With the backlash against AI escalating dramatically, I can’t imagine a better time to consider the history of what the scholar Thomas Dekeyser terms the “techno-negative.” Dekeyser has just published a new book on the subject, titled, fittingly, Techno-Negative: A Long History of Refusing the Machine, with the University of Minnesota Press. It’s an academic work, but it’s sharply and compellingly written, already garnering great reviews from mainstream outlets. It’s a hard recommend for readers of BITM.

I met Dekeyser, a lecturer in human geography at the University of Southampton in the UK, around the time his 2022 film “Machines in Flames” debuted, and have followed his work ever since. Now, with the book out, I asked if he’d be interested in writing a piece exploring its themes for BITM. He was kind enough to share this whirlwind look at how people and communities have rejected, shunned, or refused technology through history, and why their techno-negativity matters more than you think.

Before we get to that, a little housekeeping. First: I’m looking for a podcast producer to help make a weekly show about AI, labor, and the rising resistance to Silicon Valley. If that sounds interesting to you or someone you know, here’s a link to the job description. This is a paid, part-time gig, and I would love to work with someone familiar with the BITM project. Second: As always, this work—the writing, reporting, editing—is made possible by paid subscribers who chip in each month. If you find value in BITM, please consider becoming a paid supporter, too. OK! Enough of that, and onwards to the techno-negative.

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The history of the techno-negative

By Thomas Dekeyser

Technological progress is not just driven by innovations in technical abilities: explosive growths in compute power, processing speed, predictive algorithms, and so on. It is also, deeply, about discourse. AI-promoters and other Big Tech evangelists have long aimed to push their technological agendas by way of normalizing it through discourse, telling us that their tech futures are not simply desirable, but inevitable.

In this story, technological progress is a big, clean wave that carries everything forward, and cannot be halted. What we are presented with is a natural process that takes societies away from a presumably savage past and into a civilized present or future, one invention at a time. Because it is natural, attempts at pausing or slowing current forms of technological progress down are not simply naïve; they are futile. This story is omnipresent. We hear, again and again, from the mouths of Big Tech CEOs, AI grifters, national governments, and greedy employers around much of the world. “Whether you like it or not, it’s coming,” they tell us. “There’s no point in resisting.”

The problem: the inevitability narrative is a fantasy. It relies on a logical fallacy; just because something is emerging does not mean it will stay. More than that, it is historically incorrect. Technological advancement has never been a linear process. There is no clean wave; there are messy currents, vortexes, tides, rocks. When we pay close attention, what we find is that rather than a smooth, natural progression, the history of technology is in fact a political battlefield, with numerous actors fighting over the paths of technological innovation. Recognizing this allows us to free ourselves from the idea that the technological world we find ourselves in is somehow an immovable fact.

In my new book, Techno-Negative: A Long History of Refusing the Machine, I show how whenever technological advancements took place, they encountered deep pockets of refusal. In my book, I dig into the archives to reveal the oft-perplexing and stubborn existence of a fierce urge to negate life’s technologization, of what I call ‘techno-negativity’. From early machine breakers in ancient Greece and medieval Christian monasteries banning technologies to revolutionaries smashing street lanterns in 19th century France and ultra-leftist armed assaults on capitalist computation, the book explores techno-negativity as a deep—but persistently condemned—current in history. I would like to briefly spotlight five specific historical episodes in techno-negativity that may be of interest to readers of Blood in the Machine.

Ancient Greek machine-breakers

For as long as there has been what today we would consider innovation in the development and use of technological tools, there has been a desire to undermine it. In Ancient Greece, the very promise of ‘techne’, that is, of both the crafts and craft-knowledge, was intimately bound up, from its very beginnings, by its refusal and delay. As historians have shown, the expansion of scientific knowledge at the time failed to translate into a corresponding burst of technological invention. The era was overwhelmed by a deep suspicion in the face of techne.

To give just one example, the philosopher Archimedes, a crucial inventor of various technical devices and machines, was also the world’s first machine breaker, destroying his own machines in the hope of staving off future use. Even an influential Greek origin story of technology, in which Prometheus stole fire from the gods and gave them to humanity, came with a dark warning. Zeus clung Prometheus to a cliff high up in the mountains, where he was exposed to the elements and an eagle hungry for his organs. To the Greeks, techne had brought something dark and possibly sinister into the world, and thus, needed to be kept at bay.

