10.1.2015
Alan Smart is an architect, designer, writer and researcher practicing independently and as part of the design collective Other Forms. He is author of ‘Making Cultural Production in Occupied Spaces’.
‘I work between and across design, scholarship, criticism, curatorial, and publishing projects. Tying these together is an interest in systems, structures and relations and the ways in which these abstractions might be formalized, (re)materialized, and activated as sites of engagement.
In my research, this set of concerns is directed towards consideration of the terms of the political as it intersects with architecture, design and urbanism. In this, I am interested in drawing parallels between art and design practices that develop formal structures for performance and event production, and with architecture and urbanism. Also, I consider the ways that the relational structures of production – whether industrial or in the terms of various conceptions of the “post industrial” – map onto and are integrated and entangled with the relations of reproduction and cultural formation.
In material practice, this orientation towards systems, relations and discourse has informed a range of engagements with curatorial, exhibition, and event projects. These work to overlay built construction with the production of texts and design of information. Also, in my fabrication, publishing and project management, work I endeavor to engage critically to with existing production, logistical and information systems so as to push, expand and discover their potentials’.