Swiss Institute - Everything That Is Solid Melts Into Airbnb lyrics

Simon Castets Good evening and welcome to Swiss Institute. We are so glad that you could join us tonight for “Everything That Is Solid Melts Into Airbnb,” the second program of our Design Series, Fin de Siècle. Tonight we are joined by Alessandro Bava, a representative from the AIRBNB Pavilion, as well as Rachael Yu and Aaron Taylor Harvey, representatives from AirBnB. The conversation will be moderated by Sean Monahan of K-HOLE. Alessandro Bava Aaron and Rachael are coming from the San Francisco-area headquarters of Airbnb. They're part of the Environments Team, which maybe you can describe for the audience? Aaron Taylor Harvey Hi, guys. I'm suspicious of the term ‘representative' for this talk. We're designers and we're architects. We work at Airbnb. Hopefully, we'll provide some perspective from that angle but I don't seek to represent Airbnb. Rachael and I have had our own interior architecture studio called Myriad Harbor for four years. We were designing mostly commercial interiors but also did some exhibition spaces and some pop-up retail, all kinds of stuff. We got hired by Airbnb to work on a couple of projects. We were invited to design the Portland offices for Airbnb and at that point we suggested becoming full-time. As architects the relationships between client and designer can be a little fraught and it can be kind of terrible between builder and designer. We saw an opportunity to compress those relationships and work from the inside. And hopefully, as a result, find more novel solutions. I wanted to address something we didn't get to in previous conversations: Airbnb allows for a commercialization of space and interior design that has been hitherto unknown. It allows you to commodify the image of your home in a way that is totally new. I have in the past seen it as an educational opportunity, a way to build an aesthetic template or conversation amongst host and guests. But it could also be seen as a walk into a hall of mirrors and just like the everything else on the internet reflect yourself back to your self over and over again. And therefore not challenge you. I'm fascinated with that potential. We focus mostly on designing events and designing offices though, of course, we don't design listings. But I am interested in how we can connect to the listing as a commodity. Alessandro Bava Can you say something about the relationship between a certain culture of design and Airbnb, given that the founders of Airbnb are also designers? Design culture draws on specific traditions of radical design. How does that influence of Airbnb? Aaron Taylor Harvey Airbnb was founded by RISD graduates—two ID guys. They were broke, didn't want to work for corporations, but were living in San Francisco. An Industrial Design Conference was coming to town and they had the idea to open up their home for paying guests. The ‘air' in Airbnb refers to the original airbeds they deployed in their home for their first guests. Airbnb was started to support itinerant design culture by offering a place to stay. Rachael Yu For a while it was where the founders thought the company was going to go. It was going to be this idea of making spaces that followed events that were happening, which is a very cool idea, similar to Superstudio. Aaron Taylor Harvey Then they opened it up to a bigger group. When the site first kind of went public, New York was the city to most firmly embrace it because of the density here. It became a center of growth. If you look at growth over the first couple of years, it's really incredible how much of it happened in New York. I would say that the result of having designers as founders is mostly seen in the fact that we exist in the company, that there's an Environments Team. There's a belief that it's important to treat office space the same way that you treat the product. To iterate on each previous office and apply those learnings. Instead of treating each one as a discrete design contract with a new group of people who attempt to absorb the culture as fast as they can and build something to respond to it. Sean Monahan I wonder – going back to how you first introduced yourselves not as representatives but explicitly as designers and then talking about Airbnb being founded by designers—if that in some way connects to the widespread anxiety about Airbnb and how it inflects urban space? Is Airbnb not comfortable taking ownership of how it changes urban space? Aaron Taylor Harvey I think the power of this conversation is bigger than that and I don't want it to be just about what Airbnb is doing to New York. There are plenty of other people who could address that and what the company thinks about it. We don't work for Airbnb because we were conscripted. We were excited about the potential of the product and wanted to be part of it. Alessandro Bava Maybe the question then is: what did you see in Airbnb that was exciting? Aaron Taylor Harvey The potential of Airbnb is to turn more and more space into shared space. And the most powerful use of it to me is just when I leave my home that it not remain empty. When I'm visiting Europe, someone can stay in my house. Space can become perpetually occupied. An incredibly powerful result of that will be when hotels don't have enough tenants and they turn back into apartment buildings—when Times Square becomes a place full of homes instead of a place full of nightmare tourist traps. Then you get something very different then the current narrative—you get more housing, you get more shared space, you get more availability and you stop having a dynamic where hotels and Airbnbs compete for