The Luddite workers attacking looms

Fast-forward 18 centuries and we come across that most infamous of machine-breakers: the Luddites. They were framework knitters who, in early 19^th Century England, saw their livelihoods and craft under threat by the arrival of automated looms. As Brian Merchant’s book Blood in the Machine shows, rather than simply accepting their fate, they fought back, burning machines and factories.

While worker attacks on mechanic tools of labor took place since at least the 17^th century, what set the Luddites apart was their size, intensity, and level of organization. Techno-negativity became an insurrectionary tool that swept up a not insignificant portion of the wider population into an unprecedented assault on the increasingly tight link between technological innovation and the expansion of capitalism. With the emergence of the industrial revolution, technology had become a weapon wielded by the capitalist classes. Against this emergent capitalism, the Luddites developed a spirit of collectivism, fighting for themselves, for their fellow workers, and for a future beyond self-interest and profit.

Early anti-tech governments

In the centuries preceding the Luddite Revolts, it was commonly not workers, but governments who dismantled machines by literally attacking them, or by prohibiting them. In Hamburg in the late 17^th Century, to give just one example, it was common for the local government to do public burnings of newly invented machines. This was not a German craze, however. Between the sixteenth and eighteenth centuries, the King of England Edward VI banned gigmills, the Dutch Council of Leyden prohibited weaving machines, a Dutch decree forbade ribbon-looms, an English Imperial decree was announced against ribbon-looms, and the Council of Vienna signed a generalized prohibition of new machinery. Far removed from our contemporary governments’ large-scale embrace of the latest technological innovations, these techno-negative states provided worker protection in the face of looming displacement.

The 20th century communes that withdrew from technology

In the twentieth century, new forms of techno-negativity took hold. Prominent amongst these were anti-technology communes in the US (MOVE), UK (Kibbo Kift), Israel (Degania Alef) and South Africa (Tolstoy Farm). Unlike the Luddites, who directly attacked technology, these communes embraced an ethos of withdrawal and disconnection. Neither accepting nor rebelling against technological life, they fled.

As one of many anti-tech communes, a commune called MOVE asked: what might it mean to disconnect from Western, capitalist technology? Founded in 1970s Philadelphia, MOVE aimed to live in line with what its founder John Africa called ‘Natural Law’, banishing electricity, machinery, running water, processed food, and products of inorganic origins. We may not personally consider it desirable or viable to live this way, but anti-technology communes showcase the possible diversity of resistance tactics in the face of a technological world that, increasingly, feels hostile to our collective well-being.

The 1980s computer arsonists

Moving away again from a politics of disconnection, the 1980s proved to be perhaps the fieriest decade in the history of technological refusal. Militant groups around the European continent—including the Italian Red Brigades, German Red Army Faction, and Belgian Communist Combatant Cells—set fire to the companies and infrastructures fueling the arrival of computers. A French group with the fantastic name Committee for the Liquidation or Subversion of Computers (C.L.O.D.O. in French) is amongst the most prominent of that era.

Between 1980 and 1983, they set arson to or bombed at least 12 computer companies. Late at night, they would sneak into offices of firms like Philips Data Centre and Honeywell, gather computers and magnetic tapes, set fire to them in the toilets, and flee before the police arrived. Their target was less tech’s displacement of labor (Luddites) or its general impoverization of life (MOVE), and instead computation’s enrollment into the state apparatus as a war machine and a technology of surveillance. Computers, they argued before the arrival of the ‘personal computer’, would bring dominance as much as emancipation.

Across its many actors and practices, techno-negativity has varied as widely in its justifications and ideologies as in its practices and successes. Whatever we make of any individual approach to resisting tech, techno-negative actors prove the absurdity of any linear narrative of technological advancement. With every leap in technological advancement, we witness a fierce urge to undo it. Technologies are invented, attacked, delayed, dropped, delayed, re-emerge, vanish again. Some gain momentum, only to disappear within a matter of months. Others fail to latch on, and then, decades earlier, suddenly rise to the fore.

