Productive Insurgence: Towards the Autonomous (Re)Production of Commons within and against the State

Kashmir

Productive Insurgence Towards the Autonomous (Re)Production of Common(s) Within and Against the State

Arinjoy Sen

Text I - Intersections

A place is to be created over an indeterminate period of time, without an end – a growing, incremental landscape of punctuations and intersections. Therefore, the following body of work occurs at the intersection of 3 objectives.

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The conceptualisation and development of an autonomous framework for the (re)production of a productive common(s) network as a form of emancipation within and against State control – the insurgency. Common(s) as a state of exception.

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The construction of an identity – a new grammar – for an emancipated and selfsustained community, rooted in the rituals and culture of the place. Place-making through the gradual development of infrastructure over time as characters/ personalities, rooted in the Kashmiri tradition of storytelling – a construction of time.

The production of architecture through the production of images. Borrowing from the Mughal painting, the image is not used merely as a medium for the representation of objects. The production of the image occurs at the intersection of i the painting as a manual/medium of communication and interpretation – architecture as text; ii

the painting as an evolving artefact within the reality of the project;

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the reality of the project.

Thus, the image not only embodies a temporal dysfunction and a construction of time through the juxtaposition of alternative realities, but also becomes a medium for the ultimate realisation of the project within it’s material reality.

On the margins of utopia.

Chapter 1, “Paradise on Earth” Of Gardens and Graves An introduction to Kashmir with the roots of the project – learning from Kashmir and the Wall as a state of exception.

Chapter 2, Rituals and Walls Towards an Insurgent Architecture Nomos, and the initial development of the project with the production of image as a process and apparatus for incubation.

Chapter 3, Notes on Radical Commoning Towards an Alternative Mode of Production The conceptualisation of a productive common(s) as a state of exception and possibility of emancipation.

Chapter 4, The Insurgents A Construction of Time The construction of an identity – a new grammar for the city – and the production of architecture through the production of images.

Kashmirnama

Chapter 1, “Paradise on Earth” Of Gardens and Graves

An introduction to Kashmir with the roots of the project – learning from Kashmir and the Wall as a state of exception.

Atanasius Kircher, Topographia Paradisi Terrestris

“Paradise on Earth” Srinagar, Kashmir

Kashmir China Pakistan

Nepal

Bhutan

India

Bangladesh

Srinagar

National Border of India drafted during Independence State Border of Jammu and Kashmir Rest of India Kashmir Administered by India Kashmir Administered by Pakistan, claimed by India Kashmir Administered by China, claimed by India 0

1km

Map of Srinagar, Captial of Kashmir, India

Kashmir has a very complex and sensitive socio-political condition. As the British East India Company had not completely annexed Kashmir during its rule over India, during the independence of India, Kashmir was still a princely state - meaning under the rule of a monarch. India gained its independence at a price - it got partitioned. India is still paying the price of its partition.

As the Indian subcontinent got divided, India and Pakistan formed their own respective States, but Kashmir was still a princely state occupying a very important location on the map. Pakistan launched a State-sponsored guerilla onslaught on Kashmir to pressurise the monarch into handing it over to Pakistan. But Kashmir invited intervention. India aided Kashmir in driving the insurgency out for the time being while the UN insisted on a plebiscite to decide the fate of Kashmir. The complex circumstances led Kashmir to join the Indian State without a plebiscite.

This led to rising tensions between India and Pakistan, leading to several wars over the course

Socio-Political Context A History of Turmoil, Kashmir

of time, fighting over Kashmir. Now the original Kashmir has been divided into 3 parts: Indianadministered Kashmir, Pakistan-administered Kashmir, China-administered Kashmir. Even though each country believes that they should rightfully have the entirety of Kashmir, it is good to point out that originally, post independence, the entirety of Kashmir was a part of India.

In this narrative, the people of Kashmir are the ones being left out. The people are stuck in a perpetually negotiated state without a voice because apparently the stakes are too high for the opinion of the actual people living there.

Finally, on the 5th of August, 2019, India revoked Articles 370 and 35A which gave Kashmir special status, under dubious circumstances and made it a union territory (directly under the control of the Central Government, i.e. no provision for State Government). This not only took away the little autonomy that the people had but also the circumstances under which India pulled this off, put Kashmir under complete lock-down and surveillance which has not been significantly relaxed till date.

“In the mirror of that lake, what should I see . . . ? from its depths that stranger- like corpse stares I have often thrown a stone— I wished to smash that mirror ripples formed, spread, dissipated and at the furthest reaches of the silent lake the same corpse kept staring the corpse! as if it would steal my musings today . . . ! or fold the imprint of my future into the vastness of the lake!

Why should I pick up a stone and smash this mirror if the corpse is in the lake the lake too is in the corpse or both are locked in drops of water . . . !”

Corpse by Shabir Azar

Of Gardens and Graves Srinagar, Kashmir

Timeline of Events Kashmir - a princely state at the foothills of the Himalayas, under Monarchical Rule.

Independence of India, 1947. Status of Kashmir still undecided.

Pakistan launches guerilla onslaught to pressure monarch into handing over Kashmir to Pakistan.

India assists in driving out Pakistansponsored insurgency. UN invited to intervene.

UN insists on plebiscite/referendum to decide Kashmir’s fate.

Kashmir handed over to India on condition of Special Status without referendum.

Establishment of Articles 370 and 35A in the Constitution of India, giving Kashmir Special Status (a form of semiautonomy) in 1954.

The Articles 370 and 35A were drafted onto the Constitution of India giving special status to the state of Kashmir, due to the circumstances in which Kashmir joined India. These articles, combined gave Kashmir a special status to the rest of the states.

Article 370 conferred Kashmir with the power to have a separate constitution, a state flag and autonomy over the internal administration of the state. The article allowed for the establishment of the Constituent Assembly of Jammu and Kashmir, which was empowered to recommend the articles of the Indian constitution that should be applied to the state or to abrogate the Article 370 altogether.

Article 35A empowered the Jammu and Kashmir state’s legislature to define “permanent residents” of the state and provide special rights and privileges to those permanent residents. This was a type of special citizenship apart from being a citizen of India. This means that a Kashmiri citizen would still need an Indian passport and have the same rights and laws applied to them as the rest of the Indian citizens everywhere in India except in Kashmir.

In Kashmir, they would have special rights which other citizens of India would not have in Kashmir.

The articles together, defined that the Jammu and Kashmir state’s residents live under a separate set of laws, including those related to citizenship, ownership of property, and fundamental rights, as compared to residents of other Indian states. As a result of this provision, Indian citizens from other states could not purchase land or property in Jammu & Kashmir.