space. That is what's exciting to me—that potential. It's a truly nomadic vision of what space could be. It's also a utopian vision, which is of course what it is all about. Sean Monahan Could you define nomadism for the audience? I think it is a utopic term, but there are also lots of other people moving around the world that we wouldn't call nomads per se—immigrants, migrant workers, tourists, etc. Rachael Yu The way I define a nomad in this situation is this drive for people to move around, often to large cities. As we go forward in the future, we see people moving faster and faster and a lot of what we work towards is having less friction in our movement. Aaron Taylor Harvey The traditional definition of nomad is sort of these tribes carrying the minimum provisions to set up the next camp. The really powerful thing about Superstudio's vision of the endless grid is that it's the beginning of a technological notion of what nomadism actually can be, where you don't have to carry anything with you. You just carry your body from point to point to point and those points are endless and those points are everywhere. For me, that bubble of comfort in which you exist talks about an eventual future where we just have a cushion of air that surrounds us. There is no enclosure, there is just a buffer of air that keeps us comfortable and that thing can spring up at any moment where we stop. Alessandro Bava This is one of the crazier aspects of Airbnb—this idea of nomadism. Not the fact that we're all being turned into users or the idea of ownership versus giving up ownership. We are incorporating aspects that belonged to another realm, the realm of a monastery. A monk uses things, he doesn't own things—it's like nomadism. I see this as a problematic aspect of contemporary capitalism. Ownership isn't important anymore. We can use someone else's house, we can use someone else's car, we don't have to own anymore and in that sense we are always indebted. There's the idea that you are born indebted because you are always going to use stuff. And Airbnb definitely has a part in that. Airbnb has made a huge impact on where we live, and on the city. So I wonder do these discussions happen within the company? Does the company address its impact on society and reality?—because your CEO and founder thinks in very idealistic terms about Airbnb. He said one thing I found super interesting—he said that ordinary people change themselves to adapt to the world, but innovators change the world around themselves. Airbnb shows that we change ourselves to the environment rather than our connections changing around us, which was the dream of radical design. Radical design and inflatables had the idea that you could really change architecture and really change your environment—that you could form and adapt it to your needs. Airbnb shows that the reality is we change ourselves to fit into spaces, to fit into where we travel. If you travel with an Airbnb, you are in someone else's home, in someone else's reality. The whole idea of Airbnb is that this reality reflects a shared global/international idea of comfort, which is also a utopian thing to imagine. So it really shows that you adapt to your environment rather than your environment adapting to you. Rachael Yu I actually think it is more interesting for us to adapt to different environments and—especially with Airbnb as a travel company—the idea is that when you go to another place, you get to add a whole new element of being alone, trying different places, and you get to have this experience. That is more of a utopian experience than this idea that the environment adapts to us. I think it would be bland if the environment just adapted to you everywhere that you went. It would just be the same, so why travel? Sean Monahan Do you think you can escape the environments adapting to a median level of comfort? At the Airbnb's that I've stayed in there are two types. There's like the Selby prototype—an especially weird, specific place that you stay in for fun. And there's the efficiency Airbnb, which is cheaper and has Ikea furniture and looks the same in every international city across the world. Aaron Taylor Harvey But that [efficiency Airbnb] could be in any neighborhood in these cities—but the second you step out the door you are having a different experience as a traveller. That's the question you're asking. Brian, our CEO isn't cynical about it. He's pa**ionate about what Airbnb can do and what it means for travelers. But a lot of it is broadening the scope of what a travel experience can be for everyone, not just the person who is an exceptional, perfect adventurer, but for people who just want to go somewhere and come to New York. The relationship between Ikea and Airbnb is super-fascinating. I really think if you search the listings in Croatia or the listings in Chicago, you will see a lot of places that look exactly the same. It's that same f**ing black table. It's the same headboard. It's that same environment! Ikea is facilitating the global standard you are talking about. Alessandro Bava Can Airbnb be multiuse—for both business traveling and tourism? Because in my experience, most people use it to travel for work, not because they are travelling for pleasure. Aaron Taylor Harvey We're trying to grow that market. Part of it is the interface. Communicating with other humans is way less efficient than communicating with the Marriott. For business travelers it's hard to get through the whole thing. Alessandro Bava But your company should be aware that the reality of work today isn't going to a Marriot hotel. Who goes to a Marriot hotel? Aaron Taylor Harvey A billion business