Editor’s Note
Hello everyone!
Welcome to the first issue of Umarell // Brick Through a Window, we are a new critical architectural newsletter based in Glasgow. Firstly, we want to thank everyone who submitted work and everyone who took the time to share our open call online or off, we would not have had such a fantastic first issue without you all, we are super pleased with how this has turned out.
This issue focuses on the theme of protest within architecture. Protest and political action are constantly at the centre of our architectural practice, whether that be on the side of help or hindrance and even whether we intend it to be or not. The practice of designing space is innately political and small choices can have monumental impacts on the population. In this way we are a very powerful profession, but it stands with us to utilise this influence in an effective manner. It is imperative that we organise to challenge those in positions of power to create more equitable spaces that work not only for a capitalist ruling class and regain autonomy over our cities.
One question we found incredibly provocative was whether architecture itself could be considered a form of protest. Of course, it is a given that cities and the spaces created within them can affect protest and, conversely, protest is often in response to architectural decisions, but a piece of architecture being a protest itself is harder to come by. We are massively pleased then by some of the submissions that proved to us that architectural practice can be a form of protest and can challenge damaging political or social ideologies/ conditions.
Once again, thank you to everyone who submitted work, we are blown away by the quality of your work and how many ways the theme has been tackled. Please enjoy everyone’s work and keep an eye out for the next open call! Theme coming soon…
The Umarells x Keep up with us on Instagram @umarellnewsletter
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Contents
Hollywood Bowl Bus Thoughts
Women in Destruction
Tin Can Apron & Clamp Post
Architecture and Protest Under Capitalism
Disrupting Domesticity in the Political Sphere
Lynch’s Broken Dream A Personal Protest
Pollolk Free State Blank Slate - A Manifesto
The Red Sandcastles of Glasgow The Garden of Hedon
Brick Through a Glass Window / Brick as a Witness
Architecture + Politics
Collective Dwelling & Appropriation for Autonomy
Protest Architecture: Resistance & ReInvention
Eva Gerretsen Katy Hope
Amy Platt - The RAG Gallery
Rosie Park
Louis Ménia Rose Miller
Endri Kicaj
Daniel Jones
Richard Fisher
Nirali Jade
Bianca Pedrina
Joseph Conway
Tristan Theron Lissa Lai
Nathan Shakura
Reece Oliver
Hollywood Bowl
Keep in mind the colours: the octopus purr, blinking thoughts under skin as viewed from flagpole to shivering swim among crowds down George Square, then Trongate to step winter passes through as a fat worm crisping the trash with frost down Cathcart deathride Island Boys above engine song, and bins alight with Olympic Flame this is crushing time, another word for dreams, only it works better in the past before leading questions, before the unrivalled medicine god, before I caught sight of her, cutting coke with a library card neon doesn’t work the way it used to, best to shout
Beware the pampered wife!
Beware Nan’s roll-shop
Beware the bargains, the hot egg for a pound
Beware the vectored sea of cans
Can you even be sure it’s fiction
Eva Gerretsen @evagrrrrrrrrrr
After a strange phone call from our now landlord in February 2022, a series of meetings and exchange of documents and promises, our art collective ‘On The Rag’ were handed the keys of a four floor, all bells-and-whistles HSBC Bank, complete with kiosk and vault, on four-banks in Chorlton, Manchester. This was luckily free of rent due to our Community Interest Company status, alleviating the landlord of paying land tax and therefore his request for rent from us (which is not often given, so thanks Sunil).