Rising tensions between India and Pakistan.

Continued state-sponsored insurgency in Kashmir, by Pakistan.

Indo-Pak War in 1965 and Kargil War in 1999 fought over Kashmir dispute.

Period of normalcy.

Increasing terrorist insurgency, since 2004.

Notable attacks in 2006, 2014, 2016 and 2018.

Pulwana Attack 2019, Kashmir with 46 army casualties.

Section 144 curfew imposed on Kashmir, August 2019.

August 5, 2019 Articles 370 and 35A of the Constitution of India revoked.

Kashmir on lockdown for over 3 months with no communication to outside world.

Articles 370 and 35A Of the Constitution of India

Establishment of the Productive Common(s)

Throughout history and especially now, Kashmir is in a state of constant precarity. The people of Kashmir are stuck in a state of perpetual negotiation between death and democracy, between the military and the militants, between India and Pakistan. This state of precariousness and negotiation manifests itself in the form of streets as theatres of violence and daily life as objects of surveillance, choreography and control.

The project is conceived and situates itself at the intersection of these events – to confront Kashmir’s state of perpetual conflict and helplessness. It is an attempt to address the circumstances and consequences of this continuous precariousness, negotiation and control, and subvert it through a productive landscape — towards the possibility of autonomy, emancipation and public proper within and against the State.

Of Gardens and Graves Srinagar, Kashmir

“The word Paradise, as the very image of a celestial garden, ultimately entered most European languages via Greek paradeisos.

However, its Persian origin is more of a political concept rather than its later (religious) derivations. Etymologically, the very root of the word can be traced in the Old Persian term pairi-daêzã. It is combined of two parts: ‘pairi’, which literally means ‘around’, and ‘daêzã’ as ‘pile or heap’. The second part, however, is the origin of the words dezh or ‘diza’, in modern Persian all stand for ‘fort’ or ‘enclosure’. ‘Daeza’ also has another root in the Indo-Iranian verb ‘dhaizh’ that originally means ‘to construct out of earth’, and the noun ‘dhaizha’, ‘that which has been built out of earth’.”

The project begins by investigating into the idea of paradise, diving into the cultural and political history of Kashmir as well as the concept of paradise. Rooted in the idea of paradise as a walled garden, the project seeks to create a state of exception within the enclosure of this radical wall disrupting the logic of the city.

A state of exception that is liberating – towards the possibility of subsistence and a form of autonomy and emancipation within the existing condition. It is an attempt to reclaim the streets as theatres of violence and instruments of control, surveillance and choreography. The wall can be seen as a radical embodiment of the politics behind the Mughal epithet for Kashmir – “Paradise on Earth”.

(Hamed Khosravi, Paradise)

The Walled Paradise Reclaiming the Streets as Theatres of Violence

Dhajji-Dewari Timber frame with infill masonry construction.

It is a timber frame into which one layer of masonry is tightly packed to form a wall, resulting in a continuous wall membrane of wood and masonry. The term is derived from a Persian word meaning “patchwork quilt wall�. The frame of each wall consists not only of vertical studs, but also often of cross-members that subdivide the masonry infill into smaller panels, impart strength and prevent the masonry from collapsing out of the frame.

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1. Primary Timber Structure

2. Pad Foundation

3. Secondary Timber Bracing

Learning from Kashmir Traditional Building Systems

4. Masonry Infill

Taq Construction Timber-laced masonry bearing wall construction.

It is a composite system of building construction with a modular layout of load-bearing masonry piers and window bays tied together with ladder-like constructions of horizontal timbers embedded in the masonry walls at each floor level and window lintel level. These horizontal timbers tie the masonry in the walls together, thus confining the brick mud or rubble stone of the wall by resisting the propagation of cracks.

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1. Primary Timber Structure

2. Space for Masonry Bearing Wall

3. Horizontal Timber Ladder Structure

Learning from Kashmir Traditional Building Systems

4. Elevated Stone Base

Trestle Bridge Construction An ingenious method of construction devised by the boatmakers of Kashmir for building bridges. Old boats filled with stones were sunk at the sites chosen for pier foundation. Piers were driven and more boats sunk. When a height above the low-water level was reached wooden trestles of deodar were constructed by placing roughhewn logs at right angles. As the structure approached the requisite elevation, the deodar logs were cantilevered. This reduced the span, and huge trees were made to serve as girders to support the roadway. The foundations of loose stones and wooden piles have been protected on the up-stream by planking, and a rough but effective cut-water made. The secret of the stability of these old bridges may be perhaps attributed to the skeleton piers offering little or no resistance to the large volumes of water brought down during flood-time.

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1. Horizontal Beams for Bridge Decking

2. Timber Trestle Structure

3. Old Boats filled with Stone

Learning from Kashmir Traditional Building Systems

4. Wooden Pier Foundation

Diving into the history, traditions and culture of Kashmir allows one to confront the Mughal painting. More than an artistic device, the Mughal painting is considered and conceived of as an important historical document. They were conceptualised as a medium of recording a history of the Mughal empire wherein the present as a unit of time came to be constituted through the fruition of a vision projected onto the future.

Utopia is no longer conceived as an unattainable projection onto the future but is interwoven with the present. A vision located in the present which seemed to extend infinitely – juxtaposing alternative time-frames to represent a temporal dysfunction. Time, here is constructed not as a structured linear progression but one without a beginning and an end.

“The multi-layered complexity of a society like that of North India in the 16th Century meant that a plurality of perceptions and contesting cultural traditions would have been brought to bear upon a model of an ideal realm as expounded in certain Mughal histories and displayed through visual representation.”

(Monica Juneja, On the Margins of Utopia) The medium of the painting is thus taken as an embodiment for this project – a medium to represent the construction of time.

The production of architecture occurs through the production of images as a process. The significance and complexity of the Mughal painting is brought to the forefront in the following body of work, where the medium is explored not only as a mode of communication within the reality of the project but also as an embodiment of the project.

On the Margins of Utopia The Taswir as an Ideological Plane

Chapter 2, Rituals and Walls Towards an Insurgent Architecture

Nomos, and the initial development of the project with the production of image as a process and apparatus for incubation.

Questioning the way the people of Kashmir produce and reproduce themselves in order to create an apparatus for emancipation and sustenance within and against the State.

Carl Schmitt postulated the concept of nomos as the relationship between the concreteness of the ground and the construction of a political order.

Nomos or the architecture of the territory is symbolic, ritual, juridical, infrastructural and productive.

Inverting the idea of Piranesi’s Carceri d’invenzione or Imaginary Prisons into an apparatus for rituals and complex circulatory devices – towards the idea of an insurgent ritualistic architecture.

