Marina Otero Verzier

NOTHING IS
AUTOMATIC
PRODUCING MORE-THAN-HUMAN
RELATIONS IN THE PEARL RIVER DELTA

32
Het Nieuwe Instituut,
Ash Cloud factory (part of
Automated Landscapes project),
Shenzhen, China,
2018

Automation plays a key role in increasing efficiency

and productivity in the Ash Cloud factory, yet here
robots and AI have not replaced humans. Instead,
they have reprogrammed them and become their
managers.

33
In the light of rapid While automated machines have captured humans’
imagination throughout history, the architecture of full
urbanisation, manufacturing automation is no longer a distant project. Implemented
today in places like the US, Germany, the Netherlands,
processes in China’s Pearl Japan and Korea, autonomous machines maximise
the performance of financial, logistical and production
River Delta are undergoing centres. Even the so-called ‘factory of the world’, the

extensive change. This is Chinese region of the Pearl River Delta, is transforming
its production lines to become one of the main
one of the regions where the scenarios for the transition to automated systems.1
And it is precisely in the region’s manufacturing,
collaborative research project logistics and supply chain infrastructures that the
new architectures – buildings, spatial practices,
Automated Landscapes technologies, protocols – for the interaction between

has been exploring how humans and robots are being tested.
When in 2014 the Chinese government launched
automation affects the ‘Made in China 2025’ – a national plan aimed at
redirecting the focus of its manufacturing industry from
built environment. Among a quantity to a quality paradigm – mass production
was giving way to so-called ‘intelligent manufacturing’.
several international partners At the core of this transition was the introduction of

involved in the initiative is the advanced robotics to increase labour productivity and
competitiveness.2 The national scheme triggered other
Research and Development regional and local programmes in areas of concentrated
production.3 One of these automation programmes,
department at Rotterdam’s initiated by Guangdong province in 2015, has received
more than 900 billion Chinese yuan in funding, with
Het Nieuwe Instituut, headed subsidies covering between 10 and 20 per cent of

by Marina Otero Verzier. companies’ investment in robotics upgrades. Its name

evokes what many would consider a dreaded, dystopian
Here she charts how the future: ‘Robots to Replace Human Workers’.4
If we are to take the name of this programme as
area’s industries are being equivalent to its ambition, it would seem that the Pearl
River Delta is the ideal place to explore how these
rearticulated in line with disruptive changes could affect the architectures of

shifting relationships between production and the labouring bodies that populate
them. Yet while automation still seems, for many
humans and machines, and workers, to be leading to a future without work,
machines are but the human fantasy of the working
how this is proving a double- body par excellence. Or, as Michel Foucault put it,
while ‘men have dreamt of liberating machines, there
edged sword for the evolution are, by definition, no machines of freedom’.5 In fact,

of the city. modern conceptions of freedom and contemporary

factories are both built upon the reproduction of
industrial capital and the exploitation of human and
non-human workforces. Their ideologies materialised
into seemingly banal architectures.
Since 2017 the cultural centre Het Nieuwe Instituut
in Rotterdam, the Netherlands, has been working on
the initiative Automated Landscapes, a collaborative
research project analysing precisely these unassuming
architectures that are nevertheless emergent scenarios
for the future of labour and production urbanism.
Developed together with Marten Kuijpers, Ludo Groen,
Victor Muñoz Sanz, Merve Bedir, the Future+ Aformal
Academy in Shenzhen and Hong Kong, and a large
number of supporters and collaborators, Automated
Landscapes reflects on the implications of automation
for the built environment and the bodies that inhabit
it. In the Pearl River Delta, the research has focused