The messiness of technological advancement shows those of us keen on altering our current technological predicament that there are gaps everywhere that can be cracked open further. The current path of technologization is neither inevitable nor natural. Evangelists in corporations or governments may like to tell us it is as a way of undermining our sense of collective agency, but together with the infinite cast who make up the history of techno-negativity, we know better. At a time when Big Tech is becoming enamored with authoritarian politics, the stakes are higher than ever. What are the vulnerabilities or cracks in our AI-obsessed moment that can be exploited? We can turn to radical movements from the past not for blueprints, but for initial inspiration. The point is not to try and turn back the time, but to realize a technological refusal adequate to our increasingly dark present.

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One of the great ironies of the AI age, such as it is, is that it wound up looking like shit. When Artificial Intelligence finally arrived, with all of its fearsome technological sophistication, it was presumed that it would at least look cool as it surveilled, subverted, or enslaved us. Instead, even the biggest boosters of AI have been forced to disavow their technology’s chief aesthetic sensibility. “I don’t love slop myself,” Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang said in regards to a scandal over his compay’s AI giving video game characters an unwanted makeover (perhaps notably, in the same week he declared that AGI has already been “achieved.”).

Revulsion at slop aesthetics certainly played a role in the collapse of Sora, OpenAI’s much-hyped and less-used video generation app; the company announced it was shuttering the operation this week amid a pointedly publicized effort to “nail” its core business and to not “get distracted by side quests.” (The $1 billion deal OpenAI cut with Disney is also dead.) Users simply did not seem to like Sora. The app, which was estimated as costing the company as much as $15 million a day, saw both downloads and monthly usage taper off rapidly after just two months of growth.

This newsletter takes many hours to research, report out, and write a week. It’s only possible thanks to paid subscribers to chip in to support it. (A large thanks to all of you.) If you find value in this stuff, and you’re able to, please consider upgrading to a paid subscription. Thanks, and hammers up.

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After peaking at 6 million monthly downloads in November, Sora fell to around a million and a half last month.

Monthly average users had already begun to decline as well. Originally pitched as a bona fide TikTok competitor and the revolutionizer of Hollywood in a single package, Sora turned out to be more OpenAI spaghetti thrown at the wall, an impressive tech demo dressed up into a product, rushed to market and breathlessly hyperbolized.

There’s a case to be made that the company was never all that serious about turning Sora into a successful service, and that it’s best considering the app as one of OpenAI’s myriad instruments for keeping the hype cycle fed and the media hooked and the investment dollars flowing. (Given the economics and its intense compute demands, if Sora had blown up, it’s hard to see how it ever turns them a profit.) Even if that’s true, it’s still very much worth considering why Sora tanked.

Theoretically, offering users the ability to appropriate, remix, or outright plagiarize a nearly limitless well of pop culture IP and to mess with their friends by dropping them and their digitally scanned visages into any kind of scenario, seems like an idea that could have legs. Yet it was cursed from the start. To begin with, Sora was just overwhelmingly unpleasant to look at and to use. I have an account—it is my solemn reportorial duty—and from time to time I’d log on to check in on the platform. Most times I did, it seemed that people were using Sora to push the boundaries of the platform’s own conspicuous tastelessness, mining that queasiness inherent in the Sora aesthetic. There was a kind of submeme where people gruesomely but not realistically peeled their faces off to reveal they were other people. There were a bunch of posts of giant women stepping on men and crushing them. Judge Judy arbitrating a court case between Obama and Trump. People driving their cars into mountains of human shit. That kind of thing.

It turns out that there was a limit to user interest in half-baked, glitched-out pop culture mashups or videos of anthropomorphized fruit having sex or AI CEOs hilariously placed in compromising situations or whatever.

It just wasn’t fun. The jokes felt almost incapable of landing unless they were folded directly into the narrow currents of cheap Adult Swim surreality that defined Sora’s vibe. The videos looked anywhere from dull and derivative to sickly and weird to unsettling and nightmarish. I regret not taking a screenshot but I swear at one point that OpenAI served me a pop-up survey question that asked something like “how does using Sora make you feel?” indicating the company was worried about the mental health of anyone who would spend more than a few swipes on the app. TechCrunch—TechCrunch—called Sora “the creepiest app on your phone.”

