At the 2008 Venice Biennale of Architecture, the curators of the Belgian exhibition did a curious thing with their pavilion. They did not show the typical exhibition fare consisting of architectural models, renderings, plans, animations, and architectural installations. Instead, responding to a national competition, a group of young Belgian architects proposed that the pavilion be veiled behind a rugged temporary steel wall while the floors within the empty galleries of the beautiful modern pavilion were strewn with several inches of confetti. The Belgians exhibited an essentially empty building save for the confetti.



Did the Belgians foresee something that the rest of the us missed? Perhaps. Only four weeks after the opening of the Biennale, George Bush stood before the world and declared the impending onset of a Depression scaled financial crisis. Banks faltered, automakers went into tailspins, and Circuit City announced it would be cutting thirty percent of its workforce and giving up on nearly all its leases.

So, what were the Belgians saying with their pavilion cum conceptual art installation? Perhaps they saw a drunken phase of decadent architectural exuberance coming to a close. Today we are left with a foggy hangover, scratching our heads while asking, “now that the party is over, what next?”

Where do we turn to fulfill our ambitions to shape physical space now that the financial capital driving the drunken building frenzy is frozen? Many of us will give up our roll as builders and focus on making simulations of designs in a computer. Some of us will work in the academy conducting research and writing books. There will be an urgent and renewed interest in architecture as a form of activism. These are sober trajectories that we should expect of architects in an economic downturn. But where will find our architecture party in 2009? Here are some quick predictions.

• The transitory, the temporary, the instant, structures designed to disappear. However you phrase it, these present fertile territories for architectural experimentation, replacing a bit of the ground that went away in October's meltdown. For people looking to spend money on big spatial spectacle without the financial commitment of making a building– the disposable plates of architecture are better than a new set of China. But an important question looms for when we clean up: can we compost it or should we color it with crayon and repurpose it as Halloween decoration?
• The culture of no lead-time. Transitory architecture with small financial risks dovetails with a reoccurring trend toward what might be termed the culture of no lead-time. Part and parcel of the culture of convenience, the culture of no lead-time demands that we have architecture and we have it by the end of the day. Sure, we've been moving faster for years as digital communication and the free flow of materials decreases the time required to produce a building, but buildings are always expensive and in the culture of no lead-time they are out of fashion before they are finished. So look for every experiment on the digital modeling screen to find its way into the real world . . .. If only for 15 minutes. (Full disclosure: I wrote this in an hour).
• Do it yourself redux. It has always been with us but when there is little financial capital for architecture experiments, human capital will start driving the work. Look for architects changing out of their turtle-necks and stepping into dungarees to swing hammers and operate numerically controlled machines. In a world without economic stability you may have to build it yourself. There is always a party when people come together to make something big like a building or an installation.
• The credo of digital technology equaling the cutting edge will die from cirrhosis of the liver. Architects will shed some of their contempt for labor, not only out of economic necessity but also because it is fun and yields edifying results - a drift toward computationally informed handcraft! Something akin to a contemporary crafts movement is already in motion through the likes of Make Magazine, etc. but that ethos has yet to infect architecture – 2009 is the year.
• Still tipsy while waxing romantic on the potential of digital technology, the architect cum crafts person will aim much lower than the Dubai developments of yesteryear. He will infuse techno craft ideas into the little things that people need and can afford: door casings, cabinetry, paving patterns, shingle designs, you name it. Small effects will become big places for architects.

In 2009, there is limited prospect for economic and ecological recovery; architecture and design will get serious again, but we shouldn’t stop partying. Let’s not forget to play; the nourishment that play gives us is essential to our creative lives.