travelers go to a Marriot hotel. Alessandro Bava Of course, but there are also a billion people with other kinds of jobs and travelling with less means and they use Airbnb. When I travel I use Airbnb. I stay at someone's cheap house. But really, how many people travel for business today and go to hotels? I know people that work for big corporations and they stay at Airbnbs anyways. Aaron Taylor Harvey If that was true, people wouldn't be using hotels. But of course its not, the hotel industry is doing fine. Ace hotels are being built all over the country. Hotels aren't suffering. There is one thing—in some ways the generic Ikea home is almost invisible. It's repetition. It's predictability. Its sameness across the globe makes it immaterial. It becomes a predictable nexus from which you choose to explore the city. It, in itself, is not an experience. It's just the baseline allowing you to sleep. That's appealing to me because then it is sort of like – what is the minimum investment we can make to see the world? Or to facilitate other people seeing the world? Ikea definitely provides that. Sean Monahan I think this goes back to your application with nomadism. The sharing economy has a very ambivalent relationship to ownership that parallels how people feel about Ikea furniture. Ikea furniture isn't an investment—if it breaks you just order a new one. I think that's probably why Airbnb is so appealing. You trust Airbnb to give you an interchangeable experience. Aaron Taylor Harvey Disposability is not so easy to sell, but that is definitely true. It's the other side of the highly variegated travel experiences advertised by Airbnb when you experience it, or when you have a good version of that, it is incredible. And I think that is why it is what is promoted because we were traveling to Portland and I was in the Portland office and we were there like ten or 12 times in three months and we stayed in every possible version of an Airbnb. The best one we stayed in was this tiny little bedroom in this amazing self-realized space. It was this person's identity—and it was $80 a night. It's really about entering someone else's truly personal space. Sean Monahan Going back to what Alessandro was addressing earlier—the idea that there are more business travelers than there are “business travelers”: has a lot to do with the way Airbnb has modified the home space. It's paralleled the way new forms of labor, especially in the startup economies, creative economies, and freelance economies, that have muddled the division between tourism and work—for example travelling somewhere to do an interview and then staying for the week. Aaron Taylor Harvey I don't know what you're talking about [laughs]. Sean Monahan You guys might be doing that right now. I wanted to know how you felt about the relationship between Airbnb and making houses infinitely monetizable. Is there a weird inverse relationship to what happened in 2008? Suddenly Airbnb opens up spaces. They feel ownerless in a certain way. Theoretically, anyone can stay in them. With the housing crash caused by securitized mortgages, there was also a weird sense of ownerlessness—a sense that nobody knows who owns these foreclosed houses and now everyone is barred from entry. Do you guys have any thoughts on those relationships? Alessandro Bava I think that's super interesting—especially because Airbnb became very successful in 2008, especially after the crisis. While some people were renting out their private homes, other people were deprived of their homes. Nomadism became really prevalent in 2008 because some people were using Airbnb and other people had their homes confiscated. Sean Monahan Yeah, there are nomads staying Airbnbs and there are nomads that are retirees who live off their pension and work at Amazon warehouses. But I guess the question is whether this is utopian or whether the efficiency game that Airbnb represents is actually kind of dark. Or does it seem dark to some people because it feels like everyone is squeezing money out of the few resources that they have? Are some people renting out to Airbnb because they can't afford their rent? Aaron Taylor Harvey So it is like a way for people to live beyond their means. Is that what you mean? For like a zero-down mortgage? Sean Monahan You can question whether it's living beyond your means, but for young people in New York City—it's not like there are affordable housing options open to most people. Alessandro Bava So I was thinking about these dystopian ideas of Airbnb – one is whether Airbnb will kind of go into real estate. The next step is using Airbnb as infrastructure, to actually build its own housing projects. How does the company imagine domesticity and the city? The second thing, which came from the conversation with you, is that you told me about how someone was inspired in Venice to kind of sell the objects in their house. They don't sell through Airbnb, they sell them on Etsy. It's a buyable environment inside their house— Sean Monahan Like a boutique hotel? Alessandro Bava Let's say it's a buyable environment— Aaron Taylor Harvey It was inspired by the Airbnb Pavillion. There is really no plan for Airbnb to start building—then it would just be a hotel chain. But, I think that idea of commodifying your environment or turning everything into a purchasable object, that seems likely to happen. We came up with the idea during our own conversation, but I am sure somebody is already out there doing it. There does seem to be potential in linking these cottage industries that have become very popular in the past couple of years. They are a result of the economic downturn—so people are like, ‘Now