As such Sora seems to have been used mostly by people who wanted to whip up a slop joke or slop commentary to share on another platform. Who can blame them. Why would anyone want to spend any longer than they had to in the corridors of a pulsing, feel-bad uncanny valley? Sora’s were the halls of pure slop, and not even AI CEOs themselves can stomach that slop.

Now, it’s often argued that AI cannot create anything truly new, that even the most sophisticated LLMs are fundamentally token-prediction systems, and thus the pixels its image-generators rearrange are necessarily an amalgam of shapes and styles all seen before. That AI image generators are intensively derivative, and that Sora was all but exclusively so, is undeniably true. And that I think is the root of its failure. LLMs strive to reproduce reality, or beloved aesthetics of the past, or even generally pleasing imagery, and they almost always fail. This failure is immediately apparent to us, for the same reasons that animate our discomfort with imagery in the uncanny valley in general, as well as some reasons beyond that.

This failure is not limited to or even primarily concerning image quality. As the generators have improved in ironing out past telltales like the extra fingers and such (in prepping for this post I looked back at the original Sora videos and it was shocking to me how bad they were), our queasiness hasn’t subsided. AI image and video slop is not just homogenous, and it’s not just derivative. Slop is a visual embodiment of the modern AI project itself; an in-progress effort to replicate, undermine, and replace human works. It’s fundamentally unsettling. (This one reason that, as Gareth Watkins argued, AI is ideal for creating a new aesthetics of fascism.)

That’s one slapdash theory anyway, and one explanation for why, to this day, years into the AI boom, after so many billions in investment and numerous model improvements, whenever we encounter AI-generated imagery, we still tend to either recoil or roll our eyes. Why, while AI imagery was originally a very useful demo of tech capabilities for founders and execs, now they seem to wish it would go away. Slop is a pervasive reminder of both AI products’ persistent qualitative shortcomings and the noxious intent of the products themselves.

It’s also a reminder of just how little regard Silicon Valley generally seems to have for aesthetics in general anymore. I think it’s fitting that the same week that OpenAI announced the imminent shutdown Sora, its splashiest showcase for AI, Meta announced the imminent shutdown of Horizon Worlds, its splashiest showcase for the metaverse. And if there was ever a technology that looked like shit, whose aesthetics screamed failure, well:

AI often gets compared to the metaverse, in the context of allegations that it’s Silicon Valley’s latest grift after that spectacular, much-hyped failure etc. But AI garners fewer comparisons to the metaverse as a project with similar qualitative dimensions, and similar objectives. Recall, Meta launched its metaverse pursuits (replete with company name-changing gravitas/bravura/etc) with digital entertainment meant to simulate the real world (Worlds) and a productivity program (Workrooms). The metaverse was also supposed to replace and streamline bodied work, and offer users a digital facsimile of the real world.

But of course it looked like garbage. It looked primed for failure from day one. It was too obviously unserious to register the uncanny valley anxieties AI-generated imagery does. Yes, the much-remarked upon lack of legs in the avatars, but also the laughable cartoonish aspects, the cursed attempted conjuring of a Facebook-but-in-real-life vibe, and so on.

Now, I’m not going to sit here and lament the passage of the Steve Jobsian ethos from the Valley, which elevated the importance of imbuing tech with taste, but I do think where we’ve landed since then is reflective of what’s motivating and incentivizing the industry in the AI era. In the 2000s, during web 2.0 and the rise of the smartphone, tech companies still very much needed to sell new users on its devices and digital platforms. It was pretty simple; Apple knew the iPhone had to look and feel good, or no one would want to learn how to use it. Aesthetics were core to the project, from the slick industrial design of the phone itself to the user interface design of the OS and the apps it would house.

Conversely, the apps that made the iPhone so successful—namely, social media—were predicated on an aesthetics of transparency. Facebook, Twitter, Instagram; these apps existed as conduits to share personal experiences with friends (and, yes to glamorize or dramatize them, to induce more sharing). But the central idea was user connection, that the software would mostly get out of the way, so people could share photos, thoughts, memes and work.

It fits with Cory Doctorow’s enshittification thesis that after Apple et al won, and entrenched the phone as the core device through which the majority of us process the world, socially, for work, etc, becoming enormous monopolies in the process, that concerns over the aesthetic dimensions of the project would diminish. The fading interest in serving the user, the consumer, the staidness of the monopoly; all that explains the curdling aesthetics of Silicon Valley design.

