Dip/MArch Unit 17 Yr 4: Matthew Eberhard , Fernanda Fiuza, Tony Staples, Emma Tubbs, Jay Victoria, Georgina Ward, Christopher Wong Yr 5: Tala Akkawi, Justine Bell, Alastair Crockett, Jonathan Horsfall, Katsura Leslie, Tatiana Malysheva, Thomas Winter
Decay and Emergence – The Becoming of Cities In 1194BC, 1000 ships beached on the shoreline of Asia Minor and set up camp. They remained there for 10 years before sacking Troy. A temporary city consumed an existing city, and then disappeared. At the end of the 19th century, the republican Brazilian army relied heavily on former slaves for recruits. Freed a decade earlier, but with no land or wealth, enlisting was a way of escaping poverty and came with the promise of land after service. On returning victorious to the capital, they discovered the promised housing hadn’t been built. So they established an encampment on the hill overlooking what was to become downtown. Many of them had families in tow. Over time the camp became more established as the row over housing provision continued without resolution. Many found work constructing new suburbs of the rapidly expanding city. Rio de Janeiro’s first Favela was born, and so began a symbiotic process that continues still. This year, the first year in history that more than half of the world’s population will live in cities, the unit considered the emergence of cities in mythical and structural terms. Our field trip took us to Rio de Janeiro. There we studied the relationship that exists between City and Favela, and how the tensions between the two are dissipated once a year by the liminal festival of Carnival. We examined the complex dynamic systems that underpin dense urbanism and explored the historical precedents and the stories we tell ourselves: mythic, poetic and scientific; that allow us to make sense of these constructs.
Niall McLaughlin, Adam Cole & Tilo Guenther
Above and opposite page: Justine Bell, Landfall: the Other Shore.