Research Group 2022: Victoria Meniakina

Roosmarijn Hompe: How do you teach students the discipline of architecture while it is in transition, while they are also looking for this fixed idea of what the discipline entails?

Victoria Meniakina: If you want to make a change in architecture, education is the right place for trying things out. In a big firm, making change is a long, complex process. And I feel here, we can be much more immediate in adapting, addressing change, and introducing new ideas.

Alice Twemlow: Even literally, in the case of the “Salon of Ideas” you are organising?

VM: Yes! It’s a two-part event and a document that will come out afterwards, with recommendations about the transformation of the department’s curriculum and the department name to fit with that. This theme of how to transition continues into my research, which has become a way to explore these questions about the ethics and extractive nature of the profession, because it’s quite difficult to engage with these questions in other contexts. For me, research is the place where you are not looking for solutions per se, but trying to explore and open up these issues for discussion.

AT: Even though you are critical of the professional architectural discipline, do you still see your research contributing to it because you want to change it?

VM: We cannot practise architecture and design as we used to. We have to do things differently, and without research you cannot do things differently. You cannot just keep on making things, saying, “Oh, there’s a biomaterial so I’m just going to use it and make a new thing”. It’s just not going to work like that. You need research in order to change the thinking about the process and attune people to the wider environment and context.

RH: For your own research, typically how and where do you conduct it? And how does it relate to your practice?

VM: My practice is quite multifaceted: it includes research, education, consulting, writing, making and creative direction. But it always revolves around the same critical intersection where the systems, structures and economies of art, architecture and design meet with climate, ecology, social and species justice, and decolonization. So the themes are the same, but the means and methods are different.

So, if we talk about my research; it’s also multifaceted. There’s one facet – that I worked on in the Design Lectorate Research Group – about how to map and create new narratives about the built environment by tuning into ecological thinking, decolonial thinking, thinking about matter. That’s more connected to the regular kind of curricula of design education and architecture education, in how it combines theory, research, and practice.

And then there’s another aspect of my research that’s on more of a meta level, and this concerns the notion of a post-designer. From this perspective, I’m looking into the political infrastructures and systems of architecture, education, firms, institutes and so on, and asking how we can compare that to the ethics of the damaged ecology, and climate issues that we face and so on. So that’s very meta research and that’s actually the kind of consulting work that I do with my clients — architecture firms, design firms, institutes, where we look into how to change, how to turn things around, because the old ways are not okay anymore. So, it’s really addressing the current issues in a more structural way and considering how best to guide processes that can create change. But then that comes with a change of terms, right? I think exploring what it means to be a post-designer is interesting. That’s also part of my research.

RH: Perhaps we could zoom into a specific research project to understand your process, and then also the outcomes and how they might be used and valued.

VM: I do a lot of writing, reading, interviewing architects, designers and cultural institutions, and facilitating workshops for these clients. I really value peer-to-peer exchange and knowledge exchange as a part of my research. With my Research Group project, my research site was the Hortus Botanicus in Amsterdam. I worked with their archives and seed libraries, as well as their other archives at the University of Amsterdam. I interviewed people and I spent time there, observing, sketching, mapping, writing. So, it’s kind of field research.

RH: And what was the research question for this project?

VM: It was basically about how I can research and tell a story of the Hortus through an ecological-decolonial lens. It starts with architectural history because it’s in the middle of the city. So how was it even set up? All these displacements, how all these plants and creatures from across the world took all these journeys with the VOC ships to arrive in Amsterdam, and how the Hortus became this marketplace for so-called “exotic” plants. What was the role of design in containing, altering and controlling nature as a part of that colonial project?

RH: And as data, you use the seed library and the archives from the Hortus itself? And then do you also track the seeds back to their countries of origin?

VM: Actually, yes, I have an ambition to make a map of all these travels, of these seeds. There is a digital library where I can access some information about the plants, for example, about when and from where they arrived.

AT: Speaking of seeds, in what ways have you disseminated your research?

VM: I think it’s mostly through working with my clients.

AT: And that’s a very direct channel, considering you want to feed back into this profession in transition. Do you consider this to be more direct than writing in a publication?

VM: It has been quite fulfilling to see how my research actually gets directly applied in my clients’ work, and in that way also contributing to the transition in the profession. One example is Urban Maestro. This project is about mapping new urban governance strategies in collaboration with the chief architect of Brussels, UN-Habitat and University College London’s Bartlett School for Urban Planning. The outcome of this research and strategy project entails open-source tools, case studies and resources for different types of so-called New Governance Strategies for Urban Design, as well as accompanying events, talks and a publication.

RH: In that sense, your practice is an example for the IAFD students of how research is part of the practice, right?

VM: Yeah, I think an interesting example is the “Reality Check” course I teach, where the students designed the Design Lectorate research space in 2019. It was heavily research-based because the students did quite good research on bio-materials, on circularity, zero waste, how we can build differently, how we can make our own materials, how we can reuse resources that are available in KABK, that are available in The Hague.

AT: How do you explain to students the importance of research?

VM: I think my assignments make it clear that we’re not only interested in the end product, you know. And being a designer is not about just making shiny, beautiful new things. I mean, there are still quite some students who think that way. But the point is the process, the point is the thinking, the point is collaboration, and the point is… as a designer, the ways in which you are looking for solutions. So, each process of looking for a solution is, in a way, research, and that can be done through making. That could be through being in a workshop and trying to find out what works, and what doesn’t. Or that can be on a more theoretical, intellectual level.

AT: How do you experience the research environment here at the KABK, and what could be done better?

VM: It is crucial that future artists and designers understand the role of research in their own work and get access to the full diversity of research activities. That’s much more important than getting good grades or getting a diploma and entering the professional field. Because the professional field is constantly moving and changing. Knowing how to think in this precarious world, that is super important.

I think specifically at the KABK, it’s about providing options, right? So, somebody who wants to be a good designer can focus on that with some exposure to research. And somebody for whom research is more important can focus on that, but also with some exposure of what it is to be a good designer.

At the KABK I think there has also been quite a big development in the field of research and in the curriculum of our department in particular — I feel like it’s getting much more integrated. I think the thing that could still use improvement across the KABK is that we need more research opportunities for staff and teachers.