformation in the social, cultural and economic life in the 21st Century has been the arrival of social media. A new space for design has opened up. Indeed, social media is the ultimate space for design. Through its multiple platforms, we not only communicate and collaborate with wider and wider groups, but also refashion ourselves. Images, videos, texts, emojis, stickers, tweets, gifs, memes, comments, posts, and reposts are deployed to construct a digital personality. There was no social media before 2000. There has been an astonishing, exponential acceleration in the number of channels, users, interconnections, and speed. A few seconds has become a space for design. This is a complete transformation of the way we live with huge implications for the city.

Beatriz Colomina is Professor of History and Theory of Architecture at Princeton University.

 

Fig 3. Planetary Protocols designed by Daly & Lyon
Planetary Protocols took place at ArkDes in Stockholm in the Spring of 2018.

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James Taylor-Foster
editor & writer of essays & reviews,
architectural designer,
maker of exhibitions
  • CuratorialI.
  • ProjectsII.
  • PublicationsIII.
  • SpeakingIV.
  • WritingV.
I.Curatorial
  • WEIRD SENSATION FEELS GOOD2020
  • Architecture Projects: Skeppsbron2019
  • Cruising Pavilion2019
  • The Craft of Swedish Videogame Design2019
  • Sigurd Lewerentz: Freestanding2018
  • Space Popular: Value in the Virtual2018
  • Boxen at ArkDes2018
  • You Are Not Alone2017
  • In Therapy2016
  • Keeping Up Appearances2015
II.Projects
  • Plug-in Poesi2020
  • Pillow Talks2020
  • 〰️ Interdependence, a portrait of Stockholm2020
  • exhibiting architecture, exhibition models2020
  • Future Architecture Rooms2020
  • SOFT GOSSIP2020
  • alvedon series2020
  • asmrology2020
  • Mukbang Veneziano2020
  • Körper2019
  • Architecture on Display2018
  • Planetary Protocols2018
  • The Stones of Venice: A Kimono2017
  • Misunderstandings (A Reliquary)2016
III.Publications
  • Living on Water2017
  • Faith2016
  • Elemental Living2016
  • Abundance2016
  • Clairvoyance2015
  • People, Place, Purpose2015
  • Defiance2015
IV.Speaking
  • Future Architecture CEx2020 Focus Talks2020
  • ASMR at ArkDes: a Virtual Vernissage2020
  • Modevisningar är den flyktigaste formen av arkitektur2018
  • Attention, Accelerated2017
  • Exhibition Models2017
  • Conversation with Kenneth Frampton2017
  • Interview: “Profil” (RTV4 Slovenia)2017
V.Writing
  • What’s Mine Is Theirs: an interview with Max Lamb2020
  • No Time to Stand and Stare2020
  • 〰️ Screen Glow Sedation2020
  • 〰️ Don’t Fear a Snowflake2020
  • Making Believe with Charlap Hyman & Herrero2019
  • Foreword: On the Manifesto2019
  • On Practical Futurology2019
  • 〰️ To Speak As If In Capital Letters2019
  • In Riga, A Conference On Architecture and Migration2019
  • Baltoscandia: A Complex Utopia2018
  • On the Cruising Pavilion2018
  • 〰️ A Weak Monument2018
  • A Diary of Virgil Abloh’s First Louis Vuitton Show2018
  • 〰️ The Boat is Leaking. The Captain Lied.2018
  • 〰️ Virgil Abloh, Editor in Brief2018
  • Sigurd Lewerentz: Villa Edstrand2018
  • 〰️ On Liquid Modernity2017
  • 〰️ #003399, #FFCC00; The Meaning of a Flag2017
  • Pillars of Society: “Jantelagen”2017
  • Exhibiting the Postmodern2017
  • Future Architecture and the Idea of Europe2017
  • Domains of Influence2017
  • Concrete Mountain2017
  • Ingress: Black Rock City2017
  • In Dialogue With Gravity2017
  • Rem, Redacted2016
  • Media States, Or The State of Media2016
  • A Piece of England to Call One’s Own2016
  • Upon This Rock (I Will Build My Church)2016
  • The Design of the Species2016
  • Venice Isn’t Sinking, It’s Flooding2016
James Taylor-Foster
editor & writer of essays & reviews,
architectural designer,
maker of exhibitions
Selected writing 2015 – 2020
Projects
  • Planetary Protocols 2018
  • with Durga Chew-Bose, Beatriz Colomina, Kim Cook, Anna Puigjaner, Cooking Sections, Maria Lind, Anna Betancour, Ann-Sofi Noring & Lisa Enzenhofer at ArkDes
Back

Our lives are governed by interwoven banks of collective customs, civic conventions, and public contracts. Often erratic, sometimes fleeting, and usually deeply ingrained in our patterns of life, these protocols silhouette our choices and shape the structure of society at every scale.