34
primarily on the Build Your Dreams (BYD), Rapoo However, automation does not only imply the
Technology and Ash Cloud factories – all located in replacement of human activities by machines, but
Shenzhen – as case studies for the paradigms for the also a redistribution of labour. The bodies of those
division of labour as socio-spatial relations between who previously populated the human domain are not
humans and non-humans. necessarily liberated from the bondage of labour, but
instead pushed to relocate. Workers disappearing from
Redistribution of Labour the Build Your Dreams production line may appear
Build Your Dreams is one of China’s main elsewhere – notably in places where the precision of
manufacturers of cars, battery-powered bicycles, their human fingers’ movements is still in demand.
buses, trucks, forklifts, solar panels, and rechargeable The factories of the Shenzhen-based electronics
and mobile-phone batteries. In its factory in Shenzhen’s manufacturer Rapoo Technology are such a space.
Pingshan District, humans and robots do not cross Rapoo started to introduce automation within its
paths. Their domains are demarcated by a clear, assembly lines in 2005. The measure was meant to be a
straight, glass wall. Yet on both sides of the wall, bodies solution to labour shortages in peak-demand seasons.
– human or otherwise – follow the same rhythm. That It took the company four years to complete automation
of the monotonous and predictable operations needed of one of its production lines. Paradoxically, the product
to keep the largest battery production in the world for which the technology had been implemented was
running.6 A rhythm dictated and monitored by software already outdated by then. Robotic solutions, they
systems that track the status of batteries. learned, needed to be constantly adjusted in order to
This repetitive labour in the assembly lines is respond to changes in market cycles.
precisely what makes the use of automation cost- To avoid a repeat of such complications the company
effective, as well as being the cause of the decrease of designed a flexible manufacturing system based
human workers employed in manufacturing processes. around collaboration between humans and robots,
Robots maximise productivity and save space, while instead of the replacement of the former. Robots carry
guaranteeing a working environment where lunch out the repetitive tasks needed for the production of
breaks, common spaces and human comfort are standardised components, in addition to the more
becoming obsolete. Where workers’ unions have no dangerous and heavy activities. Human labour is,
place. With the exception of a handful of engineers in turn, focused on adding the plasticity that market
and managers – who rarely make incursions into the changes demand.7 Yet there is always trouble in
domain of machines – the presence of the human body paradise, and Rapoo’s human–machine collaborative
and the architecture designed around it becomes more strategy also resulted in the reduction of its human
irrelevant. The glass wall might soon be so too. workforce from about 3,000 to 700 employees.

Het Nieuwe Instituut, Founded in 1995, Build Your Dreams is a major manufacturer
Build Your Dreams factory of various vehicles as well as solar panels, and rechargeable
(part of Automated Landscapes project), and mobile-phone batteries. The company has transitioned
Pingshan District, to automated technologies for efficiency. As humans
Shenzhen, China, disappear in favour of robotic labourers, assembly lines
2018 and storage areas are reorganised to maximise productivity.
Engineers and managers do not venture into the domain
of machines here unless absolutely necessary.

35
Rapoo Technology is a Shenzhen-based electronics manufacturer that has introduced
automation in its assembly lines since 2015. Rapoo’s strategy is based on collaboration
between humans and robots, and the factory’s architectural solutions reflect the various
scales and formats for these human and non-human interactions.

Het Nieuwe Instituut,

Rapoo Factory (part of Automated The work and maintenance
of the robots, as well as the
Landscapes project),
Shenzhen,
China,
2018
training of human employees
to achieve maximum
efficiency, is controlled by AI

The spatial configurations of human–machine relations inside the Rapoo factory

are organised into rectangular work islands, where the levels of automation range
from manual to fully automated manufacturing. Robot arms work alongside human
operators assembling computer keyboards, mice, and their sub-components.

