THE FUNAMBULIST MAGAZINE

Léopold Lambert – Paris on May 18, 2020
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Today, May 18, 2020, marks the 152nd anniversary of a traumatizing event in Kanaky (i.e. colonized New Caledonia). 15 years after the invasion of the Melanesian archipelago by the French colonial army, indigenous revolts remained strong against the massive colonial land looting — they later reached their peak in 1878 with the insurrection of the Komalé Great Chief Ataï. The French colonial administration wanted to crush the insurrectionist spirit and condemned to death ten Kanak accused of having ambushed the colonial army outside of the Tchambouène tribe near the village of Pouébo. They were then publicly executed by way of guillotine in front of the chiefs and population of the Mwelebeng clan in a place called Uvanu. Today, a memorial commemorates this massacre on the very space where it happened.

Memorial of Uvanu. / Photo by Léopold Lambert (2019).

The guillotine has good press these days, in particular among North American leftist online circles, that use it as a humorous symbol of a pending class revolution. This image is, of course, justified by the use of the guillotine during the French Revolution, although one might not realize that it was used for the execution of over 13,000 people in the years that followed. As often in the history of “lesser evils,” this invention by Joseph Ignace Guillotin in 1789, which was meant to make the execution less painful and cruel, was used to industrialize death (for more on this, see this 2013 article on this blog). As such, there was no reason that it would not be imported around the French colonial empire and used against those whose death had been industrialized for years already.

Guillotine Constantine — Homage to the prisoners executed during the Algerian Revolution in Constantine. / Photo by Léopold Lambert (2018).

Similarly to many colonial strategies, Algeria was a privileged site of use of the guillotine, as early as 1843. During the Algerian Revolution (1954-1962), the self-attributed “Special Powers” to the French colonial government authorized a much greater latitude in the scope of actions that could be punishable by death to prevent the end of colonial rule. This is how 2,300 Algerians (and a few of the settler who also fought for the Revolution) were condemned to death between 1956 and 1962. Over 90% of them were never executed, but the remaining 10% were executed one by one in a intensive frequency (as the commemorating plate on the walls of the Constantine prison can attest). Although executions were supposed to be performed in secret, inside prisons, the numerous revolutionary detainees, in particular women, made sure to keep vigilant as to when an execution would happen in order to manifest a last form of support to their soon-to-be-executed friend and comrade, as well as to warn the surrounding neighborhood (in the case of the Barberousse prison, this neighborhood was Algiers Casbah itself) of the unfolding event inside the prison. When creating the canonical film The Battle of Algiers a couple of years after the end of the Revolution, Gilo Pontecorvo clearly saw the importance of these moments of great colonial violence as he chose to open the films with such a film.

For a doctor of the Barberousse prison, despite “being used to the worst,” executions “accompanied by the women’s screamings and chants” are “a true nightmare.” Women hold a particular role in these events […] as Djamila Amrane explains: “The female quarters are situated on the ground floor, at the same level than the courtyard and adjacent to the prison door. It happens often that female militants, who can’t sleep because of the anguish created by the potentiality of a new execution, hear the squeezing of the heavy gate that opens to give room to the truck” that would later transport the dismantled guillotine. These women thus alter the nearby Casbah — “and the whole prison was singing, Algier was shaking” describes Yves Jouffa. (Sylvie Thénault, Une drôle de justice: Les magistrats dans la guerre d’Algérie, La Découverte, 2001).

After the independence of the country in 1962, death penalty remained in Algeria but the guillotine was deemed as too linked to the 162 years of French colonialism. In France, the last person to be executed (death penalty was abolished in 1981) was, unsurprisingly, a former colonized subject, Hamida Djandoubi, a Tunisian person whose serious mental health issues had not prevented his sentence. His execution occurred on September 10, 1977, in the middle of the courtyard of the infamous Baumettes prison in Marseille.

This short text could not possibly have the ambition to properly unfold the important history that its title suggests. However, it seemed important to write it for two reasons: the first one was to pay homage to the ten Kanak guillotined in Uvanu 152 years ago today. We remember them and pay respect to their descendants who are still struggling against French colonialism over a century and a half later. The second was to state that when one uses the symbol of the guillotine lightly because their knowledge of this weapon’s history stops with the execution of King Louis XVI in the middle of Paris’ Place de la Concorde on January 21, 1793, many of us have much more recent and much less revolutionary examples in mind when we think of it.

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Léopold Lambert – Paris on September 16, 2020
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Dear readers,

I’m happy to introduce you to a new small project, which takes us back a bit in the history of The Funambulist as it both involves architecture as a discipline (that thing I was trained in) and our blog as a medium (between 2010 and 2015, it was the only Funambulist medium!). For the next three weeks, we’d like to feature every day the profile and work of a person who recently graduated from architecture school, and who we believe to be a game-changer in the otherwise colonial white-dominated male and heteronormative conservative discipline of architecture. I know for a fact that it’s always been hard within the discipline to argue for a vision of architecture that makes it accountable for the numerous instances in which it materializes and enforces a colonial, racist, ableist, and/or patriarchal political order, and perhaps even harder to imagine revolutionary uses (we might even say “counter-uses”) of it. It most certainly remains hard today but a new generation of future architects who formed their political imaginary far from the canons of the discipline — far from the discipline itself even — is now emerging.

They’ve read Toni Morrison, Frantz Fanon, Steve Biko, Angela Davis, Michel Foucault (not just the fucking panopticon part!), Edward Said, Ruth Wilson Gilmore, Paul B. Preciado, etc. They’ve participated to the South African Fees Must Fall revolt, the Black Lives Matter movement, the Sudanese Revolution, the Marche pour Adama, the Anti-CAA protests in India, etc. They’ve also learned from a few rare formidable professors who probably learned just as much from them. For many of us who have seen their political engagement within architecture schools met with silence, laughter, disdain, or even anger one or two decades ago, it is a deeply moving joy (it’s not an exaggeration) to see that numerous members of this new generation, despite still many institutional obstacles placed on their path (slightly moved at times when global antiracist, feminist, and queer uprisings make it impossible for conservative institutions not to adjust, however little) refuses to not see for what architecture is: a political weapon: almost always used for the powerful and, at times, transformed by and for the “powerless.” This project therefore aims at honoring, learning from, and standing in solidarity with them.

It also aims at bringing visibility to their work as, too often, young architecture graduates have no choice but to find a job in an environment that does not allow them to continue the hard politicized work that they had initiated at school; sometimes even, what they have to contribute to in offices goes the exact opposite way. We’re currently working on an online platform that will try its best to put in relation these young designers with partner organizations or institutions that could be interested in their profiles for events, workshops, commissions or, who knows, jobs. This will still need a couple of months to be finalized and in the meantime, we’d like to propose this three-week project as a small way to promote their work.

Some of the people presented here are no stranger to The Funambulist; we already collaborated and have even published some of them. For some others, we were looking for the appropriate opportunity to work together; this project makes it happen. And some others were generously oriented to us by a few good friends who had the luck to encounter their paths in the recent past.

EXPLORE THE PROJECTS

The post Game-changing Architecture Graduates #00 /// Introduction appeared first on THE FUNAMBULIST MAGAZINE.

The Game-Changing Architecture Graduates project is a short daily series of posts that aim at honoring and giving visibility to the work of people who recently graduated from architecture school, and who fiercely engage with the political dimension of the built environment. Battling with “the discipline that organizes bodies in space” that tends to materialize and enforces the violence of colonial, racist, patriarchal, capitalist, and ableist political structures, they undertake to either beating architecture at its own game, or envisioning revolutionary designs and narratives. Please note that this series exists in a joyful and constructive spirit of community-building, far from ideas of competition, ranking, and exhaustiveness; there is no doubt that many other people than the ones featured in it would deserve to be part of it.

Read the series introduction /// Find the rest of the series

#01 Kgaugelo Lekalakala

City: Johannesburg
School: Graduate School of Architecture, University of Johannesburg.
Year graduated: 2019

Kgaugelo Lekalakala is a young architect, practitioner, local critic at the Graduate School of Architecture, University of Johannesburg South Africa, and artist from Mmametlhake, Mpumalanga, South Africa. Her work explores the Black female body in space, using paintings, graphics, and architecture to critique spatial constructs. Her studies at The National School of the Arts (2012) where she specialized in sculpting, ceramics, painting, and design, broadened her medium in Architecture. In 2016 she attained her bachelor’s degree at the University of Cape Town (BAS) and graduated at the Graduate School of Architecture at the University of Johannesburg (2019) with a MTech Arch (Prof) (CW). Her work has been published in City Journal: Tales of the Vulnerability of African Black Women in Transit Spaces. (April: 2020).

Project /// Tale of Women in Transit Spaces

The title of my work is called Tales of the Vulnerability of African Black women in Transit Spaces. It is centered on the concept of transit and transitional spaces as both real places of moving and as metaphorical spaces of journeys, transitions, and changes. It talks of a place we are from, and the place we move to — a continuous process of being in transit. It explores a series of narratives of transit. It takes the position of Black African women moving through space adopting the method of surrealist collages transformed into an architectural tactic to critique and expose issues of vulnerability Black female bodies encounter in transit spaces. These surrealist images explore how women traverse different spaces as they move from their domestic realm passing through taxi ranks, walkways and sidewalks that places them as object of male gaze, artefacts in space, which creates gendered power dynamic spaces in urban-rural landscapes.

This study is dear to me because I am from a village called Mmametlhake in Mpumalanga, South Africa, but throughout my childhood I was mostly at my grandmothers’ household at the nearby village called Seabe. Her home holds many tales of what growing up as a Black woman entailed. Her life was constantly ruled by the male heads, her father and, later, her husband. She would describe how she was a constant object in her home, tossed, broken, and ungrounded. The project further explored how these gendered dynamic spaces have filtered into the streets we walk through. Throughout my life I constantly navigate between rural and urban spaces (using public transport), moving from Bree Taxi Rank (Johannesburg, South Africa) to Bloed Taxi Rank (Pretoria, South Africa). Moving through rapidly growing dense passages in the inner city can be daunting as female. You cannot help but notice how fragmented these spaces are, to an extent where you are merely an object moving through space. Gloria Anzaldúa writes in her piece “Intimate Terrorist: Life in the Borderlands” (1987), how the world is not safe for women to live in:

“We shiver in separate cells, in enclosed cities, shoulders hunched, barely keeping the panic below the surface of the skin, the attacks in the streets. Shutting down.”

She also explains how a woman is unable to feel safe when her own culture is constantly critical of her and when the males of all races hunt her as prey. The female body is locked, immobilized, it cannot move forward, cannot move backwards. The use of surrealism as the theme for the work was essential as it allowed the work to stimulate the subconscious and expose reality. Suzanne Césaire surrealist writer and cultural theorist wrote of “Marvelous surrealism” (1943) as a mode of transcending the apparent and crushing colonial (Capitalist) real. For Césaire, as quoted by Thandi Loewenson and Thom Callan-Riley, “far from contradicting, diluting, or diverting our revolutionary attitude toward life, surrealism strengthens it” (Césaire, 1943). Following Césaire, surrealism is essential in this study as it creates temporary distance, not to dilute reality, but rather to strengthen the critique, allowing the audience to build a perspective for when they could engage with the reality again. Therefore, it reveals and exposes the absurd nature of the truth (Sindi: 2019) using particular characters, figures and situations.

When the female body travels between rural and urban landscapes, they are likely to be exposed to sexual assault in small passages or alleys around transport nodes they need to take when going home. This further leads to extensive spatial negotiations, compromises, and precautionary measures (wearing layered clothes, leaving work early to prevent being harassed at night) that limits woman’s ability to experience mobility as freedom. (Uteng 2011, 11). Some escape their patriarchal homes only to enter into transit spaces where she will still exist as an object or an artifact, where her body is a destination of every corner. Therefore, she is forever in transit, unsettled, and ungrounded. (Lekalakala, 2020)

Lekalakala K Tales Of The Vunerability Of African Black Women In

Figure 1: Passing through the passage. Digital Print: K. Lekalakala 2019.

I navigate between rural and urban, while followed by some of the burdens of ‘my’ tradition;
I am displaced by the fragmentation of the urban landscapes.
Landscapes that are schizophrenic by nature.
Diagnosed with the tensions of gender, tradition and culture.
Leaving us moving in passages that make us irrelevant and almost invisible (Lekalakala: 2019).

This image depicts women who migrate from rural areas into the city, distancing themselves from the role as a mother, leaving daughters with fathers and uncles, navigating these transit spaces as an artefact that exposes the cultures and traditions that silence her; she is the object entering the surreal landscapes.

Figure 2: Ko Ren’keng. Digital Print: K. Lekalakala 2019.

“Xsxs-Xsxs, Mwxa’Mwxa, A o mphe marao, baby“
From my so called fathers and brothers. They do not see me. We are their artefacts.
Taught to ignore and reach your destinations.
Look angry, when you go to town, that way they won’t touch.
Moving through the influx of people, she gazes to the right, she sees IT, smells IT.
The spear aimed at the walls and ready to mark its space.
You do not see me.”

A lot of consideration has to be taken at the links to public transport for safety in urban areas where women who move and are dependent on public transport-the entire journey from home to public transport station and vice versa has to be assessed from a safety point of view. Figure 2 shows a taxi rank, which is a transportation node that houses many taxis in South Africa, taking people from Townships into the inner city to work daily. As mentioned before, many disadvantaged Black people use taxis to move from Townships into the inner city to work. This is a cheap mode of transport throughout South Africa and even Africa as whole. This drawing shows the displacement of the female body in space. From a schoolgirl to a mother. Being touched, provoked, immobilized, and shut down in a patriarchal space. Where you have the pissing wall, a wall where men urinate freely even with the presence of women and children.

Figure 3: Migrate. Digital Print: K. Lekalakala: 2019

We are visitors, we migrate to urban landscapes.
Serving masters that may never know how I move in transit.
Leaving my daughters with fathers and uncles.
Home is distant, it is disappearing.
We are gradually getting extinct.

Figure 3 and 4 explore transit beyond the Borders in public spaces in Tanzania. Based on a collaboration/workshop with Ardhi University, Dar Es Salaam, Tanzania, and University of Johannesburg, this image speaks to the way in which African tradition and cultures blurs itself across borders. The work exists in the imagination, but the genius of that imagination is these hybrid spaces. Dar Es Salaam, Zanzibar, and South African sites. During the visit to Tanzania we documented the nature of these landscapes and thus influenced my project. We found that the majority of the public spaces were inhabited by men while women were indoors, in the domestic realm. When out, women were almost never stationary in public spaces and they usually moved through and between transit spaces, without settling or staying still, much like South Africa.

Figure 4: Floods of tradition. Digital Print: K. Lekalakala 2019.

Passages that are flooded by tradition
Where she moves silently, discreetly, to serve her home, before sunset.
She does not set in space, she merely moves through it because it was not hers to begin with.
She holds life, carries it and conceives it.
But she has no control over her life.
She is in transit.

Figure 5: Trip to School. Digital Print: K. Lekalakala: 2019.

