MA ARCHITECTURAL DESIGN
THE UNIVERSITY OF SHEFFIELD
02/06/20
CR ITI C AL S PATI AL THE ORY ARC 6741
FAMILIARISING THE MARGIN Practices of care, maintainance and marginality in the academic space WORD COUNT: 2,026
FLORENTINA TSAKIRI STUDENT NUMBER:190183811
FAMILIARISING THE MARGIN: PRACTICES OF CARE, MAINTAINANCE AND MARGINALITY IN THE ACADEMIC SPACE
ARC6741 CRITICAL SPATIAL THEORY SUPERVISOR: DR EMMA CHEATLE
About: Edited and written by: Florentina Tsakiri Student Number: 190183811 June 2020 MA Architectural Design School of Architecture University of Sheffield Arts Tower Western Bank Sheffield S10 2TN
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‘At times, home is nowhere. At times, one knows only extreme estrangement and alienation. Then home is no longer just one place. It is locations. Home is that place which enables and promotes varied and everchanging perspectives, a place where one discovers new ways of seeing reality, frontiers of difference.’ 1
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In this quote by bell hooks, the occupation of space is an attempt of creating a type of domesticity which can unravel different meanings. A space can be characterised as a home not only because it satisfies the basic needs necessary to live, but because that space provides safety and the ability to challenge and discover new aspects of normality. It is also a space that becomes a sanctuary for the occupant. A space where practices of “care” towards other co-occupants and the space itself takes place. According to this notion of inhabiting spaces and creating other forms of domesticity and inspired by the architectural project by Peter Fattinger, Michael Rieper and students from the Vienna University of Technology 2, this essay will examine similarly the ideas of care and also maintenance and margins. In the School of Architecture in the Democritus University of Thrace, in Greece, the students working on their final project do not have a designated work space like other studios, as the building’s facilities are inadequate. As a result, over the years, they have taken over parts of each studio and created small cubic spaces, using partitions and curtains to divide them from each other and the studio space as a whole. These small units of workspace create a ‘village’ where the students are personally responsible for its structure and most of the time its maintenance. This community, which is made up of the soon to graduate students has many interactions with the university administration team, other students and the school surroundings. Along with the comparison and analysis of the two architectural projects, this essay will refer and research similar practices and the links between them in the artwork of Mierle Laderman Ukeles 3. Through her work, which focuses on a critical approach of maintenance and menial labor, practices of care, power and marginality will be discussed, through the works of bell hooks, Sara Ahmed and Michel Foucault, amongst others. As seen in the example of the School of Architecture in Greece, the existence of an authority, or its inaction to use its power for the needs of the community, is thus forming a margin. Does the existence of a closed door, a boundary, a form of margin create a metaphorical space of care? What could be the reason why these spaces connect together to form one unit and are based on the practices mentioned previously?
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In the present, the School of Architecture in the Democritus University of Thrace, in Xanthi can not be imagined without these unique, formed like a tumor onto the main studios, working spaces, which are called kamarinia 4. They have become throughout the years, a tradition to the school. Despite the romanticised history behind these spaces, the ritual of obtaining a unit, altering it to the individual’s or the team’s needs, transforming it into a second home with memories of hard work and then in the end passing it on to the next generation, is the result of barrier that the students have had to overcome. The university’s lack of interest to the matter 5 of overcrowded studios and the inefficiency of the existing building to provide the appropriate facilities was followed by the initiative of the students. This situation could be re examined as a boundary placed upon the community of the students. In this margin that they were put in, and still are, they formed a shelter which can be seen as their second home.
FIGURE 1
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‘Maybe sometimes we might make use of doors ourselves, to create spaces, shelters, in which we can breathe, to survive the harshness of being shut out. To turn that door into a wall, a way of stopping other people from entering, by treating the closing of the door not as a decision, as temporary, a product of labour, what we have a hand in, but as natural, as permanent, is to turn a shelter into a fortress. We cannot afford to do that. We can never afford to do that. There are too many lives at stake.’ 6
What Sara Ahmed alleges can be interpreted as the creation of a metaphorical space in response to discrimination. When this metaphorical space is transformed into a literal one, just like in the School of Architecture in Greece, her concern should remain present. Of course Sara Ahmed also argues that any form of closed door that shuts in front of you, should not work as a discouragement or a hindrance to progression. Instead it should be seen as motivation to challenge the situation, whilst always baring in mind that it is not a permanent state.
