CHAPTER 3: TYPOLOGY STUDIES

Metaphorical Presentation Of Marginalised Groups

priests the nobility professionals the middle-class workmen women

‘Flatland’ is satirical 1884 novella by Edwin Abbott Abbott that points out the inequalities and ironies within Victorian society. The story describes a world inhabited by two-dimensional shapes, where the women are straight lines, and the men are polygons with multiple sides. In Flatland, social status is determined by the number of sides to the shape, therefore women populate the very lowest social stratifications, as a line only ever has one side.

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Generational Social Ascent

Every man has one side more than his father. Sons elevate a family’s social status.

‘no way can Women entertain such hopes’

‘‘Once a Woman, always a Woman’’ is a decree of nature, and the very laws of evolution seem suspended in her disfavour’

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‘miseries and humiliations are at once necessities of their existence and the basis of the constitution of Flatland’

‘inferior to the very lowest of the Iscoscles, they are consequently wholly devoid of brainpower, and have neither reflection, judgement nor forethought, and hardly any memory’

Social status is also dependent on the regularity of the shapes, and it is regularity that enables discrimination in Flatland, and the implementation of a system of inequality. A stranger’s social status is ascertained by the language of Feeling, where one touches the vertex of the other, and can tell the number of sides by the angle.

The vertices of an irregular polygon of course, are all different angles, and therefore these shapes are impossible to conventionally understand, and pose threat to the entire power system built upon foundations of inequality and obedience.

The vertex of a straight line is a sharp point, which viewed face on, is almost invisible. Women are considered equally as unpredictable and dangerous, and so are also marginalised.

Overall, ‘Flatland’ makes an interesting comment on the oppression of marginalised groups in society, and the threat that those who do not conform pose to oppressive power systems.

Extracts Taken From Recorded Conversation With Exprisoner

‘prison’s a humanity processing plant. It starts off with clothes, take off your own. It continues with privacy, so get naked and turn around’

‘It’s easy physically, but it’s very difficult in your head’

‘sleep my sentence away’

‘you’ve lost control, you’re not in control anymore: you have someone controlling everything about you’

‘blood on the mattress... toothpaste on the walls... no nothing. Full of sorrow’

‘no privacy means no trust. No lasting community, no rest’

‘it’s never your home. Prison and privacy share the first three letters but they have no overlap whatsoever’

‘a cocktail of brittle egos. Hierarchy, lost kids who became men. Fear manifesting as aggression, fear manifesting as fear. Trauma manifesting as drug abuse. Drug abuse manifesting as cold turkey, and cold turkey manifesting as diarrhoea’

‘constant noise: women arguing, women crying. Women having a laugh’

‘the daytime is full of clattering chaos from the minute you’re unlocked’

‘The sounds of jails: well worth mentioning, because over the years and months they burrow deep into your mentality’

‘confined to 9 [feet] by 5, and that closed in on me, as a 20 year old, immediately’

‘bars on top of bars on top of bars’

‘halogen electric light makes you feel like a lab rat’

‘minimal light as well as minimal oxygen... the irrational brain takes over the rational’

‘people who don’t pay for their TV license get sent to this shithole. And then while they’re here, they don’t have to pay for a TV license’

‘how many reformed people are rotting away, when they are ready to be released’

Architecture Designed To Protect The Vulnerable

Aldo Van Eyck’s ‘Mothers’ House’ was designed for an organisation in Amsterdam providing single mothers and their children with temporary housing, aid and therapy. Unconventionally, the mothers’ bedrooms are separated from the children’s, in the roof of the building where the sloping attic ceilings create a comforting and protective retreat for potentially traumatised users.

This language is continued throughout the building, in elements like alcoves and bay windows.

The independence of the children is further encouraged by the adaptable plan, where rooms can be annexed or separated as needed. This creates a spontaneous experience of spaces, which invites exploration. Social areas like the cafeteria and the children’s dayroom foster interaction between inhabitants and create a sense of community.

Van Eyck’s use of transparency combined with enclosure is an especially interesting feature of the shelter’s design. The paradoxical pairing of ‘openwelcoming’ and ‘closed-private-sheltering’ creates an environment where the inhabitants are safe to comfortably heal, without shutting them off from the rest of the world, in which they are aiming to reintegrate.

This precedent serves as an example of a scheme which seeks to empower vulnerable women, and improve their quality of life through a design which stimulates feelings of warmth and safety. The balance of public and private space within the building feels highly relevant in the design of the rehabilitation centre, where the users must be supported in the transition of re-adapting to freedom.

‘THE LAST FREE PLACE IN AMERICA’

Slab City is an off-the-grid community based on a former US Marine artillery training range in California. Constructed upon a square mile of disused public land, the scheme is relevant to the extraordinary context of this proposal. Slab City represents a small-scale anarchist community, who live autonomously and lawlessly, valuing freedom over comfort or amenity. The community mostly self-polices and self-governs, relying on learned technical expertise in the generation of electricity by solar panels.

Though a true embodiment of anarchist ideas, Slab City is not a utopia. Only 150 of the 4000 inhabitants are permanent, year-round residents, and these are mostly driven to the area by poverty, rather than a desire for self-sufficiency or isolation. In 1995, almost the entire population collected disability benefits, social security or unemployment.

The local economy is highly dependent on tourism, which fluctuates throughout the year, and was heavily impacted during the Covid-19 pandemic. There is no health infrastructure within the community, and residents still rely on Niland, which is four miles away, for basic shopping.