AArchitecture 38 Bedford Square is one kilometre, as the crow flies, from one of nineteen access points to London’s Ring of Steel. This is an invisible boundary consisting of traffic restrictions originally marked by plastic coated bollards and checkpoints manned by police officers. Nowadays, the bollards are concrete and the police officers have been replaced by an army of CCTV cameras. Tracing the remains of the London Wall, one finds a ring used to monitor the entry of traffic into the city’s financial district. It is a malleable ring, continually morphing, tightening and loosening as threats to the city appear and disappear. Prior to the formation of this monitored space, a hundred points of entry allowed access to the City. In the renewed monitoring system, the Metropolitan Police employs systems of technology and urban planning in order to reduce its own presence.
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This highly censored patch of London is enforced by private security companies who control pathways and roads. The increasingly familiar experience of being ushered from a private street operating as a public byway is described by artist Henrietta Williams in her interview with Critical Cities (2012). Streets are no longer a place to roam freely “where every citizen is welcome to be public”.→ 1 This can be blamed on the increase in remote policing which has made the notion of trespassing on private property a very grey area. Williams illustrates that the Ring of Steel was designed through a series of road restrictions and monitoring systems disguised as street furniture, masking ones ability to see that they are being censored. These alterations have all been planned to adhere to the new landscape of the City of London so that no one knows they are being watched. Censorship, surveillance, control, whatever you may call it, has led to a crisis of public space. It has contributed to a reality where the ability to simply ‘hang out’ is a chargeable offence. Censorship is surprisingly flexible in form. AArchitecture 38 explores its varying degrees of scale through: subculture, boundary and country. In its extent it controls physical objects, be it the written word or the city. Our aim is to look at the simplest ways in which it manifests, in the mundane and the everyday: censorship of self, of voices and ideas. Censorship also implies an agent: the censor. Each piece we have included takes a slightly different reading on the role of the censor. Often they are oppressive, often untrustworthy. Sometimes they verge into the realm of the voyeur. We hope to offer alternatives to the immediate understanding of the term. We have attempted to collate a selection of pieces that stretches both solid and lucid forms of censorship. Seen loosely, our role as editors could be compared to that of the censor. Sometimes censorship is screamingly obvious but more often it goes unnoticed and can be present in the most unexpected of institutions. 1
AArchitecture is a magazine edited by students of the Architectural Association, published three times a year. AArchitecture 38 Term 1, 2019– 20 www.aaschool.ac.uk
Naik, D. and Oldfield, T. (2012). Critical cities. London: Myrdle Court Press.
Student Editorial Team: Georgia HablÜtzel Amy Glover
Editorial Board: Eva Franch i Gilabert, Director Alex Lorente, Membership Design: AA Print Studio, Oliver Long
Printed by Blackmore, England Published by the Architectural Association 36 Bedford Square, London WC1B 3ES
Architectural Association (Inc) Registered Charity No 311083 Company limited by guarantee Registered in England No 171402 Registered office as above
© 2019 All rights reserved
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Beyond Representation:
Karl Herdersch
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Nothing to Hide (Everything to Prove) Images travel, they migrate. They are objects which are subject to the filters of national ideology. Regardless of quality or definition standards they are copied, crushed, negotiated, distributed, advertised, banned, hacked, appropriated, celebrated, romanticised as they are filtered at increasing speeds through connections in an expanding data landscape. Ultimately, they are territorial.
When considering censorship beyond representation, rather censorship as geography or even archaeology, it is best understood through a phenomenon described to me vividly by a friend recently over a coffee: So, you’re sat there after a hard day in the office eating your microwave lasagna (because you can’t be bothered), endlessly surfing Netflix before committing to a night of millennial binge chill – your phone vibrates – An image is sent to you on WhatsApp from an ex. You go through multiple scenarios in your head, are they drunk from the two beers that they couldn’t handle? Are they ill? Intrigue eventually gets the better of you and you swipe, type. And... It’s a Dick Pic.
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GENITALIA AND REPRESENTATION: THROUGHOUT HISTORY
According to leaked training material, Facebook categorises dick pics under its operational guideline as ‘unsolicited adult nude genitalia imagery sharing’. Previously such acts were treated as revenge porn and resulted in deactivation of the users account, but as this unsolicited form of sharing increases in traffic the company has decided to update their censorship protocols to completely ban the image. What this tells us is that with an increase in the sharing of dick pics, the bodies that control the circulation of them are forced to evolve the protocols of censorship to prevent POLITICISING AESTHETICS (AS OPPOSED TO the behaviour of a rapidly growing population of AESTHETICISING THE POLITICAL) offenders. A 2018 YouGov survey revealed that 41 per cent of female millennials have received unsolicited It is vital to discuss surveillance regarding data and its dick pics, however 22 per cent of male millennials censorship. In a rare interview by John Oliver, Edward deny having sent them. Snowdon, who as a CIA employee copied and leaked The penis has long been depicted throughout the highly classified information from the National Security history of man. In 2014 Archaeologists uncovered Agency (NSA) in 2013, explains, ‘when you send your some ‘tantalisingly clear’ images of phalluses carved junk through Gmail, that’s stored on Google’s servers. into the limestone on the Aegean island of Astypalaia, Google moves data from data centre to data centre. dating back to the 5th or 6th century BCE (prior to the Invisible to your knowledge, your data could be moved building of the Acropolis). Imagery of the penis was outside the borders of the United States temporarily.’ both common and popular in ancient Greece. Despite this unsettling loss of control of personal data, Interestingly, the fashion was for smaller scale Snowdon argues that we should not change our genitalia as the larger were understood to be absurd. behaviour because a government agency is Aristophanes explained that the aesthetic ideal of the manipulating our information, going on to say, ‘If you time was ‘a gleaming chest, bright skin, broad sacrifice those values because you’re afraid then we don’t shoulders, tiny tongue, strong buttocks and a little care about those values very much’. Oliver’s response prick.’ The Middle Ages and Renaissance saw the is humorous and pitch perfect: ‘That is a pretty image of the penis continue to live on through its inspiring answer to the question: Hey, why did you just abstraction. Medieval manuscripts include flying penis send me a picture of your dick?’ But there is something monsters as seen in Renaissance art which may or may effective in the politicisation of the aesthetics of the dick not have inspired the eggplant emoji. Things took a pic. In this scenario it became a strong image and turn for the dick pic after the 1800’s when the tool to communicate effectively to a wider audience boundaries of art were challenged by various, often who cannot begin to comprehend the operations of the conflicting, schools of thought. The penis returned NSA. We could see social media and sharing apps such though Egon Schiele’s Masturbation and as Snapchat as the ultimate technological service in Masturbation 2 into a recognisable form (In the the democratisation of the image, through both context of a pre-war Vienna, the artist insisted that the repetition, temporal control (hacked by screenshots) erotic was a heroic subject, comparable to the powers and interaction through comments and crude of war or religion, however saying this is not to argue sketching. ‘Dick Pics’ seem to be an honest and clear that the dick pic isn’t the contemporary hero). mechanism of accelerationist development, This watery brush stroke through the history simultaneously providing an outlet for the male ego, of the penis and its depiction in fine art, is merely an surveying a cross section of the species by copying and attempt to place the dick pic as part of an ongoing analysing the image and therefore producing profitable documentation of the human body, its relationship to material. It may be equally exploitative and a violation technology and our understanding of contemporary of both law and privacy. With the dematerialisation frameworks in which the penis exists. of the economy there are greater consequences that go beyond arguments surrounding representation: dick pics cause climate change.