The Depletion of Wetlands

Wetlands are an integral part of Srinagar as they not only act as natural absorbers of flood water but also provide means of livelihood to a number of communities. The naturally formed rich wetlands of the city have gradually depleted due to human interference, lack of maintenance and real estate development, especially for tourism. These activities have encroached into wetland areas and concretized them, leading to its depletion and ultimately not only resulting in increased flood risk but also in the loss of livelihood for a number of poor communities. The lakes, of which these wetlands were part of, also were in dire conditions due to the lack of maintenance and damaging activities.

Being the pride of Kashmir, the depletion of the lakes were taken into notice by the people of the city and higher government officials. But the resulting actions taken completely misused the situation at hand selfish reasons. Environmental State-Making is a political strategy used by States in conflicted areas to assert governance through the entry point of environmental conservation. As the environment is often perceived as an apolitical sphere, it allows governments to enter a conflicted region with conservation as an excuse to ultimately lay down its bureaucratic structure and assert governance over time.

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The same thing happened in Kashmir. The State used the opportunity of people giving importance to the need for the conservation of the lakes to enter the conflicted region and assert governance. But not only did the government fail to deliver the task at hand, it also made ill-informed political decisions. The most important one being, the driving out of the Hajji community out of the lakes and wetlands, suspecting them as the real culprits for its over exploitation and depletion. The Hajji community instead were the only people who knew best how to maintain and preserve the lakes and the wetlands because their livelihood depended on it.

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1. Map showing the distribution of wetland areas in Srinagar, Kashmir 50 years ago.

2. Map showing the current depleted condition of wetland areas in Srinagar, Kashmir.

Anticipating the Return of the Hanjis Reclaiming the Wetlands

Network of Underground Water Channels

Bamboo Seedbank

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nne

Cha ing p o l S ake to L Well

Wetland Tree/ Plant Planting Area

The qanat is usually present in hot arid climates with a shortage of water as it is not only capable of transporting water over a long distance, it also prevents the water from evaporating. This idea of underground channels for the transportation of water is re-appropriated in the wetland planter strategy.

Here, an underground network of water channels is created, connecting the wells of the pockets of wetland within the planters to the lake and to each other. The connections made between the deep wells and the lake create an equilibrium water level. In case of flooding, the ancillary network of channels act as a secondary storage for excess water underground. The wetlands also act as natural absorbers of flood water, thus the proliferation of wetlands along with the underground channels create an efficient flood mitigation strategy.=

Qanat Irrigation A traditional form of water supply found in parts of India with its origins in Persia, the qanat is a gently sloping underground channel to transport water from an aquifer or water well to surface for irrigation and drinking, acting as an underground aqueduct. It is an old system of water supply from a deep well with a series of vertical access shafts, with the network of underground channels preventing water from evaporating as with open wells and reservoirs.

Re-appropriating the Qanat Wetland Planter

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The wetland planter is designed to be a pocket of wetland strategically placed to allow for the gradual proliferation of wetlands. It holds strategically planted species within it and has a perimeter lined with bamboo seedbanks.

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Each bamboo seedbank is at a particular height depending on the species of seed meant to be kept inside for its future propagation. The height is determined by the growth rate of the tree/plant and the estimated rise in water level of its location. This means that the longer it takes for a tree/plant to grow, the taller the seedbank is. This is to maintain an equilibrium in the propagation as well as supply/demand of particular species.

As the water level rises to a specific height, it floods the open-mouth seedbank(s) at a lower height, thus allowing the seeds to flow out and propagate through the flow of the water. This eventually allows for the proliferation of wetland species over a large area, giving rise to naturally formed pockets of wetlands.

Wetland Planter Proliferation of the Wetlands

Algae-Bacteria Symbiosis

The project aims to employ the natural processes of a wetland aquaculture ecosystem to treat sewage, using the East Kolkata Wetlands as a case study. The idea behind the Wetland Sewage Treatment System is different from that of constructed wetlands which employ heavy machinery for treatment. This is a unique process that employs a network of interconnected ponds to develop a sensitive ecosystem that incorporates productive processes.

Fish as Ecological Manipulator

Following a specific traditional preparation of the pond, sewage is allowed to enter which goes through photosynthesis to generate algae. This is the primary step in the filtration process as it effectively turns wastewater from a bacterial stage to an algal stage. The water is then mixed with a traditional bamboo sieve that allows the solid waste to gradually get deposited in the designated channel. Water Hyacinths are then introduced into the pond for bank protection which generates a system of aquaculture. Within this band of water hyacinths, other wetland plants can be cultivated, the roots of hyacinths are excellent in absorbing solid waste and also act as fish feed.

These natural processes lead to the filtration of sewage while producing fish. The filtered wastewater can then be used for farming/cultivation/gardening and the solid waste deposits can be used as fertilisers.

Protection of Pond Banks

3-4m Wide Water Hyacinth Lace Sewage Input - Protects embankment from waves by acting as natural buffer.

- Provides shelter from Sunlight during summer.

- Rhyzome network of roots absorb solid waste from sewage.

Bamboo Poles are fixed at a distance of 4m from the pond bank, tied to each other with Galvanised Iron wires.

A 3-4m wide band of Water Hyacinth is placed between the bank and the wire.

This provides a unique opportunity for aquaculture.

The regular mixing of wastewater in the pond requires drainage of the excess water. This excess water is used for irrigation in neighbouring agricultural fields.

Water Hyacinth roots act as food for fish

4. Solid waste deposition in channel

Galvanised Iron Wire tied to Bamboo Poles

Water Cycle Natural Wetland Sewage Treatment System

Ecological Processes in the Wetland Filtration System

Photosynthesis

Water Hyacinth Band

Bamboo Pole Barrier

Solid Waste Deposit

Non-potable Filtered Water as a By-product

Algae-Bacteria Symbiosis

Sewage Production

Managing Wastewater Flow

Consumers

Garbage Production

within Common(s)

Pond Bed Preparation

Fingerlings transferred to Harvesting Pond

Fish Sale in Marketplace

Wastewater Mixing

Bacteria-Algae Symbiosis

Introduction of Eggs in Nursery Pond

Drainingout Treated Wastewater

Spawns into Fingerlings in Stocking Pond Pond Preparation

Eggs into Spawns in Rearing Pond

Solid Waste

Vegetable Farming

Paddy Cultivation

Wetland Sewage Treatment System Wastewater Treatment as a Productive Process

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The streets of Kashmir are theatres of violence, arguably the most militarised zone in the world.

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Public spaces are instruments of control used to choreograph the multitude.

Public spaces are also producers of collective voices, dissent, initiative and emancipation.