Girl B-
Trip to school.
In Kasi’s passages are the public spaces.
Their public spaces, leaning over her home.
Grade 5.
Just a trip to school.

Figure 5 shows passages in the townships where due to lack of public spaces. Majority of the Black people in South Africa must be creative in making public spaces where gatherings and an escape from their homes are made.

Trip to Toilet. Digital Print: K. Lekalakala: 2019.

Girl A-
Trip to the toilet.
Damaged Artefact
Grade 2
Just a trip to the toilet.

Figure 6 shows the trip to the Long Drop. Long drops are commonly used as public toilets in schools and public buildings in South Africa. Mostly found in rural settlements and townships as mentioned previously. These are areas where there is not enough attention given by Government to provide public spaces therefore people create their public spaces, streets, corners, walkways, and alleys are now defined as public spaces. An architectural weapon that is left for communities to figure out how to use. Little girls may take long walks to these toilets, coming back not understanding what has been taken from them. The trip to the toilet is one of terror and exposure to being vulnerable similar to the trip to school, where children go to school through these passages and mothers can only hope that they come back home safe.

References

1. Lekalakala, K. (2020, April 22 ). Tales of the vulnerability of African black women in transit spaces.Analysis of Urban Change, Theory, Action, Volume 24(Issue 1-2).

2. The UCL. 2019. “In The Permanent Readiness For The Marvelous.” Issuu. N.p. February 18. https://issuu.com/bartlettarchucl/docs/bartlett_phd_projects_2019. [Google Scholar]

3. Sindi, T. 2019. Brnwsh Primer Press. Accessed May 1, 2019. [Google Scholar]

4. Anzaldúa, Gloria. 1987. Borderlands: La Frontera. San Francisco. pp. 11, 16, 21, 22. [Google Scholar]

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#02 MOHAMAD NAHLEH

City: Beirut (currently Cambridge, MA)
School: American University of Beirut (currently MIT)
Year graduated: 2018

Mohamad Nahleh is a SMArchS Architectural Design candidate and Teaching Development Fellow at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He holds a Bachelor of Architecture from the American University of Beirut and was awarded “World’s Best Graduation Project” from Archiprix International for his undergraduate thesis, 185 Encounters in Karm El-Zeitoun. Most recently, he is the recipient of MIT Architecture’s NuVu prize for his current thesis research on the politics of darkness and the night. His latest papers, “The Litani Basin in Lebanon and the Conversion of Politics Into Cancer” and “Reading Beirut through its Power-bearing Artifacts” are both slated for publication in 2021 by The Association of Collegiate Schools of Architecture for the 27th World Congress of Architecture UIA. Outside of academia, he continues to design professionally with Taha Barazy through their co-founded practice. Their upcoming projects include House of the Forgotten Arches and A Tower for the Countryside. He contributed to The Funambulist 23 (May-June 2019) Insurgent Architectures.

Project /// FROM 185 Encounters in Karm El-Zeitoun TO On a Staircase in Beirut

A decontextualized perspective of the blue staircase.

For the Funambulist’s 23rd issue, Insurgent Architectures, I wrote about my Bachelor’s thesis at the American University of Beirut a few months after its completion. The project, a series of tactical micro-interventions, culminated in the design of a single, vibrant blue staircase; what was to be an inclusive offering of public space for Karm El-Zeitoun, one of Beirut’s oldest informal neighborhoods. Upon installation in June 2018, a series of steps and viewing decks offered glimpses of life beyond the neighborhood’s massive flyover and were, at first, animated by the activity and leisure of an exceptionally diverse community of residents. But the novelty of these solidarities faded shortly after the publication of Encounters in Karm El-Zeitoun in Beirut and the staircase ultimately surrendered to the blatant racism, sectarianism, and xenophobia forced upon it by the neighboring residents. Damaged and overtaken by loose wiring and power lines, it became a steel-stepped conductor of live electricity. Abandoned by those it claimed to serve, it perpetuated and exaggerated the conditions it was supposed to alleviate. The story it wanted to tell was completely rewritten. Its structure was locked, its function altered, and the history of its own potted olive tree was weaponized against it. A hazard to everyone around it, not even the Beirut port blast in August 2020 would be enough to reconcile the hostilities now embodied by the structure. Unwanted and unused, the structure stands today among a neighborhood in ruins. A collector of political corruption manifested physically, the staircase glitters with shards of shattered glass, a piece from every home blasted apart in an indiscriminate storm of destruction.

Image 0' — The notional lines imagined to embody a narrative of inclusivity.

The story of the staircase traces the evolving tension between narratives intended by the architect (the alluring story of a ‘social’ project seductive enough to be named one of the world’s best graduation projects at the time) and the narratives of those living around the staircase itself. It is this tension, and the double life of the staircase — online and in international exhibitions and conferences, and offline in Karm El-Zeitoun — that demanded the production of On a Staircase in Beirut, an antithesis. On a Staircase in Beirut (2020) is an illustrated nonfiction novella that traces the capital’s layered urbanity through stories of the ordinary artifacts that populate one of its oldest informal settlements. While political ambitions are embedded into urban design and architecture through the commission and planning of capitals, cities, monuments, and buildings that convert the built environment into a spectacle of authority, they can also be understood at this scale, as being encoded into seemingly mundane objects by dwellers navigating the repercussions of the power constructs around them. Building on the failure of the blue staircase, the novella triggers a representation of the city where covert negotiations of power and authority come to constitute the ordinary, where dwellers’ relationships with the spaces they inhabit define the city within which they choose(or are forced) to exist. Following a nine-month return to Karm El-Zeitoun, it reveals how urban form, even at this scale, endures a complex history of displacement, migration, war, genocide, and obscure local and regional politics. But rather than offer a diagnostic of existing problems, the stories in On a Staircase in Beirut foreground the opportunities that politics provide for design, and vice versa, through a reimagined practice of architecture. It is within this framework, through the dismantling of narratives, through the nuances rather than the clear dichotomies, the dead metaphors that dictate our lives, that the practice I recently co-founded hopes to read the city, and perhaps rewrite some of its stories.

The first few components are welded together at a workshop off-site.

Locals of Karm El-Zeitoun help assemble pieces of the staircase upon their arrival.

A curious spectator watches as the staircase is lifted into position.

The staircase upon completion of the project.

Visitors are barred from entry the first day the staircase is locked.

Empty and abandoned, the staircase is now more infrastructure than space.

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#03 Lauda Virginia Vargas Vargas

City: Copenhagen
School: The Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts
Year graduated: 2020

Born in Dominican Republic, raised undocumented in the US, practiced architecture in Mexico, and now living in Denmark, my constant migration has made me a more hesitant architect. I have crossed continents and states and while landscapes may change the tapestry of colonialism is weaved together using similar techniques, with the hands of the architect often not so innocently involved. My work attempts to engage with colonial relationships, the power of citizenship, and constructs of nationality. Through both architectural proposition as well as the refusal of proposition I navigate the toolbox of the architect with caution.

Project 01 /// REFUSING PROPOSITION (2019)

The Danish government created a detailed legislation titled “Denmark without parallel societies, No Ghettos 2030.” The legislation is an explicitly racist legislation systematically targeting various areas with a more than 40% ratio of “non-westerners and their descents.” The legislation includes increased policing of these areas and a double punishment for crimes committed within the boundaries of a so-called “ghetto” compared to crimes committed in other parts of Denmark. Of the various gentrification strategies outlined in the extensive document are evictions, forced indoctrination of “Danish” traditions, as well as massive demolition, renovation, and infill projects. The legislation is a massive social experiment involving architectural investments of hundreds of millions of Euros into these areas. After a year of investigation into the architectural strategies being proposed and whether or not they were successful and what could otherwise be done I recognized that I was inadvertently legitimizing the legislation I thought I was criticizing. The project then became about architects refusing any projects that were connected to or growing out of this legislation. There are no images of this project because the project was a refusal to propose architecture.

Project 02 /// The MUSEUM OF THE MUSEUM (2020)

There is increasing pressure for European museums to return many objects filling their exhibition spaces and storage rooms that were acquired during peak European Imperialism. In the case of France, the state has begun to engage in conversations with former colonies and in some rare cases has returned objects to their place of origin.

The project is a museum centered around the return of contested art that France has acquired from its former colonies. A museum that creates an archive of the objects as they are returned is situated in the Bois de Vincennes, a park on the Eastern edge of Paris. The archive is created in order to avoid the works being returned without confronting why there are thousands and thousands of these objects in France in the first place. So, the museum serves for copying and creating a public archive of objects looted or otherwise acquired under dubious colonial circumstances as well as creating interventions at specific points in the park that reveal a colonial condition and may help in understanding how and why these objects are in France in the first place.

The museum is scattered across the forest of the Bois de Vincennes. The park was temporarily known as ‘the thinking forest’, before the demolition of the influential experimental university at the park. The project seeks to engage with the park as the ‘thinking forest’ by creating interventions at points of significance to French colonial legacies. The interventions require walking through the forest from one point to another. The intention is that the museum happens the most at the un-designed moments walking through the forest from one intervention to another where the forest may serve as space for reflection and thinking.

Across from the Castle of Vincennes lies the archival house. The anchor of the museum is placed here in relationship to the castle as the French Royal family played a fundamental role in French colonization. The archival house houses a research space and laboratories for archiving and copying objects as well as a continuously growing public archive of objects that have been acquired under colonial circumstances and are to be “returned.”

Objects are copied before their departure from France and then cast into an archive. The continuous archive grows deeper into the earth over time. An archive of the returned art is done in order to avoid the story of these objects being in France and the relationship they represent vanishing from French consciousness.

(Left) Elevation at the archive. The archive ramps down into the earth, as each object leaves France the archive grows deeper, unearthing histories. (Right) View from path.

04 Views In Through Arches Above And Zoom At Casted Object

The object is cast into the walls that make up the ongoing archive (center). Arches create views into the large archival space from above (left and right).

Additional interventions are scattered throughout the park at sites that relate to colonial legacies. One intervention happens at an area that was formerly a detention center for Algerians. An exhibition space is made, a map noting the colonization of Algeria is carved into the dyed blue limestone façade. The interior houses a rotating exhibit space.

A ceremonial space for those wanting to host a ceremony before an object leaves France is located at the site of the demolished Experimental University at Vincennes.

An intervention at a colonial limestone statue. The statue is continuously covered in a limestone dissolving vinegar mixture that would slowly eat away at the limestone carvings that celebrate colonization.

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#04 NOORA ALJABI

City: Chicago
School: Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Year graduated: 2019

Noora Aljabi is an architectural designer currently working as a design team member at Studio Gang Architects in Chicago. She holds a B.S. in Mathematics from the University of Kentucky and received her M.Arch at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, where she developed an interest in the question of architectural agency in charged social contexts. Her work has primarily focused on issues of migration, marginalization, and spatial justice as they relate to the political dimensions of architecture.

Project ///
AMERICAN SANCTUARY: ARCHITECTURE & (IN)JUSTICE

American Sanctuary: Architecture & (in)Justice is a thesis on the limits of architectural agency in resisting the violence deployed against undocumented people by the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE). This work uses storytelling to demonstrate architecture’s complicity in this violence and its responsibility to confront it.

In recent years, many have joined together to protect the rights of their undocumented neighbors from ICE’s increasingly aggressive—and arguably unconstitutional—methods of immigration enforcement. As part of this growing Sanctuary Movement, several states, counties, and cities around the country have declared themselves “sanctuaries” and have limited their cooperation with federal government efforts to enforce immigration law. Although the notion of sanctuary has centered on policy, it should also be considered as an architectural and spatial phenomenon. The spaces in which ICE raids take place, such as the home, the workplace, and the courthouse, have been complicit in allowing for the transgression of rights during immigration arrests. Thus, there is a need for architectural interventions to resist this injustice.

These sites provide a range of potential contexts in which to intervene architecturally, from private to public, suburban to urban, and domestic to institutional. The transgressions taking place within each site also range from clear legal violations, such as coerced consent at the home, to more ambiguous violations of ethics, such as equal access to justice at the courthouse. The interventions, therefore, take on three different approaches: 1) the most pragmatic at the home, 2) semi-pragmatic/semi-ideological at the workplace, and 3) the most ideological at the courthouse. These three realms of engagement serve as proxies for the conversations that should be a part of the debate around sanctuary.

Through the exploration of multiple narrative outcomes of raids at the home, the workplace, and the courthouse, this thesis aims to demonstrate the capacity of architecture to change a sequence of events, while also recognizing the unpredictability of design decisions. This approach tests the limits of architectural agency in resisting injustice as part of the Sanctuary Movement—not by providing solutions, but rather by speculating on the many ways that Architecture can participate in producing social change by engaging with other disciplines, such as Law.

The project was published in The Funambulist 23 (May-June 2019): Insurgent Architectures and Architecture and Action (MIT Press, 2019).

The home carries with it a sense of belonging, identity, and protection. Legally, these notions are reinforced by rights to privacy and property established in the Constitution. Architecturally, they are defined by the walls, roof, and floor that provide enclosure and shelter.

02 TheHome Architectural Intervention The Threshold

The threshold of the home establishes both boundary and access, determined almost entirely by the architectural element of the door. However, the legal understanding of the door in allowing consent to enter is arguably narrow, and therefore susceptible to exploitation by ICE. A thickened threshold reinforces the legal notion of consent to enter by introducing two additional chambers for interaction: a soundproof chamber to prevent coercion and a single arrest chamber to prevent search of the entire residence, both of which are clear legal violations.

Though the architecture may fail in denying entry if the thickened threshold is kicked down, its material evidence can influence court rulings on ICE’s aggressive deportation tactics and the legal understanding of consent to enter. Simple architectural moves, such as changing the direction of the door swing, can leave a violent material trace that affects how the arrest is viewed in court.

Factory buildings have become powerful symbols of industry and capital production in the U.S. landscape. The sprawling brick or concrete boxes were organized along grids meant to control and optimize every element of production, including the workers. The grid pushes the semi-private spaces, such as the employee break room, to the edges of the big box to allow for an open floor plan of public work areas. While this friction between public and private creates a complex setting for ICE agents to operate in, the organization of the modular rooms simplifies the raid and allows for large roundups of Latinx workers within the public areas of the building, regardless of immigration status.

05 TheWorkplace (Factory) Architectural Intervention Private Room

Workplace warrants are fairly easy to obtain, and often allow ICE to search the entire premises, except for residential dwellings. Operating within this loophole, the addition of private rooms in the factory limits views of employee faces and disrupts the regular grid of public work areas that allow for racial profiling and large roundups of workers.

Even if the architecture successfully intervenes in a workplace arrest, it places more control in the hands of the factory manager, who may choose to exploit it by allowing ICE to arrest workers who demand better pay and working conditions. The complexity of the situation cannot be addressed by architecture alone, and requires a restructuring of labor regulations. But by overlapping the programs of living and working, the architecture already begins to suggest an overlapping of Fair Housing Laws with Fair Labor Laws.

