New interfaces in the automated landscapes of logistics

105 Review Article New Interfaces in the Automated Landscapes of Logistics Jesse LeCavalier As a body of knowledge and as an area of work, Such standardising technologies include not just logistics tends toward the mechanical over the the physical spaces but also immaterial systems inquisitive – toward the how instead of the why. In like data management structures. However, even other words, the concerns of the industry typically if a realm like data management might be largely focus on solving a problem rather than consid- understood as non-physical, it nonetheless depends ering whether the problem is a problem at all or, on a material corollary to navigate between the two indeed, if it needs solving. Logistics is not alone in realms. Much like the way the architectures of logis- this emphasis but since it is an industry dedicated tics can translate between different systems, the bar to the management of objects over distance and code functions similarly to translate physical objects duration, its operations shape and reshape the built into information to be managed. Both building environment and are therefore particularly germane and bar code function as ‘loose couplings’ to bind to architecture and urbanism. The transformations multiple realms together. According to Karl Weick, that logistics produces are incremental and most who developed the concept, apparent at sites of incompatibility, be they physical, legislative, or both. For example, the misalignment if all of the elements in a large system are loosely of a loading dock height with a tractor-trailer opening coupled to one another, then any one element can creates a small but significant wrinkle in a process adjust to and modify local unique contingency without always seeking smoothness – a wrinkle that some affecting the whole system. These local adaptations logistics manager somewhere will try to iron out. can be swift, relatively economical and substantial.2 Logistics, if we might speak of it in such a way, depends on loose structures and overlapping affini- While seemingly a tool of reduction and over-spec- ties to navigate these incompatible conditions. The ification, part of the barcode’s power arises from its corresponding architectures of logistics become capacity to adapt to diverse conditions while still explicit sites for these negotiations and are designed creating linkages among ostensibly incompatible to reduce friction and to enable the rapid distribution worlds. 1 of material. They reflect a systems-based approach that emphasises compatibility and nimbleness and The barcode is just one of several coupling tech- might lead us to see logistical installations less nologies that facilitate the internal compatibility as buildings in a conventional sense and more as within logistical systems. Such consistent function- standardising technologies designed to project a ality contributes to an overall internalisation that certain version of the world. increasingly characterises logistical environments themselves (i.e. environments of logistics rather 23 The Architecture of Logistics | Autumn / Winter 2018 | 105–114 106 than environments for logistics). Even if these envi- coalesce around logistical priorities, including ronments are discontinuous, with multiple types and increasing speed, lowering costs, and externalising amounts distributed throughout the landscape, they their consequences for us, their customers. To do remain internally consistent and connected. For this, those involved in logistics generate both their example, tractor-trailers create a mobile but contin- own ways of being in the world and of knowing the uous space, a kind of attenuated continuity, by world. These modes are laced with apparent contra- bridging between warehouses and shopping envi- dictions that illuminate the ambiguities inherent in ronments. When confronted with such a condition, the industry. [Fig. 1, 2] Leigh Star’s conceptual category of the ‘boundary object’ helps extend Weick’s idea of loose coupling For the systems of elements within a logistical into a more material realm. For Star, boundary system, friction is a constant threat. At the same objects time, the qualities associated with a healthy urban structure are often the result of friction, both liter- inhabit several intersecting social worlds and satisfy ally and figuratively. Those involved with logistics the informational requirements of each of them. work to eliminate this friction through ‘lubricating’ Boundary objects are objects which are both plastic efforts to loosen restrictions, overcome barriers, or enough to adapt to local needs and the constraints of to create spaces of exception. One of the key arrays several parties employing them, yet robust enough to of instruments in this process is familiar to archi- maintain a common identity across sites.3 tects – they are the things we call buildings. [Fig. 3] These elements support multiple associations from Logistical buildings proliferate just as logistical multiple groups and are thus sources of coher- companies seek to make the apparatus of their ence and organisation in far flung systems. With efforts disappear. While these distribution centres these notions in mind, this article explores the and data centres and control centres