Adhocracy, as a concept, is nothing new. Yet in 1968, Warren Bennis coined the term ‘adhocracy’ in his book The Temporary Society, but it becomes much more popular in 1970 by the hand of Alvin Toffler and his international bestseller, Future Shock. Often used in the business field, the concept becomes known as ‘adhocism’ in the architecture and design context in 1972, when Charles Jencks and Nathan Silver wrote their book with the same name, where Jencks wrote “Adhocism is the art of living and doing things ad-hoc—tackling problems at once, using materials at hand, rather than waiting for the perfect moment or ‘proper’ approach.” Later on, in 1990, Robert Waterman Jr. mention the term adhocracy for the first time, referring to it as “any form of organization that cut across normal bureaucratic lines to capture opportunities, solve problems, and get results.” Since there, the economic growth of the 90s and early 2000s probably took out from the daily workflows and routines, the notion of an ad-hoc approach, at least in the Western world.
Since 2008, after the global financial crisis, the struggles and riots in different cities around the world reclaiming their rights, provoked that the feeling of collectivity was rediscovered and the public space the place where this happened. Paired with the fast development of new technologies on the same years, the rise of social networks, smart phones and easy access to the Internet, allowed the creation of networks working together even if their members where delocalized; with the aim to give responses to that uncomfortable and unfair situation, and this was and easily transformed into a fast response in the design and architecture field, mostly all mostly based on a techno-optimistic approach, without really thinking or reflecting on the basis of the economic, political and social problems.