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FIGURE 2
This margin is fabricated due to the university’s unwillingness to act, is what bell hooks is referring to. bell states that: ‘It was this marginality that I was naming as a central location for the production of a counter-hegemonic discourse that is not just found in words but in habits of being and the way one lives.’ 7 The spatial pariah that the units are, designed and structured by the students, have been spaces of significant habitation. In regards to this, the project by Peter Fattinger, Michael Rieper and students from the Vienna University of Technology, where they vitalised the scaffoldings of a building, by turning it into a ‘house’ is very similar. In these implemented spatial structures, which were used in various ways, the students and other participants were united in a broader domestic sense. The occupation of the scaffoldings might have been provisional, but the domesticity that was provided works as a testimony to the idea behind the habitation of a margin, either literally like in the case of the scaffoldings or in a metaphorical sense. Sophie Robinson agrees that someone is extended as an existence, because the attachment to a space allows intimacy and familiarity. She is referring to the words of Sara Ahmed in her work: ‘Loving one’s home is not about being fixed into a place, but rather it is about becoming part of a space where one has expanded one’s body, saturating the space with bodily matter: home as overflowing and flowing over’ 8. Perhaps the strong emotional attachments connected to the fabrication of these spaces and caused by the oppression of an authority, also play an important role to the enhancement of caring and maintaining them.
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It is also important to highlight what Bachelard argues 9. He believes home is where the person evolves and gives meaning by inhabiting it. A caring and affecting space is determined by how we experience it as individuals. The students of both architectural projects, have created not only structures, but also a community. These communities have grown to care for the structures, the surrounding environment and the people who use the structures both inside and outside. In regards to the project of inhabiting the scaffoldings, the viewers who visited the site agreed that the endeavour brought people from different backgrounds closer together in a natural way, dismissing social inequality. Alongside this and it is important to take into consideration the work of Mierle Laderman Ukeles, where she shook the hands of sanitation workers and stated in her own words: ‘Now, I will simply do these maintenance everyday things, and flush them up to consciousness, exhibit them, as Art… MY WORKING WILL BE THE WORK.’ 10. The communities that were formed have become responsible for caring and maintaining their spaces and thus creating in a sense a sort of tradition. They became the sanitation workers whilst also becoming the artists, designers and architects. Shannon Mattern claims: ‘If we apply “care” as a framework of analysis and imagination for the practitioners who design our material world, the policymakers who regulate it, and the citizens who participate in its democratic platforms, we might succeed in building more equitable and responsible systems.’11 In the case of the students from Greece, their experiences of working and living in the margin, where they were responsible to design and manage, and according to Shannon Mattern’s words, they will soon be capable of designing spaces that enable practises of care. The communal way of designing, working and living can be interpreted as a lifestyle that is affecting the experience of studying architecture and later on of performing architectural practices.
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‘This is an intervention. A message from that space in the margin that is a site of creativity and power, that inclusive space where we recover ourselves, where we move in solidarity to erase the category colonized/ colonizer. Marginality as site of resistance. Enter that space. Let us meet there. Enter that space. We greet you as liberators.’ 12
Thinking of bell hooks words and Mierle Laderman Ukeles’s art, we are able to take a step towards the marginalised groups of people, coming in contact and exchanging what needs to be shared. This can be seen as an act of care, from those outside the margin. It is a reciprocal relationship. An individual from within that inclusive space would be able to recite the experiences of the margin for someone who is outside. This would allow the individual in question to understand and help open the door that is shut. Instead of focusing on messy studios, the dirty hands or the lack of privacy of the occupied scaffoldings, outsiders should try to acknowledge the concerns that emerge from being inside that peripheral space. What are the relationships that are lodged within the reality of these spaces? What are the conditions and the sociological or political relationships? These questions should be asked to ascertain the complicated status in which these people are living in. bell hooks also claims that there is a difference between the marginality that is forced by a repressive form of power and the marginality that comes as a result of opposing someone or something. Perhaps there is a third option, where the first kind transforms into the second. Living in the periphery might not be a conscious decision, but may be forced as a result of discrimination. This does not necessarily mean that the people who are left out are not metamorphosed into a resisting party to object to this power. Michel Foucault states: ‘There is no denying that our social system is totally without tolerance; this accounts for its extreme fragility in all its aspects and also its need for a global form of repression.’ 13. The way this system is structured forms the very same margins that are fighting against the global repression.