and conti- emerging landscapes of logistics to better under- nuity centres and risk management centres and stand how logistics shapes the built environment shrinkage prevention centres supervise and control and to consider some of the potential entry points vast streams of data, all that seemingly immate- for design. rial information often remains physically connected to actual things, each with their own volume and The persistent metaphor of flow is often conjured weight and materiality. As a result, decisions made to describe the processes and labour that move in haste or under duress at a remote workstation material from one place to another. The ‘space of can have echoing consequences on the ground, flows’ that Manuel Castells articulated for us is a wherever that might be. These could include the important conceptual tool of course, arriving as it real estate processes that automated location soft- did during an expanding understanding of globalisa- ware instigates or the miles-long walking circuits 4 tion and its consequences. Logistics emerged as a of distribution centre workers engaged with the specialised area of knowledge during this period and stowing, picking, packing, and shipping of orders. is coming to characterise the operations of many of the world’s largest commercial corporate actors, E-commerce fulfilment targets individual including companies like Amazon and Walmart. consumers yet relies on collectively funded infra- Propelled by reliable and expanding consumer structure to deliver its orders. At the same time, appetites, the operations of these companies institutions that were once sites of collective 107 Fig. 1 Fig. 2 Fig. 3 Fig. 4 Fig. 5 Fig. 1: When they do anything but. Image: UPS roller platform floor. Photo: Dustin Chambers. Fig. 2: Logistics governs this movement of things through time and space. Source: Uniform Grocery Product Code Council, UPC Symbol Specification (Washington, DC, 1973). Courtesy of Bill Selmeier. Fig. 3: Entire landscapes of logistics have emerged to enable the movement of things. Image: author. Fig. 4: Fulfilment creates a wilderness of machines. Image: KIVA Robotics by DAWGHAUS Photography (https://bostonglobe.com, accessed July 30, 2018). Fig. 5: Walmart’s logistics origin story depends on architecture. Image: author. 108 encounter are obviated by the convenience and the small robotic drive units (RDUs) appear quietly affordability that a company like Amazon offers. from the dark of the centre’s depths, present their charge and then glide away, only this time to a loca- Fulfilment isolates consuming subjects by tion different from their origin. rendering us into consumer profile categories based on broad demographic generalisations. However, Multiply this path, this linear gesture, this rather than make space for the difficult questions apparent behaviour, by millions. Then imagine that posted by collective decision-making scenarios, it never stops. fulfilment industries foreground the capacity for individual impulsive choice, either through an While the scripts controlling these fulfilment abstract notion of ‘self’ improvement or through the circuits are authored by people, the effect on the intensification of impulsive desires mutated from ground is inscrutable and unpredictable. The RDUs’ evolutionary survival instincts. By maintaining focus collective activities politely tolerate the humans on these more individualised decision realms and among them by patiently waiting for them to finish by isolating consuming subjects through gestures their work or by quietly waiting for them to get out of personalisation, fulfilment industries claim to free of the way so that they might be able to get back to us from confronting either the abstract but shared the task at hand. To witness this in action is to see responsibilities related to, for example, the ‘slow a species not yet taught to fear or adapt to human violence’ of global warming or the collective imme- presence. The robots’ indifference to the organic diate action required by contemporary crises of lumps that share their space creates its own kind government, economy, or environment.5 of wilderness, one whose logic remains unavailable to us. [Fig. 4] Logistics creates the problem and offers itself as the solution. Operating at the speed demanded (and The global retail corporation, Walmart, was a promised) by companies like Amazon requires vast pioneer in developing the logistical environment. commitments to technology precisely to escape the The company began as a regional discount retailer physical commitments of location. Indeed, traveling in 1962 and has since grown into the world’s largest light, as Zygmunt Bauman might phrase it, is not just revenue generator, earning almost $486 billion in about a nomadic lack of commitment but is a deeper 2017. The closest global rival was China’s national organising philosophy that seeks to intensify a lack power company, State Grid, with $315 billion and of attachment; a disencumbrance.6 Such impera- in the US, the conglomerate holding company tives contribute to subtle but significant spatial and Berkshire Hathaway with $223 billion. While Walmart material transformations including, for example, the seems most concerned with Amazon’s ascendance, slow erosion of architectural boundaries. the Seattle-based internet