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DICK PICS NEED POWER
The continued ‘dematerialisation’ of the world’s economy means that there is an increase in digital data being stored. These processes occur at increasingly faster rates due to internet speed, effective data managing algorithms and consumer trends. One thousand megawatts go into the processing, analysis and storage of data, equal to that of a large power station. Double this and you have the necessary amount of energy to provide the cooling systems necessary to maintain the running of the facilities. Every Google search adds to the problem: an estimate that each search uses enough energy to illuminate a 60-watt light bulb for 17 seconds and emits 0.2 grams of CO2 is a conservative one. The point here is that data is environmentally expensive XXX and unsustainable. According to Greenpeace the race for a ‘green internet’ is hot and on. Google and Censorship, and by extension surveillance, Microsoft have recently built ‘hubs’ in Denmark, increasingly relies on the moral values surrounding Sweden and Finland investing in solar energy parks to ideas of self-discipline, arguing that we should have power as many European data centres as possible. Of nothing to hide. What this suggests as a result is that all the mega data consumers, Netflix is singled out we have a lot more to prove. With the image of a penis for criticism. Contracting out its data to larger sent across vast territorial filters, the user may be providers such as Amazon, they distribute their communicating a myriad of psychological signs or ‘tells’ service over a vast territory. Amazon Web services are regarding ego. These images are fuelling larger now the largest cloud-computing company with operations at a far greater and problematic scale, from almost no transparency on their global footprint. control of nation states through to climate change. Most large data centres are placed in deserts As our environments become more sensitive as a consuming vast amounts of energy to cool them. As result of regulation of and by data, simultaneously, we billions of gigabytes of energy get consumed, we have (the public/the state) lose control of the agents who no way of knowing what data centres deliver regulate, as they are becoming increasingly deregulated Facebook, WhatsApp, Snapchat, WeChat, Kakao talk (insert your desired tech company here). The regulators or any other platform used to share the dick pic. We have authority to censor our social and political landscape may be disoriented, but what we do know is this: and its subsequent moral conduct. It is hard work to by participating in the sharing and storing of vast accumulate the positive credit exemplified through your amounts of imagery, we add to the problem. food spending habits, facial analysis and potential to add value. It is work without labour but work none-the-less. Through this lens, the dick pic is a representation of our current social political condition both as a producer and victim (like a snake eating its own tail [Ouroboros]). As with any system, we are faced with questions of control and therefore censorship. The dick pic is a way of attempting to communicate our complex interwoven relationship with data-driven scenarios in a world where the Earth has disappeared beneath our feet.
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What Does a Banana Say to Another Patricia de Souza Leão Müller
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The Poundbury Code Tamir Aharoni
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Poundbury is a village in Southern England, owned by Prince Charles. It looks like a Georgian town but it was designed in the 1980s by Luxembourgian architect Leon Krier. Construction began in 1993 and is planned to be completed in 2025 with a view to double the current population of 3,000. Prince Charles, widely recognised as a guru and an enemy of modernist architects, has used Poundbury to execute his theories on traditionalist architecture.
The neo-traditional house is the commercial response of builders to regionalist government planning regulations. Regionalist government planning control began as a backlash against characterless ‘architecture of anywhere’ → 1 (modernist). But do the new vernacular houses embody an architecture of anytime? In his book, A Vision of Britain in 1989, Prince Charles states: ‘We can build new developments which echo the familiar, attractive features of our regional vernacular styles.’ → 2 As such, Poundbury was England’s answer to the New Urbanism movement which emerged in the United States in the ’80s. The town reflects Krier’s conception of traditional architecture as a timeless universal form. The aesthetic outcome of Poundbury is an awkward, incoherent, and absurd-looking architectural production. Contemporary construction methods are used to imitate a mix and match of styles: Georgian, Victorian, Tudor, Edwardian, Arts and Crafts and brick cottages. The result is alien. Kenneth Frampton, in Modern Architecture and the Critical Present, criticises neo-traditional architecture: ‘Superficial historicism can only result in consumerist iconography masquerading as culture.’ → 3 The prince’s philosophy, upon which Poundbury was constructed, consists of a set of incongruous principles. One is Populism, which argues that most people like old-looking buildings so experts should not impose modernism against their wishes. Another element is Nostaligism, with a preference for the English classical architecture of three hundred years ago. The third is Mysticism which argues that there are deep harmonies in the universe which are reflected in the sort of buildings that the prince likes. → 4 The latter two elements display an appreciation of classical form and thought. They originate from the architectural ideology of the period between the Renaissance and the Enlightenment. Populism is a postmodern addition.
In 2016, Poundbury established its town centre in the form of Queen Mother Square. If the first phase, built in the early ’90s, was based on a Dorset vernacular style, Queen Mother Square looks like a Roman piazza. In it sits the Duchess of Cornwall, Poundbury’s first hotel which is based on Palladio’s Convento della Carità in Venice. Nearby sits a Waitrose behind a Doric colonnade, facing the yellow façade of Strathmore House, a European palace containing eight luxury apartments. Columns and capitals are painted on the façades. ‘It’s the poor man’s choice, but it makes it more poetic’ → 5 said Quinlan Terry, one of Prince Charles’s favourite architects, who designed most of the buildings around the square alongside his son Francis. A 40-metre-high tower now rises above the square, crowned with a domed pavilion and a little bright-green pergola which is visible from far away. The local residents tried to stop the new tower being built because of its impact on the landscape whereas Léon Krier wanted to impact the landscape: ‘The whole point of a monumental building is to create a landmark. Perhaps it is an interesting symbol, being luxury flats. After all, that’s the spirit of our time.’ → 6 The prince has lamented what he calls the severance of a ‘meaningful relationship’ → 7 to the past and to nature. He blames this loss on the domination of a scientific and technological culture. But Poundbury is an entirely contemporary object. Its traditional appearance is itself the product of modernity; it is dependent on modern technology for the construction of its imagery. Most of the stone is reconstituted, the traditional façades hide steel frames and block-work walls, and much of the ‘metalwork’ is painted fibreglass. Even Quinlan Terry, who is known for his hand-drawn design illustrations, has utilised the computer to generate his drawings of the new Queen Mother Square. The Georgian façades are a product of computer-generated design.