Fig 1. Planetary Protocols at ArkDes
Fig 2. Five events over five weeks

Anna Puigjaner
“Kitchenless Cities”

Response by Maria Lind (Director, Tensta Konsthall)

There was a time in New York when the house was understood as an open system. It was designed not as a single entity but as a set of connected fragments that could change depending on the need. The space was flexible and adaptable on demand, and expanded also by means of collective domestic services and spaces. The kitchen was optional as the rest of the rooms and sometimes it was left apart: kitchenless. This typology blurred the traditional limits between the public and the private sphere, between the domestic and the urban and thanks to its flexibility and share-ability was able to shrink radically housekeeping costs, waste and labour. Still nowadays the idea of home is ultimately a cultural construction whose malleable limits go beyond its physicality. A home and its kitchen is, therefore, a diffuse entity.

Anna Puigjaner is co-founder of MAIO and recipient of Harvard University’s 2016 Wheelwright Prize.

Kim Cook
“Creative by Design”

Response by Ana Betancour (Rector, Umeå School of Architecture)

When we as citizens are intentional about the use of design in the public realm we can nurture, facilitate, and even catalyse creativity, stronger social ties, and meaningful connections to each other – and to the places we inhabit. This event will present a contrast between general urban realities (using the United States as primary reference) and the annual temporary city in the Desert—called Black Rock City and known as Burning Man—which serves as an opportunity to explore how temporality allows us to innovate, test new ideas and enact creative experiments. The lessons of Burning Man offer the possibility of translating those temporary strategies into active choices that make a lasting impact in other environments. From the experiential to the physical: design matters.

Kim Cook is director of Art and Civic Engagement at Burning Man and former President/CEO of the Arts Council of New Orleans.

Durga Chew-Bose
“On Shallow Stairs”

Response by Ann-Sofi Noring (Co-Director, Moderna Museet)

“I think the writer has to be responsible to signs and dreams. Receptive and responsible,” said American author Joy Williams. “If you don’t do anything with it, you lose it. You stop getting these omens.” The potential loss that Williams speaks of is, perhaps, one of my greatest fears as a writer. Imagine that. A lacking born from turning off one’s feelers – those funny, hard-to-define inclinations we might have, those radars and heart beams that keep us open. On Shallow Stairs—although I promise it will be rife with tangents—will explore art as alloy and art as a gathering of signs and omens, as Williams puts it. Topics discussed will include: the writings and paintings of Manny Farber, Mexico City, fonts, overnight fixes, Agnès Varda, Agnes Martin, Abbas Kiarostami, sardines, family vacations, glassware, Peter Doig, Marguerite Duras, Montreal metros, sandcastles and Proust, and of course, shallow stairs.

Durga Chew-Bose authored Too Much and Not the Mood (2017) and is a senior editor at SSENSE.

Cooking Sections
“The Empire Remain Shop”

Response by Lisa Enzenhofer.

Empire Shops were first developed in London in the 1920s to teach the British how to consume foodstuffs from the colonies and overseas territories. Although none of the stores ever opened, they intended to make foods such as sultanas from Australia, oranges from Palestine, cloves from Zanzibar, and rum from Jamaica available and familiar in the British Isles. The Empire Remains Shop, a public installation that opened in 2016, speculates on the possibility and implications of selling back the remains of the British Empire in London today. The Empire Remains Shop works as a platform to investigate and explore postcolonial spatial implications behind the ‘exotic’ and the ‘tropical’, conflict geologies, the financialisation of ecosystems, ‘unnatural’ behaviours, the ecological perception of ‘invasive’ and ‘native’ species, the architecture of retiring to former colonies, or the construction of the offshore and Special Economic Zones.

Cooking Sections comprises architects Daniel Fernandes Pascual and Alon Schwabe.

Beatriz Colomina
“Social Media Urbanism”

Perhaps the most important transformation in the social, cultural and economic life in the 21st Century has been the arrival of social media. A new space for design has opened up. Indeed, social media is the ultimate space for design. Through its multiple platforms, we not only communicate and collaborate with wider and wider groups, but also refashion ourselves. Images, videos, texts, emojis, stickers, tweets, gifs, memes, comments, posts, and reposts are deployed to construct a digital personality. There was no social media before 2000. There has been an astonishing, exponential acceleration in the number of channels, users, interconnections, and speed. A few seconds has become a space for design. This is a complete transformation of the way we live with huge implications for the city.

Beatriz Colomina is Professor of History and Theory of Architecture at Princeton University.

 

Fig 3. Planetary Protocols designed by Daly & Lyon
Planetary Protocols took place at ArkDes in Stockholm in the Spring of 2018.
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