Contextual Narratives
MS Advanced Architectural Design Columbia University Graduate School of Architecture, Planning and Preservation
Mai Abusalih
Preface
This collection of works developed while in GSAPP have been very consistent in the fact that they are deeply rooted in context. Remove the context and these projects would seize to be coherent. In this sense, investigating contexts is a crucial tool in generating narratives latent in the urban fabric. Behind every project there is a story that talks about the city, the people, and the tensions in-between . I believe architects have the responsibility to unfold these narratives through inclusivity and therefore, creating opportunities for intervention. This collection is only the beginning of an ongoing investigation centered around Contextual Narratives. Mai Abusalih - May 2018
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#RIP: Encoding Memory
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Resistance at the Dique do Tororo
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The Museum of Arts and Design
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Dismantle | Reassemble A House as A Small City
The Street as a Site of Resistance
NYC Subway System New York, NY, USA
#RIP: ENCODING MEMORY
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Encoding Memory GSAPP Advanced Studio Instructor: Karla Rothstein Partners: Eric Giragosian, Min He Summer 2017
We believe memory is identity.
How we are remembered defines who we are.
It is a choice to encode our identities, either physically as engravings on a headstone or digitally utilizing social media. Researching various procedures of displacement of the deceased and the living, we mine existing system deficiencies and disruptions within Manhattan. The current state reveals remembrance and memorialization uprooted from the island, disconnecting the sites where memories were originally created and celebrated.
This project bridges the disintegration between where memories were made and where they exist after death. By grafting onto the subway’s existing nodal network, we will celebrate traces and reverberations, returning memorialization to Manhattan. The project creates a network of memorial hubs; each of the five borough has a central memorial hub where promession takes place along with smaller nodes distributed across New York City subway stations.
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WOODLAWN CEMETERY
WARD’S ISLAND
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Madison Square Park
Washington Square Park
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The Waldorf Astoria Park Avenue and 49th St.
Ward’s Island
Hart Island
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Calvary Cemetery
Greenwood Cemetery
Woodlawn Cemetery
St. Marks Church in the Bowery
Evergreens Cemetery Deceased Facebook Account
Death & Displacement in New York City
The history of New York cemeteries is twined with displacement due to issues of space and fear of plagues. We can observe displacement taking place from the beginning of the 1800s when potter-fields where continuously relocated from the middle of Manhattan to Randal’s Island and today ending at Hart Island. This creates an entire history of displacement that we needed to address in the project.
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Prineville, Oregon (44.294507, -120.884966)
Altoona, Iowa (41.663051, -93.515213)
Forest City, North Carolina (35.315717, -81.827447)
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Lulea, Sweden (65.588036, 22.151591)
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Aggregation of Instagram Posts using #RIP in New York City
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The New York City Subway system is the busiest rapid transit rail system in the Western world by annual ridership. In 2015, the subway delivered over 1.76 billion rides. By studying incidents occurring from suicides, accidents and homicide in the subway, we came to realize the inevitable ripple effect of these incidents. Using a data-scape to track this aftermath, we distinguished a series of phenomenas taking place whenever there is a death-related incident on the subway.
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ADJUSTMENT
BYPASS
DISRUPTION DRAG
PATH
DEFLECTION
IMPACT DIVERSION
DISLOCATION
DISPLACEMENT
Drawing from the Subway Death Datascape and the phenomenons of Path, Impact and Diversion, we embarked on a material investigation to unfold the repercussions of these subway incidents. The sets of experiments was built on establishing a system that is “impacted” by a foreign object. These experiments led to us studying further the impact investigation minus the intended path already in the system. The final experiment shed light and intensified the relationship between solid and void.
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Prototypical Central Memorial Hub: Madison Square Garden & Penn Station
The historical significance of Penn station lies in the displaced history of the station that came with the creation of Madison Square Garden. The project repurposes MSG to act as the central memorial hub in Manhattan where the Promession process takes place.
A superimposed grid of data server towers and circulation is inserted into MSG and is used as structural support for the suspended gardens where the human remains are transferred after the promession process. This particular site offers an opportunity to bring back memorialization to Manhattan while tapping into the subway network where the distribution to smaller nodes of memorialization happens.
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Section across Gardens and Data Server towers
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Prototypical Subway Station: 149 Grand Concourse Station
The Subway memorial nodes are distributed along the five boroughs in order to slow down the fast pace of the subway to allow for remembrance. The walls of the subway are re-purposed to become containers of the promains that used to fertilize the soil of the gardens created above the subway stations. Skylights allow for light to enter in addition to observing the gardens from the platforms. 17
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Accumulation/Replacement of Promains Over Time
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Playa Blanca Lanzarote, Spain
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DISMANTLE | ASSEMBLE
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DISMANTLE | REASSEMBLE Redoing Lanzarote GSAPP Advanced Studio Instructor: Andres Jaque Partner: Ranitri Weerasuriya Fall 2017
Playa Blanca, Lanzarote provides an insight into the conflicts arising from the current trajectory of mass tourism and the trend of uncontrolled growth in the island faced with the environmental awareness of the impact of tourism originally sparked by artist Cesar Manrique.
This centers the project at the legal clash happening between the Lanzarote Government and Municipality of Yaiza following the 1991 Insular Territorial Planning Plan and the 2000 Tourist Moratorium. In today’s Playa Blanca, the High Court of Justice of the Canary Islands annulled 15 hotel licenses in addition to Marina Rubicon’s license. The situation in the coastal strip of our site reveals conflicting overlapping realities where the remnants of Playa Blanca’s history as a fishing village with the Medina and Morales families acting as hotspots of confrontation to the mass tourism in Playa Blanca.