services and retailing company remains a distant twelfth in the ranks, With its acquisition of Kiva Systems in 2012, pulling in just under $136 billion in FY2017. In terms Amazon took a major step toward the eventual of profit margin, Walmart was at 2.8 percent for displacement of architecture as both human-centred 2017 and Amazon at 1.7 percent. However, while discipline and as static assembly. These systems Walmart’s profits shrank by 7.2 percent, Amazon’s require only the most minimal of enclosures to create increased by almost 300 percent. Both of these a stable interior climate and flat floor that allow companies are embedded in the social fabric of machines to travel easily. Governed by algorithms the United States and, increasingly, in the urban but apparently acting with their own intentionality, fabric as well. Both depend on an assumption of the 109 18 23 20 24 26 19 22 21 25 Fig. 7a Fig. 6a 01 04 08 05 03 07 02 06 09 Fig. 7b Fig. 6b 11 10 15 12 14 13 17 16 Fig. 6c Fig. 7c Fig. 6a: The Supercentre has content but no form. Image: author. Fig. 6b: The Data Centre has form but no content. Image: author. Fig. 6c. The Distribution Centre’s content is the form. Image: author. Fig. 7a: DataXpress combines multiple forms of consumption. Image: author. Fig. 7b: ConDoIt merges passenger and inventory flow. Image: author. Fig. 7c: Bldg2Bldg interface enables automatic materials exchange. Image: author. 110 stability of a consumer class that seeks to maximise of distribution centres as buildings is to not register utility of its spending by ‘saving’ money on less their embeddedness within the larger logistical expensive goods. While Amazon’s model demands landscape. [Fig. 6c] remote storage and digital interfaces (so that it might plausibly present itself as a store that sells Next to this stable collection of building types, the ‘everything’), Walmart primarily presents its inven- company continues to experiment with new formats, tory in its collection of physical stores, nearly eleven including convenience stores, petrol stations, and thousand of them worldwide. [Fig. 6a] other smaller faster formats. With these experimental formats as precedents and as evidence that Walmart relies on three building types: the the retailer continues to seek out new possibilities discount retail centre, the data centre, and the for its collection of built elements, the following distribution centre. (Figure 8a, 8b, 8c) Walmart calls formats are speculative extensions and recombina- its retail centres that sell dry goods and groceries tions of the retailer’s base genetic material. ‘Supercenters.’ They are the most common Walmart building, with three and a half thousand in the United Walmart’s need to keep growing makes its logis- States alone. The company controls the interior tical mission increasingly critical, especially as layout of the stores so that they remain compatible Amazon appears more and more likely to overtake within their larger logistics system. However, the the older company. To compete with the online building uses a buffer zone to mediate the unex- retailer, Walmart has increased its own online pres- pected differences of individual sites. While the ence through, among other things, the acquisition interior content is rigidly determined by merchan- of Jet.com and Flipkart, both large e-commerce dise forecasting and replenishment protocols, the companies. These shifts point to an increased need exterior form is somewhat more malleable. [Fig. 6a] for data management and distribution, especially in and for urban areas. Walmart has its own data centre that it uses to store information and manage orders. The building DataXpress formats provide convenient local consists of a large server warehouse whose perim- access to cloud storage. Sharing space with a food eter is defined by a tall earthen embankment. While centre, the building type maintains a low profile as this earthwork creates a stable form, the contents it is partially embedded in the earth. Huggers and of the building are constantly updated as new tech- tenders are on staff to help with questions about nologies are adopted. In this sense, the building is data growth. [Fig. 7a] more of an infrastructural processing device with stable perimeter but with a fluid interior. [Fig. 6b] At the same time, because of its actual stores, Walmart has physical distribution points throughout Distribution centres process Walmart’s inventory the country with more than half of its stores on its way from suppliers to retail outlets. Buildings within five hundred metres of a city boundary.7 To like this one are semi-automated switching facilities support increased automated mobility, ConDoIt that rarely contain inventory for more than twenty- fuses transit hub modality with distribution centre four hours. Conventional architectural enclosure is responsiveness, the most expedient way of protecting and securing lines to consolidate Preferred orders, helping to the processing machinery inside and thus the enve- avoid empty back-hauls while maximising customer lope adheres tightly to the contents. Thus to speak product exposure. [Fig. 7b] piggybacking outgoing transit 111 Fig. 8: Automated reorganization of building elements produces plausible logistical configurations. Image: ‘The End of Buildings’, Jesse LeCavalier, Seoul Biennale for Architecture and Urbanism, 2017. 