Where think tank meets real world: GSAPP's Studio-X

Location: 180 Varick St., Ste. 1610, New York
Praça Tiradentes, 48, Rio de Janeiro
Kitab Mahal, 192, D N Rd., Mumbai
A103, 46 Fangjia Hutong, Beijing
Imagination, Anywhere
This is Studio-X: studio meaning empty, usable space, and X meaning anything can happen. The suite at 180 Varick St., since it is currently between exhibitions, may not look like much—industrial metal doors open onto a casual office space of black chairs, views of Hoboken, and jeans-wearing members of Graduate School of Architecture, Planning and Preservation.

What is Studio-X?

Malwina Lys-Dobradin, Studio-X Director for Global Network Programming put it simply: “Studio-X is essentially an advanced network of research laboratories around the world for exploring the future of cities. It’s a think tank by day, event space by night.”

The brainchild of Mark Wigley, Dean of GSAPP, Studio-X was created with the hopes of propagating further brainchildren—a network of innovations really, across professions, methodologies, and continents.

Studio-X NYC was established as a prototype in 2008, when Gavin Browning, GSAPP ’08 and current GSAPP Director of Events and Public Programs, was given the first programming reigns of the space at 180 Varick St. The building also houses the likes of Dutch architect Rem Koolhaas and design firm 2x4.

“It was always the case that it was a space for faculty research and a space for events,” Browning said, noting that Wigley rented Suite 1610 before hiring him. “That’s what makes the conversations new.”

The idea of creating opportunity for unique discussion has driven the studio since its beginnings, as evidenced by the title of Browning’s book about the project, “The Studio-X NY Guide to Liberating New Forms of Conversation” (2010).

After Browning stepped down in October 2010, the overseer position for Studio-X NYC was empty until Aug. 15, when Wigley brought on Geoff Manaugh, known for his “BLDGBLOG,” and Nicola Twilley, who started Foodprint Project and the blog “Edible Geography.” The new co-directors hope only to liberate further conversation around the central theme of the future of cities.

“By having it [Studio-X] off campus there’s a deliberate attempt to allow Studio-X to have its own agenda that’s outside the department as well as outside Columbia University itself,” Manaugh said. This agenda includes soliciting the perspectives of policemen, epidemiologists, archaeologists, novelists, and others. “There’s this huge range of people out there who have opinions about cities,” Manaugh said, “and it’s a nice opportunity … to not limit it to a really specific academic or architectural audience.”

Concretely, Studio-X is a space for meetings scheduled and not, GSAPP lab work, events, and exhibitions. According to Lys-Dobradin, “Browning did an amazing job of archiving all of the different types of events that took place.” His book includes 23 examples of event typologies that happened at Studio-X NYC in his two years there and instructions for exactly recreating the space—right down to the bathroom key.

Though as far as Browning is concerned, Twilley and Manaugh are free to expand, tighten, or completely do away with the system he created. “It has to keep on changing, so it shouldn’t be what I did,” he said.

Lys-Dobradin also seemed confident in the new directors. She said, “The fact that Nicky and Geoff are now our directors at Studio-X New York has big implications—they’re some of the world’s most widely read bloggers.”

Twilley and Manaugh have already opened the space to more impromptu rendezvous, which are open to the public and announced by tweet (@StudioXNYC). In their short time at Studio-X, they’ve also launched the event series “Conflict Cities” and “Night School,” which incorporates lectures and lessons the likes of which won’t be found on any CU syllabus.

The first event, on Sept. 1, featured Liam Young, leader of the “Unknown Fields Division,” a nomadic design studio at the Architectural Association School of Architecture in London. Young has taken his students on some rather unconventional field trips—to Chernobyl, for example, or for a casual canoe trip up the Amazon.

“His ‘Night School’ was about architect as the explorer,” Twilley said, “but then the tangible skill that you could take away at the end is how do you put a trip like this together?” First, persuade an insurance company to cover students inside a radioactive zone.

