The essay is an investigation into the proposal for ‘Productive Urban Landscapes’ [PUL], with the intent of looking at the city of Detroit as an example of this kind of urban modification. As a discussion of the term ‘productivity’ I examined the social, cultural, economical and ecological implications of these productive spaces, with reference to both Felix Guattari’s essay ‘The Three Ecologies’ [1989] and Karl Marx’s nineteenth-century critique of the Political Economy of Alienation in Das Kapital [1873]. The essay considers Productivity to be the accumulation of physical capital as well as the deployment of human capital in a process of continuous economic improvement. Therefore, human resources are key to productive enhancement and innovation. This paper takes ‘Productive Urban Landscapes’ as urban strategies which primarily deal with the management and development of land and often pose a critique of capitalism in relation to sustainability on a global scale. Critical interpretations of ‘Productive Urban Landscapes‘ understand political economy to be vital with regards to the spatial concerns of ‘productivity’. This is increasingly relevant in a world where land is a primary commodity and urgent agrarian questions are being raised.
I struggle to define from my own memories, an experience of a clear public realm, mainly because the majority of my youth was spent in the private sphere of homes, schools and shopping centres that have unfortunately come to define what city life means. As architects and urban designers, the notion of the ‘urban’ is intertwined with that of the ‘public’. Therefore we cannot begin to talk about a city without addressing first the nature of its public persona.
If movement is critical to the construction of public space, then Modernity as a result certainly advocated the development of urban life, for there is no better example than that of the emerging female presence in the city. Who could imagine a young woman, in western dress, her identity known to all, walking down a street alone in 1952?
These new possibilities of mobility meant that we were now negotiating our urban spaces as equal citizens. Modernity thus was not an invasive force per say, as many would argue, but rather it set the stage for an alternative narrative. However, in a strange paradox, the city that on one hand facilitated a freedom of movement, the very nature of this newfound movement ultimately contributed to its slow decline. What emerged can be described as a liminal city, lingering at a point that does not quite extend into the private realm of our everyday life, nor does it capitalize on the public realm of its own urbanity. And so separated by our sheltered suburbs, the skyline of Kuwait city towers over us like a distant ‘other’, close enough to see but far enough to avoid.
In an early address to the General Assembly, UN Secretary General Ban Ki Moon stated the following: ‘Do we have to continue like this: build, destroy, and build, and destroy? We will build again, but this must be the last time to rebuild.’
I pondered the weight of this statement. In the wake of neighbourhoods that have been reduced to rubble; and when the very idea of ‘normal living’ is inconceivable, the paradox of the century emerges. Could the perpetual cycle of devastation in itself be the very key to Israel’s justified existence?
Gaza with a population of 1.8 million people, it is one of the most densely populated strips of land; it lacks a proper physical or economic infrastructure to support it and relies indisputably on the external services of the Israeli state.
When examining the bio-political conditions of Gaza, the role of spatial practices, one can argue, can aid, counter or even perpetuate the on-going regional violence. If addressed, the necessity to critically condemn and enforce justice may find alternate grounds for validation.
As a building fragments it invites us to imagine how it was before its demise, and how it could have been or would have been, had it not. On Monday the 7th of April a group of concerned citizens stood outside the Former Chamber of Commerce Building to voice their anger at the continued destruction of our city’s modernist heritage. The ill fate of this building was inherently tied to the shortcomings in our land-ownership, and antiquity laws in addition to the policies administered by the Municipality amongst other entities. To begin, we are taken back to a critical question about the fundamental placement of these buildings within a Kuwaiti discourse on the built environment. For it seems that there exists a general sentiment of disengagement, of disconnect. How did we as the general public, as responsible citizens come to regard our built environment with such complacency? In the case of the Chamber, being left neglected directly leads to this dis-engagement. Once a building falls into this category, it is at risk of becoming part of the background, unnoticed and unaddressed.
Imagined Shared Territories (IST) is a temporary research consortium at he the 14th Venice Biennale, assembled to explore conceptual tools, build a database, and form an apparatus to unlock geographical fluidity that surpasses the political limitations and discontinuities surrounding the body of the Arabian Gulf.
How do you imagine the Upper Gulf?
i. In ancient times, the Son of the Rivers and the Daughter of the Seas fell madly in love.
ii. Their union brought about wealth and prosperity to all the Kingdoms of Men.
iii. The Sea and the River soon gave birth to the Marshes, and devoted themselves to serving this fertile land.
iv. But the mighty Kings of Men were angered by this union and for many years, wars and battles plagued the territories.
v. As the battle for wealth and power ensued, the River and Sea stayed strong.
vi. Fortresses were built, the land was devastated...war slowly came to an end..The victorious King, in a final act of defiance, banished the Marshes.
vii. And split the Son of Rivers into a thousand fragments....
viii. The Daughter of the Seas was heartbroken, and in her rage vowed never to serve the Kingdoms of Men again.
ix. The Earth around her shook with fear..and trembled at her pain...
x. She hid her Love.And she buried her Power deep beneath the ground, far from the reaches of Men
xi. Without her Love or her Power, Men grew helpless...And the Lands grew dark...And the Kingdoms fled...
xii. And although her Power lay buried deep...her Love was hidden in plain sight...For She had cast it into the water, like Salt Crystals in the Sea...
xiii. And the Daughter of the Seas went in search of her great Love, growing weaker and weaker with the passing of time..
xiv. Until one day..her heart could give no more. And the Seas finally fell...
xv. And all along, tears from the fragmented River were fighting their way back to the Sea.