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Poundbury creates a time and space that is completely alien to the way in which it was designed and constructed. The village has the aesthetic of the past but lacks history. Even the trees are young. The map is drawn like an 18th-century map. Modernity, in the prince’s perspective, has destroyed many architectural and urban virtues of the past. His aim is to resurrect these lost elements in architectural form. Rather than representing the past, however, Poundbury is a fantasy of what is lacking in the present. At times of great crisis the world itself seems to lose its footing. Things that seemed solid are suddenly revealed as provisional, their glues and mortars crumbling. We are caught in an endless state of change. Since history is constantly moving, holding on to a made-up past is understandable but it is an illusion. The Duchy cannot be the instrument of experimental notion – it has to be profitable. The new development at Dorchester cannot simply be a monument of Royal patronage. It hopes to be an example that other developers will follow and that will have a transformative effect on buildings everywhere. Poundbury’s architecture, as a construction of identity and tradition certainly influenced future developments. There are many good reasons to criticise Poundbury but it does do some things right. Somehow it embodies principles which go beyond the prince’s stylistic taste. It succeeds in implementing the urban planning ideas declared in the prince’s book: mixed use, incorporated affordable dwellings, high density and a promotion of pedestrian movement over driving. In the spirit of the New Urbanism design process, a five-day charrette provided an opportunity for local residents to directly discuss the development of the town with the architects and planners. Krier’s approach recalls the theories of 19th-century Viennese architect Camillo Sitte. The layout of buildings is determined by the road pattern. Public spaces such as streets and squares become a primary concern and positioning of mass is secondary. The Poundbury Code was established in order to keep in tact the key principles set out by the masterplan going forward. The masterplan embodies specific ideas surrounding density, traffic, use and tenure. Poundbury is conceived as a typical Dorset town with a compact radial shape. In this way, Krier creates a self-sufficient, pedestrian-oriented community. The entire expansion is planned to contain 2,500 houses on
161 hectares of land to be built in four phases in response to market demand. The first phase refers to 500 dwellings, with a density of about 60 dwellings per hectare. This is the density of a traditional Dorset town, achieved through the irregular street layout, small gardens, houses built right up to the pavement, two and three-storey houses and off-street parking lots. All the local facilities are within a short distance of each other encouraging the village to be navigated on foot. It incorporates a radical approach to the motorcar, developed by Alan Baxar Associates. Rather than seeking to exclude traffic, it aims to civilise the car through the urban layout so that its impact is minimised. The aim is to keep the speed below 32 km/h by limiting the driver’s perceived acceleration distance, introducing events and obstacles at regular intervals and using buildings to define the corners. The street layout is deliberately chaotic with blind bends and no signage – not even stop signs. Twenty per cent of the housing in Poundbury is affordable housing sprawled within the estate, indistinguishable and well-integrated. → 8 While the majority of it is social housing, there is also sharedequity housing which allows qualifying buyers to purchase a share in a home even if they cannot afford a mortgage on the full market value. What is unusual in Poundbury is that the affordable housing is ‘pepper potted’ – that is, scattered, and similar in appearance to its neighbours. Eighty small units for startup businesses are scattered among the porticoes. These are occupied by a range of shops, offices, clinics, factories and a funeral home. The ground floors of multi-storey residential and office buildings are devoted to commercial uses. Poundbury currently has 136 businesses generating 2,100 jobs. → 9
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The Poundbury Code is a set of regulations and rules which govern the planning of Poundbury as well as the architecture and residents. → 1 0 The Code determines how buildings should face the street, the amount of setback from the street, the buildings’ relationship to each other, requirements for outbuildings, parking and building heights. It also determines the materials, techniques and architectural configurations of roofs, orders allowed (Doric or Tuscan), placement of doors and window proportions. The Code in Poundbury is used to favour only one form of architectural expression. Poundbury evokes a myriad of emotions: it is funny and uncomfortably nostalgic for a world that never existed, an illusion that is painfully punctured by the steel frames in the half-built buildings. I find it depressing that a modern house is built as a half-convincing photocopy of an old one; or that, as we live in a time when large windows are easy to supply, houses in Poundbury have small windows simply in order to appear old; or that bricked-windows are built to imitate historic buildings. Yet peering beyond this, one may see values that we can learn from. Poundbury’s urban planning principles are the consensus. Those who criticise Poundbury focus on the architecture because it is a fun and easy target. They ignore the town’s urban planning because they would probably agree with its principles. Possibly the critics look at photos of Poundbury and overlook its conventional plan. The notion of affordable housing being indistinguishable from private housing is considered worthy of praise. But are they really built in the same standards as private housing? Is it good that one cannot tell which of the buildings are ‘affordable’? The framework of the masterplan leaves empty plots which would be filled in by further development. This process is contrary to the traditional growth of a village. Future building in Poundbury is predetermined. One would have thought that setting up an infrastructure that doesn’t allow flexibility destroys the valued relationship between people and development. The prince would normally have argued that the long term relationships between the inhabitants and buildings is what gives the community its life. However, the planning in place at Poundbury forces the user to adapt to the masterplan. Urbanism, today, is seen as a natural phenomenon. It is a force that has its own truth. It seems that, as with attempts to regulate the free
market, any method of preplanning a city will fail. The core issue of Poundbury’s plan, I would argue, is that it is static – it has trouble incorporating further development. It hasn’t reached that stage yet, so this is inevitably speculative. Yet an illuminating example is the preplanning of industry before housing. What will happen when a new industry appears? Poundbury has elements of modern planning, in its quest for wholeness and elements of postmodern planning, in its quest for flexibility. And the two don’t match. The prince’s contradictory philosophy is translated into an attempt to avoid conflict and politics, and to altogether avoid change. While the town pretends to grow naturally, the eclectic compositions of bits are predesigned. Poundbury’s flexibility is a prescribed model of flexibility to remain itself unaltered. Poundbury does not only plan its own mess but aims to be a model for future extension of British towns.
This is a shortened version of Tamir Aharoni’s original essay which was nominated for the AA 3rd Year Writing Prize, 2019
4 Moore, Rowan. The shape of Britain to come... as designed by Prince Charles, The Guardian, 24 Jun 2011. 5 Wainwright, Oliver. A royal revolution: is Prince Charles’s model village having the last laugh?, The Guardian, 27 Oct 2016. 6 Ibid. 7 Prince of Wales, Charles and Juniper, Tony. Harmony, London: Harper, 2010, P. 25. 8 Ibid. 9 Rybczynki, Wilton. Behind the Façade of Prince Charles’s Poundbury, Architect Magazine,3 Dec 2013. 10 The architectural and urban regulations on the Code were created by the New Urbanist planners Duany and Plater-Zyberk (DPZ).
1 Maudlin, Daniel. Constructing Identity and Tradition: Englishness, Politics and the Neo-Tra- ditional House, Journal of Architectural Education, Vol. 63, Vernacular in the Age of Digital Reproduction, Oct., 2009, pp. 51-63. 2 Prince of Wales, Charles. A Vision of Britain: A Personal View of Architecture, London: Doubleday, 1989, P.15. 3 Frampton, Kenneth. Modern Architecture and the Critical Present, London: Architectural Design, 1982, P.77.
