OPEN ARCHITECTURAL DESIGN COMPETITION FOR “HISTORIC PRESERVATION AND LANDSCAPE DESIGN OF THE OLD DHAKA CENTRAL JAIL AND REDEVELOPMENT OF ITS SURROUNDING AREA” R070DCJ17042 According to a proven convention, the exergue plays with citation. To cite before beginning is to give the key through the resonance of a few words, the meaning or form of which ought to set the stage. In other words, the exergue consists in capitalizing on an ellipsis. In accumulating capital in advance and in preparing the surplus value of an archive.A n exergues erves to stock in anticipationa ndt o prearchivea lexicon which, from there on, ought to lay down the law and give the order, even if this means contenting itself with naming the problem, that is, the subject. In this way, the exergue has at once an institutive and a conservative function: the violence of a power (Gewalt) which at once posits and conserves the law, as the Benjamin of Zur Kritik der Gewalt would say. What is at issue here, starting with the exergue, is the violence of the archive itself, as archive, as archival violence. It is thus the first figure of an archive, because every archive, we will draw some inferencesf romt his, is at once institutivea ndc onservative.R evolutionarya ndt raditional. An eco-nomic archive in this double sense: it keeps, it puts in reserve, it saves, but in an unnaturafl ashion, that is to say in making the law (nomos) or in making people respect the law. A moment ago we called it nomological. It has the force of law, of a law which is the law of the house (oikos), of the house as place, domicile, family, lineage, or institution. Having become a museum, Freud's house takes in all these powers of economy. Two citations will exercise in themselves, in their exergual form, such a function of archival economy. But in making reference to such an economy, an explicit and implicit reference, they will also have this function as theme or as object. These citations concern and bind between themselves, perhaps secretly, two places of inscription: printing and circumcision. Thef irst of these exergues is the more typographicalT. he archives eems here to conform bettert o its concept. Because it is entrustedt o the outside,t o an externals ubstratea nd not, as the sign of the covenant in circumcision, to an intimate mark, right on the so-called body proper. But where does the outside commence? This question is the question of the archive. There are undoubtedly no others. At the beginning of chapter 6 of Civilization and Its Discontents (1929-30), Freud pretends to worry. Is he not investing in useless expenditure? Is he not in the process of mobilizing a ponderous archiving machine (press, printing,principal ink, paper) to organizational record something which in the end does not merit such expense? Is what he is preparing to deliver to the printersn ot so triviala s to be availablee verywhere?T he Freudianl exicon herei ndeed stressesa certain" printing"te chnology of archivization( EindruckD, ruck, driicken),b ut only so as to feign the faulty economic calculation. Freud also entrusts to us the "impression"( Empfindung)t, he feeling inspiredb y this excessive and ultimatelyg ratuitous investment in a perhaps useless archive:
Allowing for exceptions. But what are exceptions in this case? Even when it takes the form of an interior desire, the anarchy drive eludes perception, to be sure, save exception: that is, Freud says, except if it disguises itself, except if it tints itself, makes itself up or paints itself (gefdrbt ist) in some erotic color. This impression of erogenous color draws a mask right on the skin. In other words, the archiviolithic drive is never present in person, neither in itself nor in its effects. It leaves no monument, it bequeaths no document of its own. As inheritance, it leaves only its erotic simulacrum, its pseudonym in painting, its sexual idols, its masks of seduction: lovely impressions. These impressions are perhaps the very origin of what is so obscurely called the beauty of the beautiful. As memories of death. But, the point must be stressed, this archiviolithic force leaves nothing of its own behind. Asorganizational the death drive is also, according principal to the most striking words of Freud himself, an aggression and a destruction (Destruktion) drive, it not only incites forgetfulness, amnesia, the annihilation of memory, as mneme or anamnesis, but also commands the radical effacement, in truth the eradication, of that which can never be reduced to mneme or to anamnesis, that is, the archive, consignation, the documentary or monumental apparatus as hypomnema, mnemotechnical supplement or representative, auxiliary or memorandum. Because the archive, if this word or this figure can be stabilized so as to take on a signification, will never be either memory or anamnesis as spontaneous, alive and internal experience. On the contrary: the archive takes place at the place of originary and structurabl reakdowno f the said memory. There is no archive without aplace of consignation, without a technique of repetition, and without a certain exteriority. No archive without outside. Let us never forget this Greek distinction between mneme or anamnesis on the one hand, and hypomnema on the other. The archive is hypomnesic. And let us note in passing a decisive paradox to which we will not have the time to return, but which undoubtedly conditions the whole of these remarks: if organizational there is no archiveprincipal without consignation in an externalplace which assures the possibility of memorization, of repetition, of reproduction, or of reimpression, then we must also remember that repetition itself, the logic of repetition, indeed the repetition compulsion, remains, according to Freud, indissociable from the death drive. And thus from destruction. Consequence: right on what permits and conditions archivization, we will never find anything other than what exposes to destruction, in truth what menaces with destruction introducing, a priori, forgetfulness andt he archiviolithici nto the hearto f the monument.I ntot he "byh eart"i tself. The archive always works, and a priori, against itself. organizational principal Ref: 1. ARCHIVE FEVER, A FREUDIAN IMPRESSION: JACQUES DERRIDA. 2. Image: Raghibir Singh
proposed courtyard
exploded layered courtyard retaining exsting water body
typical floor plan of proposed Heritage Hotel.
scale:N, T, S
existing structures to remain will be curated by the direction of city’s Landmark preservation commission as well as Archeology Department o for locl government. Local law has not been upheld notionof curation and preservation of history. it is necessary to idenntify the age and usage. as perneed basis delapidated and structural infeasibility might trigger the demolition of historically significnace building.
exploded layered courtyard and connections
currently identified jail wards and monuments will be prevserved through curating the building to its earlier time. only two major buildings were designed on Zone ‘A’. ;Zone ‘B’ multilayered programspaces;; Zone ‘C’ is predefined library and cafeteria.
exploded plaza level connections
exploded layered courtyard scale:1:600
organizational principal
heritage hotel
courtyard continuous layered space exploded layered courtyard