As the courthouse developed within the American context, increasing demands for control, efficiency, and security has transformed it from a public space of civic engagement to an institutional one of enclosure. Through regulation, segmentation, and centralization, the architecture has produced a complex space of hierarchy at odds with the ideals of equal protection and access to justice.

08 TheCourthouse Architectural Intervention The Corridor

The corridor has allowed for the hierarchical orchestration of public and private circulation paths within the courthouse. This isolation of movement clearly serves to control public perception of justice in the courthouse, and provides another opportunity for exploitation by ICE, who often use back doors and private circulation to keep courthouse arrests out of public view. Although arrests in public places, such as courthouses, are legally permissible, public perception of these arrests can affect ICE’s policies, which many argue are counterproductive to maintaining lawful communities. A new Public Justice Corridor deploys a system of mirrors to make ICE activities in the courthouse more visible and accountable to the public.

Even if the public is indifferent to the issue, the architecture can still prompt a change in dialogue by influencing the way judges and lawyers view the courthouse. The concept of the intervention reinforces the ideal that justice should be transparent and that the courthouse should be a safe place for people to access it. By doing so, it encourages supporters of this ideology to speak out against its disruptors.

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#05 Meera Badran

City: London
School: Royal College of Art
Year graduated: 2020

Meera Badran is a Palestinian-Jordanian architect and designer, currently based in London. She completed her Masters in Architecture at the Royal College of Art, where she developed an exploration into the body, voice and language in relation to political and social constructs within the Middle East and the Arab World. She hopes to continue this investigation, exploring the body and its physical, digital, political and social contexts – within the realms of architecture, art and theory. The Funambulist thanks Thandi Loewenson and Elise Misao Hunchuck for recommending her work to us!

Project /// On Behalf of the Voice

‘On Behalf of the Voice’ explores the role of physical and digital infrastructures in aiding political power, and their use to control bodies in the deeply contested city of East Jerusalem. This exploration takes on a multi-scalar approach – acting from the territory down to the [in]dividual – focusing on the concept of ‘dividuation’. Where, through the implementation of digital software (such as the collection of data, metadata and biometrics), a ‘dividual’ becomes the breakdown of an individual to nothing but their most diminutive parts.

Within this dividuation, this research focuses on the voice, speech and language – exploring the role of speech translation software and their effects when used on the deeply multilingual and surveilled society of East Jerusalem. Here, speech operated softwares, although extremely advanced, remain deeply flawed due to the complexity of the Arabic language and its dialects, causing glitches and mistranslations. Four softwares and their flaws are explored here: Layered Voice Analysis 6.50, Athena, Facebook’s Neural Machine Translation and Google Assistant.

The importance of these mistranslations lie in their consequences: from interrogations, detainments, to house-arrest and imprisonment. These consequences hold the ability to suspend the Palestinian-speaking body within space and time, and it is this suspension that completes the infrastructure of control. Furthermore, these soft and digital architectures are enforced with physical counterparts within the city: from the ‘shoot to cripple’ phenomenon, to barrier walls, checkpoints and dilapidated roads. These infrastructures all act to enforce this suspension, as they turn a ten minute journey into a two hour trail. Here, time itself becomes held hostage, stretching distances and isolating locations, creating an entire population with mobility disabilities.

‘On Behalf of the Voice’ therefore emphasises that the language that we speak, and the dialects in which we speak it retains a level of resolution that the AI software that track it, still does not. It asks the citizens of East Jerusalem to therefore use their language as a form of emancipation from digital control, using the architecture of their mouth as a form of resistance.

‘On Behalf of the Voice’ offers a new form of cultural practice, that can allow East Jerusalemites to navigate the city with their tongues, in order to not be understood. It asks them to train their bodies to speak in relation to the geographic locations that they live in, work in, and move through; from the historic city center to its outskirts, from the depth of the throat to the tip of the tongue and the lips.

‘On Behalf of the Voice’ is therefore a story that follows two dividuated bodies as they navigate through the city with their tongues. Through storytelling, three films are developed which use the voice in two distinctive ways: as a testimonial to the current oppressions, and as a dialogue that proposes language as a form of resistance.

The films project a way of navigating the city between two spatial realms – the internal body and external city – through oral and urban thresholds. The citizens of East Jerusalem fully act, live and belong in the city and its streets, and therefore the proposal would allow them to amalgamate and blend into the city as an undetectable glitch. This project seeks that the streets of the city become the database for this new resistance. This database is to remain open and incomplete. It is to be unstable, fragile, and extremely temporary – it is to be ever changing with the rapidly advancing context of digital surveillance. It acts as a conversation, not as a statement.

The Invisible Territory: Abu Dis from On Behalf of the Voice on Vimeo.

The Exposed Body: Qalqilya Checkpoint from On Behalf of the Voice on Vimeo.

The Essential Utterance: The Old City from On Behalf of the Voice on Vimeo.

On Behalf Of The Voice – نيابة عن الصوت from On Behalf of the Voice on Vimeo.

The Architecture of the Mouth: Working from the depth of the throat to the tip of the tongue and the lips, the position of the tongue and the utterances it makes, acts as an architecture and a particular way of shelter from speech surveillance software.

From the Territory to the Dividual: Exploring the physical and digital surveillance infrastructures in East Jerusalem to investigate the concept of ‘dividuation’. Where ‘dividuation’ is the act of breaking in individual down into their smallest digital parts.

Proposing a shift from the alphabetical order to a new phonetic order. Understanding the letters and pairings of Arabic letters and their location of emergence from the mouth. Starting from the depth of the throat, with the ‘ع’, to the tip of the tongue and the lips, ending with ‘م’.

Examining translations and mistranslations in relation to the existing and proposed dialectal variations that act within a specific location of the City – Seeing how an utterance which may sound the same by ear, causes mistranslations to computer software.

Film still from ‘The Invisible Territory: Abu Dis’. A conversation between mother and daughter as on their daily journey through the city.

‘The neighbourhood of Abu Dis, on the periphery of Jerusalem, is completely invisible in the digital world of navigation and mapping. In order to find your way there, you must rely on word of mouth. What was once only ten minutes from the Old City, now sits a checkpoint and an hour and a half away. ’ – Ghadeer.

Film still from ‘The Exposed Body: Qalqilya Checkpoint’ A conversation between mother and daughter as on their daily journey through the city.

’The checkpoint consists of electronic metal gates, that we have coined as ‘ معاطى ’ [ma’ata’s], because they remind us of the devices used to pluck feathers off of a chicken, so that’s what we call it. ’ – Yara

Film still from ‘The Essential Utterance: Old City’. A conversation between mother and daughter as on their daily journey through the city.

‘Due to the ain’s [ع [position as the innermost letter to emerge from the throat, its origins deep down in the throat are viewed as a sign that it was the first sound, the essential sound, the foundation of the voice and a representation of body, of self and of soul. ’ – Mohammad

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#06 Miriam Hillawi Abraham

City: Addis Ababa
School: California College of the Arts
Year graduated: 2019

Miriam Hillawi Abraham is a multi-disciplinary designer from Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. She holds an MFA in Interaction Design from the California College of the Arts and has received a BArch in Architecture from the Glasgow School of Art, as well as Part I of The Royal Institute of British Architects License. She is currently working as the Game-code Instructor at Bay Area Video Coalition where she infuses social justice and futurism into her curriculum. Her work has been featured in the Funambulist magazine and exhibitions across San Francisco including Institute for the Future, California Academy of Sciences and Hubbell Street Galleries. She is a fellow of Gray Area’s Zachary Watson Education Fund, a Graham Foundation grantee and was part of The Funambulist’s daily podcast series “A Moment of True Decolonization.”

Project 1 /// ABYSSINIAN CYBER VERNACULUS

As a multidisciplinary designer and educator with a background in Architecture, I aim to employ digital media as well as spatial and experiential design media to explore themes of futurism, self-determination for Black and Brown bodies and intersectional feminism. Furthermore the emerging discipline of experimental and digital architectural conservation is a space I am deeply passionate about and wish to contribute to especially as an African seeking to reclaim and expand upon her cultural heritage.

Abyssinian Cyber Vernaculus is a series of visual narratives and VR experiences designed to contest the active exclusion of Black and Brown formalisms and artefacts from the architectural canon. It pushes up against the apocryphal stories of Africa, while it attempts to uncover and reinstate the presence and power of those marginalized or demonized by the dominant conservative ethos of my own society in Ethiopia. The project emerged as three distinct VR journeys driven by the player who assumes the role of each “hero”, and navigates through their shared terrain of the Medieval monolithic churches of Lalibela, Ethiopia. Each hero represents the hegemonic narratives put forth by the self proclaimed experts of the historic site: Kentucky Johnson (the white savior), Yohannes (the god fearing Ethiopian man) and Sebi (the hotep, ie woefully misinformed afro-diasporic man).

Abyssinian Cyber Vernaculus was published in The Funambulist 24 (July-August 2019) Futurisms.

3D generated terrain, a reimagination of the Lalibela region in Ethiopia.

“Sebi the Enlightened” Abyssinian Cyber Vernaculus, VR experience and projected video in background.

Video still from the “Sebi, The Enlightened” VR experience from the Abyssinian Vernaculus Series.

Video still from the “Yohannes the Faithful” VR experience from the Abyssinian Vernaculus Series.

Concept drawings/comic book spread for “Sebi, The Enlightened.”

Project 2 /// ABYSSINIAN CYBER VERNACULUS

Objects for the Othered is a suite of tools designed to demand respect for women of color subjected to daily and trying micro-aggressions. This project equips women of color with the tools needed to embody their goddess form and empower themselves while moving through negative spaces in urban landscapes. Negative spaces are defined as “space[s] of deletions or of delimitations constraining one’s presence at particular locales.” And these spaces are created by the movement of bodies as they physically and mentally avoid certain regions due to cultural rules or laws dictating their movement. These spatial limitations then become “‘embodied’ in an actor-centered mobile body, separate from any fixed center or place.”

How can women of color reclaim these spaces and establish their presence? How can WOC demonstrate their power to themselves and demand respect without the frequent confrontations that wear them down? This project alludes to the ancient and resilient rituals of the Yoruba. Although it is said to have originated in Nigeria and Benin, Yoruba has followed its worshipers between borders and across oceans, bending and shaping to adjust to the displacement, trauma and reinvention of its people, thus connecting the Afro-diaspora through a thread of spirituality and collective identity. It takes on other forms and bears similarities to many other indigenous practices.

Among the Yoruba deities, Orishas, four of them are powerful female forces. Orishas exist in the elements and in oneself. These tools will be used to call down your orisha and harness your power from within. The user will be able to activate the tools when she/they find themselves in specific negative scenarios. The aim of these tools is to provide temporary feelings of empowerment for the user, signify their presence in their environment and ultimately draw awareness to the issues of subtle and nearly imperceptible discrimination WOC face while moving through urban currents. Ideally, these tools will become so prolific that there will be nothing to put the power of WOC into question and will no longer be needed.

Yemaya voice augmentation pendant (medium: acrylic, voice modulation circuit board, mini-speaker, copper chain).

Oya protector bracelet (medium: acrylic, fabric, velcro, wood)

Ibeyi optica-discombobulator hair beads (medium: mirrored acrylic)

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#07 Roanne Oberholzer (Moodley)

City: Durban
School: Graduate School of Architecture, University of Johannesburg
Year graduated: 2019

Roanne Oberholzer studied her architecture undergrad course at the University of Pretoria during the Fees Must Fall movement which profoundly impacted her understanding of space, ownership and access. In 2017 she interned at Asiye eTafuleni, an NPO that works alongside informal traders in Durban’s Warwick Junction. She is currently working at Lead Architects, teaching design at UKZN and freelancing as a researcher and designer based in Durban. She is interested in how the use of architecture evades the architect’s control, and the political tool of events as a way to build with the body. She was our main collaborator for The Funambulist 28 (March-April 2020) Our Battles, for which she produced no less than 27 drawings.

Project /// THE TWIN TRANSCRIPTS & MAKHZEN

Architecture primarily acts as a tool to organise bodies in space (Léopold’s definition which literally made me sigh in relief when I first read it in Undergrad). However, some of the most revolutionary moments in architecture’s history have been when these bodies revolt against this organisation: occupying space they were not supposed to, erecting banners/signs/flags that were not meant to be visible in a public space, pulling down statues that were made to be permanently upright and above us. Additionally, the way people use architecture in everyday scenarios – sleeping on a public bench, sitting on a window sill, climbing a downpipe- has always been beyond the control of the architect. My work asks if we can write architecture in the same way that we read it- as a series of events in space mediated by our bodies, and by doing so, find a language for architecture that is more free from the systems that so often co-opt it for their own purposes.

This means that my work never analyses or proposes spaces (whether this is the space of my site, a page, a street, or a mouth) outside of an action/event/situation that happens in it. The space, object and action always work together. It also means that I try to draw events with a research rigour that illustrates my belief in their ability to be as nuanced, constructed, specific and political as architecture is.

The Twin Transcripts, completed in 2018, re-imagines an event that was duplicated from Mainland France to one of it’s ‘overseas departments’ Reunion Island: Bastille Day, later renamed National French Day. France’s colonial act of replicating a national event which originated as a revolutionary event in one of its territories as a display of power was the precarious starting point for this project. Drawing references from the political act of twinning cities after WWII in hope of reconciliation, Egypt’s gift of one Luxor Obelisk twin to France, Paul Vergès’ arrest for attacking the integrity of the state, and the fall of the Vendome Column, the project imagines a revolutionary Bastille Day Parade in Reunion Island.

Makhzen, completed in 2019, is a series of studies on the acts of ingesting language through reading, speaking, and listening in the context of Morocco, a constitutional Monarchy with heavily censored media houses. It is a radio station, a radio drama, and a coup- a space, a story and an event. The project focuses on how language has the power to create boundaries around thought and behaviour at a civic scale. Learning from Morocco, its creole language, political satire, music traditions, history of attempted coups and, more broadly, from language itself, this radio station foregrounds dissent, discord and dissonance which exists under the surface of censorship.

The Twin Transcripts
Demolition Sequence 02_01 The fall of the Victory Column
Outside Town Hall, Rue de Paris, Saint-Denis
14.07.2019
09.25

[ghost]
//enter crane, lowering apparatus and construction workers
//demarcate demolition area

[ghost]
//enter people in the city not yet at the parade
//crowd around statue waiting for fall
//play games creating second stage (ref. Paris steel workers)

[ghost]
//enter casket. Military tanks open casket
//pockets of shadow structures formed
//spectators move beyond demarcated zones into transportation box

[copy]
//crane lowers column into box

The Twin Transcripts
Demolition Sequence 02_03 Festival Separation
Place Charles de Gaulle, Saint-Denis
14.07 2019
11:50

[reflection]
//official procession continues to Prefectura
//Vendome COlumn box and spectators turn left to Rue de Paris
//Box creates 9m tall wall in parade of hidden activity from the Prefectura
//creates twin parade, where spectators deviate from official route

The Twin Transcripts
Demolition Sequence 01_02 Overboard
River Seine, Paris
14.07.2019
12:10

[Reflection]
//military band and guards part of procession line bridge over Seine River.

