"Extent": a hyper-programmed structure sits in the subtle landscape of Morongo Valley, California. Team lead by Kyle May, Architect. Photo by Daniel Schwartz.

Located near the more buzzing cities of Joshua Tree and Palm Springs, the Morongo Valley is not a place one typically associates with experimental architecture. But, for a week back in May, the High Desert was met by a group of students making the scenic trek inland to try their hands at designing and building exploratory units (while also getting a healthy dose of Vitamin D).

The students were from SCI-Arc and INDA, the International Program in Design and Architecture at Chulalongkorn University in Bangkok. They were there for "Landing," a week-long course curated by Danny Wills and Gian Maria Socci and the first successful expedition of their office Space Saloon's mobile educational camp. Wills is currently getting his Post-Professional Degree in Design Theory and Pedagogy at SCI-Arc, and Socci is an educator at INDA. Both with a long-time interest in exploring new formats for education, the two wanted to run a design laboratory with the goal of crafting a collaborative hands-on experience. 

For the inaugural camp, they chose the theme of Landing to push the boundaries of traditional site analysis. Through a series of curated workshops, the students were trained in a combination of analog and digital surveying methods, environmental sensing technologies, hands-on building tools, and collaborative virtual design devices. Activities ranged from an in-depth case study of the structural geology of Morongo Valley to learning how to make one's own contact mic and building temporary structures. Over the course of the program, students worked with a range of professionals—from instructors and architects to filmmakers, photographers, and architectural technologists—to analyze, design, build, capture, and process their collected data and work.

The two plan to evolve the program into a mobile platform—"an educational group that can move from place to place", as they explain. Here, after a successful first run with Landing, the two describe the journey.

To begin, what is the motivation behind the workshop?

We’ve always wanted to explore new formats for education. Our motivation behind “Landing” was this idea to do a concentrated form of education—a week where we gather people from around the world and come together on one topic and see what comes out of that. It was kind of a perfect alignment of many interests we had and that we were trying to promote: the understanding of the landscape and also, some sort of hands-on education.

We’re working on a few different projects under our practice Space Saloon and all of them are with students. We really like defining ourselves as this educational platform in that regard. We’ve been involved in a few other design-build workshops with a different set of students, a different set of designers, artists, and universities. With Landing, the scale was a bit different. We were the promoters and organizers of everything. We worked more as curators than designers in this case.

How did you team up?

Five years ago, we were working together in Zurich and then we started living together. Gian is currently living in Bangkok and now, Danny will be joining this Fall to start teaching as well. We’ve really enjoyed having this exchange of ideas and really agree on a lot of things. The fact that we are moving around a lot is also what defines Space Saloon. We don’t want it to be an office situated in one place forever. We really want to capitalize on this idea that we are mobile.

Danny is at SCI-Arc this year finishing up a post-professional degree in Design Theory and Pedagogy, which is very specifically focused on how to conduct your own teaching project. Gian is teaching at INDA, the International Program in Design and Architecture in Thailand. We leveraged those two positions to build that student network. In the future we want to be able to get to the point where we operate independently so we don’t have to rely on our academic credentials. That’s a long process. We are starting a non-profit which is going to take some time, and there is obviously a lot of legal issues involved in not having the backing of institutions. We are very grateful in this instance to have their help this year. But, we want to get to the point where we don’t need to rely on those connections so we can build networks that aren’t based just in architecture school or the certain geography where we are.

What are some of the problems—or “gaps”—in architectural education that you guys are responding to?

It’s hard for us to say that we want to respond to something we see as a problem—we definitely have things we want to steer away from but defining us in that way is something we find problematic. We are not necessarily a reaction to something we don’t like, rather we are just trying to go towards interests we have.

But, to answer that question specifically, for Landing, it was really about how we as architects deal with site analysis. We really found a problem with how briefs are delivered, whether in a competition or design studios or other design-build projects, where you are very far removed from the places you are designing for. You have no other connection to that site other than a few documents, which defines the whole reality of your project.