The Project of the Void manifests between this paradox; Between control and autonomy.

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The political device of the void is a public square liberated from the streets.

It is the erasure of architecture - pure programme, no form - a grid of services.

The square does not have a designated function but is a container of programmes.

It introduces the possibility of autonomy and common(s) production.

Project of the Void Political Device: Between Control and Autonomy

Carl Schmitt postulated the concept of nomos as the relationship between the concreteness of the ground and the construction of a political order.

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Nomos or the architecture of the territory is symbolic, ritual, juridical, infrastructural and productive.

Nomos is used here as an instrument towards an insurgent architecture.

The project aims to question the ways in which the people of Kashmir produce and reproduce themselves in order to create an apparatus of emancipation within and against the State.

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Piranesi’s Carceri d’invenzione or Imaginary Prisons etchings are used as a precedent to invert the idea of prison into an architecture of rituals towards an insurgent architecture.

The project of the void aims to create a productive landscape for the reclamation of the wetlands - against environmental state-making - and the streets - against streets as theatres of violence through common(s) production.

Rituals and Walls Nomos and the Idea of an Insurgent Architecture

Deeply ingrained in the culture and tradition of Kashmir is the craft of weaving carpets. More than a domestic object of comfort and decoration, the carpet is in fact an important space for representation and political reading. The carpet also embodies within it the political form of the boundary and its material reality carries with it a reading of the craft, resources, production and networks of societal and cultural history rooted in the Silk Route.

Michel Foucault introduces the idea of the carpet as a Heterotopia – a small parcel of a world that can move across space, in turn creating its own space that can be inhabited.

The medium of the carpet is thus explored here as a political form – reading the carpet as a manifesto.

The idea of the project – a growing, incremental landscape of punctuating infrastructure – can exist in its ideal state within the form of the carpet, in turn making it habitable in an alternative reality. The form of the carpet thus becomes more than a medium of representation for the project.

Carpet as a Heterotopia

Proposed Site Plan

Punctuating Diversities The Political Form of the Carpet as a Manifesto

Chapter 3, Notes on Radical Commoning Towards an Alternative Mode of Production

The conceptualisation of a productive common(s) as a state of exception and possibility of emancipation.

“Marx sees social revolutions - that is, the growth of alternative modes of production - as the material condition for any political revolution. A radical transformation of our world implies that people come together in communities that develop these alternatives to the logic of capitalism, multiply them and interconnect them: I understand commons to be such alternatives. [...] commons are not just resources held in common, or commonwealth, a community of comoners, and the ongoing interactions, places of decision making and communal labour process that together are called commoning. Like any social systems, they are sites of powers, [...] it is these social powers and social forces that, if they develop and are oriented towards expansion and the creation of greater spheres of commons ecologies, could represent a meaningful challenge to capitalist processes and statists’ neoliberal policies.�

(De Angelis, Omnia Sunt Communia, p.11-12)

Analogous Map Towards a Productive Landscape

Design Principles

Political economist Elinor Ostrom, who received the Nobel Memorial Prize in 2009 for her work on the economic governance of commons, is truly a pioneer in the subject of commoning. Ostrom, in her work, has outlined a set of generalised design principles that a commons regime should have in order not to fail. The principles will serve as the overarching guiding principles governing the design and conceptualisation of the productive common(s) in its structure, framework, organisation, functioning and governance.

The design principles are as follows:

Boundaries are clearly defined (effective exclusion of external un-entitled parties).

Rules regarding the appropriation and provision of common resources are adapted to local conditions.

Collective-choice arrangements allow most resource appropriators to participate in the decision-making process.

Effective monitoring is carried out by monitors who are part of or accountable to the appropriators.

Pillars There is a scale of graduated sanctions for resource appropriators who violate community rules.

Political economist Massimo De Angelis outlines the 3 basic constituent elements that a commons system needs at a general organisational level as: Mechanisms of conflict resolution are cheap and easy to access.

“Pooled material/immaterial resources or commonwealth; a community of commoners, that is, subjects willing to share, pool, claim, commonwealth;

The self-determination of the community is recognised by higher-level authorities.

commoning, or doing in common, that is a specific multifaceted social labour (activity, praxis), through which commonwealth and the community of commoners are (re)produced together with the (re)production of stuff, social relations, affects, decisions, cultures.�

In the case of larger common-pool resources, organisation takes the form of multiple layers of nested enterprises, with small local CPRs (Common-Pool Resources) at the base level.

(Massimo De Angelis, Omnia Sunt Communia, p.119)

(Ostrom, 1990)

Conceptualising the Productive Common(s) Towards a Circular Economy

“Commoning is the form of social doing (social labour) occurring within the domain of the commons, and thus is characterised by modes of production, distribution, and governance of the commons that are participatory and nonhierarchical, motivated by the values of the common(s) (re)production, of the (re)production of commoners’ commonwealth and of the affective, material, immaterial and cultural (re)production of the commoners and their relations.”

(Massimo De Angelis, Omnia Sunt Communia, p.121)

State Organisation/ External Party Organisation

Export/Import

Collective DecisionMaking Framework

duc tive Bo Com und m ary on(s )

Resource Use/Supply Monitor

Boundary Commoning

External Exchange/ Interaction Liaison

Pro

Solutions-Based Consensus Commonwealth/ Common Resource Pool Local Common Pool Resource Unit Liaison

Local Common Pool Resource

Material Resource Production Unit

Immaterial Resource Production Unit

Self-Organised Labour-Force

Self-Organised Sub Unit

Skilled Social Labour Social Labour

Apprentice

“There are two main moments that commoning takes on. One is the plural activity of doing, understood simply generally as social labour taking the form of commoning.

The other is the decision-making process, the definition of rules for the collective governance of the commons, another form of doing in the form of self-reflective, collective orienting of the commons towards the next step, the next event, a plan, a collective problematisation of an issue faced by some commoners, or embedded in the nature of the commonwealth, or a particular event, shock, opportunity emerging in the commons environment. Commoning is therefore the plural social doing that can reproduce all the aspects of life in common, the participatory social force to mobilise for a change in the mode of production.”

(Massimo De Angelis, Omnia Sunt Communia, p.123)

A Non-Hierarchical Collective Governance Pillars and Design Principles

The formation of the commons along with the construction of a politics of the common demands the systematic widespread introduction of institutional self-government.

The formation and subsequent institutionalisation of the productive common(s) at the scale of the Kashmiri society is only possible when property rights is subordinated to common use rights, which necessarily means that property loses its absolute character. The re-organisation of the economic sphere as a self-governing commons is of utmost importance for the reproduction of commons, so as to allow for public deliberation, such that economic sphere is not controlled by the interests of a specific socio-professional class (as is the case with capitalist society). Such a form of self-governance presupposes that the governmental organs of each productive unit are not merely open to users and members, but are actually governed by the collective co-producers of the service or good themselves.