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Not For The Record Shou Jian Eng
Before recognition comes recording – by eye, on paper or through the many tools at our disposal. The kind of recording in question is unfiltered and immediate, unlike a targeted studio recording. It produces an initial collection that is arbitrary and at times intrusive. Recordings done at ‘ground level’ demand an immersion within a physical environment. It asks that one looks, listens, smells... The device, be it a pen or camera, acts as an extended vessel. It sees where the eye does not; it registers what the brain has missed. One does not record because one is cognisant. Like a fox sniffing down a rabbit hole, the recording is instinctive, even primal. Only when the material is collected does it allow one to rewind, analyse and acknowledge. The ability to play back elucidates the subtler, overlooked facets of our environment. Through repetition, it reveals the differences and makes one aware of it. This process suggests that recognition necessitates two aspects – an involvement and a double-take. They may be obvious, but without either, there would be no collection and no recognition.
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FRIED CHICKEN OIL
He lingers and loiters, waiting to lay his hands onto the shoulders of unsuspecting passersby. Those too engrossed in the glaring screen of their mobiles or simply unfamiliar with the neighbourhood are caught unaware, ensnared by his slippery advances. Once you’ve set foot within, however, there’s little chance you’ll emerge unscathed. He will cling on to you, mercilessly following you to the bus stop as you wait among others on their way home. They will stand an extra foot away, if only slightly too aware of his foul demeanour and detestable presence. By law, he should have been removed from society through the cold-steel ducts and screened through charcoal-black filters. But such is the failure of the system that he is simply spat back out over your head, waiting to prey on the next victim and enshroud him in his greasy fingers.
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THE PREDATOR
They must be unaware you’re there. You can hardly make them out behind the shrub-covered fence. Shouts of “Kaira! Kaira!” ring out as they run endlessly. Wave after wave, shrieks crash violently against cliff-like walls of unmovable bricks. Their piercing screams fill the air, resonating through the estate above the low roar of engines. They buzz about dizzyingly, their indistinguishable shrieks still without pause. Suddenly their game brings their attention to you and your camera. Fascinated, they run excitedly towards you and scream their hellos. “My mummy doesn’t know you’re filming,” says one boy. A taller male advances towards you. “Please, we don’t allow filming,” he explains through the fence. The shouts over on this side have stopped, if only for a moment. They return to their game and the shrill voices cover the estate once more.
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THE GARDENS
From across the grass patch, she whistles for Stella to return. Dressed in her blue autumn jacket and white sneakers, she feigns another kick. Then once again, she sends Stella out chasing after the rolling ball with another swing of her leg. As she kicks and whistles, whistles and kicks, a bearded man wrapped in a blue blanket emerges from behind the bush in the distance. He floats into view, like a periscope, scanning the distance. Shiftily, he sinks back down, out of sight. Nearby, the guy in fluorescents bites on his sandwich, seemingly oblivious to the rise and fall of the figure behind. “I’d rather them doing their own thing than the odd man lurking,” she says to me. “It doesn’t bother me except when they’re near the playground and there are kids around.” As I leave her, she kicks, Stella chases and the man in the blanket emerges and disappears once again.
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elay Apologies For the D
A few years ago, I was sent to Venice by the British Council to create an architectural report on the only British founding member of the Situationist International, Ralph Rumney. In 1957, Rumney went to Venice to report on the phychogeographic particularities of the city: exploring his relationship to the Venetian Landscape. His observations would be featured in the first issue of the Situationist International journal; Internationale Situationniste. However, Rumney failed to deliver his submission in time and was subsequently expelled from the SI by Guy Debord. The brutal expulsion was printed, replacing Rumney’s report, in the form of an obituary. ‘Conquered by Venice’, Rumney did eventually complete his report – it was a phychogeographical performance/photo-story named ‘The Leaning Tower of Venice’ and was published in Ark magazine (issues 24, 25 and 26) in three parts. If part of Rumney was truly ‘lost to the Venetian Jungle’ (Debords words, not mine), I would have to get lost too. I avoided any ‘objective’ phychogeographical rigour and failed wonderfully. Like Rumneys report, mine never really materialised and if it did, it was sloppy and didn’t really conform to Debords request of a ‘systematic exploration’. My report was delivered late to the British Council in 2016 but has not been published to this date. Here is a small set of fragments from the ongoing visual report:
Oliver Long AArchitecture 38 37 18
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Monika Orpik
Manual
of
Participation
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It is fashionable to believe that historians are liars. Julius Caesar and Winston Churchill were very good writers, but total liars. Historians, with their vested interests, have no reason to tell you the truth.
The Cultural Odyssey Siong Yu-Hsiang Wang
concerning objective aesthetics When the objects were released from the open prisons to the atopian cities, they were no longer manacled by their colonial past. For decades, doppelgängers of the remains found their place in the city. Re-appropriated perhaps by imagined communities in the guise of Benedict Anderson. The difference is they no longer speak on behalf of their motherland. concerning ordinary museologists Once, I went to the convenience store and I overheard the landowner telling the shop manager how to maintain the spolia of concrete blocks. Reproductions seem to have gained their own crafting and restoration histories. Custodians today are responsible for caring for the reproductions, and for forming new bodies of knowledge, in the manner of Borges, by making alternative readings upon things that remain intrinsically unintelligible.
I. NEW REPOSITORY ASSOCIATION FROM CITY OF UNIVERSAL CULTURES
to atopia London is like a cabinet of curiosities, an accumulation of identities and culture – its museums contain artefacts acquired as a result of colonial rule. The system of encyclopaedic classification of objects can be seen as a product of imperialist power. Museums across the West share this problem – an anachronism that reveals conflicts in the ownership and location of cultural artefacts and also the problems involved in ‘repatriation’ due to the forces of patrimony and nationalism. The accumulation of artefacts in the West has perhaps served its purpose of preservation and classification but it has also created a system of museology that is highly centralised and frozen in time and place. One can argue that in this time of globalism and digitisation, museums should be repositories for universal knowledge shared around the world.
