The first interview beginning the Open Ideas Library interview series. Morvern met Akiko over zoom to talk about Open Source, Akiko’s work, licencing and future possibilities.
Their paths have crossed a number of times, Edinburgh is a small city and Morvern has often met Akiko through projects which gather people together to create positive change in their neighbourhood.
Akiko Kobayashi is an Edinburgh-based Architect who currently supports a number of third sector clients such as the Pregnancy and Parents Centre, Edinburgh Palette (artists’ spaces) and Women’s Aid East and Midlothian. Her specific approach to architectural practice is based on whole project advocacy for clients, demystification of the role architects play, and designing ‘loose-fit’ responses to any given spatial challenge.
Previous projects have included facilitation of self-build adventure playgrounds and feasibility work for cohousing groups. Akiko sits on the boards of Collective Gallery and the Astley Ainslie Community Trust and is a co-founder of The Architecture Fringe.
Akiko’s practice in a sentence:
An Architect facilitating community led change in the built environment.
It is no surprise that Akiko can consolidate her approach in one sentence, her work shows that her practice as an architect is much more than just the design of buildings. Land ownership, and the right to housing, play and collaboration, and who has a voice on how our buildings feel and look.
Akiko’s work encompasses the fullness of what architecture is when working with her clients, whether they are a community, a business or an individual.
An introduction to Akiko’s thinking:
Akiko is currently involved in a bid for a new project at WHALE Arts, an arts organisation in the West of Edinburgh, where Morvern is currently co-production artist in residence. Touching on Akiko’s plans she explained her approach to architecture in a community context.
“I don’t really want to tell people what their environments should be. I accept that with an architectural training and architecture experience, I will have useful insight. But I would much rather take people on their design journey… (so that they don’t) just feel like they have a design solution plopped onto their lap. And they really can’t commit to it because in their head, they’re thinking, Oh, what about if we did it like this? What about if we didn’t like that? ….I think that’s why I use the word facilitating, and enabling. You know, who am I to impose a design on a building that I haven’t really visited that much or spent that much time in, or a neighborhood, a place? I was always uncomfortable with those projects, where you swoop in, you have a look about, and then you tell people what they need.”
This perspective is what makes Akiko’s work so relatable and interesting. It is architecture for everyone, showing that you can be given the opportunity to participate in how your environment looks. Akiko’s practice has been described as ‘demystifying the architectural design process’: “You know, it’s not magic. It’s not a black art. Just with any skill, it’s something that you get used to and you see happen in different ways. And you try and improve on it every time.”
Spotlight on the WikiHouse at the Meanwhile Site in Fountainbridge, Edinburgh.
*The term ‘meanwhile use’ refers to the short-term use of temporarily empty buildings such as shops until they can be brought back into commercial use. (Designing Buildings)
Morvern first came across Akiko’s work through the Wikihouse on the Meanwhile* site in Fountainbridge in Edinburgh. The Wikihouse is an established Open Source design, and this version was successfully built in 2015. This project is an example of a community coming together to make something seemingly impossible – the building of a house- happen.
It goes back to the story of how I got involved with FCI (Fountainbridge Canalside Initiative). A group was getting together as a community in response to that (Meanwhile) site being developed, I think it was when the council bought that land from Scottish and Newcastle Breweries. The Pregnancy and Parents Center nearby asked me if I could go along to the meeting. I’d been doing some work for them for ages, so it was like representing one of the local groups within FCI; and then I just kind of got absorbed into the FCI.
There was the conversation about Meanwhile uses on that piece of land. That was people like the Forge, the Grove Community Garden and Tony Dickson with the Scrapstore. And as things came along… there was this idea of wanting to build something.
I had worked on the boathouse in Tyree that TOG Studio did, which was not Open Source, but parts made with a CNC machine… So I had this idea of what it could be like based on those frames. But it just really seemed like there was so much stuff to work out when you’re starting from scratch. There was no budget and I was a volunteer in that group… no budget for structural engineers, or any decent budget for materials and all that kind of thing. So Jane Jones from FCI had read about the Wikihouse, she thought it was great. I thought it was awful when I first saw it, because I really didn’t understand the idea.
The story of the beginnings of the WikiHouse at Fountainbridge is particularly inspiring. As a creative practitioner you can often feel squashed or hobbled by the systems in place, there can be a perceived lack of ability to get things ‘off the ground’. Akiko’s frank portrayal of a project which seemed almost impossible is a reminder that the process is worth following and new things often don’t immediately make sense. On introducing new ideas and perspectives Akiko also highlighted that there were other benefits:
“You’ll see (on the accompanying project PDF) that lots of people were trained up to do the machining as well, that was nice to be able to share that. (People) didn’t need to know all the bits and pieces, but it’s a little bit of understanding what X, Y and Z is (in computer aided design). Like a new way of thinking about manufacturing that I hadn’t come across particularly before – it is a different way of thinking.”