But AI (and the metaverse, and web 3) must be seen not as novel innovations but as new attempts by the same investor and developer class at extracting value from their past successes, at seeking out new revenue sources amid an already digitally saturated world. It was no longer enough for users to post photos taken with their iPhones on social media, or to use cloud enterprise software to organize and input work; AI companies want to generate those images themselves, perform the work themselves, and capture the value for themselves.

For years now, Silicon Valley has largely failed to produce something that most people want, or are even comfortable having in their lives; it has failed to make the case for AI to a public that mostly fears for their jobs, their energy bills, their children’s safety and future.

AI slop ensures that no one forgets this. No wonder OpenAI wants to pivot to focusing on enterprise AI, where no one has to look at the technology’s visual exports unless they are forced to by their boss. The general public dissatisfaction with AI is a result, in part, of being surrounded by so many obtrusive reminders of this grim outcome, and the attendant, even grimmer pursuit: That Silicon Valley will not stop until it has colonized, extracted, and automated all that it possibly can.

You might even go so far as to say that Sora was a crude, funhouse mirror-refracted vision of the world Silicon Valley is struggling to birth. Let’s not forget that most people who encountered it found it repulsive.

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Further reading:

-What is “slop,” exactly? by Max Read
-Disney’s Sora Disaster Shows AI Will Not Revolutionize Hollywood by Jason Koebler at 404 Media.
-AI Slop Education by
-The Slop Tax: A Brief Introduction by
-AI: The New Aesthetics of Fascism by Gareth Watkins

Non-slop must-read of the week:

on military automation, Claude, and Project Maven:

Artificial Bureaucracy

Kill Chain

A revised version of this article appears in the The Guardian. You can read that version here…

Read more

a month ago · 675 likes · Kevin Baker

Earlier this week, I broke news about a new basic income pilot program; the first of its kind to issue payments specifically to workers who have lost work or opportunities because of AI.

The reaction to that story was, let’s say, pretty strong! A lot of commenters and readers criticized the program as insufficient or abetting the AI industry. Honestly, I love it; I welcome any and all strong, thoughtful reactions to my work and goings-on in AI or Silicon Valley or wherever else in general. It’s always good to hear from you.

In fact, it made me think I might have to start running some letters to the editor here. Let’s start with one from Anne Wanders in Germany:

Hi Brian,

First off, thanks so much for all your work! It’s so necessary, sadly.

You already made the observation that narrative around a need for UBI is feeding into the narrative of the proclaimed future when “AI” or even “AGI” will make human work obsolete on a massive scale. So in addition to that, just a quick note regarding the concept of an “AI dividend”:

The name “AI dividend” is yet another example of a brilliant marketing term, makes it sound as if laid off workers were investors in the tech … I think it’s bitter to pay a “dividend” to people losing jobs rather than to the people worldwide whose IP and personal data have been illegally used, repackaged and sold. If anything, we (creators, authors, private individuals etc.) should be paid the dividend because our work and personal data are the foundation of their business model.

I, and many others I know, want acknowledgement of what these companies did and do, I want pay for what has been scraped without consent, I want them to respect the opt-in principle of copyright or intellectual property according to applicable different legal concepts globally. (I live in Germany, the EU does not have “fair use” or “copyright”, my intellectual property exists the moment I create it without a need to register it formally!). So once that happened, once they paid all of us what is due including interest/royalties, call it a dividend or not, if after paying out all that money they still manage to operate their business, then would be a good time for them to pay taxes so a democratically elected government can help people affected by job loss.

To me, such an “AI dividend” is a free handout, further evidence of a condescending view of the people unwillingly contributing to and affected by the AI hype. It’s an attempt to circumvent the democratic and legal system.

Again, thanks so much for all your work, it means a lot and it helps me spread the word about what AI is and is not.

Best wishes,

Anne

These are good points! The first thing I will say is that one thing that’s a real challenge in running this kind of a one-man newsletter operation is that there’s often no easy way to designate between ‘opinion’ and ‘news’ and ‘essay’ and it would even be kind of weird if I were to try do so. BITM is comprised of opinionated columns and essays (see above), more straightforward reporting, and so on. And sometimes those things are in tension; when I was reporting on DOGE’s firing of federal tech workers last year, I had a lot of opinions that didn’t necessarily seem appropriate to include in a news story. But then I might share those opinions in an edition just a few issues later. It’s a little messy.