Our project aims to create an ecosystem of collaboration that builds on the existing touristic infrastructure in Playa Blanca through the introduction of a mixed society oriented towards reef building and a local fishing economy. We want to change the current transient tourism nature through establishing an integrated engagement with Playa Blanca creating a positive impact to tourism on the local environment.
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DISMANTLE | ASSEMBLE
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SANDOS HOTEL CONFLICT
The Sandos Hotel was constructed on two plots originally separated by a road accessing the beach. This road falls under the 200m requirement for beach accessibility under the Coastal Act in the Spanish Law. However, the hotel built over the road access, blocking direct access from the road network to the beach.
The number of beds originally licensed for the hotel in the Plan Partial Las Coloradas was 292 beds, however, 747 are built today. This declared the top two floors in the hotel illegal, building over the capacity that goes against the Plan Partial and the Moratorium of 2000.
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Dismantle: Sandos Hotel
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REEF BUILDING The project suggests an alternative scenario where the hotel is able to continue functioning while at the same time achieving the legal status by giving up parts of the hotel that have been built above the limit set by Plan Partial Las Coloradas. Also, the project provides access to the beach directly from the road network by creating a pathway that directly cuts through the hotel. The project proposes “dismantling” as a process instead of complete demolition by taking apart these “illegal” spaces and repurposing the materials so they could be reused elsewhere.
The voiding of spaces in the hotel allows for establishing new workshop spaces where the dismantled materials will be reworked and mesh units will be built for creating the artificial reef.
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DISMANTLE
ASSEMBLE & LOAD
SINK & ELECTRIFY
BIO-ROCK process is used to encourage coral growth and ensure the new artificial reef will survive and flourish.
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MARINA RUBICON CONFLICT
The Coastal Act in the Spanish law defines the building offset from the coast in order to maintain the coast as a public area and protect it from erosion.
In 2000, the construction of Marina Rubicon began without a license because it was not originally meant to be built in this location but was built here nevertheless due to the shallow water depth. The construction sparked a series of protests due to the natural ecosystem of 20,000 sqm of sea-grass species native to this environment that was compromised. Also, the Marina went into a legal battle with the Medina family that originally were living in this location in Berrugo for over 100 years but were eventually evicted in 2010. Today, the commercial area of Marina Rubicon sits outside of the Coastal Act building offset, privatizing public areas.
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FISHING COMMUNITY The two story high Marina Rubicon dam wall creates a barrier that separates the inside of the marina from the ocean both visually and experientially. The project introduces insertion of platforms that create a fishermen market on the dam wall itself, The fishing community will benefit through eliminating distribution agents. This is done by the fishermen directly selling their fish to clients in the tourist zone. People can consume the fish in restaurants/food kiosks or personally grill their fish in the public grills. This creates both a public space and a platform for integrating tourism with the context. The fishermen housing is situated on top of the market in housing towers that are built by assembling the materials dismantled from the Sandos hotel such as doors, windows, grills, etc.
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SORT
TRANSPORT
ASSEMBLE
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Doors, Windows, Handrails, Canopies all come together to be reassembled as housing units.
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Dique Do Tororo Salvador, Bahia, Brazil
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RESISTANCE AT THE DIQUE DO TORORO
03 RESISTANCE At the Dique Do Tororo GSAPP Advanced Studio Instructor: Mario Gooden Spring 2018
This project explores the tensions triggered by the growing tourism of Salvador, Bahia through appropriation of the cultural and religious symbols of Afro-Brazilian communities. By confronting the representations that appropriate sacred spaces of Candomble, the project aims to reclaim and establish subjectivity through the introduction of spaces of expression that celebrate Afro-Brazilian identity. To unpack these tensions, the project focuses on the Dique do Tororo, a lake that has historically been considered sacred in the religion of Candomble due to the reverence of natural elements since the lake is the only natural spring in Salvador, Bahia.
The site as of 1998, features an installation of eight Orixa statues by the artist Tati Moreno representing the deities of Candomble weigh 2 tons each and are more than 22 feet tall. This installation was commissioned by the state of Bahia as a part of a project that revitalises the area. The state of Bahia at the time chose to identify as “Africa of Brazil”, taking pride in its African Heritage and promoting the state’s important tourist industry. However, by creating various representation projects that included murals and statues, the Afro-Brazilian culture is presented in a superficial way directed at touristic consumption. Through addressing these polarities in the site, the project aims to negotiate a sense of belonging, of one’s place within an urban fabric.
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RESISTANCE AT THE DIQUE DO TORORO
The idea of tension was explored by taking Oiticica’s Parangole as a case study.
The parangole designed by Brazilian artist Helio Oiticica is an object that could be made out of flags, tents, and capes, painted or printed fabrics that are meant to be used by the viewer. The artwork is activated when one wears it and dances to samba. Oiticica described the experience of the individual- at once private and collective, intimate and spectacular- as the ciclo “vestir-assistir” (wearingwatching cycle). I argue that this experience could be enhanced in that the watching and wearing could be paired together to become one and the same. My take on the parangole is to push forward the idea of the collective experience through enhancing the dancers’ interaction with each other by allowing the parangole to encompass more than one body at a time. I conducted an experiment with two dancers wearing a parangole I made that connected both the dancers but still maintained their individual spaces by being separated in the middle. The way the parangole was made automatically allowed a void to be generated between the dancers and the parangole itself. This Void was put in tension continuously through the proximity of the dancers to each other and their movement. The parangole in this context transformed into a tool that allows for power negotiations between the dancers; when one of them moves, the other is forced to respond because of the pairing.