Akiko’s first introductions to Open Source and alternative licensing thinking
Akiko sees Open Source as rooted in a perspective: the way in which people approach their work. It isn’t always an easy or simple choice however, she talked about how she first came across this way of thinking:
“I guess it was quite a mental leap for me at the time, I think probably less so for a non architect, but for an architect to think about the building that’s already been designed, and all the parts are just ready to cut out and put together. I found it quite horrific to be honest.
I think actually that was the start of my journey on all these things. Because it made me think; hang on, designing the building is only a part of what I do as an architect. So I shouldn’t feel so threatened. Because the design of the building might already exist, but there’s loads of other stuff that a project needs around it that I can contribute as well.”
Akiko’s Current Perspective on Open Source
When asked to describe her point of view of Open Source as an overarching idea,
An opportunity for efficiency is also an opportunity to talk about the value of design, and the designers role in the process of creating new things with clients – whether that is a house or an object, or an interaction.
“It’s a mindset. Whether or not people understand what the benefits are, or if they’re only interested in reaping benefits for themselves. But also maybe even just getting away from the mindset of there being any benefit to them at all.
And I realised a little bit of why I do it; I think it’s probably still with efficiency. The stuff that I did with the Sick Kids (Community Buyout Bid info) , I do talks on that sometimes. And it’s not Open Source as such, but I really don’t mind sharing every single detail of how things were done, because there were various complexparts to it. (I am) quite happy to share that information because I don’t want to see other community groups go through the same trials and tribulations that we did. We have to have some collective learning from this and if we can give other groups a head start on what to watch out for then for me, that’s efficiency.”
“I think maybe that is sometimes the redundancy of designers; the feeling that the wheel has to be redesigned every time…in terms of spatial functionality, there’s certain arrangements of houses that work and don’t work. Yeah, I really dislike seeing the inefficiency of things being designed or redesigned, for the sake of it.
With putting an open source license on something… it’s an interesting comparison on other stuff that’s out there that doesn’t even think about licensing, and therefore what the user’s expectations are of it… you’ve started to talk about what happens when things go wrong, when you’ve used open source, information or design. but actually, if it had been freely available, and without any kind of declaration of what the open source license was would the user have felt less like someone else was to be held accountable, even though it’s kind of defined in the type of license?
A Note on Attribution
Different aspects of Open Source have come up periodically for Akiko, and she shared one particular discussion at a conference around attribution of works or ideas generated by groups of people.
“(Thinking about) the dissemination, the sharing of it, such that the material is made to be open source. I guess we’re saying that the result, or its sharing, is a result of lots of people having contributed to making it happen.
…(I have had) this conversation recently about attribution. (an experience relayed to me by an organiser of a design conference) There was a group activity happening in breakout rooms, to collect all the ideas and report back to the main conference. And you know, nothing is attributed because it’s co-produced. A person of colour attending said that they thought that not being pressured about attribution was actually a white person’s luxury in that context. Because the non-white person struggled enough to be acknowledged and recognized for the contributions they’re making.”
Not being concerned that people will recognise and value your work within a group context highlights a privilege which not everyone has. This same point around attribution and crediting people for their input can also be applied to any context where there is an imbalance of privilege and power, something particularly important in the participatory arts and co-production. Just because one person doesn’t think accreditation is necessary, doesn’t mean that is the case for everyone in the room.
Open Source in the Arts
Part of this research that is building the groundwork for the Open Ideas Library is discovering how widely used and understood this movement is within the Arts. Akiko’s perspective is particularly interesting as someone who has engaged with the movement within her work. Does she think her peers are engaging with Open Source?
“No, I don’t think it is, I think maybe the Arts is still very much based on a traditional idea of intellectual property, copyright ownership, that kind of thing.
(It touches on) how you might treat the proposals of artists… I’ve got artist friends who’ve said, this organization paid this other artist to deliver a project that was exactly what I pitched to them two years ago. Whereas when it’s architectural and spatial, because obviously, (there is) an element of not being able to unsee something and feeling that that is the best functional solution to a spatial problem.
But I think what has to be understood is, it’s not just the merit of an idea someone brings to you as a consultant, it’s everything else that they bring, above and beyond that. What are they like to interact with, will they run the job efficiently? Will they actually listen to what other input you want to have?”
The underlying idea here that creative practitioners are more than just the work they produce, something which is often unnoticed or undervalued. This led the conversation onto the benefits of Open Source, whether people felt that they recognised the importance of licencing works collectively.
