Fellow Fellows is a series that focuses on the current eruption of fellowships in academia today. Within this realm, these positions produce a fantastic blend of practice, research and design influence, traditionally within a tight time-frame. Fellow Fellows sits down with these fellows and attempts to understand what these positions offer to both themselves and the discipline at large. Fellow Fellows is about bringing attention and inquiry to the otherwise maddening pace of refreshed academics while giving a broad view of the breakthrough work being done by those who exist in-between the newly minted graduate and the licensed associate. 

This week we are talking to Outpost Office. Outpost Office is lead by Ashley Bigham and Erik Herrmann. Both Ashley and Erik have both Walter B. Sanders Fellows at Taubman College of Architecture + Urban Planning at the University of Michigan. (Ashley in 2015-16 and Erik in 2016-17.)

1. The conversation, focus and applications to fellowships in general has exploded over the past decade. They have become the go to means of exposure, legitimization within the academia and in some respect the HOV lane of historically PhD owned territories of research and publication. What are your views of the current standing of fellowships as a vehicle of conceptual exploration?

We wouldn’t presume to know too much about PhD programs, as they differ greatly and neither of us have pursued one, but the major differences between the PhD and fellowship models are clearly duration and format. In our experience, a design-based fellowship tends to encourage research through design rather than other forms of scholarship, which makes it a uniquely beneficial venue for developing a body of work. It sounds cliche, but fellowships really do provide the space and resources to experiment, take risks and try something new.

2. What fellowship where you in and what brought you to that fellowship?

We were both Walter B. Sanders Fellows at Taubman College of Architecture + Urban Planning at the University of Michigan. (Ashley in 2015-16 and Erik in 2016-17.) We considered fellowships at a lot of different schools and looking back we were really lucky to be invited to Michigan. There are typically three Fellows each year at Taubman College. Being part of a group of fellows provides you a supportive peer group from day one. You can share experiences, conversations, and provocations between the group. The diversity of ideas of the three fellows helps frame contemporary issues and obsessions in architecture more broadly, offering plurality to the school in a productive way.

3. What was the focus of the fellowship research? What did you produce? Teach? And or exhibit during that time?

Ashley: My fellowship project Safety Not Guaranteed explored the relationship between architecture and defense. As an alternative to the term defense architecture, a category which typically refers to forms and types (fortresses, citadels, bastions, urban walls), the project proposed the idea of an architecture of defense. An architecture of defense sees all of architecture as a reaction to some measure of paranoia. This project envisions a possible design future for the American suburb in an increasingly fortified world. Based on historical research on the role of architects in the formation of defense typologies, the project speculates on the role that technology, surveillance, and fear continue to play in creating the possibility of even more extreme new typologies of defense. Suburbia was used both as a typology for study and as a testing ground upon which to project future architectural possibilities.

Based on historical research on the role of architects in the formation of defense typologies, the project speculates on the role that technology, surveillance, and fear continue to play in creating the possibility of even more extreme new typologies of defense.

Safety Not Guaranteed took the form of three architectural models which drew specific inspiration in content and representation from historic military precedents. It misreads precedents of contemporary types and tendencies, recasting them as defensive in a speculation that oscillates between possible pasts and likely futures. As the research component, I developed a small publication with contributions from other writers and designers. The book tackled everything from parking lot barricades to border walls, aiming to show how defense is built into (or slapped onto) architecture today.

Concurrent to the fellowship research, I taught a studio which focused on Amazon warehouses, privacy in workplaces, and corporate secrecy. There were productive overlaps in the themes of the studio and the fellowship research, but they were also very distinct. My fellowship project focused on the American suburbs, and the studio was an experiment in transferring those same issues to new sites and contexts.

Erik: Fundamentally, I’m interested in alternative forms of the digital project in architecture. Eschewing specialization and positivism, I’m less interested in the computer as a tool and more interested in it as a lens for viewing the world. I spent the year before my fellowship in Germany studying the first wave of digital design and the computer art movement of the 1960s and much of my work deals with themes from this research. For me, it’s far more interesting to consider the conceptual challenges of making the continuous world discrete than to speculate on the productive capacities of machines. I think this reflects a broader cultural shift where computers have ceased being seen as objects of productivity and are now understood as the mediating devices through which we experience the world, for better or worse. Architecture should follow suit, which likely results in a highly dispersed, unrecognizable digital project.

