Servo (USA/CH/S) David Erdman (1970), Marcelyn Gow (1966), Ulrika Karlsson (1966), Chris Perry (1969)
Even though the four Servo associates all attended Columbia University in New York, they are now living, working and teaching in four different cities--and continents: D. Erdman at UCLA, M. Gow at the ETH in Zurich, C. Perry at the Pratt Institute and at Columbia in New York, and U. Karlsson in Stockholm. The name, Servo, and the principles underpinning it derive from this specific structural dynamic of interactions and decentralized exchanges. By "gleaning", mixing and filtering a wide-ranging sampling of materials, techniques and information, be it at local or worldwide level, their praxis is organized around several "lines" of research--Nurbline, Speeline, etc.--each one of which ushers in a broad field of applications and scales. The Cloudline axis, in particular, which consists in imbuing architecture with a certain degree of ambiguity and randomness, takes the form both of a multi-functional "cloudcurtain", sensitive to variations in luminosity, and of a "cloudbox", a household device for lighting, storage and displaying things. By combining standardization and customization--two contradictory trends in contemporary production--they thus create a catalogue of systems which can be "sampled" and recycled on an on-going, reciprocal basis.