{"title":"Conversation Rooms: Critical Dialogues in Architectural History and Theory at the GSA, Johannesburg","authors":"H. Tayob","doi":"10.1080/20507828.2021.1918895","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/20507828.2021.1918895","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract This paper discusses Architectural History and Theory at the Graduate School of Architecture, University of Johannesburg in 2019. The curriculum is centered on a series of conversations as the means to generate forms of engagement for a plurality of voices, contested views and dialogic encounters, as a way of working toward an alternative institutional imaginary. The focus on conversation and dialogue aims to create a space for slow and shared scholarship, to become a manifestation of spatial resistance to the imperatives of the neoliberal university and global economies of higher education. This paper discusses some of the key conceptual and practical moves undertaken in the development of a new history and theory course through examples of student work. The paper points to inclusive and reflexive pedagogical methods and modes of collaboration as central to resistance, and as the means that enable generative and supportive networks across geographic and institutional boundaries.","PeriodicalId":42146,"journal":{"name":"Architecture and Culture","volume":"9 1","pages":"218 - 237"},"PeriodicalIF":0.8,"publicationDate":"2021-04-03","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1080/20507828.2021.1918895","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"46580776","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Stories from the Global Staffroom: Experiences of Caring and Uncaring Architectures at work with Effy Harle and Jos Boys","authors":"Manual Labours (Sophie Hope, J. Richards)","doi":"10.1080/20507828.2021.1920217","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/20507828.2021.1920217","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract Learning from the work of artist and maker, Effy Harle and cofounder of The DisOrdinary Architecture Project, Jos Boys, Manual Labours (Sophie Hope and Jenny Richards) critically examine an excerpt of their conversation from the podcast series The Global Staffroom Podcasts which reflects on experiences of and relationships to the staffroom both as a concept, virtual and physical space. In dialogue with intersectional feminist theory, architecture theory and social reproduction theory we consider the architecture of the staffroom in different workplaces and its tensions as a space for oppression and exclusion but also transformation, collectivity and solidarity. We conclude advocating for oral and intersectional analyses of the staffroom to intervene in its reproduction within a wage-based racial capitalist framework, and as a way to uproot it from the notion of a fixed workplace and worker: to build a staffroom for a post work imaginary that foregrounds care on the basis of our differential needs and desires.","PeriodicalId":42146,"journal":{"name":"Architecture and Culture","volume":"9 1","pages":"193 - 217"},"PeriodicalIF":0.8,"publicationDate":"2021-04-03","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1080/20507828.2021.1920217","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"44253224","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Lessons from Tradition in the Building of Contemporary Settlements: The Case of Tafilalt in the M'zab Valley, Algeria","authors":"Naimeh Rezaei","doi":"10.1080/20507828.2021.1883377","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/20507828.2021.1883377","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract Since Algeria’s independence from France in 1962, the M’zab Valley in the northern Sahara has witnessed a rapid growth in population. Both legal and illegal housing has been built outside the walls of the M’zab’s ancient towns, damaging the environmental and cultural heritage of the area. In response, its long-standing residents have identified protocols for building a number of carefully planned settlements inspired by the original towns. One of these new settlements is Tafilalt, begun in 1997. Based in part on in-depth interviews with residents and the developers of the project, this article studies the construction of Tafilalt by its occupants and their perceptions of their new home. It asks how the M’zab’s traditional methods of planning, building and managing settlements have been adapted to the community’s current needs, who makes up the community, and to what extent Tafilalt might be seen as a model to be used elsewhere.","PeriodicalId":42146,"journal":{"name":"Architecture and Culture","volume":"9 1","pages":"310 - 334"},"PeriodicalIF":0.8,"publicationDate":"2021-03-23","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1080/20507828.2021.1883377","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"42432510","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Survival Praxis through Hood Feminism, Negritude and Poetics","authors":"C. Hill","doi":"10.1080/20507828.2021.1879460","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/20507828.2021.1879460","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract In efforts to protect my sanity while learning computational arts at a Western institution, I have established a subversive anti-conformist strategy where I activate the ideologies of Hood Feminism, Negritude and Poetics to survive. Hood Feminism explores Black womanhood in a different modality from Black feminist studies. I am activating Hood Feminism in its intended form as praxis of women of color who survive without access to resources and privilege. These are women who survive by all means necessary against the propagation of toxic ideologies of Western society. I am activating Negritude as a way of maintaining positionality to the desired behavior that is institutionally imprinted on students, especially students of color. Negritude is a way for me to constantly reject the efforts of the conformist hegemonies by connecting with what it means to embody Blackness. Poetics materializes as a method of connecting with computation and other students in a meaningful way.","PeriodicalId":42146,"journal":{"name":"Architecture and Culture","volume":"9 1","pages":"238 - 248"},"PeriodicalIF":0.8,"publicationDate":"2021-03-23","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1080/20507828.2021.1879460","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"43787447","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"After the Strike? Part 2: Solidarity In and Out","authors":"J. Rendell","doi":"10.1080/20507828.2021.1836776","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/20507828.2021.1836776","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract This is part two of the essay exploring the activities of strikers at the Bartlett School of Architecture, UCL over a 14 day-period in the early spring of 2018. These days were part of the 2018 University and College Union (UCU) Pension Strike, one of the largest strikes of university academics in recent times, which occurred over a four-week period, with strike days increasing from two days in the first week, to five by the final week. This was a strike to protect the pensions of university workers as a defined benefit scheme rather than a defined contribution one. This essay is structured as a two-stranded diary, weaving together textual materials taken from the Strike chronicle and website produced at the time, with critical reflections written in the present, concerning the current state of the neo-liberal university, discussing issues relating to pensions – namely institutional critique, ethics and equity, labor and work, precarity and care.","PeriodicalId":42146,"journal":{"name":"Architecture and Culture","volume":"9 1","pages":"260 - 285"},"PeriodicalIF":0.8,"publicationDate":"2021-03-04","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1080/20507828.2021.1836776","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"44693611","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Online Learning Platforms and the Confessional Subject","authors":"E. Dare","doi":"10.1080/20507828.2021.1888211","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/20507828.2021.1888211","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract Is there a connection between pedagogic practices of confessional reflectivity, online learning platforms, and the massively scaled surveillance of Higher Education student transactions via data analysis? It is the contention of this paper that there is an ideological and processual logic which connects these practices and platforms. It argues this logic has been benignly embedded in pedagogy, but has now become scaled via technologically deterministic paradigms, providing companies such as Pearson Ltd with monopolistic scope to dominate the epistemic foundations of teaching theory and practice. How these forces converge on the learning platform is the theme of this paper, which draws upon an arts and creative computation educational background rather than a specifically architectural context.","PeriodicalId":42146,"journal":{"name":"Architecture and Culture","volume":"9 1","pages":"249 - 259"},"PeriodicalIF":0.8,"publicationDate":"2021-02-26","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1080/20507828.2021.1888211","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"46722216","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Spaces of Absence in the European City: Stitching Urban Infrastructure to Contemporary Collective Life","authors":"Alona Martinez Perez","doi":"10.1080/20507828.2021.1878762","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/20507828.2021.1878762","url":null,"abstract":"This paper examines spaces in the European City that are often defined as peripheral, empty and absent. “Spaces of absence” – as Koolhaas defined them in an interview with Hans Ulrich Obrist – can have a stronger presence as a consequence of their history and, like the Berlin wall, generate a unique condition. In an empty city center or on city outskirts they often evolve organically. Focusing on Madrid and Rome, this paper first, proposes to re-visit the significance of Stefano Boeri’s peripheral sites in L’anticitta (or The Anticity), “terrain vague” or waste ground (Ignasi de Sol a-Morales) sites and Marc Aug e’s Non-place(s). Second, it uses the visual essay to contemplate the critical role that these three types of spaces of absence can have in the European city and argues that the very attribute of absence that they contain can, conversely, create urban presence by stitching together urban infrastructure and everyday collective life. Introduction: Spaces of Absence In an interview conversation with Hans Ulrich Obrist, Rem Koolhaas explains that: ARCHITECTURE AND CULTURE Alona Martinez Perez Leicester School of Architecture, De Montfort University, Leicester, UK alona.martinezperez@dmu. ac.uk","PeriodicalId":42146,"journal":{"name":"Architecture and Culture","volume":"45 2","pages":"625-634"},"PeriodicalIF":0.8,"publicationDate":"2021-02-19","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"138509953","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Slutwalks in Brasília. The Utopia of an Egalitarian City and Its Gendered Spaces","authors":"R. Rezende, Hilde Heynen","doi":"10.1080/20507828.2021.1866326","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/20507828.2021.1866326","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":42146,"journal":{"name":"Architecture and Culture","volume":"1 1","pages":"1-18"},"PeriodicalIF":0.8,"publicationDate":"2021-02-18","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1080/20507828.2021.1866326","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"46331073","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"After the Strike? Part 1: The Transitional Space of the Picket Line","authors":"J. Rendell","doi":"10.1080/20507828.2021.1827481","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/20507828.2021.1827481","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract This essay explores the activities of strikers at the Bartlett School of Architecture, UCL over a 14 day-period in the early spring of 2018. These days were part of the 2018 University and College Union (UCU) Pension Strike, one of the largest strikes of university academics in recent times, which occurred over a 4-week period, with strike days increasing from two days in the first week, to five by the final week. This was a strike to protect the pensions of university workers as a defined benefit scheme rather than a defined contribution one. This essay is structured as a two-stranded diary, weaving together textual materials taken from the Strike chronicle and website produced at the time, with critical reflections written in the present, concerning the current state of the neo-liberal university, discussing issues relating to pensions – namely institutional critique, ethics and equity, labor and work, precarity and care.","PeriodicalId":42146,"journal":{"name":"Architecture and Culture","volume":"9 1","pages":"179 - 192"},"PeriodicalIF":0.8,"publicationDate":"2021-02-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1080/20507828.2021.1827481","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"44102014","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}