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Candomble Ritual Series
RESISTANCE AT THE DIQUE DO TORORO
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Dique do Tororo 1: Laundress by the Lake
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Food 1: Preparation
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Candomble Ritual Series
RESISTANCE AT THE DIQUE DO TORORO
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Food 2: Offering in the woods
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Cleansing and Blessing
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Candomble Ritual Series
RESISTANCE AT THE DIQUE DO TORORO
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Dique do Tororo 2: Lake Offering
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Initiation 1: God of My Head
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Candomble Ritual Series
RESISTANCE AT THE DIQUE DO TORORO
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Initiation 2: Altar
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Ceremony
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The avenue Vasco da Gama that surrounds the lake from the east bank acts as a divider between the low-income communities living in the Engenho Velho de Brotas neighbourhood and the linear park currently on the river bank. The speed of the cars passing through the avenue enforces this divide and renders the lake hard to attain. One aim of the project would be to transform the relationship of the neighbourhood with the park by allowing the neighbourhood to easily flow into the park and enlarging the park from a mere corridor into becoming a community space. The neighbourhood of Engenho Velho has a large number of Candomble Terreiros which means the communities living there are in tension with the Orixa statues and the park itself becoming a tourist attraction. By embedding the values of candomble into the spatial relationships in the park, the audience of the park is transformed into the local communities living in the surrounding environment.
The sacredness of the lake in Candomble is an important aspect that should be highlighted in the project. The park becomes an area of recreation and a community space, but the lake becomes an area of contemplation and the project mediates between the two (Transition from Recreation to Contemplation / Public to private / Collective to individual).
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RESISTANCE AT THE DIQUE DO TORORO
The project creates a series of gathering spaces that enable the community to occupy the site, reversing the current isolation of the lake from the neighbourhood. The park acts as a continuous surface that allows pedestrians to walk continuously from the ground level to the roof that covers the workshops. The workshops are aimed at the cultural practices specific to Afro-Brazilians such as Dance, Music and Capoeira. By creating spaces of learning and practice, the project confronts the representations of the Orixa statues with real practice of the culture of AfroBrazilians.
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WRITINGS
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A HOUSE AS A SMALL CITY 70
WRITINGS
A House As A Small City DESIGN THEORIES Instructor: Enrique Walker
In 1959, Aldo Van Eyck presented his “Otterlo Circles” diagram in the final CIAM congress in Otterlo, summarizing his syncretic approach to design, bringing together the classical, modern and vernacular traditions in architecture. He announced that it is through these three aspects of architecture combined is when the discipline will reconciles the polarities of eclecticism, regionalism and modernism within it- the three kinds of short-sightedness of architecture. This CIAM conference was when Van Eyck announced his polemical statement “Rarely had the possibilities been so great for the architectural profession, but never had it failed so badly”. It was through establishing Team 10 of which Van Eyck was a founding member that CIAM finally collapsed.
Aldo Van Eyck with his anthropological approach to architecture has completely changed architectural discourse in the 1960s and opened it to the social and human aspect. While he has had various influences from his architectural background, an important part of understanding Van Eyck’s thinking is the anthropologists that have had a huge influence on him and changed his approach to architecture. Martin Buber, a philosopher and constant figure that is repeatedly referenced in Van Eyck’s The Child, the City and the Artist, has been a direct inspiration on the creation of the concepts of the Threshold and Twin-phenomenon. “Modern
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individualism is an imaginary structure - this is why it fails. Collectivism is the final barrier man has thrown up against himself as a substitute.” Modernism in post World War II was focused on Functionalism as a reaction to the crisis of housing with complete disregard the human aspect and the identity of the inhabitants of architecture and urban forms. Van Eyck strongly rejected this notion and called for a different approach. “There is only one reality between real persons - what Buber calls ‘the real third’. To use his words, interpreting them at the same time: the real third is no makeshift, but the real bearer of all that passed between real persons … The real third is a real dialogue, a real embrace, a real duel between real people.” It is from referencing Buber’s concept of the real third that Van Eyck called on the marriage of Architecture and Urban Planning disciplines “The real third is not something that happens to one person or another
person separately and a neutral world containing all things, but something that happens between both in a dimension only accessible to both. The in-between acquiring form.” In this marriage of Architecture and Urban Planning, he urged that the two disciplines cannot be separated for they are one and the same, a twin-phenomena; what could be summarized in his theory of The House as a Small City and The City as a Small House. An important project in Van Eyck’s career that directly deals with the idea of The House as a Small City in builtform is the Municipal Orphanage in Amsterdam (1955 - 1960) providing accommodation for 125 orphans. The building is a non-hierarchical structure that represented Van Eyck’s opportunity to test his ideas in practice. The building combines the three traditions of Classical, Modern and Vernacular architecture as presented in the “Otterlo Circles”. The Classical is evident in the regular geometric order of the plan, The Modern in the Centrifugal spaces with traverse the plan order, and the Vernacular appears in the biomorphic cupolas which encompass the entire building. The spatial organisation of the orphanage has worked as a way for Van Eyck to translate his in-between theory to architecture. The building is made out of several units that are tied together with a series of intermediate devices that include what Van Eyck calls the Internal Street. This Internal Street takes the language of the city and folds it into the organization of the building to allow for the individual and collective spaces to co-exist without one dominating the other. This Internal street is one of the intermediate spaces that ease the transition of the spaces from outside to inside. By extending the language of the street inside the building, the process of entering the building becomes tied to the social and psychological aspect, what Van Eyck describes as “helping to mitigate the anxiety that abrupt transition causes, especially in these children.” In designing the spatial organization of the orphanage through a gradient of intermediate spaces of different openness to enclosures, the inbetweening is successfully brought to builtform. In order to create an experiential in-between, Van Eyck gains specificity when designing the environment of the