What’s Stopping Open Source Becoming More Widely Used?
Akiko brought up something which reflects the core aim of the Of Source research. People working in the creative arts or in a socially engaged setting don’t know about or don’t fully understand Open Source. There is some hurdle or barrier which has stopped this movement from being useful to the practitioners in the Arts.
Did Akiko have any idea why or something which had stopped her fully getting into Open Source and using it more frequently in her work? This brought the conversation back to the WikiHouse and Akiko’s first interaction with an Open Source community.
“It’s not even necessarily about when things go wrong, but it’s how the publishing of that stuff is received… somehow the Communities Manager persuaded me to be part of a Slack group (for the Wikihouse). I uploaded all the files to Google Drive, and then put them in the Slack and then, oh my God, all the messages and the questions.
Some errors or potential errors were spotted and that made me start worrying… and it was just too much and I really, I’m kind of not the right kind of person to engage (in this kind of interaction). But I knew that everyone had questions and wanted to know. I had some direct messages as well and I just straight away said; if you ask in the forum then my answer, if it’s useful to you, it’ll be useful to other people as well.
This could seem innocuous enough, but hearing Akiko speak about the barrage of messages and hassle that she received from the community after she added her designs highlighted an important issue. There wasn’t a shared understanding of the roles people had undertaken.
In this case there was a communities manager, whose responsibility it was to hold and support this community who should have stepped in. Akiko’s experience with the Wikihouse community is really important in the development of the Open Ideas Library, because it brings up questions around iterations of people’s work and cultivating and supporting a shared understanding in a community.
Unfortunately within this same project Akiko also came across another problem, which ultimately made her disengage with the community.
“Someone else asked if they could use the images because they wanted to do the same thing and they wanted to make a little web page to help raise money for it. So I said; yeah, that’s fine as long as you credit the photographers as different photographers have taken different things. And I put them into specific folders so that people knew what credits to use.
… (I found out that) he hadn’t credited the photos. I called him out on it in the forum, (saying) this is all about openness, the least you can do is to credit a photo. He said it would have taken too long, because there’s so many. I went and looked them up and they used sixty different photos. (After this experience) I just left the slack group, I had just had enough.”
The negative experiences that Akiko had with this aspect of the Open Source community has evidently made an impact on how she sees the benefits of engaging with it. It is as useful, if not more useful, to learn about what hasn’t worked for artists in the past. The question now is: how can we move forward and create something useful and appropriate for the creative industries. What needs to change to make Open Source more accessible and useful for artists and audiences?
The Open Ideas Library Toolkit & Future Possibilities
Open Source is, like with any movement, as positive or as negative as anything involving lots of people can be. It means different things to different people, and therefore looks very different from project to project. The Wikihouse project only reflects one part of how the ideology can be applied.
This is where Morvern sees the Open Ideas Library coming into its own for the practitioners, organisations and participants in the creative third sector.
On the subject of where the Open Ideas Library could go and what a toolkit could look like Akiko recommended to consider a number of things
“A toolkit for practitioners would be quite different to a toolkit for recipients of those services and activities. You know, those organizations that deliver to participants as well as anything a practitioner works with?
I think there’s a lot to cover, there’s also a distinction between resources like designs and recipes, with research and thoughts. (There is) the distinction between that and the sharing of knowledge, which might be more to do with the kind of person (or organisation) we are talking about.
And I wonder actually, is the most useful application of open source that it can work backwards from problems. (It gives you the opportunity) to look at those organisations and practitioners and identify what they struggle with.Because they have no experience yet, it seems like an unfathomable thing…. the idea of an artist or designer being someone who contributes to the wider body of knowledge is something that some people get and some people don’t… (that’s) how I would begin to define what the benefits might be.”
Conclusion and Further Reading
With this interview the project is underway! There is a really interesting mix of perspectives and ideas from Akiko, with lots of threads to draw upon. Understanding the context of how Open Source is currently used and perceived will be the base of the research, influencing the Toolkit & Training elements, and the Open Source projects to come.
Of Source is speaking to a number of people across the community arts and participatory design industries in Edinburgh and beyond as part of the Interviews series.
For more information on Akiko’s work and other things mentioned in this interview see the link below:
Akiko Kobayashi – https://www.akikokobayashi.co.uk/
Assemble Collective Self Build – https://www.assemble-csb.co.uk/
Wiki House – https://www.wikihouse.cc/
Fountainbridge Canalside Initiative – https://www.fountainbridgeci.org.uk/
WHALE Arts – http://www.whalearts.co.uk/
Open Street Map – https://www.openstreetmap.org/