So! Just because I am writing about a basic income project does not mean I am endorsing said project. I hope that’s clear in general, and from the presentation, tone, and inclusion of critical perspectives in the story, but it also makes a lot of sense that it would seem otherwise. After all, I condemn and endorse stuff all the time in these pages! I’ll surely write more on UBI in the future, but for now, suffice to say, I think this is a fascinating project that is very much a sign of the times, and in BITM’s wheelhouse. (And for the record, the UBI is being piloted by nonprofits that are not affiliated with AI companies, by worker-affiliated orgs who are trying to help blunt the impact of the AI economy.)

But thanks again—and always—for the comments, notes, emails, and social posts. All of it. I read them all, even if I don’t always have time to respond. I count myself lucky to be part of such an incredible critical community here. Cheers all, and hammers up.

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Ypsilanti Township in Michigan is attempting to cut off the flow of water to a planned data center that would power a new generation of nuclear weapons research. On Wednesday, the Township’s Board of Trustees voted to institute a 365 day moratorium on the delivery of water to hyperscale data centers so the township can study the impact of the building’s massive water needs.

The proposed data center in the Ypsilanti Township’s Hydro Park has been a sore spot for the community since its proposal. The $1.2 billion 220,000 square foot facility would be used by Los Alamos National Laboratories (LANL) some 1,500 miles away for nuclear weapons research. In February, UofM’s Steven Ceccio told the University of Michigan Record that the facility would consume 500,000 gallons of water per day and that the University planned to buy it from the Ypsilanti Community Utilities Authority. (YCUA)

The YCUA has spent the past month lobbying for a moratorium on providing water and sewer access to hyperscale data centers and “artificial intelligence computing facilities,” according to notes on a presentation stored on the organization's website. The moratorium would include LANL’s data center.

The YCUA cited an American Water Works Association white paper about data center water demands and concluded it needed more time to investigate the matter. “Hyper-scale data centers, as well as other mid-sized data centers, artificial intelligence computing facilities, and high-performance computational centers are ‘high-impact customers’ for water and sewer utilities,” YCUA said in its presentation.

The moratorium places a 12-month stop on serving water to data centers while the YCUA conducts a long-term water supply analysis and looks into the environmental sustainability studies. “During the 12-month moratorium period, the Authority will refrain from executing any capacity reservation agreement.”

This is a delay tactic on the part of a Township that does not want to see the data center constructed. Many in the community have strong feelings about the use of parkland for a facility that researchers nuclear weapons. Beyond the moral and ethical concerns, some are worried about becoming targets in a war. Last month, Township attorney Douglas Winters told the Board of Trustees that building hosting the data center would make Ypsilanti Township a “high value target.” He pointed to the recent bombing of Gulf Coast data centers by Iran as evidence.

America is embarking on a new nuclear arms race and Ypsilanti Township is one small part of it. The Pentagon has called for US nuclear scientists to design new kinds of nuclear weapons and Trump’s 2027 budget proposal almost doubled the money set aside to create new cores for nukes. UofM has repeatedly said that the data center would not “manufacture” nuclear weapons.

“Los Alamos is tasked with nuclear stewardship—not conducting live tests on weaponry, but instead using advanced computation to ensure the safety and reliability of our existing stockpile without the need for nuclear testing, especially as our stockpile ages. Computation provides an important tool for LANL to achieve this mission,” UofM’s Ceccio told the Record.

But during a public open house about the data center, LANL deputy laboratory director Patrick Fitch confirmed it would be used for weapons research. “One of the two computers we’re planning in our 55 megawatts (section)—if this facility is built—will be for what’s called secret restricted data. So it’ll be for the nuclear weapons program. Not exclusively, but it’ll be able to do that work,” Fitch told the Michigan Daily.

During the Wednesday meeting of the Ypsilanti Township Board, attorney Winters gave a clear eyed summary of the Township’s place in the new nuclear arms race. “This facility they’re proposing in partnership with the UofM is the digital brain for everything that’s going to take place in New Mexico. Make no mistake about it, you can rename, reframe, and repackage all you want. It is a high value target,” Winters said. 