[Uncanny]
//Vendome Column box too wide to fit across bridge with guards and extend
-ed flags- guards receive orders to throw French Flags overboard

Makhzen
Setting Out: eye tracking studies on reading

Setting out a building is the process of transferring architectural proposals from drawings into the ground. It established the location points for site boundaries, foundations, columns, center-lines of walls and other necessary structural elements.

Makhzen
Site/Sight

Tracking blind spots from positions of power to site the radio station as space and event. User pathways during ceremony of allegiance used.

Makhzen
Speaking Back

Creole language is formed from two or more parent languages merging together, and borrowing from native languages to change the structure of the parent languages and form a new language.

Makhzen
Intelligibility

The quality of language that is comprehensible.

Makhzen
Scene B-01
Location: Just outside mosque
Name: King Mohammed VI and The Replacement King
Occupation: Divine Ruler and Divine Ruler Impersonator
Language: French
Date 8 October 2020
Time 12:00pm-12:50
Daylight

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#08 Rula Zuhour

City: Chicago
School: School of the Art Institute of Chicago
Year graduated: 2020

Rula Zuhour is an architectural designer based in Chicago. Shas practiced independently and in offices of various sizes both in the United States and Palestine. She is a recent graduate from the M.Arch program at School of the Art Institute of Chicago and holds a B.S. in Architecture from Birzeit University in Palestine. As a graduate student, she was awarded the Pritzker Graduate Fellowship, the first prize of the Gensler Diversity Scholarship, and the Schiff Foundation Fellowship for Architecture. A big thanks to Mas Context for making us aware of Rula’s work.

Project /// Present futures

My practice lies at the intersection of architecture, landscape, and urbanism. Through investigation and narration, my work engages wider socio-economic, ecological, and political contexts. I am interested in using design as a tool to question existing power structures and propose new realities.

This work is my Master of Architecture thesis project completed at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago in May 2020. The thesis, developed over two semesters, has received the 2020 Schiff Foundation Fellowship for Architecture and was published in MAS Context. It examines the relationship between policy and space in the neighborhood of Kafr Aqab at the edge of East Jerusalem- investigating decades of Israeli policies and practices that have shaped the neighborhood, identifying key factors which have laid the groundwork for any future annexation or excision, and examining the stakes of each possible future.

Within Jerusalem’s city boundary but outside the Separation Wall, the neighborhood of Kafr Aqab is a ledge where Palestinian Jerusalemites resort to live. Behind them is a concrete wall sealing off a city that constantly pushes them out, and ahead of them is a downfall that renders them stateless. With the goal of achieving a 70% Jewish majority in Jerusalem, this lawless place emerges as yet another tool in the Israeli colonial project, which strategically expropriates as much land with as few Palestinians as possible.

In Kafr Aqab, time becomes irrelevant as Palestinians live in a state of limbo. Often compared to a refugee camp, its temporariness is served by permanent structures. But in this case, those structures are informal high-rise buildings, rising higher every day, with little infrastructure and no services. The future of this vertically growing density-like its emergence-is shaped by Israeli policies and practices.

This thesis investigates past and current Israeli colonization tactics that have created the Kafr Aqab phenomenon, where architecture and urban planning are instruments of dispossession, displacement, and control. The thesis uses both spatial and non-spatial information to identify colonial policies and territorial tactics that shaped the urban condition of Kafr Aqab. The spatial is reflected in the territorial representation of tactics including land expropriation, the declaration of state land and national parks, and the construction of military walls and checkpoints. The non-spatial is coded into the drawings, where it incorporates colonial systems and policies such as the Israeli ID system, Center of Life Policy, and Greater Jerusalem Bill. The spatialization of the history and the narrative exposes Israel’s strategic weaponizing of space in consolidation of disparity and control.

The thesis uses speculation to both orchestrate the unstated power of the political boundaries and military structures as well as reveal the stakes of possible future policies currently being considered by Israel in the Greater Jerusalem Bill. By examining moments in space and time of idiosyncratic collisions between the urban fabric, military structures, and political boundaries, the thesis reveals the method in which those territorial tools operate in tandem with oppressive legal, civilian, and administrative policies to expand Israel’s territory, while displacing and fragmenting Palestinian communities.

Anatomy of Kafr Aqab: Informal Vertical Densification

Despite the fact that Kafr Aqab is completely neglected by the city and is facing challenges of overpopulation, informal construction, and lack of law enforcement, infrastructure, and facilities, the densification process still persists. Palestinian Jerusalemites, especially younger adults, are still establishing their homes in Kafr Aqab. An estimate of one third of families residing in Kafr Aqab are made up of a Jerusalem ID holder married to a West Bank ID holder. Palestinians with West Bank IDs cannot live in Jerusalem while Palestinians with Jerusalem IDs absolutely must live within Jerusalem’s city boundary to maintain their residency status under the “Center of Life” law, making Kafr Aqab one of a couple of places they can be together.

Due to numerous colonial policies and tactics enacted by the Israeli government against Palestinians in Jerusalem, many Palestinian Jerusalemites find themselves lacking the means to establish a home in Jerusalem. Between the cost of living and salary gap between Palestinians and Jewish Israelis, Palestinian Jerusalemites increasingly find themselves not being able to afford to live in neighborhoods within the Separation Wall. Moreover, building permits are extremely expensive and limited to Palestinians by design due to city planning practices. And with them being forced to prove they reside within the city boundary of Jerusalem, they are forced to move to areas beyond the wall such as Kafr Aqab and Shufat Refugee Camp.

Colonization Apparatus: The Creation of the Kafr Aqab Phenomenon

The Kafr Aqab phenomenon is both a product and tool in the Israeli colonization project in Jerusalem. To fully understand the method in which it was created, one needs to both zoom out and go back in history to identify both policies and territorial tactics crafted to build this colonization apparatus.

Ever since Israel occupied the West Bank and annexed East Jerusalem in 1967, it has used various tactics to gain control over land and build as many Israeli settlements as possible. Those tactics include the outright forced expropriation of land, declaring nature reserves and national parks on false pretenses, using ancient Ottoman and British Mandate laws to declare state land, needlessly classifying areas as closed military zones, the construction of checkpoints restricting movement, and most infamously drawing the route of the Separation Wall so as to lay ground for annexing seventy illegal settlements in the West Bank. Meanwhile, Israel has also carried through demographic strategies that continuously replace Palestinians with Jews. Those strategies include the Law of return, the Gafni Commission, the “Center of Life” policy, the building permit regime and house demolitions, and the “Greater Jerusalem” bill.

Displacement and Dispossession

Due to the discriminatory colonial policies, over 14,500 Palestinian Jerusalemites had their residencies revoked since 1967. Residency revocation leads to forcible transfer—barring Palestinian Jerusalemites from their own city. In fear of facing revocation, Palestinian Jerusalemites are being displaced to the edge areas of Jerusalem. This animated map shows the link between waves of residency revocation and waves of construction, where Palestinian Jerusalemites living either in the West Bank or abroad rushed to Kafr Aqab to preserve their identities.

Examining the colonization apparatus at the Kafr Aqab scale, it is easy to see how Palestinians were slowly dispossessed of their land and left with that lawless ledge between the Wall and city boundary. The thick dash-dot line represents the accessible parts of the village to Palestinians, which has been shrinking dramatically due to the construction of the illegal Israeli Settlement Kokhav Ya’akov, Area C classification, and the construction of the Separation Wall. Prior to Kafr Aqab becoming a resort for Palestinian Jerusalemites seeking to preserve their residency status, the land used to be primarily agricultural.

The Greater Jerusalem Plan: Ethnocratic Territorialization

The speculation on future policies is based on a report done by Crisis Group, which investigates Israeli plans for Palestinian neighborhoods in East Jerusalem both inside and outside the Wall. It focuses on the Greater Jerusalem bill, drafted in 2007 and voted on but shelved in the Israeli Parliament after winning the support of Netanyahu in 2017 and a dispute over the excision of Palestinian neighborhoods that have been walled off. One of the bill’s goals is to swap the 140,000 Palestinian votes in municipal elections with 140,000 Jewish Israeli ones-known as ethnic gerrymandering.

Futures: Bird City or Slum Metropolis?

The Israeli attitude towards East Jerusalem can be summed up in the quote by a former Israeli Minister:

“East Jerusalem remains stuck in our throat: we can’t swallow it and we can’t spit it out.”

While this quote refers to East Jerusalem as a whole, it can be applied to the specific case of Kafr Aqab as follows:

For Kafr Aqab to be swallowed is to integrate it with “Unified Jerusalem”. To be spat out is to be excised from Jerusalem, which was proposed in two scenarios. And to remain stuck is for Kafr Aqab to stay inside the city boundary but outside the wall.

The two futures “Bird City” and “Slum Metropolis” are not separate, but rather feed off each other, raising the stakes every day. “Slum Metropolis” is a direct product of the current displacement of Palestinian Jerusalemites, and “Bird City” will be the second, if not the third time the very same communities are displaced. This vicious cycle is the very definition of the state of limbo Palestinians live in and is always coupled with the continuous expansion of Israeli territory and illegal settlements

Moments: Idiosyncratic Collisions between the Urban Fabric, Military Structures, and Political Boundaries

Moments represent a collection of urban conditions at a certain moment in time. And each condition is defined by the collision between the urban fabric with different colonial military structures and/ or political boundaries. Codifying buildings with ID colors reveals the way in which those territorial structures and boundaries work in parallel with the colonial policies to determine where Palestinians live. To fully understand what is at stake, possible futures are envisioned for each moment-whether the decision to excise Kafr Aqab from Jerusalem is made tomorrow, in ten years, or twenty.

[In]Visible Line

The invisible city boundary of Jerusalem determines where Palestinian Jerusalemites can establish a home. The city boundary here is a permeable line which operates as the edge of the ledge, where crossing it is considered defiance of the “Center of Life” law. While inside the boundary is currently highly desirable, outside it is classified as Area C, which bans Palestinians from construction without Israeli permission.

Excision will result in shifting the city boundary to align with the Separation Wall, probably transforming the area into Area C (or some equivalent) in order to consolidate control and prohibit further construction. The longer the excision process takes, the more visible this boundary becomes.

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#09 Arinjoy Sen

City: London
School: The Bartlett School of Architecture, UCL
Year graduated: 2021

Arinjoy Sen is currently a student of M.Arch architecture at the Bartlett School of Architecture, UCL in London. His focus ranges from the politics and aesthetics of architecture/space to the instrumentalization of spatial agents in socio-cultural and political phenomena. In the last academic year (2019-20), Arinjoy’s work focused firstly on critically relevant political events and conditions within the Indian political landscape, namely the ongoing socio-political crisis within the highly conflicted and militarized region of Kashmir. Secondly, his research worked towards the demystification of a specific politico-religious movement – the Ram Janmabhumi Movement – through the spatial agents instrumentalized within it. Previous explorations include penetrating the realm of capitalism through architectural discourse, namely a critique of capitalist development through the lens of post-Operaist thought process. Drawing plays a crucial role in Arinjoy’s work, where it becomes an apparatus and alternative space for the exploration and subsequent projection of thought processes and architectural discourse. Current research occupations include subaltern studies – towards a deconstruction of architecture’s role within the realm of postcolonial discourse.

Project 1 /// Productive Insurgence

Architecture as a discipline situates itself at the locus of a complex and far-reaching network of agents, events and processes. This gives it a unique position or vantage point, which enables the discipline to have loose boundaries. Such a condition allows us to go beyond the intricacies of architecture’s-built manifestation and explore the deep, implicit or explicit, and complex historical, socio-cultural and political ramifications of architecture. Such a strain of thought brought about the agency to address and confront the political landscape of India, which is currently in crisis, through architectural discourse.

In recent times, especially in 2019, Kashmir was at the forefront of heated political debate. This was brought about by the Government of India’s abrupt decision to revoke the special status of Indian-Occupied-Kashmir, and subsequently its enforcement under dubious circumstances causing Kashmir to plunge into deep crisis. This is where ‘Productive Insurgence’ (2020) situates itself in order to address and confront this condition of deep political crisis and conflict. Historically, Kashmir has always had a complicated relationship with India and its neighbours, due to the nature of its inclusion within the State post-Independence. This allowed Kashmir to almost exist as a state of exception — with a special status in the form semi-autonomy. But following the revocation of its special status in August 2019, the people of Kashmir have been living in constant precarity, negotiating between death and democracy, the military and the militants, India and Pakistan – where the streets have become theatres of violence and the people at a loss of identity and choice.

Productive Insurgence as a project attempts to explore the possibility of a form of autonomy and self-determination within and against State-Capitalist systems while actively addressing the complex socio-political and cultural condition of crisis and aims to confront this state of helplessness – towards the possibility of emancipation. It questions the ways in which the people of Kashmir produce and reproduce themselves in order to create an apparatus for production and reproduction within Kashmir, towards a circular economy independent of State and Capitalist systems, for the sustenance and subsistence of the community in this struggle.

Through this exploration, the project attempts to address issues pertaining to identity politics, cultural narratives and socio-political conflicts along with the politics of environmental state-making. It intends to stretch the possibilities of regionalism, circular economy and the idea of common(s) and offer them as a radical alternative to current modes of production. A solution perhaps the world needs to start looking at right now, especially for conflicted territories like Kashmir.

Maintenance as a Facilitator – the act of building and maintenance as practices towards the destabilisation of status quo and facilitation of circular economy.

Narratives for a New Grammar – towards the construction of an identity rooted in struggle.

The Political Form of the Carpet as a Manifesto – towards an alternative space for reading and inhabitation.

Between Construction and Ruin – a continuous state of evolution/development perpetually oscillating between a construction and a ruin.

An Evolving Artefact – the painting as a manual towards the development of the project, the narrative and the construction of a history.

On the Margins of Utopia – the painting as an apparatus for the projection of ideologies for a future interwoven with the present, towards a construction of time.

Project 2 /// Spatialising Conflict

Also defining the current political landscape of India is its Hindu nationalist right-wing government. The ideologies and agendas pertaining to this government can be argued, tend towards a neo-Fascist regime. It’s not difficult to see the overarching agenda – sometimes explicitly outlined – of this government through its recent enforcement and mobilisation of policies, policing and movements of subjugation, control and choreography – towards the construction of a specific historicity. Such a condition begs to trace the history and beginnings of Hindu nationalism in a secular India and its crucial turning point within the political landscape. This turning point was arguably, the Ram Janmabhumi Movement which took place in the late 80s extending onto the 90s, culminating into the demolition of the Babri Masjid, a 16th Century mosque. The event shocked the country and the rest of the world, culminating in vast communal conflicts throughout the country, and subsequently cementing the position of Hindu nationalists in the political landscape of India.

