Call for Submissions

Crit 70: Overproduction (Fall 2010)

In simple economic terms, overproduction means too much supply, too little demand, or both. In Marx’s thinking overproduction is an inevitable byproduct of capitalism (with the profit motive demanding a continuous expansion of both supply and demand), while more recently, game theorists have demonstrated why overproduction is a “dominant strategy,” albeit one with negative consequences.

These negative consequences became lucidly clear as the economic boom turned into a crisis. Speculation had led to overproduction of the built environment, seen now in the empty housing found almost everywhere. When something is overproduced, its presumed utilitarian function gets subsumed by its rhetorical function. Take, for example, the reappropriation of surplus or discarded objects or materials, such as with shipping containers, which have no reason to be anything but.

Overproduction typically means “too many,” but it can also mean “too much.” A musical artist is considered to be “overproduced” after spending too much time in the studio, where originality and creativity get removed. Technology has only heightened the condition, with the “Auto-Tune” machine smoothing over the misplaced notes of many popular artists.

With the continuous introduction of new modes of production, overproduction at the object scale seems almost inevitable. Architects have a tendency towards fetishization, manifest in the wholehearted embrace of digital technologies. But there is an illusion that digital production has value in and of itself, and just because things are possible does not necessarily make them desirable.

So, then, if the flip side of overproduction is restraint, what does restraint look like today? One could look at the Japanese architects working today as a possible model, with firms like recent Pritzker-prize winners SANAA ([Kazuyo] Sejima and [Ryue] Nishizawa and Associates) embodying a form of restraint that uses available techniques without being overly reliant on them. Japan had its bubble burst almost two decades ago, and perhaps provides some lessons for the world at large.

Crit 70: Overproduction seeks written essays, built projects, studio designs, and competition entries that address issues of production, both the tendency toward overproduction and attempts to mitigate it.

The deadline is September 1, 2010. Please send questions to 2009-2011 Editor-in-Chief Zach Heineman at crit@aias.org.

Download the guidelines for submission (PDF).