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new anti-collectionrepositories association The so-called world museums such as the British Museum, the Louvre Museum and the Metropolitan Museum of Art are taking the role of preserving universal knowledge. However, the nature of encyclopaedic museums with their growing collections inevitably shapes future relationships among museums, the public, and even the art market. In 1978, the radical model of a Semi-Permanent Collection was conceived by the New Museum in New York. The museum’s general operation is that it will retain artworks for no less than ten years and no more than twenty. The collection will be deaccessioned in order to create space for new additions and only a digital archive is retained. The Semi-Permanent Collection is constantly changing as it continually renews its status as a resource of contemporary work, rather than a monument to the past. The project proposes a new repositories association with this anti-collection model system, in which cultural representation is not frozen in place and time. It is an apparatus which will provoke the ‘contemporary’ of cultural heritages in different times and locations. travelling repositories between atopian countries The new location of the repositories association is networked between different ‘atopian’ countries (those that are not universally recognised as nations). The atopian sites have ambiguous sovereign status and stand on the other side of the spectrum of globalisation. The territories are also sites of conflict (the museum is a site of conflict in post-colonial debate), with changing borders, displacement of people and reassertion of cultural identities. The travelling repositories system aims to negotiate the conflict between cultural objects, people and local conditions by taking a radical model of the travelling museum: The Circulation Department in the V&A museum, before its closure in 1977. They tailored selections and displays in regional galleries, art schools and everyday spaces such as post offices and libraries, and co-operated with other museums. Unlike the typical museum tour and loan programme which is mainly scheduled in stays of months in different locations, it is a new global system of collaboration between locals. The project treats atopian locations as an alternative neutral ground where their hybridised cultural identity comes from a struggle between more than two foreign powers and its local condition. Taiwan is one of the them: identities such as
Austronesian, Chinese, Japanese, Japanese-European and American. Its political situation has turned the whole territory into a non-place of atopia, since it has not been recognised by the United Nations as a country since 1971. The proposed travelling repositories system negotiates the spectrum of our global condition, in which London is considered as a city of universal culture, but Taiwan has struggled with its own identity. The new system suggests that cultural properties should be truly universal and transposed into new relationships; in spatial and social scenarios.
II. SPOLIA OF REPRODUCTION ARCHITECTURAL SPECIFICATION AS AN ALTERNATIVE MUSEOLOGY
The project seeks to negotiate post-colonial debates about the centralisation of artefacts in place and time, to mobilise cultural artefacts as ‘relational objects’ (to use Lygia Clarke’s phrase) and to leak them into various social and political conditions. With today’s systems of digital preservation, museum artefacts can be transposed into new relationships, spaces and social scenarios through works of reproduction and their use. The Wedding Feast at Cana by Paolo Veronese in 1563 for example – the original one is in the Louvre Museum in Paris, but the replica in the refectory of San Giorgio Maggiore in Venice made by Factum Foundation can be seen as more authentic due to its spatial and social context. The work of reproduction here is not solely made for the aura of the work, but is re-activated by breaking the loop of invisibility by preservation in the current art world. History only exists if there is a tomorrow. By giving a new use value to cultural heritage, the history is continuous and relative to our time. pataphysical taxonomy Today, the museum is preserving cultural objects by collecting digital information and creating open resource libraries in order to increase the accessibility of universal knowledge. However, one can argue that it is impossible to categorise the entirety of world knowledge due to inevitable cultural appropriation and prejudice by any communities (e.g. between indigenous and non-indigenous curators). In response to the possible arbitrariness and cultural specificity of any intent to classify the world, Jorge Luis Borges’s fictitious animals classification – Celestial Emporium of Benevolent Knowledge – can be seen as a critique
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of canonical history and knowledge. Instead of keeping a generic encyclopaedic narrative, the proposal suggests an alternative museology by turning the digital museum archive into an architectural library: ‘Spolia’ of reproduction. Cultural artefacts here will be re-classified according to an alternative ‘Pataphysical’ (ludic) taxonomy based on their architectural features (to borrow Sir John Soane’s objective aesthetics). spolia of reproduction With the reality of open source, digital libraries are not only created for the accessibility of knowledge but should allow freedom of use. ‘Spolia’ is a decontextualisation of cultural artefacts and repurposing of building materials for new construction. The cultural objects are therefore no longer protected and preserved in museum stores but can be given new meaning in the afterlife. The re-construction of artefacts here can be seen as an alternative curatorial method in relation to various spatial conditions and everyday scenarios. Hence, the power of cultural narrative is given to the ordinary people who own the cultural reproductions. This is similar to community curation in the current museum world in which conflicting views can be presented side by side without any attempt to reconcile them. Cultural artefacts can therefore be curated according to relational or irreverent juxtapositions through different lenses socially or politically. The ‘spolia of reproduction’ also suggests different digital processes of manipulating scanned information according to current available building constructions. Consequently, the new value of museum objects can be given not only through their use but also through contemporary crafting and manufacturing in different local materials and technologies.
museum to retain cultural objects for ten to twenty years enabling reproductions to be made which can subsequently be shared with its neighbours. After ten years, the repository will keep a digital archive and let the objects travel to their next location. the repository One of the testing grounds of the repository is located in Taipei, Treasure Hill. It is itself an ambiguous grouping of urban artefacts built in different colonial periods on the edge of the city of Taipei. During the stay of ten to twenty years, the original artefacts will be temporarily displayed in the repository for education, while the preservation data and reproductions are created in different existing urban conditions. According to the features of the objects: large objects, small inorganic objects, drawings and textiles, the artefacts are stored in the repository and integrated into existing public spaces: a redundant reservoir, an artists’ village, public gardens, water park, swimming pool, restaurant and market hall. The building extensions and refurbishment by ‘spolia’ of reproduction are alternative museums in different social conditions and conflicting historical contexts. the public museum With the building of the architectural library, the spolia of reproduction will then be disseminated into the city and curated in different everyday scenarios. The power and control of cultural representation will be given to the people who own or take care of the reproduction of cultural artefacts. The everyday cleaning and repair will therefore give the work of reproduction a new history. They are now new custodians of works of art. History is no longer frozen in any place or time whilst the ordinary museologists are now responsible for forming a new body of knowledge, in the manner of Borges, by making alternative readings upon things that remain intrinsically unintelligible.
III. OPERATION SYSTEM THE NEW ORDER OF THINGS
the association The general operation of the new repository association is that the repository in each atopian location with non-nation states such as Taiwan, Palestine and Kosovo, etc. will not own permanent collections. Instead, the original cultural objects will migrate and be shared between the atopian locations. The semi-permanent-collection system allows each
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Janos Bergob
Hiding in
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Thoughts on: The Contemporary P.R.C. Periphery Nicole Xinyue Zhang
BORDER
RADIO
Hong Kong; It was a few days after the antiextradition bill protest (9 June 2019) when my Hong Kong-based architect friend told me that his colleague (a Hong Kong citizen) was intercepted when crossing the mainland border of China before heading to a site meeting in Shenzhen. The conversation between this colleague and the Chinese border officer went something like this:
Beijing; A week after the anti-extradition bill protest, I was on a business trip to Beijing. While casually walking around Hutongs, my colleague said she was surprised to find the discussions among retired men rather progressive. The retired groups were sharing detailed information and analysis of the trade war between the US and China as well as the protest in Hong Kong. We didn’t bother to interrupt their debates. Another local Beijing friend suspected that such information was not fetched from digital social networks or media but from the radio,a platform familiar to the older generation in mainland China. In Beijing, one of the privileges of living in the capital is being able to tune into international stations in mandarin.
officer: “Were you in the Sunday protest crowds?” colleague: “No.” officer: “Our source showed us that you were sharing photos taken inside the protest in your WeChat (equivalent to Whatsapp) history.” colleague: “…um, I was just forwarding them taken by other people.” officer: “Then how come our CCTV also recorded your presence during the protest?” colleague: “Well… I was just passing by…” The conversation went on for two hours, way past the time of his site meeting. He was also asked to record a video of himself before leaving the border office, promising that he would not speak of anything relating to the protest and recent events in Hong Kong. Fully alert and shocked by the situation, he turned back to Hong Kong and never made it to Shenzhen.