intermediate “Since the interior street is an intermediary place, I wanted the child’s behaviour and movement in it to remain as vigorous as they are outside. No sudden curbing of spontaneity used in this interior street differ in no way from those used outside. … The child is inside here - the same outside child - with a roof over its head instead of the sky. The electric lighting, moreover, is like street lighting” This account provides a complex play of relationships of outside to inside and vice versa. The architectural elements used, according to Van Eyck, influence the behaviour of the inhabitants of the architecture: the exterior materials invoke exterior behaviour and this could be read as a way of liberating the inhabitants of the interior through the psychological influence the materials provoke in the inhabitants. When explaining the experience of in-between twin phenomenon, Van eyck takes the example of being in the beach and standing right where the ocean meets the shore “No landward yearning from the sea, no seaward yearning from the land. No yearning for the alternative - no escape from one into the other. You coincide with both, because their coincidence is you.” The implication here is that of total democracy of twin phenomenon. However, in the
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WRITINGS
Orphanage’s material and lighting continuation from the outside to the inside in order to facilitate an inbetweening, the character of the inside becomes swallowed up by the outside. An environment of street materials and street lighting leaves little room for the domestic to co-exist, which questions the wholesomeness of the twin phenomenon that Van Eyck was designing for.
The framework of the building and the fact that it is an aggregation of units holds in its DNA the potential to expand on all sides. However, it remains ambiguous how the building with its composition relates to the composition of the city. In a micro-scale, the transition of the building to the outside begins to set up this relationship, but the compact nature of the building presents a stark contrast to the context. As an organization, it hangs on the edge of being interiorized in relation to the city, which complicates the fact that the prompt for the building is the in-between of the house and the city. “There are millions of children in thousands of cities. The children exist in spite of the cities; the cities persist in spite of the children. Both survive, the children with, the cities without identity.” In this statement, Van Eyck again is addressing the divorce between Architecture and Urban Planning, and it is through this urgency that the idea of the children come to the forefront.
Van Eyck addresses the topic of subjectivity in builtform starting from his opening statement in the description of the Orphanage “This building is a house, a particular house as all houses should be within the framework of a certain generality. Peopled. … A house, therefore for the unprotected child”. This powerful statement relates back to his humanist approach and could be read as an underlying criticism of Modernism and its negligence of the human aspect. There is a conscious specificity in the photographs taken for the project in the sense that children inhabit the spaces, performing various activities that involve play in an indirect
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proclamation that this architecture is tailor-made for children. If this project is a House as a Small City, then the figure of the child in Van Eyck’s architecture represents much more than the idea of play, but it addresses a more urgent topic of citizenship.
Van Eyck discusses this idea in his essay “The Image of Ourselves”, and he asks us “If it were true to say that cities are meant for citizens, would it be true to say that they are meant also for children? Is the child a citizen?”.
individual and collective at once, and the exterior and interior. Perhaps the true way of successfully applying twinphenomena is by paying attention and empathizing with the inhabitants and how they relate to the space and the psychological effects of spacemaking in order to facilitate a homecoming.
If children indeed were the image of ourselves as Van Eyck states, it would be because their innocence allows us to only picture them in the best of scenarios; the best of architecture. Children architecturally represent the ideal place to be, so by using his figures as children, Van Eyck emotionally implicates the audience in his project. In stark contrast to modernism’s lack of inhabitants and their identity, Van Eyck repeatedly invokes the imagery of an inhabited architecture with a specific focus on children that appeals to the humanity of those who perceive it. The poetry that Van Eyck brings to architecture is a pivoting point that all architects need to reflect on. In times of crisis, going back to the urgencies of humanity and how we relate to each other is a powerful notion and is the reason why the memory of Van Eyck is alive in architecture today. His theory of “Space in the image of man is place and time in the image of man is occasion” situates man at the center of architecture. Architecture does not exist without inhabitants, and therefore, their identity needs to be announced in the conceiving of the spacemaking.
Upon reflecting on the Municipal Orphanage, the architecture announces the anticipation of children. Play is everywhere, in the circles inside squares and hexagons, in the small playful mirrors that reflect light and distorted images, in the interconnected spaces that weave into one another. By introducing the idea of twin-phenomena to the builtform, Van Eyck creates a series of relationships that invoke the
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THE MUSEUM OF ARTS AND DESIGN AN ELEMENTAL ANALYSIS 76
WRITINGS
The Museum of Arts and Design: An elemental analysis Metropolis Instructor: Enrique Walker - TA: Ashraf Abdalla
The Museum of Arts and Design, also known as Columbus Circle 2, is one of the most characteristic buildings located in Columbus Circle. Despite the fact that the Circle has its fair share of iconic buildings, and that the Museum of Arts and Design only inhabits a small area of the Circle, Columbus Circle is immediately associated with the iconic image of the Museum with its stark white terracotta tiles that contrast against the glass.
