Outpost Office (Assistant Professors of Architecture Ashley Bigham and Erik Herrmann) will deliver the Richard O'Cain Lecture at the Clemson University School of Architecture on November 8. The lecture, “Timeful Architecture,” is a part of Clemson’s public lecture series whose theme for 2023–24 is “The Third Place.”

In the modern era, the “third place” is the space of socialization separate from our usual environments that impact the health of Western societies and individuals.

The health of Western societies and individuals has, in the modern era, depended upon the existence of “third places,” spaces for socialization separate from the usual environments of home and work. But increasingly, human interaction exists outside traditional systems, with improvised and alternative spaces serving dispersed communities and uses. The Third Place implicates issues ranging in scale, including the precarity of borders (visible and invisible), metropolitan networks, digital spaces as proxies, transition spaces, and, in the more colloquial sense of the term, spaces outside the dwelling or workplace. 

Outpost Office seeks new public audiences through experimental creative production ranging from the serious to the absurd, often simultaneously. Inventive applications of off-the-shelf tools and industrial-grade materials often characterize the practice's work. Their designs propose that architecture can be projective and impactful while at the same time inexpensive, temporal, and open-ended. Particular focuses of Outpost Office include experimental platforms for gathering and speculations in and about the American suburbs.

Read more at Clemson University