POST
Xinjiang; On July 2 2019, The Guardian published an article titled ‘Chinese border guards put secret surveillance app on tourists’ phones’. The timing of this post made me think it was about Hong Kong but instead it was quite a detailed investigation into the north-western borderlines of China centred around another disputed area: Xinjiang.
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SURVEY
POLICY
Shenzhen; At the moment, my research colleagues at work are preparing a bluebook on the Greater Bay area with a state publisher. They were told that all maps containing national borders are required to pass reviews conducted by Grade-A certified survey agencies if to be published. Such tight requirements were unprecedented in 2018.
Hong Kong- China; Yesterday, when I was on a trip to Hong Kong, I was told that we have a new work policy from Beijing which requires all employees who are travelling beyond the national border to file reports prior to their travels and attend a follow-up interview 30 days after they return. It is justified that this kind of policy is normal for employees working in government and state-funded corporations in China. However this is confusing in the context of the Pearl River Delta as the state has lifted the Greater Bay strategy up to a national level – are we encouraged to promote regional exchanges with Hong Kong and Macau beyond the borders, or are we limited to tighter travelling control? The answer should undoubtedly be ‘both’, just that we as employees need to train ourselves to be more administrative.
THOUGHTS ON
Contemporary censorship in China is particularly strengthened around its peripheral spaces through architecture and the conditions of a border: checkpoint complexes, border patrol infrastructures, military-civil settlements and special trade zones. While these are normal border practices that can be found around the world, the Chinese are implementing them with particular force. When it comes to politically sensitive cases, they do not shy away from taking action. In fact, border officers are often transparent in terms of what they are doing to their ‘victims’, as seen in Hong Kong and Xinjiang. Architecture does not just frame the content of border security, it also plays a critical role in the imagemaking of an intolerant nation especially one that is filled with uncertainty, political infiltration and threat. Surveillance of information has a significant affect on the urban development of China. Firstly the borders which define the P.R.C. resemble the frontlines for political battles and their relationship to its neighbours and the west. It was not until recently that I was told by some elders of the report in The Guardian which resulted in many rounds of bloodshed and ‘revenge’ carried out by both the locals and the central government. By censoring, we are blocked out of this crucial international perspective, which seems to hold a mirror up to the happenings in China today. The international audience is deprived of information
about what is happening to the country. Little information is available for judging who is good or evil. Secondly, the population’s access to information and education influences the way they move, build and settle in the country. Over the past four decades, 60 per cent of the rural population in China has undergone ‘Hukou’, where they have transformed into the new urban population. It is difficult to obtain data on this gigantic migrating group, however one thing that is clear is that the access to education is generally poorer among this group than those who were originally born and raised in urban China. During mass migration, Chinese cities grow and it becomes easier to undermine unprepared departments of Governance. At the same time Chinese security forces have fine-tuned their practices and have determined that brute force, especially against a less educated populous, works better than benevolence. One of their mechanisms of ‘brute force’ is censorship. If the core of the problem was addressed, the entire administrative system of modern China would need an overhaul. The resulting outcry would have to be met with civility and compassion. Currently, instances of violence are caused by misconduct, from the middle-ranking officers blindingly obeying orders from above, to the military executors along borders who have no voice.
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Russian journalist Ivan Golunov has been carrying out anticorruption investigations for independent news outlets in Russia for years now. In early June 2019 he released a piece of work which, of course, involved revealing hidden facts about the government’s “business” allies. This led to him being apprehended, arrested and charged by the Russian Government for manufacturing and distributing drugs. The boundary between freedom of speech the public’s rights and censorship is blurred. Revealing information as Ivan Golunov did, is like playing with fire… or with the Russian Government. One of the many ways to control and punish someone who has been digging for truth, is to fabricate an accusation, preferably involving drugs – fast and easy.
Truth or Dare Censorship as a Means of Punishment in Contemporary Russia Anya Glik
Russian police officers picked up Golunov right outside the metro station Tsvetnoy Bulvar, without letting him call his lawyer. Moving forward, the entire process of the interrogation and details of Golunov’s arrest were made unclear by officials; lacking transparency of information and valid evidence. This provoked a very powerful response from the public which interfered with the court's decisionmaking process. ‘Bagman’ Ivan was first put under house arrest for two months but then released after only a couple of days. Although this story has a happy ending (so far), there are still too many journalists who are locked in prison cells after revealing the truth.
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In order to support Ivan and the other journalists in his position, the public organised a peaceful march, which was in fact prohibited by the government. Participation in gatherings such as this, which have not been authorised, is against the law. More than 400 participants were arrested.
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An Adaptation
‘In-Betweenness’, Identity and Race in Apartheid South Africa Ciara Hablützel
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This adaptation of the original dissertation intends to explore experiences of in-betweenness within categories of race and identity in Apartheid South Africa, utilising memoirs and biographies. This article uses the texts ‘Born a Crime’ by Trevor Noah, the comedian and host of The Daily Show who was born to a Xhosa mother and Swiss father. As well as, ‘Third World Child’ by GG Alcock, born in Msinga in an Afrikaans family, as points of articulation and recreation for experiences of the in-between.
