INBOUND/OUTSOURCED

Global Assemblages
Our everyday space and lives are surrounded by the vestiges of outsourced production: a garment you are currently wearing with the ‘Made in China’ label; a Nike Air that is designed in Oregon, made of fifty-two components arriving from five countries and assembled in South Korea; the manager you talk to on the phone regarding your Hertz rental car upgrade sitting in Bangalore speaking with a perfect American accent. The Fuji apple you enjoy, originally derived from two American apple varieties, was genetically altered at the Tohoku Research Station in Morioka, Japan in the late 1930’s. In the United States, even electricity used to illuminate Manhattan’s Times Square is sourced from Canada. In the healthcare industry, radiology scans are diagnosed overseas and sent back to a physician in the UK in a near real-time environment. Corporate architecture firms outsource drawing and CAD work to operators in India to reduce costs. You can outsource a video game character to China to be played around-the-clock, gaining skills and attributes so you can begin at a more advanced level. Outsourcing is not just a way to do business; it is a way of life.

Inbound Products
The unit will begin the year-long investigation by analyzing specific everyday products, from microchips to fruit, tracing the linkages the products have to more intricate systems. The researched patterns, facts and statistics may also reveal hierarchies, priorities, inequalities, and nuances in the system of global production. Continuing the inquiry, students will design a display unit of the product and develop a presentation strategy for the research uncovered during the investigation.

Outsource Agency
A site visit to Hong Kong is scheduled end of autumn from Dec 3rd-14th, with visits to manufacturing spaces in China. These generic facilities are flexible in nature and react swiftly to market demand, allowing for the transference of work from one sector to another. The necessity for economic survival creates highly contested conditions that are defined not only by geographical location, but by a diverse combination of factors such as language, education, trade politics, human rights, policy-making and communication.

Parent companies commonly have offices in developed countries with back offices operating around the globe. In response to this tendency, the unit will focus on designing a Hong Kong ‘agency’ that functions as an anchor, display and meeting space for a more distant workforce. Addressing issues of identity for the corporation, this architectural space acts as a mediation between the global and local, the front and back office. Whilst the design is pursued we will launch into debate about designing and respecting the local neighborhood fabric of HK, whilst raising questions about development and planning issues that are facing rapidly changing global cities. In utilizing custom real-time software, the project will culminate with the design of a façade system, a site where branding, consumerism, display, and information collapse to form a technologically driven surface.