‘Spatialising Conflict’ (2020) attempts to demystify the event through the examination and deconstruction of the instrumentalisation of spatial agents within the event. The research argues that examining the spatial dimensions of the sites and events within the Ram Janmabhumi movement will allow for understanding the role of spatial agents in the politics of orchestration, production and proliferation of conflict. This should have wider implications on the instrumentalization of space in the politics of communalism, religious nationalism and mass mobilisation as well as its role as a social agent.

Such are the topics and fields of interest that occupy Arinjoy’s work at the Bartlett School of Architecture. The nature of the work briefly introduced above embrace the loose boundaries of architectural discourse in an attempt to confront the wider socio-cultural and political implications of the discipline – towards the creation of an agency to critically address and practice architecture.

Spatialising Conflict – Decoding the instrumentalization of space in the Ram Janmabhumi Movement, India

The post Game-Changing Architecture Graduates #09 /// Arinjoy Sen appeared first on THE FUNAMBULIST MAGAZINE.

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#10 Folasade Okunribido

City: London
School: The Royal College of Art
Year graduated: 2020

Folasade Okunribido is an architectural designer. After receiving her BSc in Architecture from the University of Bath, her 2020 graduate thesis project at the RCA earned her the School of Architecture Dean’s Prize for the innovative, rich and cohesive nature of the project that pushes the boundaries of the discipline. Her work explores new forms of inhabitation through the lens of traditional Yoruba Architecture. Folasade is currently an Architectural Assistant at AHMM Architects and part of a collective focussed on redefining, elevating and celebrate African History using illustrative narratives. The Funambulist thanks Thandi Loewenson and Elise Misao Hunchuck for recommending her work to us!

Project /// Ààfin Awon Eniyan (The People’s Palace)

Ààfin Awon Eniyan (The People’s Palace) is a home for renegades, a group of 150 young people, who are breaking free from the expected traditional way of life in a space defined only by immersion in blue. The project provides a refuge, like the traditional Yoruba afin (palaces) (G.J.Afolabi Ojo, Yoruba Palaces, 1966). of the past, allowing these renegades to freely go about their daily lives. It provides space for resting, playing and working together. The building is situated in my mother’s home, Ibadan, Nigeria, overshadowing an area of 10,800m² above the shallow Kudeti river, filling the largest void in the densely packed centre.

The building maintains the collective use of the afin’s untranslatable and characteristic àgbàlá (courtyard). However, the yara (rooms) are pushed to the extremities allowing the ọdẹdẹ (corridor) to flow in and out of the enclosed spaces, creating a complex of entanglements for special moments of interaction.

In traditional Yoruba society, the Oba’s (King) afin was a place of organised ceremony, debate, sanctity and a solace for the afflicted. In reclaiming the organisation and the traditional notion of the afin from an elite, for the benefit of the many, the project creates a backdrop for communities like the Alté, who celebrate the political edge that music and performance can play in its ability to bring people together. The perception of such communities is unstable and this characteristic is reflected in the building through the use of structural colour. In this project, the colour blue is as important to the architectural structure as a column, floorplate, load and mass.

Blue,
Universal and infinite,
The colour of the sky and the sea,
Which when reached cannot be touched,
And disappears when close.
Blue surrounds us constantly,
Shifting into different shades and hues.

(David Batchelor, Chromophobia, 2000)

Up until recently, in Yoruba, there was no word for blue. Like many languages, blue was one of the last colours to be described with words. Blue was unbound by language, thus possessing its own kind of freedom. Free from preconceptions, free from ideologies.

The building is composed of an abstract array of reinforced, interlocking clay plates. Each plate varies in size according to their structural (including colour) performance and requirements. Each clay plate is treated with mica powder which creates structural colour through the phenomenon of light interference. Outside, the blue is elusive, leaving the largest handmade clay elements rough to match the terrain of the city. Moving deeper into the building the colours shift and intensify. And at the centre, which holds a place for those most marginalised, a collective space opens up to a vivid fluctuating blue. The building provides multiple forms of inhabiting a structural blue, where shifting shades permeate through yara and ọdẹdẹ allowing everyday acts to be reframed by the oscillation of colour, only opening at the àgbàlá for an uninterrupted view to the blues of the sky.

The project was a pathway to understand a new form of inhabitation through the lens of Yoruba afin architecture, a spatial definition that is not commonly used in Nigeria today but became essential to the project. I do not romanticise the traditional afin and the building translates a sequence of spaces for an elite into one which celebrates a common – whilst adopting the colour blue to evoke a sense of freedom. Within Ààfin Awon Eniyan, an amalgamation of elements with an oscillating presence on the site, provide shelter through the yara, ọdẹdẹ and the main àgbàlá. In openings small and delicate and courtyards which engulf the collective, a deep sapphire blue flickers where those who could not find their place are free.

First Floor Plan – Upper levels can be accessed and used by many within the community, subverting the tradition that only the Oba would have a room above one storey. On the first floor, plates surrounding the yara are continuous, large and more dense for increased privacy, separation, and reduced light.

Material tests – The project uses blue as an aura in the form of structural colour, a phenomenon that occurs when light interferes and diffracts through periodic nanostructures, causing the appearance of bright shifting colours. Similar to the wings of a morpho butterfly, the clay plates of the building are embedded with a translucent mica powder medium, which allows each plate to manipulate light causing the reflection of a range of colours. The base colour for mica powder of 450nm is blue and its intensity varies depending on two factors; the background colour and the angle of the light.

Long Elevation – Similar to the traditional afin, the rhythmic layering of the clay plates expresses vastness and rigour, yet the building is not solid, it is entirely exposed to the outside, with only a series of elements creating a distance.

Long Section – The three equal single storey levels, lightly hold the centralised àgbàlá which are non-hierarchical in their layout. The building provides multiple forms of inhabiting a structural blue, where shifting shades permeate through yara and ọdẹdẹ allowing everyday acts to be reframed by the oscillation of colour, only opening at the àgbàlá for an uninterrupted view to the blues of the sky.

Periphery perspective section – The clay plates decrease in scale vertically and horizontally, with the internal façade remaining constant. On the periphery, the floor tiles are laid directly along the ground, and small intimate spaces, back a thin layer of elements which provide screening and protection from the outside, whilst still allowing those near to hear children pottering around the river and feel the gentle breeze. Here, yara are enclosed yet never quite closed off to the rest of the building, leaving gaps for others to both see and enter in.

Cooking in the àgbàlá – The àgbàlá – a space for everyday acts such as cooking and eating, where the traditional communal culture and edgy character of those living within the building meet.

A view through an ọdẹdẹ – Moving deeper into the intersections, the blue intensifies and the plates link to form pockets. The colours are animated further with artificial light, constructing areas of intense saturation and glow.

Skating in the main àgbàlá – The àgbàlá – with the most in intense blue, open and vast where the elements seem to merge into the sky, angled at 53 degrees allowing the vibrancy of colour and continuous screening to shield the community within the city.

The post Game-Changing Architecture Graduates #10 /// Folasade Okunribido appeared first on THE FUNAMBULIST MAGAZINE.

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#11 Uthra Varghese

City: New York and Dubai
School: Columbia University
Year graduated: 2020

Uthra Varghese is an architectural designer and researcher who practices in Dubai and New York. She holds a Bachelor’s degree in Architecture from the American University of Sharjah and recently graduated from Columbia University with an M.S. in Advanced Architectural Design. Her keen interest in historical research inspires and drives her design methodology. She co-founded UT- r studio with Tasnim Tinawi in 2016; the practice investigates the multitudes in which design can elevate the relationships between cultural contexts and the built environment. The studio integrates work across the disciplines of architecture, art, installation and product design. The Funambulist thanks Mabel O. Wilson for recommending her work to us!

Project 1 /// DECOLONIZING AN IMPERIALIST ARCHIVE THROUGH NATURE CULTURES

The intervention activates both invasive and poisonous species found on site through digital and physical networks to dismantle Rockefeller Jr.’s icon and establish nature cultures. Fort Tryon Park in Manhattan includes among other things; a heather garden, poisonous plants and the MET Cloisters museum, which the project will demolish. The site has been colonized politically through invasions, symbolically through the MET Cloisters museum and ecologically through the nonnative gardens, making it an imperialist archive. The project decolonizes the site by putting to work the capacities of the invasive heather plant and the poisonous plants. The Cloisters is broken down through micro explosions created by heating the excess gas of the poisonous plants. In order to determine the activation timeline, the project aims to handover the responsibility of the breakdown of the building to Rockefeller’s oil empire; as fracking increases, micro-demolitions in the museum walls are activated.

Project 1 Image 01 Site Invasion Axonometric

Fort Tryon Park has been colonized by multiple powers throughout history. It was originally inhabited by the Lenape nation who were driven out by Dutch invaders and then taken over by the British army. The land was finally won in battle by the Americans after the US independence. The property was purchased by Rockefeller Jr. in 1917. He employed the Olmstead brothers to design a park and then gifted it to the state of New York.

The MET Cloisters is an exhibit of cultural, architectural and ecological extractions. It is a unique space where architecture and plants are both exotic to their contexts. Within the gardens of the cloisters, there are exotic species of poisonous plants that are brought in from all around the globe. One of them is Oleander, which releases excess nitrogen gas as a defense mechanism. The heather garden is another site of exotic species in the park. It takes over surrounding lands due to its large seed and pollen count. As it increases in quantity, it attracts large amounts of bees and butterflies.

The project focuses on extraction of exoticism and its naturalization as native. It decolonizes the site by dismantling Rockefeller’s vision. This is done by putting to work the capacities of the invasive and poisonous plants by creating nature-cultures. To do that, the MET Cloisters is broken down through micro-explosions. Poisonous plants are enclosed and their excess gas is collected, heated and pumped through pipes. The result is the breakdown of the building. The invasion is facilitated by a mesh that directs the heather’s growth. It extends from the garden and envelopes the MET Cloisters. A network of wireless sensors and an irrigation system enrich the soil for the heather’s growth.

In order to determine the activation timeline, Rockefeller’s Empire must be revisited. Standard Oil’s monopoly was split up into smaller sectors that still function today. The Marcellus Shale supplies oil to New York City where Exxonmobil and Chevron, both descendants of Rockefeller’s monopoly are fracking in that area. Not only are they continuing extraction practices, but they’re also leading to an increase in earthquakes, water pollution and poor air quality. Therefore, as the fracking continues so does the demolition. The agents on site are activated to allow for an ecosystem that would synthesize the nativity and exoticism of both culture and ecology to eliminate Rockefeller from the landscape.

Project 1 Image 05 Animation — ^ Click on the image to see the animated GIF. ^

Studio Instructor: Nerea Calvillo
In collaboration with Farah Monib

Project 2 /// RE-DRESSING THE RENAISSANCE

As architecture students and art history enthusiasts, we began analyzing and re-interpreting the art we so admired. We sought to see ourselves represented in iconic Western art and this sparked a series of Renaissance reenactments that included Da Vinci’s Last Supper, Masaccio’s Tribute Money and Raphael’s School of Athens. The overarching themes of our recreations are to re-consider the rather limited representation, per today’s context, in celebrated work from the past and to spark conversation about the accepted conventions of portrayed figures.

Project 2 Image 1 Last Supper Reenactment

Da Vinci’s Last Supper Reenactment

Our work pays homage to the masters by re-imagining their artwork and re-positioning them in this place, day and age. The reenactments of these paintings explore multiple themes with a primary focus on the re-gendering of a conventionally male-dominated ensemble. The figures in the painting have also been re-represented in terms of regional and religious diversity. To make it more culturally specific, we re-costumed the figures using traditional attire such as sarees and shaylas.

Project 2 Image 2 Tribute Money Reenactment

Masaccio’s Tribute Money Reenactment

We shot the recreations on campus, after draping the cast and directing their positions for a single photograph. Finally we knitted together all the visual elements using Photoshop to form the final composition. As much as the reenactments were about generating significant images, we realized that the process itself created a sense of community that was more meaningful than the final result. It also perfectly captured the spirit of learning that is a core aspect of the studio environment, while bringing faculty and students together.

Project 2 Image 3 School Of Athens Reenactment

Raphael’s School of Athens Reenactment

Team: Divya Mahadevan, Farah Monib, Zahra’a Nasralla, Gopika Praveen, Tasnim Tinawi, Uthra Varghese and Nabeela Zeitoun
Photography: Aashish Rajesh

The post Game-Changing Architecture Graduates #11 /// Uthra Varghese appeared first on THE FUNAMBULIST MAGAZINE.

This Monday, Professor Ariella Aïsha Azoulay was kicking off the stellar lecture series Algerian architect and architectural historian Samia Henni has put together for the department of architecture at Cornell University in the United States. Entitled “Into the Desert: Questions of Coloniality and Toxicity,” this lecture series features a list of speakers that is arguably unheard of in the context of an architecture school. In this list, Aïsha is joined by Dalal Musaed Alsayer, Paulo Tavares, Asaiel Al Saeed, Aseel AlYaqoub, Saphiya Abu Al-Maati, Yousef Awaad, Nadim Samman, Menna Agha, Alessandra Ponte, Solveig Suess, and Zoé Samudzi. The topic of the desert as a site of colonial exploitation or invention is itself at the core of Samia’s ongoing research on the French nuclear testing in the Algerian desert between 1960 and 1966.

For one hour, Ariella Aïsha Azoulay unfolded her brilliant lecture entitled “Palestine is There, Where it Has Always Been.” She argued with great rigor and precision how the very notion of the “desert” in the context of Palestine had been used as one of the main component of the Zionist narrative of the inexistence of Palestinian people in Palestine, and of the implementation of an Eurocentric idea of progress by the Israeli state in its endeavor to “make the desert bloom.” Such an engineered narrative thus allowed the displacement of 750,000 Palestinians during the 1948 Nakba (before and after the establishment of the Israeli state) and the subsequent construction of the settler colony known as Israel. Aïsha is herself the daughter of a Palestinian Jewish mother who grew up in pre-1948 Palestine and an Algerian Jewish father who was part of the Zionist effort to settle Palestine. She spent most of her life in Palestine.

The lecture gathered many spectators who, for many, were shocked when, a few minutes after Aïsha had began her talk, a message was posted by the person in charge of the technical side of the session on a clear demand from the Chair of the department of architecture, Andrea Lee Simitch:

“We are aware that these topics are sensitive and have multiple view points and would like to assure all participants that the department is looking forward to organizing a future lecture that presents other view points than those that are offered here today and in subsequent talks.”

2020 1005 — Screenshot of the message sent by the Cornell Chair of the Architecture Dept through IT.

While many antiracist and anticolonial remote conversations that happened in the last few months have been regularly interrupted by white supremacists and zionist provocateurs, the Cornell school of architecture apparently intends to take care itself of such interruptions. There is, of course, the blatant contempt displayed against the organizer of the series, as well as the speaker herself — imagine one second the Chair of a department interrupting an invited speaker after 10 minutes of her presentation to affirm that she “looks forward” to organizing a future event that would say the opposite of what she is exposing. This coward attack against Samia Henni and Ariella Aïsha Azoulay is outrageous and we would like to send them our moral and political support. However, our outrage extends much further the bounds of this specific talk.