36
 Human workers are still in demand at Ash Cloud, New Paradigms
a company also located in Shenzhen that produces The examples of Build Your Dreams, Rapoo Technology
accessories for mobile phones and tablets. There, and Ash Cloud demonstrate how automation does not
robots and AI have not replaced humans. Instead, necessarily lead to a utopian human society organised
they have reprogrammed them and become their around leisure, nor to one of rampant unemployment
managers. The enterprise resource planning (ERP) due to the total replacement of the human workforce.
system manages the factory internally and remotely They show, instead, how under the relentless scrutiny
to the point that the figure of the middle manager has of AI, employees are pressured to perform at their limits
been rendered redundant. to contribute to an infinite supply of cheap labour at the
The ERP monitors supply and demand, product expense of resting time, one-to-one communication,
stocks, employee tasks, shifts, hours and vacations, welfare and safety issues. Their bodies are in fact
resource usage, waste produced, currency exchange abstracted into numbers and graphs displayed on
and stock market activity in real time. Easily accessed smooth surfaces. They are data on a screen where
through an IOS application, the system quantifies forms of empathy and solidarity towards the worker
performance and efficiency and makes results are rendered irrelevant to the AI or humans who
intelligible through the screens of computers, coordinate, recalibrate and control them. A perfected
tablets and mobile phones. It in fact channels all Cartesian regime designed for maximum profit through
communication between the management team and the full exploitation of bodies, and unbothered by
human and machinic employees. changing social dynamics and working conditions.
The work and maintenance of the robots, as well These infrastructures and dynamics have a profound
as the training of human employees to achieve impact on the environment. As some human bodies and
maximum efficiency, is controlled by AI. In this way, their capacities become dispensable (or exhausted),
the productivity of each assembly line is measured so do the spaces that they inhabit even beyond the
against objectives and cost. Productivity is also assembly lines and production centres. Automation
enhanced by digital avatars of a sad turtle or a happy does not mean replacement, but displacement and
rabbit that emerge and preside over the assembly differential distribution of the social, ecological and
lines to either push or motivate the human teams’ economic effects of these regimes.9 What happens in
work. Nothing is fully automatic. It is designed for the factories in Shenzhen has an impact on the city’s
subjecting bodies to the crude pace dictated by landscape and economy and in its neighbouring cities
production needs. As architect and filmmaker Liam and regions where workers made redundant may need
Young puts it, human bodies are optimised and relocate. It is also felt in more distant territories, where
trained to perform as components of an efficient the changes in the pace of production and the supply
planetary-scale production line.8 chain that automation is instilling in the Pearl River

Het Nieuwe Instituut, The Ash Cloud factory, focused on the

Ash Cloud factory (part of manufacturing of mobile phone polyurethane
Automated Landscapes project), cases, still depends on human labour and
Shenzhen, China, maintains a spatial organisation based on
2018 assembly lines that operate during fixed hours.

37
 Rather than aiming for enhancing
productivity, a post-anthropocentric
and non-Cartesian architecture
could instead serve to challenge
the inevitability of unequal relations
between humans and the planet

Het Nieuwe Instituut, The Automated Landscapes project initiated in 2017 had as a hypothesis the
Anthropometric graphical study substitution of humans by robots in production centres due to the introduction
of crane cabin operator versus of emergent automation technologies. Yet the research demonstrated that
remote control operator, blue-collar human workers are not disappearing from production sites, but
Automated Landscapes project, being displaced to other markets and territories and/or replaced by white-collar
2018 workers who control operations remotely from their laptops and iPads.