Even with the proposed water moratorium, the University and LANL plan to break ground on the data center on Monday. The University of Michigan did not return 404 Media’s request for a comment.

Corporate interiors are designed with function in mind, outfitted with contract furnishings made to support employees as they perform daily tasks. Yet there is little emphasis on the locale where duties are actually performed. When it came time to design their own hub, the architects at STARK decided to create a studio that was also a showcase of regional makers and craftsmanship: a celebration of both people and place.

Located in Squamish, British Columbia, the 3,200-square-foot Queensway office emphasizes an interplay of materials which sets the tone at the entrance. Custom millwork in Canadian-sourced maple veneer adds warmth, and contrasts with the predominant crisp white tone.

The material library forms the heart of space. Designers can pair flooring, tiles, and hardware and envision how each piece might enhance a project. This curated archive of finishes, textiles, and sample boards is not only an essential resource, but also a spot that provides endless inspiration for staff members.

Adjacent breakout rooms are ideal for moments of quiet focus. Glass-enclosed conference rooms offer transparency with just enough privacy. Select words and phrases such as “creative boldness” and “authenticity” decorate the clear surfaces. A wood partition has the same terms carved out of the panels, playful reminders of the firm’s ethos.

In alignment with STARK’s clear approach, every element is on view rather than tucked away. Exposed mechanical systems, bare walls, and concrete floors have an industrial appeal. Acoustic comfort in the open environment is key. Felt ceiling grids and covered panels dampen sound but do not detract from the streamlined style. The lighting program, developed in partnership with a local consultant, defines sectors designated for groups and yet still meets the demands of detailed work.

Strategically placed pops of color produce visual energy without overwhelming the rest of the interior elements. Orange chairs and dividers animate the main zones of the office, while a rich rust tone envelops the largest boardroom. A linear fixture in a soft blue seems to float above the desk area, with seats in a similar tone set in the rooms below.

At this office by and for STARK, colleagues can fully engage with one another, with the space as part of the dialogue.

Charles and Ray Eames are synonymous with the burgeoning field of ergonomics, the Eames Lounge for Herman Miller an iconic example of what can happen when innovative design meets considered craftsmanship. The Eameses were highly interested in material exploration, using traditionally industrial parts to create a thoroughly cohesive project: the Eames Pavilion System, shown for the first time at Triennale Milano. Brought to life with through the collaboration of Eames Office and Kettal, each part is colorful, distinct, and most importantly, humane.

The facade is designed for the natural flows of life–windows open wide to refresh air inside, with the colorful panels available in custom configurations, equipped for privacy or public view. Yes, these are containers: containers for life, that one can place like blocks, however we wish.

For the Eamses, the house was first and foremost a design problem. The confluence of architecture, with Charles’ background, and the expertise of a painter’s eye from Ray made for a beautiful understanding of human nature, which they then translated to the built environment. “In the almost 40 years I have been Director of the Eames Office, I have been asked time and again whether it is possible to purchase a reproduction of the Eames House. One-to-one replicas can be interesting, yet we were always holding out for something else – a true systems approach that was also international in its solution. The new system advances prefabricated Eames buildings from prototype to product. Not a facsimile or collector’s edition, but a fully engineered architectural ecosystem. The Eames houses – many of them unbuilt – were always milestones and prototypes for such evolution. Our grandparents’ writings clearly show that even when designed for a specific site, the intent was series production of human habitation,” stated Eames Demetrios, Director, Eames Office, and grandson of Charles and Ray Eames.

A balance and a symmetry dominate the form, an extension of their design philosophy through and through. Not satisfied with creating an object for beauty’s sake, each aspect of the house reflected a deep understanding of human movement, trajectory, and nature: the gathering around the kitchen counter, the pile of shoes in the hallway. Of course, standards vary across cultures, yet there are certain things that we continue to hold true, about ourselves and others. This is what the Eameses were truly interested in, and it shows.

A brilliant burst of blue and yellow among the industrial black and grey are signature Eames, creating personality and bringing Ray’s sensibility as an artist into view. Industrial details and cold metal soften within the sensibility of family and connection, a settling of the mind that is a talent unto itself.

To learn more about the Eames Pavilion System, visit kettal.com.

Photography by Yosigo, Rocafort, courtesy of Kettal.