Firstly, it is crucial to observe how works that examine and engage with the settler colonial conditions of Palestine are fundamentally more and more experiencing various forms of censorship. This usually culminates in the designation of anti-Zionist activists, including Jewish ones, as “antisemites” in a dangerous blur of what constitutes an antisemite speech or person, to the greatest joy of antisemites themselves. Just a few days ago, over 1,300 academics including Judith Butler, Diana Buttu, Noam Chomsky, Angela Davis, Noura Erakat, Robin DG Kelley, and Ilan Pappe, called on academic institutions worldwide to end the censorship of works and speeches that explicitly supports the Palestinian struggle against colonialism and apartheid. The fact that such a censorship happens in an architecture school should not be forgotten either, as architecture is in no way a neutral tool in the matter. In fact, architecture, along with Israeli laws and military, is one of the key tools for the Israeli apartheid to implement itself all over Palestine.

The second point has to do with the blatant hypocrisy of academic institutions, in particular architecture ones. Many of them have understood (at least in North America) that it was no longer acceptable for them to provide their students and faculty with curricula and lectures that reinforce the white-dominated, settler colonial, patriarchal, and heteronormative status quo. Some have reacted by organizing a few tokenized events around the Black Lives Matter uprising to hide the screaming lack of Black people in their administration, faculty, and student body; others, admittedly, have initiated more ambitious programs, such as this lecture series curated by Samia Henni. Yet, they evidently did not realize the consequence of what it means to be consistent between anti-colonial and anti-racist posturing and an actual engagement to dismantle the structures of colonialism and white supremacy.

This letter does not demand anything from Cornell’s Department of Architecture administration (besides not interrupting any other lectures of the series), as we know that any conciliatory statement from their end would be disingenuous. This is rather a means to expose their cowardice and hypocrisy so that such malign interventions cannot happen without being called out publicly. We also write this having in mind that this type of censorship can influence the students themselves. Let’s hope however that they will have seen the obvious asymmetry between, on the one hand, a brilliant, detailed, deep, and smart exposé and, on the other hand, a petty comment written from outside of the conversation by a Chair more worried about her liability than the quality of knowledge produced in her Department and who will now be looking for a zionist speaker to establish what she perceives to be an intellectual balance. The story does not tell yet whether she’ll also be inviting a masculinist in response to a feminist event, a white supremacist after a Black Lives Matter one, and a climate-change denier after an environmentalist one. As for us, we very much look forward to following the rest of the lecture series proposed by Samia Henni and hope that we’ll be joined by many of you during the next talks.

SIGNATORIES SO FAR (310 and counting)///
Léopold Lambert, editor-in-chief of The Funambulist
Margarida Waco, Head of Strategic Outreach, The Funambulist
Omar Berrada
Yasmine Tandjaoui
Isabelle Saint-Saens
Jessika Khazrik
Dr Gabriel Varghese
Merve Bedir
Nyla Matuk
Mona Rahal
Malak Al-faraj
Ethel Baraona Pohl, co-founder dpr-barcelona
Zanira Sandhu
Dr. Anne Kockelkorn, ETH Zurich
Nick Axel
Céline Cantat
Solveig Suess
Venko Curlin
Josué Pérez Campos
Ameneh Solati
Pascal Schwaighofer
Muriam Haleh Davis
Anaïs Duong-Pedica
Sabrien Amrov
Abdulla Janahi
Julien Lafontaine Carboni
Ekaterina Navarro
Guy Mannes-Abbott
Gopika Praveen
Aurélie Faure
Mark Ayyash
Tasnim T
Meera Badran
Ana María León
Maria Topolcanska
Victoria Ngai
Layal ftouni, Utrecht university
Chiraz Gafsia
Mabel O. Wilson
Paola De Martin
Anooradha Iyer Siddiqi, Barnard College, Columbia University
Augustin Jomier
Kareem Estefan
Rashid Khalidi
Michiel Dehaene
Razan Abou Askar
Shai Gortler
Carmen Popescu
Lucas Morin
Socrates Stratis, Associate Professor University of Cyprus, Cornell alumni
Michael Moynihan
Secil Binboga
Ana Ozaki
Nadia Jones-Gailani, Gender Studies, CEU
Reinhold Martin
Sarah Rusconi Origoni
Eudes Lopes
Philip Ursprung, ETH Zurich
Charles Heller
Constantina Theodorou
Maya Ober, FHNW Academy of Art and Design, Basel
Lesley Lokko
Sara Diaz
Basil Harb
Caleb Lightfoot
Aseel AlYaqoub
César Reyes Nájera
Jean-Philippe Halgand
Brinkley Messick
Andrew Curtis
Asya Uzmay
Ruihong Li
Ismael Sheikh Hassan
Camillo Boano
Sophie Akoury
Godofredo Enes Pereira
Nabil Harb
Josh Begley
Carolina Rito
Zoya Gul Hasan
Robert Vitalis
Mayar El Bakry
Sophia Azeb
Brenda (Bz) Zhang
Kaye Geipel
Mithra Akhbari
Marral Shamshiri
Christel Leenen
Kenny Cupers
Sofia Manganas
Yaser
Mitchell Lawrence
Lameess
Deniz Sözen
Esra Akcan
Nicholas Gamso
Hollyamber Kennedy, ETH Zurich
Elis Mendoza
Greg Camphire
Natasha Ginwala
Killian Doherty
Esra Akcan
James Graham
Kathleen James-Chakraborty
Latika Gupta
Jessica Bair
Caitlin Blanchfield
Karim Samir Farhat
Moza
Frederick Kannemeyer
Alexandre Mecattaf
Daham Marapane
Laurel Mei-Singh
M’hamed Oualdi
Lynda Zein
Lawson Spencer
Samantha Martin
Alp Demiroglu
Stephanie Jaouen
Doreen Mende
Derek Yi
Dr. Nadine Schütz, IRCAM Paris
Niloufar Tajeri
Silvia Galdamez
Nadia Abu-Zahra, Associate Professor, University of Ottawa
Dubravka Sekulic
Anaïs Nony
Yazan khalili
Irene de Craen
Stanley Wolukau-Wanambwa, Graduate Program Director, Photography Department, Rhode Island School of Design
Surya Ghildiyal
Hannah Boast
sarah shakeel
Ola Hassanain
Fabienne Engler
Ryohei Ozaki
Ijlal Muzaffar, RISD
Laura Wexler
Jiayi Wang
Iftikhar Dadi
Clemens Finkelstein
Murchana Roychoudhury
Wendy Matsumura
Michael Kubo
Irena Lehkoživová, VI PER, Prague
Ben Barsotti Scott
Erzsébet Barát
Jeanette Jouili
Liyana Hasnan
Françoise Vergès
Rosalyne Shieh
Nora Akawi
Brennen Stenke
Felicity Scott
Samar Al-Saleh
Uthra Varghese
Anbar Oreizi-Esfahani
Andrea Ng
Max Piersol
Christina Leung
Felicity Scott
Lara Fresko
Paulo Moreira
Heather Grossman
Jonathan Ochshorn
Elodie Doukhan
Celina Abba
Nick Estes
Gregory Cartelli
Robert Flahive
Julia Ramos
Farzin Lotfi-Jam
Hasnaa Fatehi
Ignacio G. Galán
Anna Engelhardt
Mira Stanic
Jacqueline Tran
Adriana Contarino
Min Hanna
Abigail Amit
Ainslie Cullen
Chae Park
Riana Tan
Carina Ray
Jasmine Benyamin
George Tsourounakis
Timothy Perkins, ENSCI-les ateliers, Paris
Elaine Zmuda
Adi Ophir
Kandis Friesen
Rachael Biggane
Anees Assali
Jacob R. Moore
Susan Slyomovics
Lori A. Brown
Hyun-Ji Yang
Sneha Ragavan
Colin Alcock
Sonia Sobrino Ralston
Aaron Katzeman
Jasbir Puar
Ingrid Lao
David Lloyd, UC Riverside
Caren Kaplan
Issam Nassar
Taylor K. Miller
Neal Walsh
Jamal Nassar
Stephen Sheehi
Lara Sheehi, The George Washington University
Randah Sweilem
Nam Henderson
Suzannah Henty
Randa Farah
Marcelo López-Dinardi
Jully Chen
Mona Halaby
Mara Ahmed
Sben Korsh
Swati Chattopadhyay, Professor, History of Art and Architecture, University of California, Santa Barbara
Patricia Morton, UC Riverside and 1st Vice President, Society of Architectural Historians
Mary H. Regier
Zulaikha Ayub
mary regier
Jisoo Kim
Monica Grycz
Aline Suter
Professor W. Glenn Bowman, University of Kent at Canterbury
Emilio Distretti
Christopher Lloyd
Marion Slitine
Krishna Parikh
Suan Schuppli
Tal Barmash
Todd Reisz
Serena Dambrosio
Professor W. Glenn Bowman, University of Kent at Canterbury
Saba Innab
Eva Schreiner
Mpho Matsipa
Katie-Rose Nunziato
Anne de Groot
S-A J Felsenberg
Meitha Almazrooei
Bassem Saad
Preeti Chopra
Silvia Balzan
Manuel Shvartzberg Carrió
Mur Masalha
Alfredo Brillembourg/ urban think tank
Oliver Ilievski
Prof. Nur Masalha
Runa Johannessen
Dima srouji
Nuha K.
Qusai sayed ahmad
Anat Matar
Kalani Reyes
Ronnen Ben-Arie
Santiago Alfonso Fernández
Terri Ginsberg
Min Kyung Lee
Haya maraka
Dana Mourad Hanna
Eyal Weizman
Moad Musbahi
Hannah Feniak
Samia Labidi
Mirjam Ragossnig
Dana Alami
Stéphanie Dadour
nida ekenel
Zaid Kashef Alghata
Anna Frei
Sergio Beltrán-García
Jinny Khanduja
Fareed Armaly
Frank Wang
Lachlan Kermode
Nada Pretnar
Dena Qaddumi
Ilan Pappe
Saoud El Mawla, Professor- Beirut
Sandrine Baudry
Rasha Salti
Denise Bertschi
Carlotta Trippa
Jumana Manna
Shaaban Al Ghazali
Tuliza Sindi
Heather Diane Formaini
Hilda Moucharrafieh
Leana Boven
Mays Albaik
Romy Rüegger, artist
Pierre Bélanger
Fredi Fischli
Inès Weizman
Assia Henni
Talhi Dalila
Najib EL AGGUIR.
Reem Shadid
Hasan Daraghmeh
Fadwa Naamna
Yulia Gilich
Jaret Vadera
Andrew Ross, NYU
Rana Saba
Guy Bollag
Kirti Durelle

The post “Palestine is There”: A Problem, Evidently, for the Cornell Chair of Architecture appeared first on THE FUNAMBULIST MAGAZINE.

Read the series introduction /// Find the rest of the series

#12 Alicia Olushola Ajayi

City: Brooklyn, NY
School: School of Visual Arts, MA Design Research, Writing & Criticism
Year graduated: 2020

Alicia Olushola Ajayi is an architectural designer, researcher, writer, and (still trying to figure it out) based in NYC. Some of her favorite things is imagining Black futures, consuming copious amounts of media for “critical research”, and growing with her passions. She was published in The Funambulist 5 (May-June 2016) Design & Racism and The Funambulist 11 (May-June 2017) Designed Destructions.

Project /// We Call it Freedom Village: Brooklyn, Illinois’s Radical Tactics of Black-Place Making

Trained as an architect, my work explores the layered complexities of people, place, and power. Recently her work has focused on radical Black placemaking as a spatial tactic during the antebellum period in a project entitled We Call it Freedom Village: Brooklyn, Illinois’s Radical Tactics of Black-Place Making. Focused on Brooklyn, Illinois as a case study, the research looks at Black town-building as a crucial tactic deployed during the Black protonationalist movement that emerged in the nineteenth century and lasted well into the Jim Crow era (1877–1950s). Brooklyn sits directly across from St. Louis, Missouri, on the east bank of the Mississippi River. Today, the small commuter town with nearly six hundred residents, the majority of whom are Black, boasts the town motto “Founded by Chance, Sustained by Courage.” Local oral histories claim that in 1829, eleven Black families led by Priscilla “Mother” Baltimore, a free Black woman, escaped Missouri (a slave state) and crossed the mighty Mississippi into Illinois (a “free” state). Once on the free soil of Illinois, the group settled in a secluded wooded area near the river in what scholars and local historians call a “freedom village.” Throughout the 1800s and well into the next century, Brooklyn was a beacon of Black autonomy. In 1873, Brooklyn became the first Black incorporated village in the US making it a critical turning point for Blacks to legally claim ownership of American landscapes.

The intention of creating freedom villages before the Civil War, and Black towns generally after the Civil War, is important to examine. Brooklyn, like other early Black town-building efforts, used their agency to redefine and reclaim Black identity by making their own space. This was a radical act. Brooklyn emerged by claiming space during a time of overwhelming racial persecution of Black lives and domination over Black bodies. The history of Brooklyn demonstrates how Blacks boldly participated in the same capitalist system that oppressed them. While the idea of capitalism in antebellum America rested on the principle of Blackness as property known as slavery, Blacks used tactics of place-making to subvert the racial dominance perpetuated by economic gain.

The drive for this study places Black agency in a new context. Due to this omission of an important American historical narrative, Black self-determination efforts that date prior to the Civil Rights movement of the sixties have been silenced. Most of these towns or settlements, if mentioned at all, are simply footnotes in thick history books. Even worse, we steadily lose this history as towns go under due to the weight of the lack of economic opportunities that and encroaching developments threatening to overrun them%. Brooklyn, IL is an example of how Blacks pursued freedom and eventually power with spatial tactics of place-making. This research is important because the legacy of Black place-making tactics continues to counteract persistent oppressive practices and pedagogies which form the foundation of much of the Western design and planning fields. This research is a continued effort to fill in the gaps of architectural and urban planning history, to inform future practices in these fields to secure better futures for Black people.

1 Screen Shot 2019 12 11 At 3 30 33 PM — Madison Street in Brooklyn, IL. 2015.

2 Norden Announcement 2020 — US Map of the Missouri Compromise of 1820.

3 Norden Announcement 20203 — Aerial of Brooklyn, IL.

4 Norden Announcement 20202 Reginal Map — American Bottom Regional Map of 1903.

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#13 Miliswa Ndziba

City: Pretoria, South Africa
School: The University of Pretoria (currently the Graduate School of Architecture at the University of Johannesburg)
Year graduated: 2018 (2021)

Miliswa Ndziba is a South African student currently in Unit 19 at the University of Johannesburg’s Graduate School of Architecture. For her thesis, she is designing a series of paper toys that make concepts of colonial and Apartheid spatial planning accessible to children. In the final year of her undergraduate studies at the University of Pretoria she interned at 1to1 – Agency of Engagement, an NPO that facilitates spatial design strategies through critical engagement with residents in poor unsafe areas of South Africa. During her time at the organisation, she was presented with the opportunity to present her research at Backstory, which was an urban story-collecting/sharing project with the users, managers and makers of the city known as Jo’burg. Her research project, Toolbox, engaged grade 3 learners at Jeppe Park Primary School to develop an educational tool that makes use of story-telling, mapping and 3-d modeling to nurture spatial literacy in children.