The Museum,however, is only a recent tenant of Columbus Circle 2. This is evident when closely inspecting the columns at the street level that appear behind the glass. Immediately, it is revealed to the questioning eye that there is an inconsistency in the relationship between the columns and the facade. The building has had a long history that started in 1964 when it was designed by Edward Durrell Stone and opened as the Gallery of Modern Art. The original building’s facade had a distinct style of modern architecture, with its marble cladding and Venetian motifs sitting on top of lollipop shaped columns forming an arcade at the ground level. At the upper levels, the building was a continuous monolith broken only on the top two floors where the restaurant opened to a view of Central Park.
In 2002, Brad Cloepfil of Allied Works Architecture was commissioned to redesign the facade of Columbus Circle 2 to take up a new identity as The Museum of Arts and Design. Cloepfil was faced with the challenge of transforming the existing building and opening it to natural light and views. He attempted to achieve that by inserting structural cuts throughout the concrete facade in order to allow light in. The intention of these cuts was to create a continuous line that unites the façade, walls, floors, and ceilings of the building that transforms the building entirely. But comparing Cloepfil’s intention with the final product we see in Columbus Circle today as a whole, the so-called transformation he was aiming for is minimal and still carries the inherited monolith character of its origins. Conversely, the defining quality Cloepfil managed to create for the Museum of Arts and Design
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with his transformation is actually the unique new facade of the building.
The paradox of the materials Cloepfil carefully selected to include in his facade call for further investigation especially in comparison to the older facade of Columbus Circle 2. For his facade, Cloepfil replaced the existing marble with terracota tiles and covered the structural cuts he inserted with glass of varying transparencies. In doing so, the small scale of the terracota tiles that dominate the facade fell in tension with the uniformity and scale of the building as a whole, complicating the shift from the original marble material even further. Interestingly, the scale and nature of the tiles work together in favor of animating the building, reflecting the changing light throughout the day. Simultaneously, the glass used in the facade continues this spirit of animation and extends its reach to the night with the interior light filtering out of the glass. This phenomenon of a changing facade during night and day creates a continuous atmospheric type of entertainment singular to the Museum of Arts and design, allowing it to always be engaged with the outside world. The dynamic nature of the facade causes the building to immediately stand out from its neighbors, therefore, separating itself from the context around it. This is further emphasized by the particular nature of the plot where it is located. Perched on a small isolated island, the Museum is physically limited from engaging with its neighbors and is cut off from all sides by the streets surrounding it. Despite the limitations of the plot, the remarkable location at Columbus circle provides a fertile opportunity for engagement. This is demonstrated when examining the Time Warner Center across the street from the museum which curves with the circle and is in dialogue with its surroundings. In contrast, even though the Museum is also slightly curved with the circle, the commanding presence of the Museum falls short of taking full advantage of this location. Due to the under-detailed monolithic facade dominating the building’s exterior, the building has no choice but to introvert itself from reaching out. Similarly, when looking into the interior of the building and its history before this new facade,
there is also a disconnect from the inside happening. During the process of creating this transformation, Cloepfil decided to keep the lollipop columns and even show them through his new facade. However, he blurred the upper lollipop part of the columns with frosted glass. This suggests that there was a conflict when Cloepfil was dealing with the existing interior of the building in response to his new facade. The end result that we can observe is Cloepfil inversely establishing a separation between his facade and the interior by not connecting them. By segregating the interior from the exterior, it appears that the building is left suspended in an unidentified zone between introversion and extroversion.
itself, the facade remains a separate presence that is always in tension with the inside and the outside of the building, trying to establish some sort of relationship with both but never really committing to either.
Furthermore, when examining the building at night, this suspended unidentified zone at first appears to be blurring when the interior lights come on. The night dims the terracotta tiles while the illuminated glass panels start to reveal which parts of the museum are exposed and which parts are hidden. Conversely, after close observation, the parts that initially appear as exposed actually don’t really reveal much information to us about what is going on inside of the museum. We are left with an illusion of exposure caused by the facade but without any tangible aspect to it. This gesture of openness implies that the building is more focused on the facade appearing open than the interior spaces actually being open to public view. In effect, this reinforces the fact that the facade is giving false ideas of exposure and doesn’t seem to be speaking to the inside of the building. Nonetheless, the facade always has a strong omnipresence to the spectator that demands attention.
The thematic separation in the Museum of Arts and design draws to the conclusion that this unidentified zone is created and solely inhabited by the facade, refusing to pledge allegiance to either the outside or the inside of the building. However way you examine into it, the facade seems to be working in isolation of its surroundings. Nevertheless, because it is always in motion and is ever changing, it appears to be working with an agenda. The facade is but a tool for drawing attention to the Museum and for iconic advertisement. But for the Museum
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THE STREET AS A SITE OF RESISTANCE SPACE AS PRAXIS 80
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The Street as a Site of Resistance Space as Praxis Dark Space Instructor: Mario Gooden
This paper studies the phenomenon of expressing the collective identity in the Brazilian cities’ Carnival Rio de Janeiro and Bahia, and compares these expressions with the project “Marching On” by Mabel Wilson, Bryony Roberts and the Marching Cobras of New York. These investigations reveal the importance of the street as a political site where identity is manifested.