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FIGURE 3, 4, 5 (TOP TO BOTTOM & LEFT TO RIGHT)
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‘It might seem that doors function to contain us; to be told to use the same door is to be told who we are and what we can be. Perhaps use instructions are only necessary because they can be refused. Indeed, one might think of how the postbox can become a nest only by creating a queer door: the birds turn an opening into a door, that is, a way of entering the box.’ 14
FIGURE 6
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Sara Ahmed asserts the notion of opposition against the closed door, the boundary, the reason that leads to marginality. The opposition could be established not necessarily by rioting in front of the gates of the oppressor, but instead by forming the marginality into a community. A community which will institute practices of care and will not forget what needs to be claimed. The very core of the kamarinia 15 in the School of Architecture in Greece is an example of both finding a solution to the problem and resisting the indifference of the university’s authority by doing something of their own accord. By taking the matter into their own hands students have gained a power of their own to reshape the margin with which they find themselves in. Through this power, they were responsible for the balance between their community and the surroundings, either other students, the building, the surrounding environment and the university as a whole. In this reality, they have found a way to maintain and sustain their community, even if it means they are not going by the book. The occupation of the studios, is not something that was reckoned as a viable solution, but emerged as a necessary reaction to the inability of housing this group of students. In a similar context, the project by Peter Fattinger, Michael Rieper and students from the Vienna University of Technology could be read as an attempt to prove that even a simple and worthless structure, such as the scaffoldings of a building, can become a home to a variety of people, if needed. Nonetheless, the community of the Greek students had to establish their ground and this was successfully done by occupying parts of the studios, while finding the way to co-exist with their fellow younger students. In a way it is as Shannon Mattern states that when the authorities are inadequate, the solutions might not be following the rules, but may follow their own course to a remedy. In her words, it is a form of ‘distinctive ‘repair ecologies’’ 16.
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C O N C L U S I O N
As a student that has inhabited my own kamarini 17, I have many strong memories that resonate to me in the works of bell hooks, Sara Ahmed, Sophie Robinson and others. For me, as it is for many other students of the past, present and future, the practices of care, maintenance and living within a form of margin, come natural as it was imperative to do so, in order to sustain the community as a whole. The way we have been addressing the issue is shown in a combination of the ideas behind being a part of maintaining, sustaining and caring for the margin that we were cast aside in. In my opinion, when a number of groups of people have been discriminated against in some form by the same authority or community, perhaps even subconsciously, they create their own space of care, where they stand as a community. In many cases, just like students from Greece or the project done by Peter Fattinger, Michael Rieper and students from the Vienna University of Technology, this space is a shelter as well as an ephemeral resort. ‘Spaces can be real and imagined. Spaces can tell stories and unfold histories. Spaces can be interrupted, appropriated, and transformed through artistic and literary practice.’ I would like to add to bell hooks words that spaces are also transformed by architectural practices which derive from life itself. Also as Shannon Mattern says “care” is more connected with ethos and the results of maintenance rather than the results it can provide. Caring for the our world surrounding us means that we work towards maintaining and repairing it, whilst bridging the gaps that define the space that we call a margin.
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NOTES 1. bell hooks, ‘Choosing the Margin as a Space of Radical Openness’ , Gender Space Architecture: An interdisciplinary introduction, p.205 2. Peter Fattinger, Michael Rieper and students from the Vienna University of Technology, Institute of Architecture and Design, SELFWARE.surface, 2003, Graz, Austria. 3. Mierle Laderman Ukeles. Touch Sanitation Performance, 1979–80 Marcia Bricker/CourtesyRonald Feldman Fine Arts. 4. Kamarinia = Καμαρίνια. Kamarinia is the Greek word for dressing rooms. The idea behind the name derives from the backstage of the theatre's stage. The workspaces named like that are the backstage rooms for the studios. 5. The School of Architcture in Xanthi is temporarily housed by the building that was originally meant to be the library. of the University. The University, which is funded by the government, does not have the funds to build a building for the School and the students have been fighting for their right to have one for many years. 6. Sara Ahmed, 'The Same Door', feministkilljoys, 31 October 2019 7. bell hooks, ‘Choosing the Margin as a Space of Radical Openness’ in J Rendell, B Penner & I Borden (eds.), Gender Space Architecture: An Interdisciplinary Introduction, (Routledge, 2000), p. 206 8. Sophie Robinson, ‘Now that’s what I’d call morphing: Building a Queer Architecture in Caroline Bergvall’s Eclat’, How 2, : Sara Ahmed, Queer Phenomenology, p. 2 9. Gaston Bachelard, The Poetics of Space (Boston: Beacon Press, 1969), p. 15 10. Kat Herriman, 'Mierle Laderman Ukeles, the “Maintenance Art” Pioneer Who Made Art out of New York’s Sanitation System', Artsy, September 2016 11. Shannon Mattern, “Maintenance and Care,” Places Journal, November 2018. Accessed 26 May 2020. 12. bell hooks, ‘Choosing the Margin as a Space of Radical Openness’ , Gender Space Architecture: An interdisciplinary introduction, p.209 13. Michel Foucault, ‘Intellectuals and Power’, Language, Counter-memory, Practice; Selected Essays and Interviews. New York, Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1977, p.209 14. Sara Ahmed, 'The Same Door', feministkilljoys, 31 October 2019 15. Kamarinia = Καμαρίνια. Kamarinia is the Greek word for dressing rooms. The idea behind the name derives from the backstage of the theatre's stage. The workspaces named like that are the backstage rooms for the studios. 16. Shannon Mattern, “Maintenance and Care,” Places Journal, November 2018. Accessed 26 May 2020. 17. Kamarini = Καμαρίνι. Kamarini is the singular form of the word kamarinia.