As such because such a radical revolution is not possible overnight and under direct State control, a negotiation is required with the existing structures. Because the concept of private property cannot be abolished with immediate effect in a place like Kashmir, a stakeholder framework needs to be established within the commons. This system is one of the foundations towards the establishment of the commons and postulates:

- The moment an individual becomes a member of the commons, she/he necessarily becomes a permanent member.

- Members of the commons do not have personal assets and properties, only common use rights.

- Commons use rights is enforced by the transfer of all personal property to a commons property (as a negotiation between property rights and common use rights because within the current socio-economic and political situation it is not possible to imagine the complete abolishment of the concept of property).

- The Productive Common(s) Cooperative will privately own all property within its jurisdiction but each member of the cooperative will be an equal stakeholder of the entirety of the privately owned assets. Each member will have an equal share and right over the entirety of the commons properties.

Governing the Common(s) Towards a Circular Economy

Common Pool Resources (CPR) Fishing Grounds, Forests, Agricultural Land, Water, Money

Establishment of co-produced evolving common use rights and self-governing system in liaison with Srinagar Municipal Corporation and respective State Department (for eg: Jammu & Kashmir State Forestry Department).

Self-governing system eases pressure of government resources for the maintenance and regulation of CPRs.

F1

F2

F3

F4

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B

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D

Let us consider F1, F2, F3 and F4 to be respective resource extraction points (here, fishing locations but can be imagined to be timber extraction points, agricultural plot, etc.) and A,B,C,D are resource extraction units (fishermen, lumberjack, farmer, etc.) including non-members of the commons.

No single extraction unit will have endless control over a particular extraction point.

According to a predetermined scheduled, the maintenance, extraction, and regulation of each extraction point will change hands. For example, in the case of fishing grounds, a predefined list of extraction points is established beforehand and each fisherman is allocated a point. Every day each fisherman moves to the next location on the east facilitating a rotational system, thus providing each fisherman with equal opportunity at every location irrespective of the location being of high or low yield.

Rotational Management System Quasi Voluntary Compliance

Common Pool Resource (CPR) Rotational Management System as an example of a self-governing structure

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Ex ce nit r u U

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Co-production of rules through consensus based decision-making. Rules subject to change and evolution.

Self-Organised Resource Extraction Unit

ship

tion Interrela + Liaison

Self-Organised Resource Extraction Unit

Self-Organised Resource Extraction Unit

Non-member of Common(s)

Non-member of Common(s) Self-Organised Resource Extraction Unit

Material Resource Production Unit

To Site In cases of building construction materials

Immaterial Resource Production Unit

Self-Governing Systems Quasi Voluntary Compliance

Self-Governing Structure Commons Use Rights Quasi-Voluntary Compliance + Consensus based Conflict Resolution

Productive Common(s) Collective

- Donations - NGO Affiliation - Export Income - Common(s) Community Contribution

Planning Permission Process for Srinagar Municipal Area “Every person intending to undertake or carry out the development of any site in any Municipal area of Srinagar or erect or re-erect any building or make a extend any evacuation or lay out any means of access to a road in such area or materially alter a building or conduct repairs to any building shall give notice of intention in writing in the prescribed format/from and paying Rs. 300 for registration fee. The said application shall be supported with the following documents:1. Twelve (12) Copies each of building/site plans drawn and signed by Architect registered with Counsel of Architect or by Drafts-man registered with the authority constituted for Srinagar under J&K Control Building Operations Act, 1988, one copy of such plan must be dully endorsed by the Assistant Commissioner, Nazool and or A.C. Revenue and custodian in case of evacuee immovable property.

2. The Verification of land by Assistant Commissioner, Nazool in case of State land/Assistant Commissioner Revenue in other cases with following latest revenue documents: Shajra-Khasra Intikhabi-Dirdawari Intikhabi-Jamabandi Sale deed/gift deed 3. No objection certificate of Power Development Department, Urban Environmental Engineer Department, Public Health Engineering Department and Lakes and Water Ways Department, Srinagar Development Authority, etc.(depends upon case to case) The Corporation keeping in view the grievances by the public through press and other sources simplified the process of registering, processing and issuing the building permissions. Accordingly, if No Objection is not received with the stipulated period the permission is placed before the Building Permission Controlling Authority for sanction at the risk and responsibility of the concerned department.

This steps has been appreciated by the public in general.

For the first time, the department has proposed obtaining of “Completion Certificate” from the concerned Officers and the public has been notified through press about the submission of completion certificates. This has been done to avoid illegal constructions and violation of sanctioned and approved plan. Similarly, the Public Health Engineering Department and Power Development have been asked not give any water connection/electric connection before completion certificate from Corporation is issued.”

(From Srinagar Municipal Corporation Website: https://www.smcsite.org/index.php?link=Building%20 Permission Accessed: 04 April, 2020; 9:50 am, BST)

Payment of lease through Common Pool Resource Fund

Planning submission to Srinagar Municipal Corporation by Productive Common(s) Collective

- Temporary Accommodation for social labour force - Evening Assembly for local community - Communal Cooking - Partial use by intended production unit

Approval of government land on lease for productive infrastructure development to benefit local community, in this case common(s).

Planning Approval

Determination of required quantity of materials by Immaterial Resource Unit QS

Information passed on to Immaterial Resource Unit Liaison

Liaison with Common Resource Pool Use/Supply Monitor

Procurement Stage

Information passed on to Material Resource Unit Liaison

Material Procurement/Production

On-Site delivery of materials

Self-Organised Labour Force Unit assigned through collective consensus. (Salient criteria include location, size of project in comparison to labour force, availability of required skills within labour force)

Building Construction begins on site

Types of Uses

Lobby with Jammu and Kashmir (State) Housing and Urban Development Department (JKHUDD) for the acquiring of government (public) land on lease.

Construction Stage

Alternative use of building during construction

Building Completion

Building use begins

Building Maintenance

Project Delivery Framework Planning Strategy and Delivery Sequence

Maintenance Stage

Delivery Unloading Point

1 Execution of Sub-surface Exploration Programme following the obtaining of the site geology and desk study of site.

Site Access Perimeter

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Site bore-hole for sampling and testing Site

Programme comprises: - Exploration of foundational behaviour of buildings around the site.

- Soil sampling using ThinWalled Sampler (Fig. A).

- Vane Sheer Testing (Fig B.).

Fig. A

Programme executed by: Road Research and Material Testing Laboratory, Srinagar.