This piece of scholarship seeks to fill a gap in in-betweenness during the Apartheid era and in South Africa, a rich site for analysing in-betweenness and its implications on race. Other works analyse global or US contexts, neglecting this time and space. This article takes shape across themes of selfcategorisation, language, politics and beliefs. These three themes considered together deconstruct how in-betweenness can be created and experienced. In a system where racial absolutes were coveted and idealised, in-betweenness was a source of subversion and calls into question historical notions of race. To me, stories of in-betweenness in Apartheid South Africa are the norm, but that is not the nation’s known narrative. My family is Jewish-South African and my mother’s childhood in the height of apartheid in the
1960s and 1970s told a tale of being outsiders; different; stuck in-between cultures, but being rejected by them at the same time. My mother did not grow up in an observant household, with her mother from Switzerland as a Protestant and her father a Jew who emigrated from Germany before World War Two to South Africa. This cultural heritage led to some confusion. Every year, she and her two brothers had to fill out an enrolment form for school, one question asked what religion they were. South Africa at the time, in the words of my mother was about ‘being Afrikaans and belonging to the Dutch Reform Church, anyone else was an “other” ’. Part of a Protestant-Jewish household, she did not know which box to tick. She had a sense that being agnostic or atheist was not right in the government’s eyes, so
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every year she ticked the box of a different religion on the form. All three siblings did not have heavy South African accents, like the other children in their school, because of the melange of accents at home. So, they were teased, despite the school having ‘a large cross-section of whiteness’ (there were Greeks, Irish, Italians, etc.), my mother describes that ‘… everyone was profiled and categorised’. Categories such as coloured, Jewish and white-Zulu, are considered here according to how the subjects viewed themselves, considering they did not fit normative categories of ‘black’, ‘white’ and ‘coloured’. Hybridity or in-betweenness ‘subverts the narratives of colonial power and dominant cultures’, these subjects ‘deconstruct’ the ‘premise’ of Apartheid and are a ‘counter-narrative, a critique of the dominant culture [– Afrikaans –] and its exclusionary practices’. → 1 Although the foundation of group identity is finding common origins or shared characteristics with groups/people, the subjects do not wholly conform to group identity, therefore subverting Apartheid’s system of categorisation. → 2 Throughout his memoir, Born A Crime: Stories from a South African Childhood, Trevor Noah talks about leaning towards blackness – embracing his black ancestry/identity and self-ascribing as black. ‘I was mixed but not coloured – coloured by completion but not by culture’ and ‘My hair was curly and I was proud of my afro. I spoke African languages and loved speaking them.’ Noah subverts categories because he derives his identity from blackness and his understanding of self. He also does not play racial politics and instead finds himself able to adapt to any group. ‘You don’t ask to be accepted for everything you are, just the one part of yourself you’re willing to share… I didn’t belong to one group, I could be part of any group…’ explained Noah. Multiracial individuals may not identify with any racial group because they do not experience full acceptance by any group. This is true of Noah to a degree, but he experienced more acceptance from black people than coloured or white. Noah uses his agency to choose his identity by abiding to certain black norms and aesthetics. To an extent, one can see characteristics of Black Consciousness in Noah, a coloured person who rejects the label ‘coloured’. Instead he sees himself as black because these are artificial categories imposed by Apartheid, and black is more inclusive. → 3 As Biko said ‘“being black” is a “reflection of a mental attitude… Merely by describing yourself as black you have started on a road towards emancipation”’. Fighting against forces that use blackness as a mark of subservience, Noah’s behaviour is a reflection of Biko’s view. → 4
There was an underlying knowledge that Noah was not black in the sense that people understood. As Noah entered school this was augmented. He noticed segregation, describing how in H.A. Jack Primary School, which was majority white, the white children would form groups, leaving the few black and Indian children out. ‘Groups moved in colour patterns across the yard, up the stairs, down the hall,’ but Noah stood ‘awkwardly’ by himself ‘in this no-man’s-land in the middle of the playground.’ This description is a crucial metaphor for depicting Noah’s experiences. He did not fit wholly into any group; he was solitary and did not habituate into any group structure. Throughout his childhood, he did not feel belonging to any racial group. He explains, ‘I was the anomaly wherever we lived. In Hillbrow, we lived in a white area, and nobody looked like me. In Soweto, we lived in a black area, and nobody looked like me. Eden Park was a coloured area. In Eden Park, everyone looked like me, but we couldn’t have been more different.’ GG Alcock’s multilingualism was a sign of his duality. similar to his self-ascription, where he considered himself Zulu and white. Alcock’s experience growing up, documented in Third World Child: Born White, Zulu Bred, was that of both a white and black boy, but his use of language growing up underlines this. Khonya (his brother) and him would call their mother ‘Ma in the Zulu or Afrikaans manner’, her ‘hardest job was to teach her kids to be English boys as well as Zulu boys… we spoke Zulu all day every day and only spoke English at home, so, our accents resembled that of Idi Amin…’ Going between Zulu and English is the most convincing example of Alcock’s duality. His Zulu accent was heavy. When he went to regular school he had to be corrected from ‘“muun” to “moon”, from “ja” to “yes”’. Although South Africa was highly divided by language, Alcock knocks down these assumptions. Alcock shows that ‘identity making requires that we consider not only whether/or but also both/and…’ → 5 However, Alcock is plagued by his in-betweenness because he is ‘searching for wholeness’. He is multilingual and this is advantageous, but his language abilities suggest a fractured identity, which he tries to put together by proving to people he can speak Zulu like a Zulu black man. → 6 Alcock raises questions about the fluidity of race – is speaking a language ‘properly’ enough to change your race? Can someone change their race? ‘Linguistic anthropologists have written about the instability and fluidity of race and language for decades and the literature includes examples of speakers who passed for one race or another.’ → 7 Alcock’s knowledge of language makes him transracial, he moves past the
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racial boundaries set up by language because he understands the depths of Zulu, despite his white skin. The subject epitomises a transracial case of moving beyond attempts to demonstrate loyalties/ belonging and highlights the problems with racial categories. → 8 Apartheid structures placed races and languages into boxes, ascribing them an identity, but race is fluid (to a degree). Therefore, since Alcock can speak the languages with authenticity and intention we should call him a ‘white Zulu’ as he self-categorises. Alcock wants to redefine race so it suits what he feels he is and his language abilities are the best indicator of his duality. Bhabha argues that the idea of language is not the only articulation of hybridity or in-betweenness, distinctiveness and behavioural identity implicates signification, importantly representation of difference embodied by manners, rituals, customs, etc. Alcock followed certain Zulu traditions and customs. He describes in his memoirs, ‘This was the world where we really wanted to be. Essentially, we grew up like Zulu herd boys. The Zulu kids were all herders and they rose early to drive the goats or cattle to the grazing lands in the hills around us’ wrote Alcock. He followed in the tradition of other children being herd boys and working the land. By participating in these customs and traditions, Alcock was participating in Zulu culture but is it appropriation? Was he participating in these traditions/identifications in the Zulu realm without ownership rights? → 9 Although Alcock speaks a language and follows some traditions, is he black or Zulu? Following some definitions of blackness, the defining factor being living through oppression according to Biko, he isn’t. In South Africa, race was implicated politically, Elirea Bornman published the article ‘Self-image and Ethnic Identification in South Africa’ in The Journal of Social Psychology, where he states that ‘a person’s membership in a particular race that was used to determine whether he or she belonged to the privileged group or to the exploited and oppressed group.’ He goes on to state that if a person felt ‘exploited or oppressed they regarded themselves as blacks even if their phenotypical characteristic did not concur with the characteristics… the privileged people were designated as white.’ Alcock still experienced privilege like his white counterparts. However, Alcock writes in his memoir that he has ‘the inkani of my people, Zulu bred with the skills [of ] my white father and my Zulu elders…’ He does have some right to practise these traditions because he upheld Zulu beliefs and lived like a Zulu. In his article Bornman states that ‘Ethnic identification is related
to the extent to which group membership gives a sense of uniqueness and belonging to an individual’, associating himself with the Zulu group gave Alcock a sense of belonging. Zulu culture was/is synonymous with being black, but Alcock enables one to discuss the meaning of blackness, it has been defined as more than the colour of one’s skin. Regarding Alcock as completely black is problematic. However he was in-between, able to mobilise between categorical imperatives and deconstruct social constructs.