Following suit, the fellowship project dealt with the broadest impact of digitalization on design, which I consider to be the computer’s capacity to convert any object into many, whether through familiar operative tropes of serialization or mass customization to more subtle effects of our networked existence. These effects were illustrated in my fellowship installation, which included an enormous cabinet of hundreds of rooms compulsively filled with experiments I conducted throughout the year. These objects fill the cabinet in varied representations, materials and scales, transfiguring in form, scale or materiality as they recur throughout. The cabinet builds from a simple set of four chambers at its lowest level to a diffused field of rooms at the zenith.

I think this reflects a broader cultural shift where computers have ceased being seen as objects of productivity and are now understood as the mediating devices through which we experience the world, for better or worse.

In parallel to my fellowship work, I was fortunate to teach a seminar on design computation and a representation course where my students and I reconsidered the grid as a trope in representation and computation.

4. What is the pedagogical role of the fellowship and how does it find its way into the focus and vision of the institution that you worked with?

Teaching is the least discussed but certainly the most rewarding aspect of the fellowship. Fellows at Michigan teach a variety of courses from coordinated core studios, representation courses, topics seminars, or open-topic studios. We always felt an incredible amount of freedom and support for our teaching. Michigan has a robust legacy of architecture fellowships that have been in place for over thirty years and the school thrives on the energy of the fellowship and recruits many of its faculty from past fellows.

...we are more and more interested in what we teach students today, how we teach it, and why we teach it. Fellows are often recently out of graduate school themselves, so they tend to bring some (or a lot) of pedagogy with them. 

As we are now in our third year of full-time teaching we are more and more interested in what we teach students today, how we teach it, and why we teach it. Fellows are often recently out of graduate school themselves, so they tend to bring some (or a lot) of pedagogy with them. Observing how the school incorporates these ideas has been particularly fascinating.

5. Where do you see the role of the fellowship becoming in the future and how does it fit within the current discipline of architecture?

It seems like a win-win for the school and the fellow—it’s an opportunity to try something new without a long-term commitment on either side. It’s a way for schools to stay current to larger discussions happening in the discipline, and the Fellow receives a platform and institutional support for their design research.

The model appears to be thriving as more schools offer fellowships, but there’s a lot of room for further innovation. This year at Taubman the school is offering new Postdoctoral Fellowships with a 2-year term that target candidates offering expertise in research areas outlined in a Building Tomorrow agenda laid out by our new dean Jonathan Massey. We’re excited to see how this new fellowship model impacts the school and its pedagogy.  

6. What was your next step after the fellowship?

After two years of consecutive fellowships at Michigan, we continued at the College as lecturers. We have shifted from the Fellowship year where the emphasis is on one, focused project, to working more collaboratively with colleagues on a variety of projects and developing our collective work as Outpost Office. Beyond the University of Michigan, we’ve worked to share our work and make connections with faculty and professionals in the region.

We’re convinced that architecture is about how you look at the world...

The post-fellowship phase also allowed us to take some risks and experiment with different formats. Recently, we launched the podcast Site Visit in order to formalize one of our favorite activities—talking to architects about buildings. We’re convinced that architecture is about how you look at the world and Site Visit attempts to bring this conversation to audiences of all types, something we also aim to do in our recent built projects.

7. What are you working on now and how is it tied to the work done during the fellowship?

After the fellowships, we took some time to develop the work of Outpost Office. Looking back at our two Fellowship projects, the seeds of our current interests were already there, but we have used the time to build on this work and take it it new directions. It’s a work in progress, but the platform and space provided by our fellowships has been invaluable.   

We’re also excited to be part of Becoming Digital, a year long project at Taubman College reconsidering the impact of an increasing naturalization of digital technology on design and visual culture. The project is co-organized by Adam Fure and Ellie Abrons of T+E+A+M and they’ve done an incredible job including a broad range of current and past fellows from Taubman in the project.

8. What advice would you have for prospective fellowship applicants?

Apply. Apply. Apply. There are a lot of talented people out there, and sometimes it is just luck of the draw. If you’re serious about pursuing the opportunity, don’t miss a cycle. Just go for it. When and if you do, make sure that the process is productive for you. There’s an immense satisfaction to making a fellowship proposal. It demands taking a position, identifying a focus and reflecting carefully on what your next step should be. It’s enormously helpful for your own development to stop and consider what you should do next.