Under the knowledge that in a year it will be gutted and turned into a wine bar we got cracking on our transformation process. This undertaking of turning an old bank, and before that a Chemist, into what is now RAG Gallery (Manchester) was exhausting, cathartic and hilarious. The ‘DIY’ aesthetic for art spaces has long been pretty fashionable, I’m sure this is because the people running these spaces inevitably operate outside of mainstream gallery spaces (and funding), therefore are both perceived ‘avant-garde’ and are always, always, skint. We certainly apply to the latter. Indeed, armed with an asbestos survey and floor plan we literally went to screwfix, bought a sledgehammer under the guidance of some unassuming builders we accosted on the street, and started tearing walls down. We knew to keep the power off and tapped the walls to check if they were weight bearing. Our PPE consisted of valved site dust masks, goggles, gloves and some hard hats lent to us by more passing construction workers. Nearly all the advice was obtained from construction workers walking past the gallery, and we are indebted to them. Our electrical circuits were amended after some precarious snipping by a friend of mine from the sauna, electrician Eamonn, who again we likely owe our unfrazzled minds to. Somehow we managed to clobber together enough money to afford a skip, yet even that was not large enough to fit the ever growing mound of debris located in what is
now our gallery’s main exhibition space , what we referred to as ‘Our Everest’. Time, as always, was not on our side and with a show in a matter of months we were working every moment we had. Unshockingly, it turns out banks are incredibly well built. Nearly every god-for-saken wall had 0.5mm thick steel embedded in it which we had to painstakingly expose and remove, weighing ½ a tonne, and store away. Nonetheless the steel is both beautiful and magnetic, so makes for fantastic exhibition material mounting prints etc, and also nods back to the space’s past. Further, much of the glass in the gallery is ‘bandit glass’, you can literally shoot it and it wouldn’t smash. This stuff, although kind of cool, weighs so much that three people must carry it. We upcycle this too, as many artists are drawn to its at once delicate appeal and yet hard wearing functional practicality, but christ is it a pain in the arse to move.
At the time, we called ourselves ‘women in construction’, a proud label yet one far from our degrees in art history. However, looking back we did not construct a single thing. Really we were women in destruction, demolishing all things confined and bank-like until we were left with a beautiful, if rough around the edges, open gallery. And with an opening show happening in a matter of weeks and still Everest remaining, myself and a few amazing friends ended up taking up the floorboards and shoving the remaining wreckage into a void between the basement and the ground floor. It worked, and our opening show ‘Breaking Bread’, was a great success. We sold out for the Friday night, repaid most of our debts and solidified our relationship with The British Art Show 9, their contribution of 500 quid to the project incredibly helpful and, to this day, the only amount of funding we have ever received. Breaking Bread was truly a baptism of fire and since then I have never undertaken such a physical and mentally draining project. Now, we can have fun with the place, repaint it, put muriel’s up, do small repair work if necessary and generally enjoy ourselves. We offer free studio
space, workshop space, performance space and everything in between. I’m incredibly proud of myself and the two women, Jasmine Skellern and Christina Purvis, who run the gallery with me and undertook the bulk of the construction work together. Now we’re all pretty handy, as well as arty, women, which is great, firstly because we all feel capable of doing this again with so much more knowledge and skills, and secondly it makes us pretty hot.
Keep up with RAG Gallery through their instagram @ontheragmcr
Written by Amy Platt, with thanks to Jasmine Skellern and Christina Purvis
Tin Can Apron
Made entirely out of flattened tin cans salvaged from a bin. Jack Monroe (author of ‘Cooking on a Bootstrap) explains the limitations to living in poverty and cooking entirely out of tin cans due to the measly amount of funding she received as a single mother on benefits . The tin can apron is an object of protest; it is both oppressive and restrictive to cook with, making the act of operating within the kitchen basically impossible. This intentionally highlights the oppressive food structures caused by a government who has abdicated any responsibility in providing affordable food for people who need it.
Clamp Post
This operates in a similar vein, in recognition of our governments lack of food policy, the clamp post poses the opportunity to grow vegetables in any local borough through transforming existing public infrastructure.
Rosie Park @ro_park
Rosie Park @ro_park
Archietcture and Protest Under Capitalism
As a political tool, architecture has been used in many different ways. It has been used for war, pride and love shown through fortresses or strongholds, Louis XIV’s Versailles, and the Taj Mahal respectively. With the emergence of modern societies, architecture’s political use has become a vector of ideology, whether it be utilitarian under communist regimes, for profit in capitalist countries or as an expression of power for a fascist leader. As capitalism progressively becomes hegemonic, the buildings we produce are driven by money and control. In Western Europe, this has been the case since the late 18th century. It started with company towns, where a rich industrialist owned a city focused on a factory, workers’ homes within the fold of the city, spending their money in his shops, and enjoying their free time the way he intended. Then, as urbanisation grew during the 19th century, the same concerns reached city planning, and can still be seen today. An exemplar of this is Haussmann’s plan for Paris following the Commune Revolt of 1871, which increased control over the city’s population through its larger avenues, having seen copious investment from the Parisian bourgeoisie, the plan is still intact to this day.