Project /// The Imagination Station: An Exploration of Miniature Realities Through Toys

Architecture has been used to socially engineer the rituals of performance that exist in current day South Africa. Aiding this, toys have been used (as a tool of engineering) to reinforce this architecture in the imagination of the youth. The study seeks to explore how rituals of performance that are embedded as a collective consciousness during childhood have facilitated the sustained production of erasure of black people in South Africa.

Set in the author’s childhood bedroom as a playscape, The Imagination Station is an educational children’s television program that frames the exploration of miniature realities that exist in current day South Africa, through toys.

The work is set in three time periods, namely: colonial South Africa, Apartheid South Africa and present-day South Africa. The author will contextualize their family’s history in the greater South African context in all three time periods in the form of a memoir. The point of departure is the PAC Treason Trial in 1960, Apartheid South Africa. The central figure is the author’s paternal grandfather, Rosette Ndziba, who was a defendant in the trial. The work references the court transcripts from the trial to frame the narrative. The author will set the scene in the historic centre of Pretoria, Church Square. The PAC Treason Trial (1960), which served as a ritual for the production of erasure, is transported from the Johannesburg Central Magistrate’s Court (PAC Treason Trial, [1960]) to the Palace of Justice, adjacent to the square. This container, and the rituals that it housed, were concealed and buried deep within the collective unconsciousness of the South African people.

The collection of toys is presented as a series of fun activities with corresponding instructions that employ alternative ways of seeing South African spatial history such as a paper theatre, colour-by-number triptych and dollhouse. The activities are performed by child actors on the educational children’s television program and the presentation of the information will reference Once Upon a Time (Weinstein, 2005) for effective methods of imparting information to children. Paper craft engages the child from the assemblage of toys to the performance of the activity. This process will assist the young viewers to understand the concept of world-building.

Paper Theatre ///

Damnatio ad Bestias: The Tale of Church Square, which has accompanying scripts and puppets, tells the story of Church Square, Pretoria. The characters are historical figures in South African history. The story starts in colonial South Africa, and ends in the present day.

Colour-by-number Triptych ///

The Mephisto Waltz is a colour-by-number triptych, that uses the story of The Mephisto Waltz from Faust by Nikolaus Lenou to encode the choreographies present in Church Square, Pretoria. Colour is used to symbolize the different dancers in Church Square, namely British Imperialists, Afrikaner Nationalists and indigenous South Africans who are a subversive element to the dance. The story, which is told in three parts, has a twist to it. A subversive element is introduced to Lenau’s narrative.

Dollhouse ///

Named for Kazuo Ishihuro’s novel, The Buried Giant, is a dollhouse that grows with a child from preschool to matric. The dollhouse encodes two Treason Trials (1956-1961) in South Africa, in a story about a dragon that has been enchanted to breathe a Mist of Forgetfulness over the PAC Treason Trial (1960) that is buried underground. This condition is juxtaposed with the highly publicized Rivonia Trial (1963-1964) that takes place above ground in the Palace of Justice. The child’s interaction with this narrative begins with a “don’t touch” rule, and ends with the dismantling of the dollhouse in their adolescent years.

A floor plan of the set of the author’s childhood bedroom on The Imagination Station educational children’s television program.

The child actor who performs the aesthetics of play for the child viewer takes their cue from the scripts or instructions that accompany each toy. The playscape frames the codes of engagement, and serves as an additional layer of prescription for the viewer. The floor plan delineates the ways in which the child and parent actors engage with each toy in the playscape.

Damnatio ad Bestias: The Tale of Church Square cover page of paper theatre panels.

The components of the paper theatre booklet are indicated on the cover page. The performance of Damnatio ad Bestias: The Tale of Church Square consists of the construction of the paper theatre and the staging of the play.

Damnatio ad Bestias: The Tale of Church Square paper theatre and accompanying puppets.

The paper theatre depicts Church Square and the accompanying puppets are of historical figures that are integral to the narrative of the history of Church Square.

The Mephisto Waltz colour-by-number triptych colour key.

The key for The Mephisto Waltz colour-by-number triptych communicates the history of the choreography present in Church Square that is encoded in the narrative of Lenau’s The Mephisto Waltz from Faust to the child actor.

The Buried Giant dollhouse package.

The narrative of the dollhouse is contained in a replica of the Palace of Justice. The components of the dollhouse are packaged in its corrugated cardboard shell. The package is presented to the child actor and the parent actor.

The Buried Giant dollhouse assembly instructions for parents and educators.

A note to the parent is presented on the back lid of the package. The parent actor who performs the instructions relays the information to the child actor.

The Buried Giant peep show.

The stratification of the spatial condition of the two trials on 2-dimensional planes in the peepshow is used as a guide in the arrangement of the courtroom scene in the dollhouse. The peepshow is reintroduced to the child in Grade 4. It essentialises the two trials. The above ground scene depicts Nelson Mandela on Trial. While he was not the only defendant in the trial, he is the figure that the narrative revolves around. The below ground scene depicts the dragon surrounded by a shroud of Mist. It reveals the role of the dragon (that the child has been playing with since preschool).

The Buried Giant dollhouse exploded axonometric model.

Arranging the courtroom is the only part of the assembly process that the child is involved in. At this point the parent or educator begins to plant the idea of being delicate with Rainbow Nation narrative. The components of the courtroom scene, like the dragon, are made of glass. While the dragon is the only aspect of free-play in the model, the courtroom scene is displayed and not played with (similarly to the way a china-doll is).

The PAC Treason Trial is represented in the model by wire dolls of the 23 defendants, one of whom is my grandfather. Whereas the Rivonia trial scene has a single doll of Nelson Mandela, all the defendants of the PAC Treason look exactly the same. This speaks to the erasure of their identities in the court transcripts, where they are referred to by numbers. Each defendant is fixed (smoldered) to a wire rod in a grid pattern. The rods, which don’t touch, are a commentary on how the PAC Treason Trial was used to disrupt the rhythm of the Pan Africanist movement in favour of “Rainbowism” in Apartheid South Africa. The scene is veiled by sheets of translucent paper. This Mist that the child first encounters in the peepshow in Grade 4 shrouds the condition of trial. To quote The Buried Giant, the dragon was deliberately enchanted by Merlin in order to perform her ordained task, so “the bones [of war would] lie sheltered under a pleasant green carpet… long enough for old wounds to heal forever and an eternal peace to hold.” So long as the dragon has “breath left, she does her duty.”

The Buried Giant dismantling instructional card.

In Grade 9 the child is presented with a dismantling instructional diagram. The labels suggest ways in which the child can begin to deconstruct the narrative. Until this point the model has only been for display, and there has been an emphasis on treating the glass toys with care. When the glass dragon is smashed along with the glass mise en scene in the Palace of Justice, the enchantment breaks. After the obliteration of the most fragile components, the child may be less precious about tearing down the rest of the dollhouse that they have been conditioned to treat with care. The child is now an active participant in the process of demystifying the narrative. As a consequence of free-play, there is a chance that the child may break the glass dragon, before Grade 9. This may reveal to the child early on how easily the dragon can be slayed.

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#14 Ishita Shah

City: Bengaluru

Ishita Shah is trained as a designer and historian. Her practice revolves around the idea of curating for culture. Through the pandemic of 2020, she has been conducting online engagements on constructing personal archives in order to discuss creative possibilities for archiving in India and the Global South.

Over the past year, Ishita has collaborated with Biome Environmental Solutions Pvt. Ltd., National Centre for Biological Sciences and INTACH Bengaluru; and co-curated a public engagement platform, Design-ed Dialogues at the Courtyard, with an intention to develop a wide-range of public interpretation projects. Prior to this, she has been an educator and the coordinator to the UNESCO Chair in Culture, Habitat and Sustainable Development at Srishti Institute of Art, Design and Technology. She has also been the founding archivist and oral historian at CEPT Archives, and worked with Royal Institute of British Architects, INSITE Magazine, SPADE India Research Cell and Design Innovation and Craft Resource Centre.

Ishita is also a Graham Foundation Grant recipient 2020. The Funambulist thanks Anooradha Iyer Siddiqi for recommending her work to us.

Project 1 /// BIOME

BIOME publication project is focused on archiving, interpreting and disseminating the narratives of work and life at BIOME through its people, their practices and projects from over the last thirty years.

BIOME Diaries is a collection of essays and artworks contributed by a wide-range of practitioners and academicians. The content of this publication is created in two ways: one set of contributions speak about the design practice at BIOME Environmental Solutions Pvt. Ltd and the second set of chapters are inspired from the ecological and social responsibility nurtured at BIOME. Designed as a set of three, BIOME Diaries are meant for all kinds of readers. Primarily alluding to the art and design community, these diaries will be very relevant to keen enthusiasts of ecology and environment. The diaries are titled as ‘now’, ‘then’ and ‘emergence’.

BIOME Archive, as of today, consists of data related to more than 90 selected projects. Furthermore, we will be sifting and organising information from across the larger database of more than 600 projects in areas of architecture, planning, and intelligent water designs. In the longer run, the archive will also curate and disseminate the works of the Biome Trust in water and waste management as well as community engagement initiatives. The archive is a collection of primary sources, like drawings, photographs, documents, models, recordings and presentations. Physical material is professionally digitized and digitally developed material is reorganised into suitable formats.

Project 2 /// Lab Culture

Lab Culture: life beyond sciences, was a two-part exhibition, intended to bring forth the nature of life and work at the National Centre for Biological Sciences (NCBS), Bengaluru at their Museum and Field Stations Facility – Gallery. Envisaged to tell stories of science, Lab Culture I (June 2019) presented a symphony of ideas and explorations, distinguishing one laboratory’s work culture from another. Thus, the scientific exhibits and creative representations displayed then, made a remark about the culture of an art-science collaborative in more individualistic ways. Following that, the interpretative search for Lab Culture II (Sept 2019) was inspired from specific studies about cellular and neurobiology, introduced by the participating labs from NCBS and inStem. Starting from the mere existence of a single cell or a neuron, to the growth of a systemic structure, newer processes are discovered and adapted. Situations are quite similar, when an institution grows. The second exhibition thus, traced values like scalability, modularity and flexibility across time, space, and philosophy, to represent their effects on a human society. Through these exercises, the exhibitions brought diverse practitioners together from arts, science, design, and history to interpret and disseminate the relationship between these spheres.

Funambulist Proj Img 1200px 1 — Design-ed Dialogues #6, Play of Knowledge Systems, informal session at The Courtyard, Bengaluru

Funambulist Proj Img 1200px 2 — Students documenting behind the scene action, during the Ethnography workshop in Hampi-Anegundi, Karnataka

Funambulist Proj Img 1200px 3 — Participants of the Oral History Workshop in session with master cart marker in Srirangapatna, Karnataka

Funambulist Proj Img 1200px 4 — Study of archival material at the Ahmedabad Municipal Corporation, in collaboration with CEPT Archives

Funambulist Proj Img 1200px 5 — Presentation made during the Curating Archives 2020 series, about different kinds of archival practices.

Funambulist Proj Img 1200px 6 — A collage representing the diverse projects discussed during Family Archiving Workshops in pandemic 2020.

Funambulist Proj Img 1200px 7 — Bring art, science and history together at Lab Culture II Exhibition in National Centre for Biological Sciences, Bengaluru

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#15 Nattakitta Chuasiriphattana

City: Bangkok
School: Chulalongkorn University (International program in design and architecture)
Year graduated: 2020

Nattakitta Chuasiriphattana is a freshly graduated from an International program in design and architecture, Chulalongkorn University. Her final year project is a reflection on her identity and her thinking framework as a designer, challenging a typical representation of an architectural project. An attempt to objectify research in a subjective matter and reinterpret the physical term of an Architecture outcome. This project Manifestation of Truth is a design of a theoretical framework of interpretation, understanding the structure of information and exchange path, by researching on crowd analysis and the behavioral transmission from an individual to larger scale. This project is an attempt to express every field of interests she has as a person, social, politics, psychology, history, communications etc. Therefore, being able to expand her point of view on design towards this publication is a great opportunity to explore other possibilities and potential in using architecture as a forensic-research tool. The Funambulist thanks Tijn Van de Wijdeven for recommending her work to us.

Project /// MANIFESTATION OF TRUTH

Truthfulness, to many individuals, derives from the concept of realism and honesty. However, I argue that honesty does not bring forward the actual truth, because ‘Truth is Subjectivity, and Subjectivity is Truth’. Truthfulness is heavily based on personal interpretation and how information is being exchanged. Thus, this project studies information and exchange through analysis on the structure of crowds of a Thai students protesting against military dictatorship in the 1970’s. Initial approach in compiling evidence is to create a forensic board and drawing connections between every stakeholder inorder to analyze spatial and performative quality of crowds. Observations have pointed out certain factors that define characteristics of crowds such as urban layout, street fragments, crowd structure, communication path etc. Among several listed, information and exchange is one of the most important factors that determine what direction the crowd will be taking; behaviour of a crowd can likely be predicted based on what kind of information the majority receives.

Research is then gathered through methods of forensic archiving and conducting social experiments to understand performative aspects of the protest. Forensic archiving is represented in categorization of evidence from different institutes and creating these periodic archive tables by organizing information according to its sources. I notice that information provided from each institute tends to reflect their political positions, it seems biased and manipulative. Parallel to information gathering, conducting social experiments is another model of testing information layers in an urban context, and to be able to identify structure of information and exchange paths. Which is made up of 3 main actors: the sender, information and the receiver, moreover information is classified into 3 basic categories which are verbal, visual and physical.

Then I restaged the timeline of the protest in this forensic timeline diagram, to track down the locations and moments of exchange between different stakeholders, to observe how information of this event have been exchanged from the actual date of protest to contemporary days. Which led me to the proposal of the ‘Performative City Parade’: an event aimed for participants to experience the city through different interpretations of truth, instrumentalizing the parade with classified components of the event into informative element studies, categorized as Spatial elements, Performative elements, Visual elements and Text elements. I started assembling the tour route based on the location of landmarks in Bangkok, because they are mostly a combination of utilitary usage and political gesture, finding the spatial and connotation relation between each landmark became the base guideline for arranging routes for this city performative parade.

In this parade, there will be 4 themes in total; according to different themes of interpretation. Forensic & Science, which are proven facts with supported evidence. Propaganda & Manipulation, the use of emotive/manipulative languages to propagandist. Romanticism & Censorship, the ability to glorify the event, by censoring out the ugly part. Resistance & Opposition, an idea of opposing general perceptions, forming resistant movement behind the scene.

As defined above, the core concept of each theme. The most important part to curate them is how you construct the narrative and tell the story. The Tableau is an atmospheric depiction of each theme. It has a clear structure of a type of narrative and a protagonist, and the reinterpreted version of spatial quality in each scene.