A global project

Browning wasn’t aware that his Studio-X was to become one of many, but Lys-Dobradin said, “Even though New York was the pilot project, I think the Dean’s idea was always that this was going to become an active global network.” Moscow and Amman will soon join the list of addressed Studio-X locations.

All the studios were pioneered by GSAPP—by Wigley himself, and all maintain the same core vision. “Every Studio-X is imagined as this kind of off-campus hub for conversation and unexpected collaborations between disciplines,” Manaugh said.

Lys-Dobradin extended the list of similarities: “They’re all big, loft-like open spaces, always located in the heart of the city, in a historic neighborhood,” she said.

But Twilley also stressed the different strengths, opportunities, and methods of each location. Whereas she and Manaugh both have writing backgrounds to make use of, Manaugh explained that for director Rajeev Thakker in Mumbai “the idea of writing and blogging is one of the last things he wants to do … he wants to do interventions in the city and do actual design.”

Director of Studio-X Pedro Rivera finds his studio to be similarly focused to that of Mumbai. Having met Thakker in person at the Mumbai studio launch in February 2011, he said “Mumbai has many urban issues that are similar to ours—the scale is much bigger.”

Unlike in New York, Rio’s city government has gotten involved with the studio—going so far as to furnish it with a villa in a historic square and a specific project.

According to Rivera, the Praça Tiradentes was “Rio’s Broadway of the 19th century” but deteriorated into a red light district. “They offered us this building, because they want us to be part of the renovation process, and we are fully committed … to develop activities to energize the place,” he said, adding, “Somehow the square is now in fashion.”

But though some of his work is more concretely and locally rooted than Manaugh’s and Twilley’s, Rivera’s most recent exhibition, “Central Futuros” or “Future of Downtown,” clearly fits in with the universal Studio-X vision.

“You can learn from one another,” Manaugh said. “It’s like assembling an A-team.”

It’s an A-team across multiple time zones, though, which poses obvious difficulties. “We are now in the process of establishing …. a platform so that we can communicate easily and also communicate the set of activities that we prepare,” Rivera said. “I think next year will be a great year for us, because we will already be settled, all of us.”

Lys-Dobradin echoed the need to open real-time channels of communication but seemed to think it a farther off goal, one “in the first development stages.”

Meanwhile, traveling GSAPP faculty and students physically bridge the gap between locations. While various GSAPP studios have already made their marks abroad, starting next spring it will be compulsory for GSAPP faculty to bring their students to a Studio-X outside New York.

Just another program for grad students?

“There is that level of kind of a trusted core audience from the architecture school, but … our goal is definitely to broaden it … to have undergrads mixing with grads mixing with faculty mixing with the general public,” Manaugh said. “The cliché that I always use is to put on an event that my dad would want to come to.”

Looking at some of Studio-X NYC’s upcoming programs, one may be inclined to think that Manaugh’s dad is a pretty hip guy. The next “Night School” on Nov. 1 at 7 p.m. will teach the art of hacking cameras and the takeaway skill for a later one will be how to put together a zine. “And if there’s undergrads that want to put something on,” Manaugh said, letting Twilley finish his thought, “we’re open to good ideas.”

An idea of his own that Manaugh seemed particularly excited about is the studio’s November film festival “Breaking Out and Breaking In,” which will explore the architecture of prison breaks and bank heists. Manaugh cited Spike Lee’s “Inside Man” as an example where the mastermind played by Clive Owen builds a fake room inside the bank and hides there for a week before strolling out with his diamond. “It’s the idea of looking at the architecture as a series of obstacles that you have to cut through in ways that the original architect didn’t plan,” Manaugh said.

Twilley added that a heist is about “finding new space within the space you already have.” Just as Studio-X is about finding room to imagine the future—even if that future is student seeing herself as a camera hacker—inside cities packed with the material present.