38
Delta translate as even more pressure on the already Yes, human bodies are subject to programming.
strained manual labourers to remain competitive. We could, therefore, be willingly self-reprogrammed
What to do with the replaceable, displaced humans not for the pursuit of profit and privilege for some
has been the focus of educational programmes humans, but instead to unleash ecological practices
to develop workers’ skills and competencies or and networks of ethics and responsibility. To combat
proposals for a universal basic income. Yet perhaps climate injustice. To conceive and enact an architecture
the most important question to address is how not based on systems of exploitation of bodies, on
these new paradigms of work could bring the seed the depletion of resources, on the dictates of the
of an alternative organisation of society and its market and the rationality of economic efficiency.
accompanying architectures. After all, the fascination An architecture for the future that is not confined
and anxiety produced by an automated world can to managerial disciplinary boundaries or technological
be redeployed towards the actual prospect of social, industrial progress. 1
economic or ecological collapse in the face of climate
crisis – a crisis brought about by this quest for
Notes
relentless production based on the exploitation and 1. International Federation of Robotics (IFR), Executive Summary
invisibility of labouring bodies. World Robotics 2017 Industrial Robots, 2017: https://ifr.org/downloads/
press/Executive_Summary_WR_2017_Industrial_Robots.pdf.
2. Made in China 2025: http://english.www.gov.cn/2016special/
Future Speculations madeinchina2025.
3. Huang Yu and Naubahar Sharif, ‘From “Labour Dividend” to “Robot
If there is something to glean from the architecture Dividend”: Technological Change and Workers’ Power in South China’,
of the Build Your Dreams, Rapoo Technology or Ash Agrarian South: Journal of Political Economy, 6 (1), p 55.
4. Dongguan City Government Office, ‘Management Measures for
Cloud factories it is that, unlike contemporary cities, Special Funds for “Machine Substitution” in Dongguan’ (in Chinese),
they do not have humans at their centre. Perhaps the 25 March 2016: www.dg.gov.cn/gkmlpt/content/0/591/post_591399.
html#684; Dongguan City Government Office, ‘Dongguan City
de-centring of the human that we are witnessing in the Promotion Enterprise “Machine Substitution” Action Plan (2014-2016)’
productive architectures of the Pearl Delta River could (in Chinese), 11 August 2014: www.dg.gov.cn/zwgk/zfgb/szfbgswj/
content/post_353845.html; Huang Yu, ‘Can Robots Save Dongguan?’,
be taken further, to the de-centring of the notion of HKUST Seminar, 16 March 2017: https://iems.ust.hk/events/academic-
humankind as a universal, rational subject. However, seminar/2017/can-robots-save-dongguan-huang-yu.
5. Michel Foucault in conversation with Paul Rabinow, ‘Space, Power,
rather than aiming for enhancing productivity, a post- and Knowledge’, in Sylvère Lotringer (ed), Foucault Live: Interviews,
anthropocentric and non-Cartesian architecture could 1961–84, trans Lysa Hochroth and John Johnston, Semiotext(e) (New
York), 1996, pp 340–41.
instead serve to challenge the inevitability of unequal 6. Jiang Shan in conversation with Merve Bedir (member of the
relations between humans and the planet. For nothing research team), Pingshan, China, 25 January 2018.
7. Steven Lee in conversation with Merve Bedir and Marten Kuijpers
is fully automatic. Humans, their time, their labour and (members of the research team), Shenzhen, China, 25 October 2017.
behaviours are managed by technologies, protocols, 8. Liam Young in conversation with Simone Niquille and Arif
Kornweitz, ‘Useful Life Podcasts’, part of Work, Body, Leisure, Dutch
legal documents and social conventions. The product Pavilion at the 2018 Venice Architecture Biennale, curated by Marina
of automation is not only commodities but, perhaps Otero Verzier: https://work-body-leisure.hetnieuweinstituut.nl/audio.
9. Dieter Ernst, ‘Advanced Manufacturing and China’s Future for Jobs’,
more importantly, the technologically enabled East-West Center Working Papers: Innovation and Economic Growth
biopolitical production, reproduction and extraction Series, 8, 2018, p 20.

of forms of life.

Marina Otero Verzier (curator),

Work, Body, Leisure,
Dutch Pavilion,
Venice Architecture Biennale,
2018

This work, by Marien Kuijpers and Victor

Muñoz Sanz, and included in the OFFICE
Room in the Dutch Pavilion at the 2018 Venice
Architecture Biennale, looked into the transition
to automation production and the effect it has
on territories and labouring bodies. Shown here
is a replica of the operator’s remote work area
inside the fully automated container terminal
in Rotterdam (APM).

Text © 2021 John Wiley & Sons Ltd. Images:

© pp 32–8 © Het Nieuwe Instituut; p 39 © Het
Nieuwe Instituut, photo Daria Scagliola

39