When I Digress... [Part 1]

WHEN I DIGRESS...

“AN ARCHITECTURE OF THE MARGINS”

In order for the discipline of architecture to interrogate power, we must redefine the architectural understanding of the margins.

Typically when we talk about the margins in architecture we use the term to refer to marginal land or to people that are from marginal or “minority” backgrounds. (Of course, this is all in an attempt to consolidate power, as “minority” in the Western canon refers to the global majority.) Both these references carry with them negative connotations; defining an area or people by their lack of developmental, agricultural, or industrial value. “Marginal land has little potential for profit and often has...other undesirable characteristics. This type of land is often located at the edge of deserts or other desolate areas.” (Investopedia) By operating under this definition, we are objectifying the margins as peoples and places that are “undesirable”.

I propose that we redefine this idea of the margins to one that aligns more closely with that in literature. In literature, the margins occupy an essential physical space on the page. The margins are essential in grounding the text, but more importantly, they allow for a conversation between the author and the reader. The margins exist as a “space of accessibility”, a space for which the reader can follow along and log their “traces of development” in relation to the text. The margins allow for articulating differences and fostering independence in the self-assertive act of mark-making.

The following is an exploration of how this redefinition of the margins, allows for the re-envisioning of the architecture of the margins.

When you are reading a book, an article, or an academic text, occasionally you will stumble across moments where the text is opaque— you require further clarification.

So you try reading the passage again, hoping that in the second time, or in the third time, or in the fourth time of reading the text you will find an opening in which you can untangle it. Frustrated, you might pick up a pen and start underlining moments that you think are important, hoping that if you keep those underlined words in mind, things will fall together.

PT 2: THE ANNOTATIONS

Slowly, but surely, things start coming together; there is maybe a fleeting moment of understanding that you try to hold on to, so you quickly jot it down on the available space on the page— the margins.

These moments of understanding stop fleeting away, but rather they start occupying a space of their own on the page. Now that you are accustomed to writing, you begin not only writing down in moments where you are trying to understand something but your thoughts and opinions in relation to what the author is expressing.

Maybe you even start to imagine yourself...

Conversing Laughing Questioning Criticizing Arguing Agreeing Considering Denying Recalling Suggesting Imagining Allowing Dreaming Questioning Fixating Growing ... with the author

This once perplexing article has transformed.

It is no longer this mentally crippling piece of writing that you are trying to untangle, but it is a body to which you start to define yourself in relation. The annotations that you have taken, while comprised of poorly written shorthand, become to you, more important than the text itself.

It is important that we redefine the architectural understanding of the margins.

Annotations begin to express not only what you understood or do not understand, but also how you were feeling at certain moments in relation to the original text. This new body emerging on the page, these annotations, not only hold the key to your understanding but were built out of relations.

Typically when we talk about the margins in architecture we use the term to refer to marginal land or to people that are from marginal or “minority” backgrounds. [Of course, the irony is that “minority” in the western canon refers to the global majority.] Both these references carry with them negative connotations; defining an area or people by their lack of developmental, agricultural, or industrial value. “Marginal land has little potential for profit and often has...other undesirable characteristics. This type of land is often located at the edge of deserts or other desolate areas.” By operating under this definition, we are objectifying the margins as peoples and places that are “undesirable”.

These traces and marks are what as known as annotations. Annotations occur on an ad-hoc basis, usually in a relational manner. They tend to occupy the periphery.

What happens when we compile these annotations into a body of their own and apply a focus on them?

I propose that we redefine this idea of the margins to one that aligns more closely with that in literature. In literature, the margins occupy an essential physical space on the page. The margins are essential in grounding the text, but more importantly, they allow for a conversation between the author and the reader. The margins exist as a “space of accessibility”, a space for which the reader can follow along and log their “traces of development” in relation to the text. The margins allow for articulating differences and fostering independence in the self-assertive act of mark-making.

w/ H.J. Jackson

w/ Nora Akawi

w/ Bell Hooks

One One One itself One itself

Annotations are not a perfect summary of the text, nor a particularly informative one, however, they carry the embodied emotion of the text. By centralizing the annotations, a different set of understandings— and by extension priorities— is brought into focus. These are of course variable by site and circumstances— the text and the reader— however one characteristic salient between these bodies of annotations is their lack of a clear narrative. What I mean by this is that there is no overarching linear objective that dictates the trajectory of the writing. Rather, due to the ad-hoc nature of annotations, the trajectory frequently changes based on what is needed. However, despite this lack of linearity, each annotation carries a bit of information where cumulatively they start to voice a cohesive need.

way way this cohesiveness can manifest... way this cohesiveness can manifest itself is through all-way this cohesiveness can manifest itself is through alliteration.

Alliteration is the return to a letter, phrase, sound, or fragment to tie together a series of concepts while granting them some liberty of being different from one another.

Alliteration allows for something to repeat, but never present itself in quite the same way or context as it did before, keeping it from becoming stagnant.