Through occupying the street, the collective identity is able to infiltrate domestic spaces through vehicles such as style and song. Identity then goes from the temporal state of the event, to the permanent realm of the everyday. This research also investigates how the expression of identity takes hold on an existing form of expression, in the case of this paper either the Carnival or the Military March, and it is only through inhabiting this existing form does the sharp clash between ideologies of the existing and the other create an impact. Introduction Every year, the city of Rio De Janeiro witnesses the annual Carnival when the city completely suspends it’s natural order and delves into a series of week long Lent festivities. Contrary to its current form, the Carnival in Rio de Janeiro has evolved several times in order to reach its current form of street festivals and Samba school parades. The first records of the Carnival in Rio date back to 1723 which was brought to Brazil by the Portuguese immigrants who celebrated the Entrudo, a pre-Lent celebration that involved soaking unsuspecting persons with lime water. The most prominent idea of the Entrodu was that it was primarily celebrated by the working class, who dressed up to make fun of the rich. Jean-Baptiste Debret notes in his book, Picturesque and historical trip to Brazil, “I saw that during the carnival one or two groups of negroes masked and disguised as old Europeans, very adroitly imitating their gestures, when they saluted, from right and left.”
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Scène de Carnaval, Picturesque and historical trip to Brazil, Jean-Baptiste Debret (1823)
In 1855, the celebration of the carnival evolved with the creation of the Great Societies, an organized parade with the presence of the Emperor of Brazil, Dom Pedro I. This parade involved aristocrats dressed in luxury dresses. In the 1890s a new concept of Cordão Carnavalesco emerged in Rio de Janeiro that participated in the Carnival. The Cords were a groups of masked revelers with features of old men, clowns, devils, kings, queens, Indians, Bahians, among others, led by a master obeying a whistle of command whose instrumental ensemble used to be exclusively percussion. A critical moment in the Rio was the emergence of the sound of Samba. Samba was first introduced into Rio Carnival because of women from Bahia, known as Tias Baianas, who came to Rio and settled in a neighbourhood that was called Little Africa. These women were priestesses of Candomble, the religion practiced by Afro-Brazilians that originated from enslaved West Africans maintaining their religious practices despite persecution from white Christian masters. An important part of the practice of Candomble involves music, so it was in the neighbourhood of Little Africa where Samba was first played towards the end of the 19th century and then later spread to
the carnival and was adopted by the Samba schools. A main theme that distinguishes the Rio Carnival is the fact that it is a Great Illusion. This is generated from the fact that normal life is suspended whenever it is time for Carnival. Roberto DaMatta, a Brazilian anthropologist describes this in his book Carnivals, Rogues and Heroes “The principle of hierarchy is always present, because the deepest social fear in Brazil is the fear or being “out of place,” especially when this “displacement” implies trying to pass as something other than what one really is. Within this frame the inversion of Brazilian Carnival is a principle that temporarily suspends precise hierarchical classification of things, persons, actions, categories, and groups in the social arena, enabling everyone and everything to be out of place. It is precisely because it can put everything out of place that the Carnival is often considered a “great illusion” or a grand “foolish madness.” Brazilian Carnival, then, transforms the holistic hierarchy of everyday life into a fleeting moment dominated by magical individualistic equality.” The idea of a new reality that transforms everyday life, in DaMattas opinion, allow for integrity and social harmony, what he describes as a “real” meeting between social classes or ethnic groups that bleeds into everyday life. The social construct of “Brazilianness”, an idea that suggests “Racial Democracy” exists in Brazil and racism does not is enabled by this social meeting of the classes. This construct infiltrating the social life in Brazil disregards the idea of race and discrimination in society, as if that does not play a role in the social dynamics of Brazil. An important aspect of the great illusion is the tools used to achieve it. In this sense, masquerading acts as a vehicle in the displacement of identities. In the Rio Carnival, the rich dress as the poor, the poor dress as the rich or even Nobles, Men roam the streets in rag and adults dress as infants. These acts destabilize the everyday in Rio de Janeiro through detaching from one’s identity and everyday reality. The effects of the Rio Carnival are limited to only the specific
time of the Carnival and are completely divorced from the natural flow of everyday life. DaMatta also describes this temporality by stating “Brazilian Carnival is seen as a compact festival. It is “Carnival time,” a special moment when anything can happen. In sociological terms, it is a period when the social world is rich in possibilities and ceases to be organized around its ordinary social classifiers (occupation, neighborhood, wealth, power, etc. The Carnival of Rio de Janeiro and Brazil, then, is a period marked by an increase in freedom and anonymity and in social maneuverability.”
The temporality of the Carnival chaos is what enables the everyday rigidity of hierarchical social structures in Rio to remain in place, creating two opposite extremes that exist because of each other. In that sense, the themes of Illusion, Role Masquerading and Temporality in Rio Carnival’s street become a tool in democratizing even if temporarily the idea of social hierarchy. Identity: Between Brazilian Negritude and U.S Blackness The state of Bahia, north to Rio de Janeiro, is unique for its African influenced Carnival. The capital of Bahia, Salvador, is known as the Most African City in Brazil. The Bahian Carnival prior to the 1970s, however, was not always africanized. Ilê Aiyê, the first afr-bloco to emerge in Bahia, started as a reaction to the exclusion of blacks from Trio-Electricos, the trucks or floats that act as stage in the festivities. The Trio-Electricos were created specifically for the Bahian carnival and the bands play for the crowds as they pass through the cities. Ilê Aiyê started in 1974 in Curuzu, Liberdade, in the state of Bahia in Brazil. The creation of an African bloco, unprecedented at the time, was a different type of festivity: a revolutionary, ethnoracial, socially engaged carnival, committed to the struggle against racism in Bahia. Candomble, the religion practiced mostly by Afro-Brazilians, has historically acted as a vessel to preserve African identity
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in Brazil through religious practices that involve dance, music and oral traditions. A strong reason why Ilê Aiyê was motivated to express their Africanness was that Mae Hilda, a priestess in the religion of Candomble, influenced her son Vovô’s band the expression of Africanness through it. Africanization or Black space-making, according to Ilê Aiyê’s method, is injected into the carnival by Music and Style. The lyrics used by Ilê Aiyê speak strongly of Black Pride. “Black is beautiful” is a concept that many of the songs incorporate because the lyrics are directed towards the community of Afro-Brazilians.