I am going to make pickles, I guess.” Those get linked to this sharing economy of space and so therefore when you are staying in a Portland studio and there is a rack of pickles and you can buy one. Rachael Yu Yeah, I think someone did that once. It was goat soap. Aaron Taylor Harvey Yeah, goat soap. Surprised that wasn't in Brooklyn. You can either see it as radical—that you are actually letting modification capitalism run amok—or you can see it as people not having to work at the Amazon loading or shipping warehouse. Is housing or are the objects in your house sacred? Are they protected from the market? Or are they just a piece of the market that is an ongoing conversation in and out of your home? I think if you are already turning your home into a commodity via Airbnb, then why not take it a step further and say “Hey, my bed! Whatever you want!” You can scan it and I you can ship it back to your house when you get home. It's not very nomadic but it is certainly a natural outflow. Audience Member There is one type of utopianism that is nomadic and fluid—its endgame is total fluidity between cities and between people. And there is another type of utopianism that is about staying put and about what happens to communities when there isn't fluidity and when things are allowed to grow and build over time. There are communities that don't necessarily need to be fluid and are actually suffering from the opposite effect, from too much change and too little investment over time. The sharing economy is really built on knowledge and trust and familiarity and I wonder what happens to that sort of utopianism in an ideal, fluid, Airbnb future. Rachael Yu We were talking about this this morning actually because of Archigram. Archigram has those places where you plug in different places and you basically plug in your container. We were just talking about how that becomes the norm—who stays and pays for the place. So I think you are right. I think there needs to be a host. Airbnb is based on the host/guest model, there will always be the person who is hosting you. There is always the foundation of ownership, the foundation of the place. Sean Monahan This is like the Fran Lebowitz take on Airbnb. She recently gave an interview about how in a time when we are particularly concerned about immigrants, no one seems particularly concerned about tourists. She thought instead of inviting more Airbnb guests, we should go to the border and invite some Mexican immigrants to come to New York and actually stay for a prolonged period of time. Aaron Taylor Harvey One thing that just pops in my head based on this question is there is this fantasy, this contemporary fantasy, to go off the grid—which is generally just bullsh**. The grid provides the means for you to go off of it, so you are never truly off the grid. But I like the idea that the Superstudio model is the exact opposite—it's the endless grid instead of being off the grid. It's a full acceptance that the grid is everywhere and that the prevailing grid allows you to create adaptations. When you are in Yugoslavia, it doesn't matter what here is, placefulness evaporates, but I think that in a realistic determination of what that means I do think that we can be in many places at once in a way and we can become familiar and locals in more than one place. And I think there is a potential in Airbnb to at least provide that and make sense of twisting into each city that you are in—in a meaningful way that hopefully will serve us all. Audience Member I was interested in the role of host and you guys talked about that, but I wonder if in the ideal model where every person acts as a host—as a kind of a tour guide— how does that change the way people interact with each other? Aaron Taylor Harvey There is a sense of curation that comes with hosting. They can affect your trip in a way that is so profound. When we went to Dublin, we stayed with this guy who was amazing. He not only showed us around his house, but he also drew us a map of the neighborhood and in the middle of drawing the map, said, ‘Oh, I'll just show you around!' We walked out and took a 45-minute tour of the neighborhood with him and he gave us a sense of the environment, a sense of the culture and a sense of the values. So I think it is a big focus of Airbnb. Airbnb is trying to facilitate meaningful hosting experiences to give people the tools to be good at that job. Alessandro Bava But it's not necessarily about generosity when you have a feedback afterwards. If my friend is visiting I show them around out of generosity, but if there is a monetary exchange , that's much different. So in that way – that is the critique of what Airbnb is. Aaron Taylor Harvey Yeah, but in terms of a transactional relationship it certainly is preferable then, steaming milk behind an espresso machine, right? I mean, if we accept a capitalist notion of society then we have to make money. Is it showing people around Dublin? Because that seems like a nice way to make money. But I accept the Marxist critique. Andrew Durbin [Audience Member] Can you talk about the Marxist critique then—I think the problem with Airbnb is though you talk about your CEO being non-cynical, he actually seems quite cynical. Airbnb leverages crisis in order to financialize all these social interactions and it exacerbates some of the problems that were created in 2008. There is a funny blind spot about poverty and ownership and the idea of being in a position to sell your bed—but you would only sell your bed because you had to… To me that's actually a nightmarish vision of a home or a space, one in which everything is for sale. So I'm hoping you can talk