112 The automated environments of advanced distri- of design investigation even as it becomes more bution demand expedited exchange and delivery of self-referential. To create the frictionless conditions material across facilities. Rather than using tractors, that logistics promises and seeks, it is possible that systems can plug directly into adjacent or related the contemporary ‘loose’ relationships of elements fulfilment zones, translating to less downtime, less might very well be only an intermediate step along hurry-up-and-wait, and greater throughput. [Fig. 7c] a path to a much more tightly organised, and therefore inaccessible, logistical world. The images included here are the results of a project that perpetually reshuffles pieces of Walmart’s distribution system to examine their Notes compatibility but also to investigate the spatial 1. Langdon Winner addresses the challenges of reifica- arrangements that emerge from their recombina- tion when engaging such phenomena. He writes, ‘The tion. On one hand, the technical information and charge of reification, however, loses some of its impact the axonometric projection provide credible alibis if one considers that social science consistently reifies for apparently absurd building configurations. At the concepts such as “society”, “family”, and “bureau- same time, the buildings are not randomly gener- cracy”. One is hard pressed to think how it could do ated but rather identified from patterns that emerge otherwise. Since we cannot have all that we wish to from the cycling combinations of elements. In this talk about immediately present as empirical referents, sense, the heuristic dimension of pattern recog- we must employ symbols to represent phenomena.’ nition introduces some level of subjectivity to an Langdon Winner, Autonomous Technology: Technics- otherwise autonomous process while also simu- out-of-Control as a Theme in Political Thought lating the growth of the logistical landscape. [Fig. 8] (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1977), 42. 2. Karl Weick, ‘Educational Organizations as Loosely Recurring combinations present evidence, not so much of a single configuration but more like a recurring probability – something that tends to ‘stick’ Coupled Systems,’ Administrative Science Quarterly 21, no. 1 (March 1976): 7. 3. Susan Leigh Star and James R. Griesemer, over time. These sticky patterns suggest emergent ‘Institutional Ecology, “Translations” and Boundary logistical environments, freed from assumptions Objects: Amateurs and Professionals in Berkeley’s about use, type, or even inhabitation. The logics of Museum of Vertebrate Zoology, 1907–39,’ Social standardisation, which are necessary for the func- Studies of Science, 9, no. 3 (August 1989): 393. tion of logistical systems, support this compatibility. 4. See, for example, Andrew Ballantyne and Chris Drawing out the absurdity in the process introduces L. Smith, eds., Architecture in the Space of Flows some kind of contaminant into an increasingly sterile (London: Routledge, 2012). The volume contains a formula or a retardant into an increasingly acceler- series of articles, each concerning some aspect of ated process. The automatic production of new ‘flow’ in contemporary space, e.g. ‘Oceanic Spaces of logistical forms intensifies these inherent processes Flow,’ ‘Trade Flow: Architectures of Informal Markets,’ to generate plausible but unstable images. By ‘Temporal Flows,’ ‘Navigating Flow,’ etc. creating representations of logistical environments 5. See for example, Rob Nixon, Slow Violence and and by subsequently attempting to read them, we the Environmentalism of the Poor (Cambridge MA: not only recognise our own general illiteracy but also Harvard University Press, 2013). see aesthetic possibilities beyond the utilitarian. The 6. Zygmunt Bauman, in Liquid Modernity, points to ‘trav- logistical ‘boundary’ increasingly emerges as a site elling light’ as an asset of power because ‘holding to 113 the ground is not that important if the ground can be reached and abandoned at whim.’ Zygmunt Bauman, Liquid Modernity (Cambridge: Polity Press, 2000), 13. 7. Matthew Zook and Mark Graham, ‘Wal-Mart Nation: Mapping the Reach of a Retail Colossus,’ in Wal-Mart World: The World’s Biggest Corporation in the Global Economy, ed. Stanley D. Brunn, (London: Routledge, 2006), 20. Biography Jesse LeCavalier’s work explores the architectural and urban implications of contemporary logistics. He is the author of The Rule of Logistics: Walmart and the Architecture of Fulfillment (University of Minnesota Press, 2016) and an associate professor of architecture at the New Jersey Institute of Technology. He is currently the Daniel Rose Visiting Assistant Professor at the Yale School of Architecture. LeCavalier was the recipient of the 2015 New Faculty Teaching Award from the Association of the Collegiate Schools of Architecture (ACSA) and the 2010–11 Sanders Fellow at the University of Michigan. His work has appeared in Cabinet, Public Culture, Places, Art Papers, and Harvard Design Magazine. His installation ‘Architectures of Fulfillment’ was part of the 2017 Seoul Biennale for Architecture and Urbanism as his project ‘Shelf Life’ was one of five finalists for the 2018 MoMA PS1 Young Architects Program. 114