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BIBLIOGRAPHY • bell hooks, ‘Choosing the Margin as a Space of Radical Openness’ in J Rendell, B Penner & I Borden (eds.), Gender Space Architecture: An Interdisciplinary Introduction, (Routledge, 2000) • Sara Ahmed, 'The Same Door', feministkilljoys, 31 October 2019, ( https://feministkilljoys.com/2019/10/31/the-same-door/ ) • Michel Foucault, ‘Intellectuals and Power’, Language, Counter-memory, Practice; Selected Essays and Interviews. New York, Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1977 • Sophie Robinson, ‘Now that’s what I’d call morphing: Building a Queer Architecture in Caroline Bergvall’s Eclat’, How 2, ( http://www.asu.edu/pipercwcenter/how2journal/vol_3_no_3/bergvall/robinson-bergvall.html ) • Shannon Mattern, “Maintenance and Care,” Places Journal, November 2018. Accessed 26 May 2020. ( https://doi.org/10.22269/181120 ) • Gaston Bachelard, The Poetics of Space (Boston: Beacon Press, 1969) • Kat Herriman, 'Mierle Laderman Ukeles, the “Maintenance Art” Pioneer Who Made Art out of New York’s Sanitation System', Artsy, September 2016, ( https://www.artsy.net/article/artsy-editorial-the-performance-pioneer-who-made-art-out-of-new-york-ssanitation-system ) • Randy Kennedy, ' An Artist Who Calls the Sanitation Department Home', The New York Times, September 2016, ( https://www.nytimes.com/2016/09/22/arts/design/mierle-laderman-ukeles-new-york-city-sanitationdepartment.html ) • Vienna Business Agency, 'Something Special - Vienna, the creative city', Wirtschaftsagentur Wien / Creative Industries, 2014, pp. 178-179
FIGURES • FIGURE 1: The kamarinia in the Democritus University of Thrace. The structures are made by materials that are find as scraps in the school or bought and put together by the students. Source: Photohraph: Untitled, Marios Iordanidis • FIGURE 2: Just like a home, these cubic spaces are providing some sort of privacy. In there students work, eat, share ideas and even sleep. Source: Photohraph: Untitled, Natalia Chorti • FIGURE 3: The building of the School has many problems. The ceiling is leaking during storms and sometimes structural materials are falling on the desks in the studios. The students usually are responsible to clean and report the damages to the adminidtration. Source:Photohraph: Untitled, Constantinos Karatzas • FIGURE 4: The school is open for everyone. As a result stray dogs are entering the building and the final year students are taking care of them. They have become part of the community, even though it is not allowed. Source: Untitled, Natalia Chorti • FIGURE 5: Photo of the project by Peter Fattinger, Michael Rieper and students from the Vienna University of Technology. Multiple functions occur at once in this structure that resembles a block of flats. The scaffoldings have been domesticated and used by the students and other participants. Source: Photograph: ADD ON. 20 HÖHENMETER 1200 VIENNA, A , 2005, DURATION: 17.06.2005 - 31.07.2005, TEMPORARY INSTALLATION IN PUBLIC SPACE IN COLLABORATION WITH: MICHAEL RIEPER AND STUDENTS OF THE VIENNA UNIVERSITY OF TECHNOLOGY, COMMISSIONED BY: KÖR - KUNST IM ÖFFENTLICHEN RAUM WIEN, RANGE OF WORK: INITIATIVE / IDEA / CONCEPT / DESIGN / IMPLEMENTATION / BUILDING CONSTRUCTION / DEVELOPMENT AND DIRECTION OF A 45-DAY CULTURAL PROGRAMME / MANAGEMENT OF THE OPERATIONAL DUTIES, THE IN-HOUSE CANTEEN AND GUEST ACCOMDATIONS / ART AND CULTURAL MEDIATION, WWW.ADD-ON.AT ( http://fattinger-orso.com/projects/addon.html )
• FIGURE 6: In the National Technical University of Athens there are similar structures used by final students in the same way as in the Democritus University of Thrace. The kamarinia could be considered as a cult for most of the Architecture departments in the universities in Greece. Source: Photograph: Untitled, Author, 2018
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FAMILIARISING THE MARGIN
FLORENTINA TSAKIRI