about this inherent cynicism… Aaron Taylor Harvey I think you could look at it as facilitating. It's only cynical if the alternative is a co-op. But if you don't have that co-op in your head — I grew up in Berkeley and I have had that co-op in my head. I know what it looks like— we all live together, we make honey, we have ducks and sh**. But [Brian Chesky] doesn't know that. That is not part of the rhetoric that exists for him. For him it's like ‘I had this idea and it really worked out.' I bet other people would like to try it too. I mean, honestly, it is not that complex. I do think that reflecting on poverty in light of the shared economy is super fascinating. I totally agree with you— Alessandro Bava That's the reason Airbnb has been so successful—since 2008, people who were fired from their jobs have been renting out their home—it's the last thing they have—their bedroom, their couch, their living room, whatever. I am very happy with the discussion and at the same time I'm not trying to push a Marxist critique on you. I don't want to take that stab, in a way. I think what we are trying to say tonight is that yes, the CEO, Brian [Chesky], has big ideas and it's great. It's great as a personal narrative. But when about when that dream becomes a reality for millions of people? How does Airbnb respond to that? Sean Monahan As we get into this discussion, I want to propose the idea that Airbnb is an ambivalent platform—that it can have both positive and negative effects at the same time. This is part of the anxiety people have about it. It's weird that it can have utopian intentions and generate lots of positive experiences for people, yet at the same time be symptomatic of larger social evils. Aaron Taylor Harvey I'm still thinking about your question and what I'm wondering… Is it a blind spot and could it exacerbate the crisis that created it? Is posting on or using the service in lieu of traditional employment, somehow preventing traditional employment? And that I can't wrap my head around. That doesn't seem possible to me. But I do think it's likely that Airbnb gets used a lot to fill a little gap when people are floating. At the moment when they would get kicked out of their house, and it fills that gap and they find the next job. I think you hear that story a lot and people don't necessarily do this forever, they just go through things. Audience Member I have two questions: One, what is the importance of reliable WiFi for this whole equation to work? And two, is there a moral issue when people rent out rent-stabilized or rent-controlled apartments for more than they're paying? Aaron Taylor Harvey Well, WiFi is the endless grid. Or maybe the LTE network is the endless grid that Superstudio imagined. And so that bubble of air that surrounds us is your iPhone. Airbnb is totally dependent on pervasive technology. There are moments where we feel, ‘Oh, Airbnb is about space and environments and design values!' And actually it's really a tech product, an app. Airbnb is doing a lot to try to pull out the product to function offline. They are downloading clients to it so that when you are traveling without a data plan you can find your listing—the thing beeps when you are ten feet away. It's all being explored. The moral implication of negotiating rent-controlled cities and has always been get what you can until your luck runs out—as far as I can tell that's the way it works. So I can't really critique it exactly. Rent control in a lot of ways is a failed notion of how to control housing costs and it has a socialist tinge to it. But in a capitalist society, it just ends up being taken advantage of over and over again. Audience Member I was wondering, on a political level, what's the relationship between Airbnb and hoteling laws, especially in light of the legal battles in New York City with people that are renting out their sublets? To what extent is Airbnb subordinate to a rentier cla** of landlords that inherit land and property across generations as opposed to actually trying to wither that away? Basically, did you have an agenda for housing laws? Aaron Taylor Harvey Tread lightly… Rachael Yu Yeah, seriously. We are the Environments Design Team – Aaron Taylor Harvey There's a public policy team that could actually answer that question—so the answer is yes but I couldn't explain it. There's a whole corner of the building that is committed to this question and dealing with local governments and trying to come to positive agreements – I think that Airbnb's goal at this time is not only to legalize it but to also make it a consistent framework. For example, Portland just pa**ed some laws around Airbnb: how it can be taxed, how long everyone can stay, and then Airbnb's are inspected, which is interesting. People have an inspector who comes in and approves them. There is definitely a move towards trying to create a consistent, legitimate way for people to use the service. And to address the issue of rent control—in cities, there is always a kind of dysfunctional equilibrium that allows them to continue. In Buenos Aires, there are favelas that surround the city and at night these guys come out with these giant bicycle carts and they fill them with recyclables that people leave on the street. There is no recycling program, but there is a recycling program – it's those guys. I think that to some degree the rent control – and rent control was an added equilibrium that cities could handle and that most landlords could deal with. It was just f**ed up enough to not actually freak anyone out, you know? And now this area has pushed out into a place where it has to be dealt with in a more safe, direct way.