Adhocism – an idea of improvisation

‘Adhocism’ ideas were coined in their book Adhocism: The Case for Improvisation by architect, theoretician, and former designers Charles Jencks and Nathan Silver (1972). They considered how designers could take immediate action in ways that had never been imagined in their original design by using readily available components.

Adhocism has existed for as long as anybody can remember. (Think Robinson Crusoe, who built a raft and a shelter to escape his ship’s wreckage.) Adhocism as a design approach begins with simple improvisations, such as using a bottle as a candleholder, a dictionary as a doorstop, or a tractor seat on wheels as a dining room chair. But it’s also an underdeveloped force in practically every activity we engage in, from play to architecture to city planning to political change.

Adhoc – Contemporary Meaning

In interior design and architecture, designs use “found” materials or materials on hand or nearby. Ad hoc, which originally meant “for a particular place or purpose,” means “picked up casually.”There has been a surge of ad hoc design as part of the experimental efforts that seek directions outside or beyond the aesthetic of Modernism. Houses constructed of driftwood, recycled cans or bottles, or combinations thereof, and interiors furnished with used cable reels, casks and kegs, hammocks, and similar items are typical examples of the ad hoc design approach.

“Everything can always be something else.”

Charles Jencks

Drop City and the Counter Culture Movement

In the 1960s, Counter culture groups in the US explored some of those concepts, including Drop City, which had built dome dwellings from car roofs obtained cheaply from scrapyards used for reusing materials discarded by consumer society. Change, mobility, and immediate obsolescence are the foundations of adhocism. When adhocists discover their ship is breaking up around them, they transform it into a raft. The building’s motto is “Everything can always be something else.”

The Whole Earth Catalog of 1968, an encyclopaedia of new forms of life and providers of means of doing so, had some promising implications for this future.

Sources

The MIT Press. (n.d.). Adhocism, Expanded And Updated Edition. The MIT Press. https://mitpress.mit.edu/books/adhocism-expanded-and-updated-edition.

Woodham, J. M. (2006). A dictionary of modern design. Oxford University Press.

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