Design Inspection and Quality Control Department (DIQCD) Office of the Chief Engineer Government of Jammu and Kashmir

Fig. B

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Manual Auger for driven timber pile foundation, post assessment of site ground conditions and choosing the appropriate foundation type.

On-Site Delivery of Materials.

Site access perimeter fencing in place. Fencing comprises bamboo poles with stretched tarpaulin sheet in between and galvanised corrugated iron sheets.

Direct access to main road allows for easier delivery of materials.

Designated loading bay allows for unloading and further moving of materials to site without the interruption of traffic.

When required, temporary parking available in parking spaces of repair garages around site.

On-site assembly of timber tripod pulley system for manual boring.

Building foundation process begins.

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On-Site assembly of required construction infrastructure:

Construction begins on site with simultaneous alternative use of construction site as temporary accommodation for Self-Organised Labour Force Unit.

- Timber Crane - Bamboo Scaffolding - Temporary Accommodation

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Alternative use of construction site as stage for local common(s) community participation.

Introduction of daily communal cooking and assembly for the duration of construction to broaden social stimulus of construction as well as productive alternate use of building.

Towards the completion of construction.

Partial use of building as its intended programme of production begins before completion of construction.

Chapter 4, The Insurgents A Construction of Time

The construction of an identity – a new grammar for the city – and the production of architecture through the production of images.

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The Productive Common(s) is a growing, incremental landscape with a time sequence determined by the users, ideally one without an end. ii

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The urban fabric of Srinagar, Kashmir is punctuated with this productive infrastructure; An interconnected landscape network of production evolving with time.

Perpetually under construction and a ruin at the same time.

The buildings are imagined as characters of a narrative; Characters with personalities that develop over time. iv

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Kashmir has a deep tradition of storytelling, the storyteller reciting folk tales passed down.

The landscape of Kashmir is dotted with stories of streets, trees, lakes and shrines that exist; Real places animated with stories, turning them into landmarks and imbibing them with an emotion.

The narrative of each building-character is rooted in the struggle of the people of Kashmir.

They construct an identity of a people that has forgotten its meaning; A people living in identity crisis, stuck between a war of two sides.

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The Horticulturist

There was once a craftsman who could carve roses out of wood. Each rose he would carve would be unique, as delicate as a real rose but with the fragrance of walnut.

The craftsman at work was a magnificent sight to behold, carving hard wood as if something soft and sublime.

People from lands far and wide would come to see the curious man at work and possibly attain one of his roses.

It was believed that his lineage could be traced to the panjrakari carvers of the extraordinary Shah e Hamdan mosque. But he was a lonely man, living alone having lost everyone in his family. The story follows that his most beloved mother loved roses and had the fragrance of a rose. Ever since she past away, the craftsman, overwhelmed with grief promised to only carve roses for the rest of his life to keep the memory of his mother alive.

One day, as he was passing by downtown he caught a glimpse of the exuberant colours of the gardener’s garden. It was as if he was paralysed by the sight of the garden. The colours reminded him of the colourful nature of his mother, as he sat down in front of the garden, crying. Seeing this, the gardener quickly went up to the craftsman in an attempt to console him and offered him a red rose. The craftsman was taken over by emotion.

He saw the garden as an embodiment of his mother’s memory.

This is the story of how the craftsman started on his never-ending quest of creating a wooden reflection of the gardener’s garden. As the garden grew, so would its wooden reflection.

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The Craftsman

The gardener used to work in the famous tulip gardens, growing tulips of all the different colours known to the world. But soon, the visitors became few and the tulips became sad, slowly losing their colour. He had always dreamt of his own chahar-bagh - fascinated by the exquisite colours and the fantastical representations of the majestic Mughal garden. He had practically grown up in the tulip gardens, so he knew what it was like. One day, tired, sad and frustrated by the dire conditions of the city, he decided to finally leave the tulip gardens and create his own garden. Amidst the violent insurgency and the daily twenty-twenty clashes in downtown, he planted the first tulip in one of the busiest parts of downtown, near a small lake. As time went by, his garden grew and people flocked to experience the most colourful part of this grey city. Whenever the gardener saw a twenty-twenty player passing by, he would hand them a flower from his garden.

This was his protest, his insurgency.

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The Gardener

The Gardener is conceptualised as a machine to not only house the gardener and an interior garden but also to facilitate gardening around it, proliferate and maintain the wetlands, and reintroduce floating gardens on the lake.

The building serves as a device and an apparatus for the facilitation of the Common(s) Economic circuit through its construction and maintenance. Thus, it is strategically conceptualised to act as an enabler through its existence.

The Water Tower is conceptualised as both an independent and a parasitic typology, in the sense that even though it is a part of the Gardener here, it can exist and function independently. A hybrid typology, its job is to harvest rainwater.

Each fragment of this incremental landscape is imagined as a negotiation between a machine expressing its own autonomous existence and a developing character with its own narrative. Each machine is born out of the intersection of its functioning, the pragmatics of its making and the allegorical connotations of its identity and narrative - towards an analogous architecture expressing the idea of harmony negatively by embodying the contradictions, pure and compromised, in its innermost structure (Adorno). The functioning of each machine allows the architecture to be read as a text, to be interpreted by the reader. e nt for th i o p g n i start hers. forms a oning of the ot cts are t n e m g i e t h proje “Each s ding and func in whic eskind (on his e n l a c t y s c r - Lib unde orm a r they f nd overcome.� . e h t e g o a T le) plicated enice Bienna x e , n e se he V es for t machin

Building as a Machine The Gardener

The Gardener

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The Water Tower

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The construction, maintenance and possible evolution of the infrastructure is meant to be the driving force behind the functioning of the productive common(s) and its circular economy, therefore, each element or node of this productive landscape is conceptualised to facilitate as much possible, the productive network. The Gardener is no different. The conceptualisation of this spatial typology has taken place at the intersection of the ideas of construction, maintenance and expansion, such that these processes facilitate a productive network. The Gardener, thus becomes an incubator of these processes, in the common(s) network – an apparatus for facilitating local economy.

Facilitating Local Economy Productive Common(s) Network

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1. Local Timber Production.

Kashmir has a range of locally available timber for construction, as discussed earlier.

Unfortunately, over the last few decades, the use of locally available timber has increasingly reduced and the timber economy of Kashmir fallen. The low availability of local timber in the market has helped in pushing the prices up, making it impossible for the local people to utilise it and has opened the doors for cheaper foreign timber. The continual use of local timber by this building will allow for a circular timber economy within the common(s) framework.