through celebrating black features and natural hair, as well as normalizing African Prints and African Fashion. Vovô recounts the reaction he received in the beginning of this transformation of Liberdade’s community “Soon after the creation of Ilê, I was booed a few times for wearing colorful african robes, they said I was crazy and that carnival has already passed. Before this, we only wore clothes in neutral colors, nobody used colorful clothes. However, we argued that it was not enough to just speak it, we had to provide examples. Hence, the men started to grow their hair and women started styling and braiding theirs.”
Infinite beauty/ Pretty Black/ Divinized in Ilê
- Ilê Original Black Divinity, by Wostinha Nascimento E Odé Rufin What bloco is that / I want to know / lt’s the black world /That we came to show you We’re crazy blacks / We’re real cool / We got kinky hair / We’re black power Whitey if you knew / The worth of the black man / You’d go bathe in tar Become black too / I don’t teach you my wiles / Nor my philosophy either Who shows the light to the blind man / Is the white cane of Saint Luzia
Ilê Aiyê’s first popular hit, “What Bloco is That/Que Bloco É� Esse”, by Paulinho Carnafeu, 1975 carnival
Therefore, Ilê Aiyê is constructing a racial identity that is seperate from “Brazilianness” and advances “Negritude”. The songs address racism and the existence of prejudice against Afro-descendents, a topic that is rarely acknowledged in Brazil and openly criticizes it. Also, as a part of constructing a racial identity, the songs use the idea of Africa and Candomble to create mental images that refer to their distinct culture. Style - As the music suggests, black power is achieved
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Inside cover of Ilê Aiyê’s first vinyl record
The choice of the name of the band, under these circumstances, was an important one. Mae Hilda, mother of Vovô, the cocreator of Ilê Aiyê, recounts “..because the Americans were fighting over there, if they called it: Black Power, it was something of a student who came to shake things up on this side. So I thought it should not be, and I told them to choose another name and they chose Ilê Aiyê. [...] It means House, and you will host your friends, colleagues … so it is a black from the Big House. Ilê Aiyê means the universal home, for everyone,
it is the slave quarter of Barro Preto, Curuzu.” By naming its headquarters as a Slave Quarter, Ile’s board of directors had in mind the necessity of resignifying that place, challenging its negative connotations as a space of suffering and submission, and rendering it as a realm of creativity, strength, and a venue of black resistance against all forms of oppression. This recount of the thinking behind the name of Ilê Aiyê reveals the cross continental influences on the ideas behind of Black Power shared between the African diaspora. It is interesting to note how the form of marching has been a tool in asserting Black Power in both Brazil and USA. There is a long history of African - American marching as a way of camouflaging their occupation of public space under Jim Crow segregation laws in the nineteenth and twentieth century.
In the 100 year anniversary of the Silent Parade of 1917 Bryony Roberts, Mabel Wilson in collaboration with the Marching Cobras of New York created “Marching On”. The project explores the history and importance of marching as resistance, in particular because it is a form that used to be commonly associated with Military and disciplined bodies. Marching On recalls the Silent Parade, a silent march of about 10,000 African Americans along Fifth Avenue starting at 57th Street in New York City on July 28, 1917 against lynching and violence. The fact that the parade was silent was very powerful because it was a sharp contrast to the known form of marching that is accompanied with music. The project also states the importance of marching bands and drumlines as a political expression, celebrating collective identities and asserting rights to public space and visibility. While Negritude for Afro-Brazilians means rejecting the construct of social harmony advanced by Brazilianness and asserting an individual Black identity, Blackness in U.S means rejection of racial superiority and socioeconomic ascendancy of whites through Black Consciousness. Although each movement differs in terms of social dynamics, they both utilize the form of marching as a way of occupying the public space to assert collective identity. Whether because of accessibility or neutrality, the street remains an important part of facilitating the practice of expressing identities.
Social ordering of the Street Space for Black Bodies in the Bahian Carnival could be read as the main reason behind the creation of Ilê Aiyê. This is especially evident in Vovô’s description of what the Carnival was like prior to 1970s. “The ropes are set up by carnival blocos in order to separate the performers who paid for their costumes and those who did not. As a result, often times there is a distinctive racial difference between those who are holding the ropes (usually low income black women and men), and those who are following the musical bands inside (whites) and outside the sideline row ropes (low income blacks).”