Though She was gone, her love remained, in fields of Salty Plains that had settled at the bottom of the dying Sea.
xvi. And so the Son of Rivers and the Daughter of Seas were re-united. These are the tales of a great love immortalized......of a great land reborn...of a Shared Territory, Fertile and Green.
Travelogue is a collaborative alternative travel guide based on the city of Porto.
Extract from the play ‘Azulejo’ written in collaboration with Deema Alghunaim and Suad Alfraih.
PROLOGUE:
Hearts of terra, warmth hardens them.
Blue stories, filling the room,
Easing his fear of emptiness.
“Maybe we should rhyme it with gloom?”
“But we need to use the word Azulejo”
ACT I: A KISS GOOD-BYE
[A woman in her forties kissing her husband good-bye at the train station. In the background appears a neo-classic mural of the Portuguese King (D. João I) who married an English Princess in Porto.]
> A group of students having a conversation.
Student I: [Reading from her phone] Azulejo is a term of Arabic origin, which means smooth rocks, or ease of movement. The blue pigment comes from Cobalt used in China, Netherlands, Persia and anciently in Egypt. Student II: In Essaouira; a city in Morocco, they produce blue pigment from crushed shells, and they use it mainly for the clothes of the royal family.
“This dialogue needs to be a bit more conversational, it sounds like listing facts...”
Student III: Essouira__Mogador? “Yeah, he doesn’t have to explain that it was a portuguese colony.”
Student I: Blue is a royal colour, the colour of Porto. The coat of arms for the City of Porto is blue.
Student III: After the revolution they changed to green, but then they brought it back again.
Student I: But why? Is it a gesture of resistance?
“Maybe we should add the sound of a train leaving here...”
Student IV: It reminds me of these porcelain figurines that my mother bought from Amsterdam fifteen years ago. Do you remember them? In our living room, that porcelain doll dancing around the piano?
Student II: [Examining the mural] Metaphors… metaphors, and suddenly discovering something! Like Cortez finding the Pacific Ocean for the first time.
[Light is dimmed, and a spot light follows a grandmother and her granddaughter. Grandmother holding the child’s bag and dragging her bicycle alongside].
Understanding the city is crucial to the understanding of various aspects of individual and collective identities. Here, the city of Istanbul becomes a site for the exploration of a philosophical inquiry into place which questions the very way in which we locate ourselves within it. Once we recognise that space and social relations are made through each other, we can ascertain that the production of identity becomes central to spatial discourse. As new concerns within spatial thinking encompass discussions about geography, cultural history, mobility and narrative, by acknowledging the manifold nature of space, we can begin to engage with the world more openly and ethically, respecting both alterity and difference. For it is a recognition of difference that leads to the affirmation of the plural, and thus the possibility of delimiting the specific conditions of each individual or subject.
Therefore, the thesis will aim to form a conceptualisation of space and place at a variety of scales from the image, the body, the group to the city. Thus, the relationships between the objects, images, people and spaces positioned, must be taken under consideration. As Edward Casey suggests in The Fate of Place it is in this direct ‘positioning of ourselves relative to images, objects, people, space and place that entails a direct understanding of spatial difference.’ Therefore, I would like to explore how the definition of difference starts to articulate these spatial relationships within the context of identity production.
The thesis will attempt to initiate an interdisciplinary conversation, drawing on particular spatial relations through the use of textual analysis, philosophy, images and film that work alongside a proposed architecture. This is not to assume, however, that reality is stratified and that for each level of architectonic event there is a corresponding and analogous level in philosophy or cinema which would suggest a universal homoginisation of a certain kind.
Instead, the discussion would like to draw forward a sense that differences are perceived more clearly the closer the relative positions of the objects of comparison remain variable and forms of relationships are established between apparently unconnected positions and situations. If space is no longer understood as fixed, but rather an ‘unfixing’ of place, then the role of the image, or the movement image to be specific becomes a crucial part of this new spatial discussion. Therefore, I initiated this investigation by making a series of montages that began to articulate or consider the interrelationships between images, subjects and the city. Using the film Turkish film Uzak by Nuri Bilge Ceylan, as a case study, I will then investigate the role of film as a medium from which to explore these moving images further. Here, I refer to these unique constructs that lie at these spatial intersections as ‘Portals’, to be explored throughout the individual sections of the Thesis.
Finally, the thesis will attempt to situate a proposal for the Museum of Identity in Istanbul. The final Portal (Museum) will seek to construct an interpretive framework from which to monitor a multiplicity of perspectives, places and identities. Therefore, considering the question of difference as that which means taking plurality not only as a starting point but as a multiplicity within which to situate an argument of contemporary reality. The Museum does not advocate the production of a victorious historical determination, nor a better historical image. Instead it must almost produce an overall ‘image’ that should not speculate on its visibility. Hence, the critical endeavour of the Museum is creative to the extent that it gives rise to connections that might otherwise go unnoticed or impossible to recognise in the absence of differential mechanisms. Therefore, the purpose of this research is to establish architectural approaches geared towards reflexive design methods and to consider how the practice of reflexive montage within design in turn can start to articulate these sites of spatial difference.