2. Traditional Carpet Weaving.

Carpet weaving by hand is a deep rooted tradition of Kashmir, passed on from generations. Kashmiri families have the skill of this art as their only form of inheritance which they pass on, making them heavily dependant on the demand for these expensive hand-made carpets which can take up to a year to make a 4ft x 6ft carpet. As the economy of Kashmir has been falling drastically over the years due to its volatile socio-political condition, the local demand for these carpets have drastically reduced because most people can’t afford it anymore, making this economy almost completely reliant on foreign export. The idea here is to use these carpets as a building material. Carpets are used in this building as a secondary form of curtain insulation to cope with the drastic daily temperature variations.

3. Panjrakari or the craft of wooden lattice-work.

Panjrakari is the traditional Kashmiri craft of intricate wood-carving to make beautiful lattices. These are mostly used in buildings as a shading system (alternative for louvres) or inside as privacy barriers or spatial dividers. This is also a deep-rooted tradition, utilising the hardwood walnut, which has deteriorated due to the economy. The use of this craft across the building and its need for maintenance aims to facilitate this local tradition.

5. Wagu or traditional bamboo/reed mat weaving.

This is a form of weaving where bamboo/reed is used to create floor mats. These mats have often been used to serve as building insulation in small mud houses. This traditional practice which has deteriorated, is used a building material at a much larger scale. The wagu provides exterior insulation to the rammed earth construction of the heating system. Since rammed earth erodes in wet climates, the wagu aims to protect the exterior from rain.

6. Local Clay-Works.

Traditionally water was stored in the household in earthen clay pots to keep the water cool especially in warmer climates. Clay pots are also used in the heavily used kangri. The kangri is a locally used portable heater comprising a clay pot to hold hot charcoal placed in a basket woven out of bamboo.

These ideas are used at a larger scale in the water tower, where the main water storage element is a large clay pot. The heating system also acts as a semi-kiln which allows for smaller clay works to take place.

4. Floating Gardens.

Kashmir has a unique community of boatmen who live on its many lakes and wetlands, called the hajji community. This is a rather insular community of master boatmen whose entire livelihood depends on the lakes and wetlands Kashmir.

Their practices involve fishing, gardening and boat-making which facilitate a micro-economy. The floating gardens are one of their such practices, where vegetable cultivation takes place. These vegetables were in turn sold in floating gardens - essentially a vegetable market formed on a lake through the conglomeration of hundreds of boats carrying vegetables.

The proximity of the gardener to the wetlands as well as its programme aims to facilitate this micro-economy in order to restore the wetlands and the lakes.

Facilitating Local Economy Productive Common(s) Network

Bamboo Deodar

Flower Export

Poplar Local Timbers

Himalayan Blue Pine

The Horticulturist

Walnut Timber Procurement & Resourcing

Timber Production

Floating Market

Co n Ma stru c i Re nten tion/ qui anc rem e ent

The Gardener Ex

Existing Master Craftsman

Co Ca nstru rpe t as ction a B Req uild uire ing me Ma nt ter ial

Joiner

New Recruitment

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ns

Fishery

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Pr

od

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Floating Gardens Clay Works

Carpet Weaving

Training

Knowledge Accumulation from local Hajji Community

Apprenticeship

Wagu Existing

Area for possible skill training

Weavers Bamboo/Reed Weaving Jaipur Rug Foundation (NGO) Local Handicrafts Industry

Brick Kilns Large Scale Pottery Silt Bricks

Testing Dreadging Infrastructure

Maintenance of Water Bodies

The Horticulturist

The Gardener

Timber Production

Boat-maker Fishermen

Carpenter

Boat-maker

Requirement Boats and Boatmen

Wetland Planters

Bamboo

Proliferation of Wetlands Flood Mitigation

Production Chain and Economic Network Facilitated by the Gardener

The idea of a circular economy, reinforced with regionalism, can be seen as an oppositional apparatus State-Capitalist systems in addition to being a radical alternative. Oppositional because the systems of commoning that give rise to the possibility of a circular economy have the potential to destabilise the status quo. This is precisely its strength.

Circular economy infiltrating State-Capitalist imaginaries through systems of commoning, can be imagined as islands or pockets of common(s) which act as states of exception within the continuous landscape of Capitalist Economy. Within the context of the project, Kashmir becomes one such island through its struggles of liberation and self-determination against State control.

The idea of maintenance is introduced here as a practice which tends to destabilise and question profit-making systems as well as the notion of profit, in turn becoming a facilitator for the circular economy. The common(s) network comprising locally available CPRs(Common Pool Resources) is activated by the continuous maintenance of built infrastructure. The constant evolution of the Common(s) built apparatus through the acts of construction, maintenance and expansion-modification, here used interchangeably, facilitate the circular economy through the continuous supply-demand chain of local skills and resources.

The built apparatus of the common(s) therefore, embodies a liminal quality as such, perpetually oscillating between being under construction and a ruin – a state of ruin under construction.

Text II: Notes on the Idea of Maintenance as a Facilitator – Between Construction and Ruin

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The Gardener

Maintenance Strategy

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Maintenance Walkway

Designing for Maintenance Towards a Circular Economy

Roof Hatch System 1

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Extendable Horizontal Bamboo Maintenance Ladder with Woven Bamboo-Reed Safety Infill

Maintenance Walkway

Figures 1-2 illustrate the strategy for access and maintenance to the roof.

The roof-structure segment vertically above the maintenance ladder, occupying the same structural bay is independent from the rest of the roof build-up. The independent segment is fitted with a hinge-system allowing it to act like a roof hatch - for maintenance access to the roof.

Figure 3 illustrates the use of the built-in maintenance walkway for the repair and maintenance of the Carpet-Curtain System as well as the windows at that level. The walkway is supported by the truss system and careful consideration has been taken for the design of the truss to allow for sufficient head-height clearance.

Figure 4 illustrates the use of an extendable horizontal bamboo maintenance ladder with woven bambooreed safety infill. The ladder is designed such that it can slot in to the gaps of the maintenance walkway’s timber decking. The lightweight ladder can be easily carried up to the walkway or passed on and allows for further access to the truss system beyond the reach of the maintenance walkway. It can be used to repair/replace damaged segments of the structure or maintain the curtain system.

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The Gardener

Maintenance Strategy

Maintenance Walkway 5

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Structural Support as Maintenance Ladder

Maintenance Walkway

Designing for Maintenance Towards a Circular Economy

Figure 5 illustrates the use of the built-in maintenance walkway of the roof truss system. The roof envelope building is divided into 4-segments, each attached with a hinge system. This allows for the entire roof envelope to open up in order to accommodate maintenance, since the low height of the truss is unable to accommodate the required head-height clearance within it. The walkway is accessed through the maintenance shaft, following which the roof segment closest to the shaft is lifted up with the help of the hinge allowing the access. The timber-decked walkway is built into and supported by the truss system.