In this way, alliteration differs from repetition (the act of copying and pasting) for it does not continuously produce the same result. It also differs from iteration for there is a requirement that each step in the series has some relation to what came before.

At this moment our modes of representation are brought into question. If the way we understand things is the way we represent them, and the way we represent things is the way we build them, how do we visually represent marginal annotative alliterations? How must we push the current boundaries of architectural drawing to allow for this form of knowledge production and communication? What are the results of our desire to speak, present, draw, articulate, write, and communicate in non-linear ways? What is the result of our constant framing and re-framing of the narrative?

I have found that through the practice of stamping we can begin to tackle these questions.

PT 4: ALLITERATIVE ANNOTATIVE AFFINITIES

A.K.A STAMPING

Stamping as a drawing method is not frequently explored in architectural representation. The act of stamping usually occurs in two situations. The first situation is as an art tool for simple functions, like haphazardly repeating the icon of a flower over a page.

So you might see a lot of children playing with them.

The second situation is for official use, like the systematic stamping of legal documents.

These stamps carry a lot of importance and are used with great intention.

Stamping as a mode of representation exists in both these extremes—the haphazard and the systematic. In both these realms, the stamp is reduced to its singularity— it is one stamp that relays the entirety of the idea. When we start to see stamps as a connective tool, we open up the possibility for them to exist between the haphazard and the systematic.

I have created sets of stamps, where each set consists of salient two pieces, the structure and the interior. These pieces work in tandem to communicate an idea for a home. Cumulatively, the sets of stamps can begin to communicate an idea for a community of homes.

The stamps always exist in relation to one another, thus through their repeated combination and recombination they grow and evolve over time in ways that always reference their past.

In other words, the stamps can alliterate.

MARGINALIA COLLECTION: MARGINALIA COLLECTION:

COLLECTION: COLLECTION:

This stamping process can also be explored in a community setting. It can be used by communities in the margins as a way of expressing their agency as to what they want their future to look like and communicating their needs. The power of communally drawing these spaces is that it not only makes them worthy of being drawn but also it gives them the potential to exist. The stamping allows the community to come together and transform their ideas— which may have been thought of as impossible— into ideas that are imaginary.

This essential transformation comes when there is an acknowledgment that there could exist an architecture that addresses the needs of these communities. This process of stamping and restamping is essential in transforming the imaginal into a series of layers, or a process. The stamping process embodies complexity and thus the need to delegate and organize. It requires that the community learn to more closely observe their surroundings: their material resources, their relations to one another, and their relationship to the environment.

Informal Housing is the weapon of the poor against the state’s failed leadership and indifference.

Informal Housing allows residents to invest in their own spatial and social neighborhoods.

Egyptians’ response to “a structure of urban injustice where the state failed to provide them with affordable land, resources; failed to put in place an efficient, transparent and responsive urban governance framework; and failed to distribute public resources fairly and equitably among different urban areas.”

The majority of Egyptians reside in informal housing, which primarily consists of lowermiddle-class housing in semi-planned urban areas. Although the structures are generally sound and equipped with some public infrastructure, they were constructed illegally on legally owned land, in violation of zoning laws and building codes. Informal Housing is

PT 5: INFORMAL HOUSING IN EGYPT

A part of this informal housing practice is a phenomenon I am referring to as generational building.

Generational building is the process by which a landowner hires a local builder and they collaboratively construct a home out of materials cement and red brick, however, they do not build the entirety of the building at once. Rather residents build what is needed at a specific moment, allowing the opportunity for future generations to improve upon and add their voice to the building when necessary.

This generational building is a form of what I would consider Annotative SpaceMaking. Annotative Space-Making is a process in which multiple voices are given agency and influence the development of the building. This way of building must be gradual to allow for the preservation of culture and community.

The government has begun to dramatically crackdown on Informal Housing. Egypt is currently in the midst of executing its military-led construction boom, in attempts to construct a New Administrative Capital. Its goal is to raise the overall living standards for Egyptians by developing Egypt’s rural areas.

hindering the productive and imaginary potentials of the informal housing processes.

These new housing proposals lack the intelligence and sensibilities of the informal settlements. Along with destroying built informal housing, the government tightened up building codes to reflect those of Western construction

However, this project has relocated entire neighborhoods of low-income citizens and destroyed their informal housing.

PT 6: THE VILLAGE OF RECONCILIATION

I am rooting this epistemology in Kafr-Al Musalaha, Egypt. [Kafr Al-Musalha, translating to the Village of Reconciliation]

Kafr-Al Musalaha sits on the cusp of a metropolis and a rural village; traveling ten minutes in either direction will lead you to one or the other. It is a community that is feeling the pressures of the city but has yet to succumb to it.

Due to how imminent the threat of falling to exclusive and foreign ways of construction is, Kafr Al-Musalaha’s location makes it a perfect place to address the question of building in the margins.

END OF PART ONE