Founded in 2015 by Igor Bragado and Miles Gertler, Common Accounts is an architecture practice and creative agency operating over satellite, server and fibre cables between Seoul, Toronto and New York. For this week's Small Studio Snapshot, we talk with the two about starting a practice while still at school, the astrological compatibility needed to run one, and their research into digital afterlives.
What motivated you to start your own practice?
It started very naturally at the Princeton School of Architecture. Our joint thesis research got the attention of a few of our professors who were at the time directing two biennales: one in Istanbul, the other in Seoul. We expanded and tested our thesis in those two venues. To this day, much of the work we are doing is still an extension of our thesis.
If we have to pinpoint a starting moment, that would be when were first asked for an interview while we were still at school. The writer asked us for our office's name and a few hours later, we had a placeholder website.
Oh, and Horoscope.com would have us believe that, "Aries gives Leo the assertiveness to charge ahead and take chances, while Leo can help teach Aries to stabilize and follow things through. Aries may sometimes hurt Leo’s feelings by saying something hurtful without thinking. Conversely, Aries may be irritated by Leo’s bossy nature and tendency to sulk. But they’re both loyal and care about each other deeply, and when they can understand there doesn’t have to be a boss, their relationship can be exciting bliss." So with that in mind it all seems rather inescapable.
What was your thesis research on, and how has the project evolved alongside your practice's current ventures?
Quick version: Our thesis was a take on death as a plastic force and city builder in its encounters with daily urban life.
If the last half century of architecture was looking at death as a site for poetics and metaphysics, disregarding the material business of death’s impact on the shaping of the city, then we instead wanted to seize on a number of contemporary situations and reclaim a space for death in the resolution of its own conflicts like lack of land availability, environmental concerns, and the prospect of a digital afterlife. We channeled several of the ways in which people were already memorializing and designing bodies in reaction to close encounters with death well beyond the traditional sites in which design has taken it on. We recognized that new technologies in the disposition of human remains presented new opportunities for the production of value, and demanded new forms of ceremony to match.
As for the spin offs of that research: we recently built a prototypical funeral home for the virtual afterlife, pairing alkaline hydrolysis with the collection of the digital remains of a life lived online for the Seoul International Biennale on Architecture and Urbanism. Further, our interest in online rituals, subcultures, and body transformations expanded into a research on the cosmetic industry. This got the attention of LVMH, with whom we are currently working as consultants in the confluence of self-design, lifestyle, architecture and social media.
You operate globally between Seoul, Toronto and New York. For a small practice, how does this work and what sort of challenges and opportunities come with it?
For us the distant geolocations offer the possibility to mobilize certain interests that we are aligned with or to which we can claim some knowledge. For instance, the simultaneity of our locations produces access to various subcultures (cosmetic surgery enthusiasts, K-Pop cults, and tribes of blue chip gallerinas) we might not otherwise be poised to engage. The sites of production for our projects are far apart in geographical terms as much as in their medium specificity. We are currently designing massage chairs, a scarf, a thermal techno-quilt with tassels, a music video, a beauty bar for cosmetics, a house, and a book, in places like Shanghai, Toronto and Madrid. The case is that intellectually, they are all extremely closely tied. Besides the distant geographies, we do believe that we are acting locally, since local for us is also a matter of intellectual proximity. This is an architecture practice without a center, and for us, that feels about right.
This is an architecture practice without a center, and for us, that feels about right.
What this means is that while we bring a specific knowledge to the production site, we rely on a network of agents that are each time new to us (builders, structure consultants, lawyers, coordinators, curators, performers...). We navigate each new subject with a collaborative reliance on a fresh cast of actors. This is the server/user mode that Caroline A. Jones has identified in current art studios. The outcome of this is that we lack control over a number of details that were thought to be fundamental for architecture just a few years back, but at the same time, we can claim expertise over issues that only a few years back no architect would.
Your website is clearly much more than just a visual overview of the firms work. Can you talk a bit about what is behind it?
Our site and Instagram are a reflection of the aforementioned dispersed, uncontrolled, deferred, mediated mode of production. It's closer to a database than a portfolio. There's a lack of boundaries between projects or sites, where there is no beginning and no end, and where all content shares the same space and enjoys equal relevance. The latest video of a Korean lifestyle blogger and a pdf of Sigfried Giedion's of Mechanization Takes Command occupy the same amount of MB and are present on our site, server, and Instagram. There is also the possibility of multiple narratives overlapping one another or in conflict. We are interested in what this points at, which is the end of single narrative-based architecture, where those potential conflicts and misinterpretations are an opportunity for connection rather than a threat to authenticity, to paraphrase K-hole's Youth Mode report from 2013 (what ever happened to K-Hole?).
Do you guys see yourself growing beyond the two of you?
We're big enough to generate healthy debate and small enough to establish occasional consensus
Our lack of interest in a single narrative-based architecture is also as a lack of interest in author-architecture. The aesthetic multiplicity that you see on the Instagram account or website is also our MO. Common Accounts is directed by Igor Bragado and Miles Gertler but there is rarely any endeavor that is done just by the two of us. This is partly by design and partly by the necessity of having experts in other fields of knowledge. The future? We would like to be able to establish a healthy layer system for our drawings, bring on brilliant collaborators who can push the work forward, and maintain the luxury of lavishing 2 hours on a single footnote, as we ought to admit we currently do.
What are the benefits of having your own practice?
Setting the agenda! Deep diving into our own preoccupations! Developing an intellectual project intimately linked between all aspects of our work: everything is part of our design "project."
And staying small?
We're big enough to generate healthy debate and small enough to establish occasional consensus. As a small office, it's easier to have everyone up to speed, fully informed, in every conversation. We're not too concerned about this in the face of growing larger though. Whether its KakaoTalk, WeChat, or WhatsApp (we're hardly platform loyal) we can get all our collaborators and stakeholders on the line simultaneously. We like to quote one of our client's business development slogans on this front: Anywhere, Anytime, on Any Device!
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