Diagram 1 Illustrating Black Bodies relative to White Bodies in Bahian Carnival prior to 1970s
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The Carnival in Bahia positioned white bodies as central figures and black bodies were marginalized. The main purpose of Ilê Aiyê was repositioning black people as protagonists. Vovô recounts the absence of blacks from the center of festivities in the Ilê Aiyê book “The most revolutionary invention of Ilê Aiyê changed the state of the art in research, as well as the analysis of the concepts of carnival, a popular festivity. There were absences: we, black men and women, did not participate in this festival of joy on equal terms with the social classes considered elites. They defined the standards of order, beauty, joy and organization of this popular festivity in which all classes had to participate. However, each class had their respective place, previously established within the perverse realm of “racial democracy,” in the nonexistent brazilian racial paradise, the maintainer of a colonial ideology.” By addressing the construct of Racial Democracy, which as mentioned previously is achieved through Carnival in Rio de Janeiro according to DaMatta, Bahian Carnival by becoming Africanized, it therefore turns into the antithesis of Rio Carnival. Africanization in the Bahian Carnival spatially translates to the restructuring of Black bodies from outside spectators from the margins of the street of festivities into being able to infiltrate the Carnival and assert their visibility and identity. In the same sense, marching in the U.S was an important tool for Blacks to occupy spaces they weren’t allowed to in the early twentieth century because Jim Crow segregation Laws. While free blacks had a history of being the first groups to march before the civil war, the segregation after the war gave marching a new meaning. Since they participated in the war through drumlines, the music and clothes of the Military postwar became a cloak for resistance in public spaces. The 369th Infantry Regiment also known as Harlem Hellfighters were one of the first troops to march in New York after arriving from World War I and confronted with lack of jobs housing, lynching and segregation because of racism. The Harlem Hellfighters were important in changing the music and dance styles typically associated with military marches because they created hybrids that included Jazz. The parade took place on 17 February 1919, and about one
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million New Yorkers came to see them perform. It began on Fifth Avenue at 61st Street, proceeded uptown past ranks of white bystanders, turned west on 110th Street, and then turned onto Lenox Avenue, and marched into Harlem, where black New Yorkers packed the sidewalks to see them. The parade became a marker of African American service to the nation, a frequent point of reference for those campaigning for civil rights. An important part of this parade was the reaction of people towards it and how the parade transformed the street into a place of resistance because the street was the only place accessible for all and where the community could engage with one another. In addition, people lined up along the balconies of the buildings around the street to watch the parade pass by, altering the public sphere by the experience of watching . Marching On takes this set of historical events in addition to the history of Civil Rights marches and Pride marches, creating a performance that discusses rights to public space and visibility. Marcus Garvey Park in Harlem, the site chosen for the “Marching On” performance, is a contested site that is witnessing transition in land value and therefore gentrification. The park historically holds regular drum circles and has been used by residents for performances, however,
the new residents have been filing noise complaints against the activity of the park. The intent in situating the project in this site was reasserting the right for presence of Blacks and continuing the local history of marching. The capes of the performers are two sided, uses the idea of military forms to camouflage and create an ambiguous relationship with the site. One side of the capes reference the Harlem Hellfighters and the white color signifying the Silent March and the other side holds the colors of the Marching Cobras. In this duality, the performance goes from the rigid formations of the military to expressive colors that are paired with performance elements from African dance. In the project, the relationship of the performers and the context becomes ambiguous at times. The audience has an intimate relationship with the performance in the sense that social ordering becomes lost at times to enable an exchange. Influence on the Everyday
In the U.S, the form of marching has evolved through time as a means of political expression especially since military training has been incorporated into Historically Black colleges and Universities which led to the formation of student marching bands. From the nineteenth century, the movements, costumes, colors have evolved to include other forms of performance such as dance lines, hip-hop and step choreography. It is through different means of representation in society that identity is able to become present in the everyday. Similarly, the concept of the everyday is what was revolutionizing about the Bahian Carnival. Temporality, which is the main theme in Rio Carnival, is reduced almost completely from Bahian Carnival. As styles and music that carry Africanness invade the space of the Carnival (street), the ideology of Negritude transcends the temporal aspect of the event and is thus transferred into the everyday (domestic space). The effect of Re-Africanization is not only evident in men and women braiding their hair and wearing African print clothes, but in the introduction of Afro-Brazilian culture to the education in the community. In 2004, Ilê Aiyê established the
Centro Cultural Senzala do Barro Preto, which does important social work and expands Afro-Brazilian culture through music, dance, sports and professional courses. Citizenship is exercised by raising self-esteem and educating children about history. In this sense, Negritude in Bahia goes from the street to domestic spaces to educational spaces. Ilé Aiyê use their art as a vehicle to sing their past, challenge their still defiant present, and create a fairer future for themselves. Although they are still victims of considerable prejudice and cope with other serious challenges, they can now unabashedly express their uniqueness and claim a rightful place in Brazilian history and society. They are fighting for a much deserved space in society, and making it possible for their local communities and the larger Afro- Brazilian group to slowly move towards citizenship. The space of the street represents a key element in the urban fabric. Occupying the space of the street hints at the side effects where roads are blocked and the surrounding area stops it’s flow to allow for this occupation to take place. In this sense, occupying the street with identity becomes important because it disrupts the everyday, forcing the public becomes aware of this event. Through analyzing the Carnival and the Military march, the importance of the street as a political site where identity is manifested becomes evident. An important part of the expression of identity is the visibility in the public sphere, where the community can see itself and be able and represent itself. Through studying both the Bahian Carnival and U.S marching bands, occupying an existing form - Carnival or Military - helps to camouflage the infiltration of the public realm in the sense that it is familiar enough to the general public. Through this occupation, ideas of Identity are able to be transported from the temporal state of the event, to the permanent realm of the everyday where communities can be represented.
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