In this process of discovering reality, you’ll find new ways of designing and new information that would be completely inaccessible otherwise.

We wanted to use that analysis and process of investigating a place and really turn that into the core of the project. Students worked with different workshop leaders and artists to spend a good amount of time investigating the site and defining their own subjective perspectives of the site and then coming back together and trying to understand what all of that meant.

Since both of us have been very much involved with architecture education for a long time, we understand the value of a very abstract conceptual brief. However, we don’t see why these could not be supported or implemented in a real world scenario and context. We see so much added value in doing that, both for being consistent and grounded, but also, because in this process of discovering reality, you’ll find new ways of designing and new information that would be completely inaccessible otherwise.

How did you find the site?

Pure happenstance, my sister was living in Palm Springs for a while and met this guy who is starting to invest a lot of energy in Morongo Valley, which is located pretty conveniently between Joshua Tree, LA, and Palm Springs. The area is pretty ripe with things going on: Coachella, Pappy & Harriet’s, Modernism Week, etc. There is a lot of attention especially from LA. But, Morongo Valley itself is this area where everyone passes through so we were happy to do it there. We talked with him for a while. He has a lot of different properties and he wants to experiment with people who want to do stuff with his property. So he is also looking for future iterations of this to even go larger. He wants to support people as much as we want to support people. He really gave us the opportunity to experiment with this.

How was the curriculum designed?

Basically, we prepared a very loose brief identifying, what for us, were meaningful layers of the landscape. Then, the various people and colleagues we were in contact with crafted particular briefs for their own project. It was a constant feedback between what we wanted to discover and what their own interests were. It was a natural match.

As a first round, it was a lot of recruiting from our network, close friends, people we’ve worked with in the past. We treated it as a platform from the get go, so everything we are doing, everyone we are collaborating with, we want to make sure that it is as beneficial for them as much as it is for us. We want to make sure they are creating work they are happy with but also in a context that is educational for our students. A lot of the leaders were interested in that fact because some of them have never taught before. To be confronted with this idea of “How do I communicate my work?” to students really pushed their work to grow in a way they didn’t expect.

How do you describe and conceptualize of the program?

We often refer to what we do as expeditions rather than projects because when you think about architects designing projects, they get a brief and then they sit in their office and start developing proposals which are most likely based on preconceived ideas. Whereas with an expedition, you go, you approach places you don't know and you're very open minded about it.

You have some interest but you're open to new discoveries and then of course you have to master your tools. In order to find something interesting, you have to know what to look for. But it's really this idea of the discovery that I think is related to the use of certain technologies for creative means or creative goals.

It’s about how to put a creative lens on something like a scientific process that normally says it has to be so regulated

Creativity is a good word to bring up in that process, it’s about how to put a creative lens on something like a scientific process that normally says it has to be so regulated. Data is a very quantitative thing, but then there is a very qualitative process from data to meaning. If you take the temperature of the place, that doesn’t mean anything until you’ve put your subjective qualifications on what “comfort” actually means.

For instance, let’s look at the two extremes, if you look at scientists they use technology to prove a point. To get data and proofs. Whereas designers might use technology just to sell or realize their idea which you know is coming from a different source. We hope to bridge those two approaches and make the discovery creative in itself. We want to equip students with tools; the ability to develop their own tools or processes or methods for investigation and not relying on a brief to come to you. You design the brief yourself by the way you are looking at a place.

What is happening with the projects built on site?

There were two large, main projects which the two teams split and divided and those projects, the site owner intends to keep. We left them with him to do whatever he wants. One of them he is going to build out to a pavilion, just to hang out in the middle of that landscape. The other one functions very utilitarian as a bar, as a space to host events, which I think to him, is very important. We never went in designing for him but in the end, we are very happy we gave him something that he could also use.