To conclude the event, this last scene is the symposium scene It will be a collision of four themes, exposing participants to different perspectives, exchanging and accepting different interpretations, to truly create a constructive public discussion on the topic establishing a concept of Manifestation of Truth.

Forensic Board

Creating a forensic board which is a collection of evidence leading to analyze spatial and performative quality of crowds. In which I concluded that, information and exchange is one of the key factor that can controls the direction of crowd.

Periodic Archive

Gathering research by going to different institutes and creating these periodic archive tables to categorize information according to its sources.

Forensic Timeline

Restaging timeline of the protest to track down the locations and moments of exchange between characters.
● color presents different actors
● lines are the locations
● highlighted area and dot lines represent moments of information exchange.

Narrative Timeline

An illustration of the whole process, a collective timeline with forensic evidence towards my design proposal which is a ‘ Performative City Parade tour ‘ aimed for participants to experience the city through different interpretations of truth.

Element Archive

Classifying components of the event into informative element studies, categorized as Spatial elements, Performative, Visual and Text. These mixture of drawings, actual footage and explanations of elements will help instrumentalize the design of this parade.

Map of Landmarks: Fragmentation relation

Landmarks of Bangkok are mostly a combination of utilitary usage and political gesture, mapped landmarks in Bangkok and defining the spatial and connotation relationship between each of them.

Map of Landmarks: Path of interpretation

In which it has shaped the decision to construct different options of paths according to different theme of interpretation. In this parade, we have 4 theme in total
● Forensic/science
● Propaganda/manipulation
● Romanticism/censorship
● Resistance/opposition

Parade Footprint

In the axon a Simulation of scenarios that would be happening in each theme of the parade. I will be focusing on the most concentrated area where most paths intersected, which is the democracy monument.

Tableau

The most important part to curate them is how you construct the narrative and tell the story.
The Tableau is an atmospheric depiction of each theme. Tableau has a clear structure of a type of narrative and a protagonist, and the reinterpreted version of spatial representation.

Forensic: Forensic are facts that require anonymous narrations, the neutral-ness of the space is a reverted symbolism of a forensic interpretation of the monument.

Romanticism: Anthem or a song can be used to glorify, Depicting the notion of monumentality through scale, and the exaggeration of lights and gradients of darkness

Propaganda: A speech is best used to manipulate people and make them believe. This staged tribune, with the billboard at the back signifies a forged extension of a falsified crowd.

Resistant: An underground movement by exchanging through invisible networks such as social media. The image portrays the protagonist in a crowd, the feeling of resistance developed through pressure from the social density of gathering.

Documentary: Witness Interviews

I’ve put together a documentary of site inspection of the ratchadamnoen area and conducted a few interviews of actual witnesses, current academic and also normal civilians around the context.

Social experiment 01: Information layer

I conducted a social performative experiment to identify structure of information and exchange path. Which is made up of 3 main actors: the sender, information and the receiver, and I classified information into 3 basic categories which are verbal, visual and physical. The 1st experiment is purely an experiment on information layer.

Social experiment 02: Information layer

The 2nd experiment is by applying the same model onto an urban context.

Forensic Documentary: Forensic Timeline

I restaged the timeline of the protest in this forensic timeline diagram, to track down the locations and moments of exchange between characters, to observe the effect of this event from the actual date of protest to contemporary days.

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On October 6, we published a statement denouncing the unacceptable interruption of Professor Ariella Aïsha Azoulay’s lecture “Palestine is There, Where it Has Always Been” (as part of a lecture series about colonialism and the desert curated by Samia Henni) by the Chair of the architecture department at Cornell University. In a few days, no less than 1,001 people signed the statement in solidarity with Professor Azoulay and in an explicit positioning against any form of intimidation of discourses examining the settler condition experienced by Palestine and Palestinians living at home and in exile. In this statement, we had clearly indicated that we were not demanding or expecting anything from Cornell, as we don’t expect for those responsible for this kind of erasure to be contributing to the struggle against colonialism and racism — especially when they are themselves settlers in the large colony commonly known as the United States.

On October 9 however, Professor Jonathan Ochshorn, who teaches in the architecture department at Cornell, shared with us the following open-letter that he wrote to the Dean of the department, Meejin Yoon, where he exposed the pressures received by the administration, the role of Cornell in the industrial military complex of the U.S. and Israeli militaries, and where he asks Dean Yoon to firmly position herself against efforts ” to silence, marginalize, intimidate, or penalize [their] faculty, [their] invited lecturers, or [their] students on the basis of their critical scholarship.” Given that Dean Yoon has not issued any public statement about this censorship until now, and given that forms of intimidation have been enacted by one student against another guest speaker in the lecture series, we have decided to publish Professor Ochshorn’s letter here.

We know all too well that Dean Yoon and Chair Simitch are no worse nor better than any other of the many heads of academic institutions who are cowardly giving way and credit to the Hasbara tactic of equating anti-zionism and antisemitism — an equation that appears to us as remarkably dangerous for the blind spot it creates with regard to actual racism against Jewish people in Western societies, where antisemitism is born and where it continues to thrive today as a full component of white supremacy. Such a tactic has been elaborated for, and is partially successful at deterring Palestinian and non-Palestinian activists, researchers (student or faculty alike), and lecturers from working on or talking about Palestine and the Palestinian struggle for liberation. We have, of course, no interest in addressing the cynical manufacturers of such a odious equation, but we’d like at the very least to show those who implicitly or explicitly adhere to it, opportunistically, cowardly, and/or by intellectual laziness that their spinelessness does not go unnoticed.

Léopold Lambert, Paris, October 15, 2020.
(Image above shows the common campus of Cornell University and the Technion-Israel Institute of Technology in New York City. / Photo by Sperli)

An Open Letter to Meejin Yoon, the Gale and Ira Drukier Dean of Cornell University’s College of Architecture, Art, and Planning
By Jonathan Ochshorn
October 9, 2020

Dear Dean Yoon,

First, I want to thank you for convening a meeting of architecture faculty to discuss the chat message that appeared during Prof. Azoulay’s “Zoom” lecture on October 5, 2020. I also want to acknowledge your courageous and forthright behavior in taking responsibility for that message and apologizing to Prof. Henni, the conference organizer; Prof. Azoulay, the speaker; and Prof. Simitch, who seems to have been caught in the middle of this unfortunate episode.

The chat message, which had the effect, if not the intention, of marginalizing and discrediting both the lecture and the entire lecture series, contained this single sentence: “We are aware that these topics are sensitive and have multiple view points and would like to assure all participants that the department is looking forward to organizing a future lecture that presents other view points than those that are offered here today and in subsequent talks.”

After an initial statement of support for Profs. Henni and Azoulay was distributed to departmental faculty (I was one of the authors), Prof. Akcan along with PhD students and other HAUD faculty distributed a second statement that is better able to galvanize support for Profs. Henni and Azoulay and to demonstrate our college’s solidarity with the principles of free speech and academic freedom. I urge you to sign that statement.

Second, I want to emphasize one of the key points raised in the “HAUD” statement: that there was “outside pressure to interfere in this academic event.” In the recent faculty meeting that you initiated, you also acknowledged that there was external pressure, including by Rabbi Weiss, Executive Director of Cornell Hillel, to marginalize and discredit (my words, not yours) the lecture and the speaker—although you didn’t characterize it as “pressure.” Instead, you spoke of “community” members who felt at risk because of the “hate” and “anti-Semitism” presumed to underlie the lecture, if not the entire lecture series. You portrayed your actions as an attempt to protect vulnerable (Jewish) members of “our” “community.” In my view, this amounts to an Orwellian inversion, where victims are portrayed as aggressors, critical analysis is reframed as “hate speech,” and—most pervasively and insidiously—criticism of Israeli policy and practice is conflated with “anti-Semitism.” An argument that you did not invoke, but which is another common talking point used against critics of Israeli policy, is that it is actually the defenders of the Israeli state who are being censored.

During the department meeting, I tried to rebut this “logic” by situating this intervention in a larger political context. I also pointed out that Rabbi Weiss worked for the “Birthright” organization—funded in part by the pro-Israeli and right-wing Las Vegas casino magnate and GOP funder Sheldon Adelson—before coming to Cornell. While I can’t know with certainty the rabbi’s motivation, I surmise from all available evidence that his intervention was not an innocent act. Rather it appears to be part of a much larger, well-funded, and systematic attempt to silence, intimidate, discredit, and even criminalize scholarship critical of Israel, and to penalize scholars who critically examine the history, policies, and practices of the self-defined Jewish state. As such, it is a clear and present danger to academic freedom.

Your actions that led to the chat message, however they were intended, nevertheless reinforce the chilling effect on free speech already apparent in U.S. culture and in other countries. Try to imagine how professors, under these circumstances, might reconsider embarking on scholarship that explicitly and critically examines Israeli policy and practice, knowing the manufactured rage that would ensue during a tenure application, for example. And the same goes for graduate students considering a related topic for their dissertations, knowing the impact of such research on their ability to find work after graduation.

Third, I am well aware of the hypocrisy implicit in the statements being distributed and the actions being recommended. This is not because I agree with the right-wing talking point that “we” are just like “them” in censoring opposing points of view. Rather, our hypocrisy arises from an explicit condemnation of racism, sexism, and inequality—along with an implicit condemnation of Israeli policy and practice—while largely ignoring the much larger and more dangerous elephant in this global room: i.e., the unprecedented economic and military power of the U.S. state. It is U.S. state power that creates and enforces a capitalist world order which, among many other destructive outcomes closer to home, enables and supports Israeli policy and practice.

The Funambulist blog predicted that “any conciliatory statement from [Cornell] would be disingenuous.” Such confidence—that you would take the intellectually innocuous path of least resistance—is certainly understandable, given the onslaught of propaganda which normalizes such behavior and threatens radical or even progressive voices. Cornell University itself is hopelessly intertwined within this nefarious web in myriad ways (just examine how Cornell promotes research funding opportunities from the CIA, Army, Air Force, and Defense Security Services, to name a few). And Cornell, of course, is already literally intertwined with the Israeli state, having engaged in a joint venture to establish its New York Tech campus with The Technion, a public research university in Haifa, Israel. Not only that, numerous supporters of the Israeli state are alumni of, and donors to Cornell, including Ira Drukier, the hotel entrepreneur whose name prefaces your academic title and who was accused recently by the New York City Department of Housing Preservation of harassing tenants in the landmark Chelsea hotel; and Stephen H. Weiss, the late investment banker whose name adorns the title of our department chair.

Fourth, you asked during the faculty meeting what you might do in response to this fiasco. In my view, there is one principled action that might make a difference, aside from signing the statement posted by Prof. Akcan, PhD students, and faculty in HAUD. This action refers back to the problem of external pressure mentioned in the HAUD statement. Specifically, I would urge you to publicly and explicitly rebuke the odious attempt by Rabbi Weiss (and any others) to silence, marginalize, intimidate, or penalize our faculty, our invited lecturers, or our students on the basis of their critical scholarship.

I’m aware that any truly forthright and courageous statement that you might issue would likely be met with a furious backlash, and could have negative consequences for your own academic and professional career. In the face of these implicit and explicit challenges, I can only hope that you will find a way to navigate through these difficult waters and take a strong and principled stand in defense of our faculty and academic freedom in general.

Jonathan Ochshorn
Professor, Department of Architecture, Cornell University

The post Palestine & Academic Censorship: An Open-Letter to the Dean of Cornell Architecture by Jonathan Ochshorn appeared first on THE FUNAMBULIST MAGAZINE.

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#16 Nida Ekenel

City: Eskişehir
School: Istanbul Technical University
Year graduated: 2019

Not only the architecture industry itself but also its tools proliferate canonical norms. This is because, the dogmas linked to the field itself are deeply embedded in the ways of how architecture is produced. In other words, architecture as a major is inseparable from its conventional tools that are ubiquitously consumed among architects.

“…the master’s tools will never dismantle the master’s house.” (Audre Lorde, 1984)

On the contrary, the emerging practices and approaches start an unceasing search for counter canonical ways of using the tools. They develop projects to nurture thoughts through the manipulation, speculation, and discovery of alternative tools. In a way, the alternate tools aim to subvert the common understanding of architecture by ensuring the involvement of imagination and attendance of multiple subjectivities.

Situating herself as one of those subjectivities, nida intends to expropriate space in further equalities. Upon thorough observation of plural bodies in action, she aims to decentralize the process of making architecture. After all, the following project can be considered as the very imperfect instance that tried employing tools throughout the stages of measurement, representation, and design.

Project /// paper-being // ecologies of living – speculations for housing

Appropriated as a tool for measuring, maps reflect its proponent’s tenets. This authenticity impacts how architects discern a place and consequently develop their proposal. Eliminating city actors and their connections, conventional maps neglect significant space makers. Seeking a substitute for the anthropocentric ecology, this project compelled an alternative mapping, where the actors were measured within their connections. Hence, personal mappings allowed the realization of how connections make individuals stronger and more efficient actors in this multi-action land. So instead of eliminating them at the beginning of the design stage, the project evolved in a way to try speculating architecture based on their actions.

One should realize how conventional ways of producing architecture omit the connection of city actors but rather concentrate on so-called architectural aspects of a city, such as form, style, or proportions. Meanwhile, profit is the a priori that is embedded in the design stage. As opposed to that, the project concentrates on alternative scenarios of how individuals might develop further connections. Observation of the existing city performers reveals paper to be a significant material actor and a profound connector in Kadıköy, İstanbul.

Upon the realization of how the material world continues, its endless and ubiquity, one can disassociate materials from their common connotation of obsessions and possessions. Rather than properties, their continuity could be projected as complex relations between things. Perhaps this shift of the perception from commodities to connections could reconstruct the cities we live in.

Materials that are cast to build life are called the matter-being. In Kadıköy, life is stimulated by papers in the first place. Paper is light, neither dead nor alive, and it has the capacity to store knowledge that is essential for cognitive evolution. Paper-being, in this case, builds a life in the neighborhood for the city actors to perform. Any action is a performance in the city and the performance requires connections. As connections make individual actors more powerful in the city, the paper-being aims to build a network of actors.

Here, paper-being assembles an interdependent reproduction and collective living bringing together the endemic actors of the place. Given the life initiator aspect of matter-beings, paper-being starts over to challenge the contemporary dualities, such as local versus global, technology versus nature, urbanites versus farmers.

You are invited to go through pages of a study that was designed on paper [with sketches], from paper [used as a material], thus had never been outside a paper and eventually evolved into a book [out of papers]. Books are powerful tools, tools that can share knowledge, make people interact, and lead to the construction of new ideas. Thus, paper-being becomes another narrative of how paper could murder architecture, irreversibly (cf. Victor Hugo, Notre-Dame de Paris, 1833).

these aren’t fables
between pages
my book’s ageless
and it’s pageless
so judge me by the page
but not by my cover
like it or not
I live by the book
(“The Book” by King Gizzard Lizard Wizard, album Sketches of Brunswick East)