Roof Hatch System

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Maintenance Walkway

Disassembly of Timber Support System

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Pulley System

Moving the ladderstructure for clearance

Figures 6-8 illustrate the strategy for the repair and replacement of the clay water storage system of the water tower. The clay water tank has a 2-fold support system, designed such that each support system has the capacity to independently support the water tank. The first is a timber structure supporting the tank from the bottom. The second is a suspended support structure. This 2-fold system is in place as they much be operated in conjunction with one another to allow for the replacement of the tank. The timber structure, first has a ladder-like configuration for its alternative use as a maintenance ladder to access the tank for repair/maintenance purposes. Second, can be disassembled easily, such that the ladder-like component can be moved away and rested on the primary structure of the tower to be used as a ladder. The disassembly is required for the safe lowering of the tank using the pulleys of the suspension system. The suspension system utilises the clay tank’s woven bamboo-reed external insulation in order to tie the basket-like structure of the insulation to the suspension system. The pulleys of the system are then used for the vertical movement of the tank.

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The Water Tower

The painting becomes a manual to be interpreted as text - between text and object - standing on the margins of utopia. Utopia is no longer conceived as an unattainable projection onto the future but is interwoven with the present. Time is constructed not as a structured linear progression but one without a beginning and an end.

Utopia, here, is conceived of as an emancipatory device embedded within the painting-manual apparatus, to be interpreted and translated into a built reality. The painting is finally imagined as an incubator where social, cultural and political processes intersect with the role of the designer, the storyteller and the creator of relationships to give rise to a productive framework.

The ideas, conceptions and designs of each spatial typology is delivered through the medium of the painting, to be interpreted and translated into a building.

A building thus represented in the medium can have a countless number of manifestations depending on the interpretation.

Text III: Architecture as Text – the painting as a manual

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The Gardener

He lived on the banks of the Dal, collecting bamboo for his fishing.

They called it Shadow Fishing, but he had never heard such a thing.

He grew up with his trade, he knew of nothing else.

The fish spoke to him in the dark; leaning in the fisherman saw his reflection painted in the water. He tried to wash it away but to no avail.

The fisherman took care of the water, after all his livelihood depended on it.

He grew gardens on water and tended to them. The gardener found this most magical — they were friends. They spoke of gardens and graves.

The fisherman loved to pass his time watching the Dal at dawn.

Sunlight piercing through the misty air — he found it most beautiful.

His relationship with the Dal was akin to that of two lovers and also not — but much more.

She symbolised “paradise on earth” — Kashmir’s phantasmagoric representation taken from a Mughal epithet.

Her beauty faded with time but he hadn’t changed.

He despised the people responsible for it.

People came and went, they admired her beauty and shed their dirt on her.

The fisherman tried his best to protect her, after all they grew up together — side by side, as equals. He kept telling the others but no one listened to him.

Enviro nmenta l Statecontro making l and g o is ve and co nflict th rnance in ter a strategy of a rit ss at of terri torial u are seen as t ories of politi erting hreats c nity or al insta conser to so vation b project vereignty, th national imag ility rough ( s and s i n aries trategie pseudo ) s.

One day on his return, his home is seized, his neighbours, friends and family taken away by “authorities”.

The people blamed him for the Dal’s fading beauty.

The people didn’t understand their relationship. Didn’t understand that they were like lovers, they grew up together, they took care of each other.

The people wrongfully framed him.

As the fisherman was being taken away from the banks of his birth, from his livelihood, from his lover, a single drop of tear found its way through the rugged landscape of his face.

It seemed to take eternity.

With his final steps, the drop of tear let go of the ends of his beard and fell into the water.

i Fish Market ii Fish Drying Wind Chamber iii Fishmongers Assembly iv Accommodation for Hanjis (Fishermen/Boatmen) v Pier

Fish Market, Fishmongers Assembly, Hanji Accommodation

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The Fisherman

The typology of the Fisherman is rooted in the local fishing traditions of Kashmir, aiming towards a symbolic grammar for the reading of the Hanji community. The tradition investigated here is a peculiar method of fishing known to the local fishermen, called Shadow Fishing. The typology intends to reflect this through its tectonic configurations and form.

The materiality and construction aims to utilise specific local skills and involve the Hanji community, in order to facilitate their reinstatement within the wetlands.

The only possibility of the wetlands’ survival is through re-engaging this community, which thrives within this context.

A neglected and misunderstood community on the verge of an exodus, the typology intends to ingrain its identity within the urban fabric – allowing for a new growth in the demographic, facilitating the propagation and protection of the invaluable wetlands.

Shadow Fishing

Reading the Typology

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The Fisherman

A State of Ruin under Construction

In post-Fordist society, the reality of production exists at the intersection of information, knowledge, communication, relationships and physical objects. This can be seen as a departure from the postmodern distinction between virtual and reality, into post-operaist thought where production as information and relationships coexist in the same field as material entities. Communication, representation and affect, thus become fundamental assets of contemporary post-Fordist political economy as immaterial production. The reproduction of architecture within the productive/re-productive apparatus of post-Fordist economy thus, becomes a part of immaterial production as much as material production.

Therefore, architecture cannot be considered only as the built environment, but also the embodiment of ideas, values, relationships and ideologies. This strain of thought allows for the production of architecture through the production of images as an embodiment ideas, values, relationships and ideologies — an architecture that is not built.

Thus, the process of image production for the production/re-production of architecture becomes a radical alternative to the use of images simply as a medium of representation.

Architecture then, is not separated from the image. It becomes a reality within the material reality of the image.

erial reality; but have a mat y, it al re f o a cr ot just simula “Images are n eople) .” gs in th orld Without P among W a gs r in fo th e es ar ag they et: Im rio Aureli , Man (See Pier Vitto

Text IV: Notes on the Production of Architecture through the Production of Images

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The Fisherman

The medium of the painting serves as an embodiment of the project. The ultimate realisation of the project occurs within the material reality of the painting.

Therefore the painting represents a temporal dysfunction and a construction of time.

Different points of view here, come to represent the alternative realities of the same project or building – intersecting on the ideological plane of the taswir (image).

Thus, the production of the image occurs at the intersection of 4 realities: i the painting as a manual and record of communication delivered by the architect-storytellerdesigner; ii the painting as an evolving artefact within the reality of the project; iii the reality of the project; iv the viewing of the conception and realisation of this project within this reality – the reality of the reader.

An Evolving Artefact

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The Fisherman

On the Margins of Utopia

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The Fisherman