Then there is a series of installations and sculptures. One hopefully stays forever, because that was the point of it. There is a steel plate attached to a granite wall and it references tectonic shifts and deep time and all these things. Other installations were only meant for that week and others, literally just for the day that they happened. I think going forward, we really want to push that these things can have any lifespan. We don’t put a judgement on whether they stay forever as long as the material is getting used or recycled. There was a lot of documentation and assessment of the built architecture and their environmental conditions. But also, they can have their own life develop independently.

This was one workshop, we did right after in Thailand, working with an artisan community that crafts metal bowls for Buddhist ceremonies. Gian has been working with that community for a long time and the INDA students have been involved. The project that was left there hopefully has an impact on a larger scale. The point was to bring attention to the community and hopefully get them recognized as a historical area. For our projects in some way, if we reach that moment where they get what they need and then the project itself disappears, that’s fine with us as long as it did what it needs to do for in that moment in time.

This also generates an interesting relationship between the material outcome of the workshop and the knowledge generated. As an example, what is happening now for the Thai project is that we built this very simple entrance structure. But, the documentation of that process is now going to the Istanbul biennial. It’s going to be part of a larger exhibition on material flows. So the curators were following us, looking at our metal pipes, how they were produced, how they were manufactured, how we transformed them into a project for a community also working with metal. And then that exhibition installed in Istanbul will potentially go back to the community as a sort of temporary museum. I think emphasis on the process rather than the material outcome is really opening up interesting possibilities for the projects to become something else.

What are students walking away with?

We definitely feel the workshops we’ve done and want to do are knowledge production events. We’ve been working with a series of different tools, both digital and analog, to talk about what the scientific methodology is—to put into question, not to necessarily say that any of these processes are wrong or obscured, but to try and invent our own. We hope to equip students with tools—mental tools, actual tools, their own kind of creative tools— for looking at something in a new way.

This is also the result of acknowledging our limitations. Since we are exposed to so many possibilities, we cannot be experts in everything. Landing is the result of our attempts to put together a team of people who are experts in their own fields and can share their knowledge in a very compact and direct way. Usually it is over your typical semester, but for our students, it happens over the course of a week and we think this is a viable way of teaching.

We don’t make any claims to any sort of truth, in that sense, in our investigation. We are very open to gaps and limitations and things that go wrong in that process. But, it is better in some way than going to a site for one hour and looking at the people who walk around and suddenly deciding your whole project on the fact that there are 7 people on a Tuesday afternoon that walked on this side of the street and 14 on that side, so therefore it is better to put the opening over there. We really want to turn that process into so much more and fold in other disciplines too. We are trying to get geologists and botanists and engineers together to really show the students there are so many ways of looking at the same thing. By the end, we have a hundred different perspectives and you can pick and choose the sort of reality of the site you want because everyone has their subjective interpretations of the place.

What's next?

This is the first year we’ve done this workshop, but we’ve done a number of other design-build. It’s given us the opportunity to judge this Landing workshop off the others. For us, Space Saloon is more of this mobile platform, educational group that can move from place to place. And make these moments in time where we create these investigative communities. I don’t think we can know where it goes. We know we have a limited time in Morongo Valley. We want to see what the opportunity is to take it to other places. The site really is what dictates what the project is, so we can’t put any prediction on it.

We really don't separate all those phases that usually in architecture education are different courses. We want to do it all at once.

It's been very hard to describe Space Saloon because there is not one term that defines us. Yes we are design studio but we are also a school and we're also a collective and a network. Somehow it's easier to define what we do or what we want to do rather than what we are. It's definitely about traveling, being a traveling camp, a traveling group of people and then it's about teaching and studying and building at the same time. So we really don't separate all those phases that usually in architecture education are different courses. We want to do it all at once. That's what we hope can define us.

Usually as architects we tend to design things and then we try to make them fit to the world. We try to find the right materials or the right systems to make our ideas come to fruition. But with Space Saloon, we really want to make our practice about that reverse process. We go somewhere, and we have the project emerge out of that investigation. It has a very local idea but it brings in international perspectives.