* Framework

Workshopping presents projects that involve the architect as the initiator of a trans-disciplinary cooperative team focused on research, social engagement, and private initiative for public benefit. Rather than await a framework for solving a problem to present itself, workshoppers initiate that framework for themselves, identifying problems, assembling collaborators, marshaling resources, and ultimately seeing through the eventual solution. In a new economic and political context where activism and pragmatism are rewarded and submission to ideology and trust in hierarchy are not, Workshopping offers a new vision for an American model of architectural practice.

Workshopping occurs across an ideologically, geographically, and generationally diverse range of practices, from small offices engaged in tactical design projects in the city such as Hood Design and MOS; to large corporations organizing urban space networks at a large scale such as John Portman & Associates; from independently organized teams such as that formed by Guy Nordenson, Catherine Seavitt, ARO, LSU Coastal Sustainability Studio and Anthony Fontenot to explore the future of New York Harbor and the Mississippi Delta as public space; to alternative schools and NGOs that take on design and research projects in the public interest such as Archeworks, Terreform, and CityLab. Whether working through material and structural experimentation, community engagement, or development models, what brings these projects together is a common conviction that architectural practices can initiate positive change in the city.

To the theme of the 2010 Venice Biennale, People Meet in Architecture, Workshopping presents two responses: one is that the changing model of architectural practice in America brings a new engagement with public space in a country with a long history of both activism and antagonism towards the city, leading a renaissance in the spaces in which people meet. The second is that this new model is also leading to a revolution in architectural process, creating a new public space of ideas where people meet over architecture. This is the space that Workshopping promises, the charged atmosphere of solution-finding.

— Michael Rooks
— Jonathan D. Solomon