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Idea by

Matiss Groskaufmanis

https://www.instagram.com/matissgroskaufmanis/

Ann Arbor, United States of America
Matīss Groskaufmanis is the 2019–2020 Sanders Fellow at the University of Michigan's Taubman College of Architecture and Urban Planning. His research and design work examines architecture’s relationship to political and economic ideologies, with a particular focus on the emergence of global architecture practice. In 2018, he served as a curator of the Latvian Pavilion at the Venice Architecture Biennale, exploring housing as a means of nation building.

Call for ideas 2020

The Prolific Office


A study of management of the global architecture practice

The Prolific Office


A study of management of the global architecture practice
The Prolific Office is a post-starchitecture practice, as it signifies both – a break from the preceding era, as well as a more intensified form of it.
File under
Type of project
  • Systemic changes

The project examines architecture’s managerial turn, problematizing “prolific offices” as the par excellence model of global architecture practice of the first decades of the twenty-first century. It looks at how managerial ethos, economic deregulation, global logistics, and communication technologies—as well automated design processes and building information modeling (BIM) systems—have transformed architecture practice and its productive output. By examining multiple case studies from both business management and architecture practice, the “prolific office” is explored from two perspectives: on one hand from understanding how capitalist modes of production—from Fordism to the new economy of cognitive-cultural capitalism—have penetrated architecture practice; and on the other had how these transformations are manifested in built and virtual forms, including formal qualities, authorship, and economies of production.


The Prolific Office


A study of management of the global architecture practice

The Prolific Office


A study of management of the global architecture practice
The Prolific Office is a post-starchitecture practice, as it signifies both – a break from the preceding era, as well as a more intensified form of it.
File under
Type of project
  • Systemic changes

The project examines architecture’s managerial turn, problematizing “prolific offices” as the par excellence model of global architecture practice of the first decades of the twenty-first century. It looks at how managerial ethos, economic deregulation, global logistics, and communication technologies—as well automated design processes and building information modeling (BIM) systems—have transformed architecture practice and its productive output. By examining multiple case studies from both business management and architecture practice, the “prolific office” is explored from two perspectives: on one hand from understanding how capitalist modes of production—from Fordism to the new economy of cognitive-cultural capitalism—have penetrated architecture practice; and on the other had how these transformations are manifested in built and virtual forms, including formal qualities, authorship, and economies of production.



Idea by

Matiss Groskaufmanis
Ann Arbor
United States of America
Matīss Groskaufmanis is the 2019–2020 Sanders Fellow at the University of Michigan's Taubman College of Architecture and Urban Planning. His research and design work examines architecture’s relationship to political and economic ideologies, with a particular focus on the emergence of global architecture practice. In 2018, he served as a curator of the Latvian Pavilion at the Venice Architecture Biennale, exploring housing as a means of nation building.