THE DEGENERATE MENAGERIE

Conflict Bloom

Flowers in our Tarnished World

Location: Naivasha, Kenya

Advisor: Micah Rutenberg

Dynamic: Individual Project

Project Statement

Lake Naivasha, Kenya, is a concentrated zone of cut-flower farms exemplifying a purified form of neocolonial urbanism, providing an opportunity to analyze the spatial, political, economic, environmental, and creative characteristics of neocolonial heterotopias. Kenya is the world’s third largest producer of cut flowers, most coming from Naivasha’s enclave of 62 flower farms in which a single site can annually export over 800 million stems. Naivasha aspires to its own sovereignty and is unapologetic in that its laws, landscapes, and customs are more reflective of the interests of the flower industry than those of the nation, in effect creating a zone under “siege,” ruled by flowers and surrounded but not penetrated by Kenyan authority.

Preserved until the end of British colonialism in 1963, the landscape was then developed almost exclusively by the floriculture industry, meaning spatial analysis of this neocolonial domain is untarnished by the phantom of previous developments. This condition creates a space defined by oppositions--global and local, visible and invisible, tamed and wild--each a variation of the colonizer and the colonized. The housing, streets, markets, neighborhoods, offices, transportation, and churches are occupied by either expats or Africans, reflecting and reinforcing cultural stratification.

The company Twiga Roses financially collapsed in 2014 and attempted a forced relocation of its laborers who lived in free, on-farm housing. When workers resisted, Twiga removed on-site access to basic life services including water stations, sanitation buildings, and health care facilities, forcing them to be informally rebuilt by the workers. Heightened by economic instability, regional tensions between the global and local turned to unrest in the past decade, with the micro-heterotopia of Twiga being an example of resistance. But protected by walls of corruption, confinement, and capital, Naivasha will face more violence if some semblance of local justice cannot be found.

Using methods from the growing field of forensic architecture, this project will analyze the way that the architecture and landscape of Twiga has become a zone of conflict. Sun Tzu’s Art of War identifies aspects of terrain, culture, tactics, action, and spies, each which can be used as a way to understand how the renegade architecture of Twiga can be used to understand the larger postcolonial patterns of Kenya, as well as a window into global problems of the industry.

In consideration of the relatively open corruption of the Kenyan government, an architectural intervention will be designed employing the Straussian method. This concept is being adopted from the essay Persecution and the Art of Writing in which he explains how to publicize dissident writing by hiding it in plain sight - a piece of writing may have hidden meanings behind a facade of conformity. Using the Straussian method, a design will be constructed in Naivasha, in which dangerous and subversive architecture hides in plain sight. The goal of this design will have two main parts, 1) to create a design with a hidden agenda, and 2) create a focal point that can destabilize Naivasha’s flower politics so that a more stable system can emerge. The floriculture industry becomes a case study in explorations of architecture within the context of corruption, beauty, war, and change.