1 Ahluwalia, P & Zegeye, A. “Between Black and White: Rethinking Coloured Identity”. African Identities, 1.2, (2003). 263-264. 2 Hall in Hall,S & Gay, P (eds.) Questions of Cultural Identity. (London: SAGE, 1996). 3 Adhikari, M. “Blinded by Anger: Coloured Experience under Apartheid”. South African Historical Journal, 35.1, (1996). 169. Adhikari, M. “ ‘God Made the White Man, God Made the Black Man...’: Popular racial stereotyping of Coloured People in Apartheid South Africa”. South African Historical Journal, 55, (2006): 147. Ahluwalia, & Zegeye, "Between”, 271. Schildkrout, E. People of the Zongo the Transformation of Ethnic Identities in Ghana. (Cambridge studies in social anthropology; no. 20). (Cambridge [England]; New York: Cambridge University Press,1978). 12. 4 Howarth, D. “Complexities of
identity/difference: Black Consciousness ideology in South Africa”. Journal of Political Ideologies, 2.1, (1997). 60–61. 5 Chapman, M. "The Problem of Identity: South Africa, Storytelling, and Literary History". New Literary History, 29.1, (1998). 97. 6 Wade, M. White on Black in South Africa: A Study of English-Language Inscriptions of Skin Colour. (New York: St. Martin's Press, 1993). 130. 7 Alim, H, et al. Raciolinguistics: How Language Shapes Our Ideas about Race. (Oxford: Oxford University Press USA – OSO, 2016). 34. 8 Ibid, 35. 9 Jenkins, R. “Rethinking Ethnicity: Identity, Categorization and Power”. Ethnic and Racial Studies, 17.2,(1994). 211. Purification Systems, (Better Air), 2019 (betterairus.com)
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aarchitecture 38 – Biographies
TAMIR AHARONI has completed his RIBA part 1 at the Architectural Association and is currently working for Kuehn Malvezzi on his year out. Tamir has previously worked for Pierre d’Avoine Architects, Guard Tillman Pollock and as an apprentice carpenter in Tel Aviv. PATRICIA DE SOUZA LEÃO MÜLLER is a Brazilian-Swiss event designer, maker, illustrator and videographer of Holy Fool Studio. She trained at the Architectural Association and California College of the Arts. SOPHIA ALAMI graduated from the Architectural Association in 2019 where she completed her RIBA Part I and II. During her studies, Sophia explored themes of gender politics and space in the current context of Morocco. She previously worked for Francisco Pardo Architects in Mexico City and has published a visual essay with the Real Foundation: A Home Truth on Gender and Subjugation, as well as a piece on the spatial extent of the hijab in the 8th issue of Real Review magazine. KARL HERDERSCH is currently studying at the Architectural Association. He has an interest in industrial fabrication, automation and material ecology and is currently working on numerous collaborative projects including a furniture series using industrial manufacture. He has previously worked producing independent films, fashion and technology startups.
OLIVER LONG is a graphic designer working in the AA Print Studio. He graduated from Kingston University in 2014. He has since collaborated with a variety of civic, cultural and commercial projects. SHOU JIAN ENG is a Fifth Year student at the Architectural Association. The work forms part of his interest in the role of observation in a data-laden environment. He enjoys travelling and understanding how opposing forces have caused cities to grow over time. MONIKA ORPIK is an artist from Poland. She graduated from London College of Communication in 2019 and is this year’s winner of the PhotoWorks Prize. Through the medium of photography and experimental processes in the darkroom, Monika explores time and trauma and questions the influence of art on the process of reconciliation. She has recently completed Manual of Participation, a book documenting a diachronic timeline of Bosnia and Herzegovina during and after the Balkan War in the ‘90s. SIONG YU-HSIANG WANG graduated from the Architectural Association in 2019. He received the AA Commendation for his final project, The Cultural Odyssey. He has practised in the UK and Taiwan, and is currently working as an architectural designer with Meiri Shinohara based in Tokyo.
JANOS BERGOB is currently pursuing his Part II at the Architectural Association. Previously having worked at Gustav Düsing & Max Hacke Architects, on 1:1 fabrication of architectural installations and concept development, he is currently developing design concepts for the studio of artist Julian Charrière. NICOLE XINYUE ZHANG graduated from the Diploma School at the Architectural Association in 2015 and registered as an ARB Architect (UK) in 2018. She was born and raised in Shenzhen and recently returned to the city as a researcher at a state-owned urban planning enterprise. xinyuezhang2010@hotmail.com welcomes any criticism or discussions. ANYA GLIK is a student at the Architectural Association and a mixed-media artist. Her work investigates human behaviour in the context of mass surveillance, through film photography, videos and collages, which zoom (x40) into specific moments within found scenes. CIARA HABLUTZEL graduated from University College London in 2019. She studied History and focused on modern African and Eastern European history, with a particular interest in colonialism, race, culture and identity politics. Ciara currently works in the arts, with experience in film, theatre, fine art and publishing.
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Next issue
A charger for a non-rechargeable battery
Technologies of disobedience from the Archive of Ernesto Oroza “This is an object that I found recently. You plug it into an electrical outlet. And with these attachments it can revive a non-rechargeable battery. It’s mainly used by people with hearing aids and these devices need batteries. People made this for them so they could always recharge their batteries.” (Cuba’s DIY Inventions from 30 Years of Isolation. (2010). Directed by S. Stelley. Motherboard.) Throughout Cuba’s 30 years of isolation from global market trade, the government was forced to produce and supply each household with a series of standard objects. This led to a lack of basic amenities. What emerged was a habit of ‘hacking’ objects in order to prolong the life cycle of rarities, evolving into a black market of domestic objects. Where plates become satellite dishes or scrap materials are assembled to plug into an electrical socket, the life cycle of an object is supplemented, enabling re-use. This instance touches upon rules of aesthetics, law and economy in a context with dwindling state support. These objects enable the public to reclaim their household; interrupting, reviving and prolonging. Maybe the most mundane need can become an object of protest. Its maker is its user, a technology of disobedience.
Submit visual and written content by Monday 25 November 2019 to aarchitecture@aaschool.ac.uk
In this issue L.A.W.u.N begins with an unseen house. Page 1 Karl Herdersch forecasts the rise and fall of the dick pic in Beyond Representation. Page 2 Pati de Souza Leão Müller’s humorous illustrations give a new glimpse at familiar images. Page 6 Tamir Aharoni searches for merit in The Poundbury Code. Page 8 Shou Jian Eng plays the voyeur, unpacking the potential role of the designer as censor in Not For The Record. Page 12 Oliver Long’s photographic report on Ralph Rumney, offers a view on what has never been seen before. Page 16 Monika Orpik tells of the memories of 1990s Bosnia and Herzegovina through her photographic essay taken from Manual of Participation Page 20 and Siong Yu Hsiang Wang’s Cultural Odyssey offers an alternative form of censorship to mediate between objects of history and their display within contemporary culture. Page 30 Janos Bergob designs surveillance devices disguised within street furniture. Page 36 Nicole Zhang’s Thoughts on: The Contemporary P.R.C. Periphery offers an insight into the extent of state censorship in China today. Page 38 The blurred boundaries of free speech are questioned by Anya Glick’s Truth or Dare. Page 40 Finally, Ciara explores notions of racial in-betweenness in apartheid South Africa. Page 44
Edited by students at the Architectural Association