With the rise of colonialism and nationalism, the prerogative to have a unified nation reached almost the entirety of controlled territories across the world. What had been territory of freedom and expression for communities became more remotely policed. The rising control of states over nations, through war effort or policies like public education, led to
a post-WWII Europe with centralised powers. To take the example of France, this expressed itself in cities with new urban developments to cope with war destructions among other factors like rural flight or post war immigration. Due to Le Corbusier’s popularity at the time, the majority of buildings were designed following Modern principles, houses as « machine[s] for living in ». These new standardised buildings, coupled with low paying physical work for its inhabitants led to poor living conditions. In the mid-1960s, voices started to raise against the government and their policies as a result. Protest first took place culturally, particularly in movies, as cinema was at its peak popularity, then it took a more vicious turn, culminating in the general strike and uprising in May 1968. Architecture and the city hold a significant role during these events. Jean-Luc Godard produced three socially and stylistically radical movies between 1966 and 1968, Week-end, La Chinoise and 2 or 3 things I know about her. The latter was set in a newly built apartment complex, isolated from the city, and shot like a prison, brand new but already crumbling, and crushing the working class protagonist in a consumerist mirage. The whole movie also links the absurd, unhappy life of its main character to the segregating urban policies in Paris metropolitan area.
When a large spontaneous antiauthoritarian revolt against capitalism, consumerism and American imperialism started on May 2nd, 1968, the city was very much part of it. It was the theater of demonstrations and proof of the effectiveness of the strike, with piles of trash growing out of control as no one was collecting them. During the
demonstrations themselves strikers were pulling cobblestones out of the streets, as their size a made them ideal projectiles against law enforcement. And then the strike ended. Cobblestones were buried under asphalt, but the French government listened. President Charles de Gaulle quit in 1969, and numerous policies changed. Minimal wage was raised, and people were no longer to live in newly built shoeboxes.
Whilst this is specific to France, it can also be applied in some degree around the globe. In the early 1960s in New York City, Jane Jacobs fought Robert Moses’ segregating urban planning policies, and on the other side of the iron curtain, the Prague Spring of 1968 saw similar demonstrations to the ones in Paris, but on different grounds. People occupied the street, and soviets came to crush the revolution, but once again architecture was a witness of the situation. Even today, pictures and film are left for us to see, telling us a story of what happened. Taking a step back, the situation that led to these uprising is still relevant today. Urban planning and architecture are still decided by the same capitalist leading class. Therefore, the spaces we experience are still designed to enrich this ruling class and maintain a status quo through crushing any dissenting voice.
2008 TV series Breaking Bad clearly illustrates how little things have change since then. The choice of Albuquerque is part of the director’s intentions, as it is a decently large city, located in a sparsely populated state, with sprawling emptiness. Albuquerque is a stereotypical North American city, car centric, impersonal and poorly
maintained. The White residence follows the same trend: in appearance, it seems fine, but it is actually rotten from the inside, with a failing water system and fungi infestation. This series is a firm critique of American society, particularly their healthcare and financial systems. But when digging deeper, past this blatant observation, it’s the the hopelessness of these characters facing this permanent exploitation that is really alarming, as it is the core of the way 21st century capitalist societies work. The building industry is an important part of that process. Resources are exploited, in quantities and in ways that are killing the planet; workers are exploited, every step of the way, from the unpaid intern architect to the undeclared migrant mason; and then, when the building is finished, the people who live, work, or simply go there are exploited financially, or manipulated through entertainment or marketing.
What we see in these different examples is clearly that the architecture of capitalist countries is a mean for the ruling class to exert power over the rest of the society. However, these expressions of power can be reclaimed, through observation, communication and direct action. Drastic changes are starting, because of global rising instability and climate change. Something as central to society as architecture is, and must continue to be a tool for the masses to push towards a fairer society.
Louis Ménia @eloimaunisDisrupting Domesticity in the Political Sphere
Rose explores how ideals of maintenance and preservation in British politics are manifested architecturally, uncovering private domesticity in the political sphere. We are told that political decisions are taken in Westminster, yet a network of Member’s Clubs and lobbying groups are hidden in Palladian villas and Georgian town houses.
55 Tufton Street is discreetly nestled amongst a row of Georgian Town Houses. Here far right “think thanks” are tucked away in private homes. The extreme ideas coming out of these lobbying groups are gradually making their way into mainstream politics.
Rose proposes to “unbuild” Tufton Street, transforming the instruments of domesticity into weapons of emancipation. Boot scrapers flank the doorways of most Georgian buildings. Rose has made a flattened and naïve version which draws attention to the transition into the domestic sphere; an undemocratic space where political decisions should not be taken. When the boot scraper is dislodged from its docile position, it becomes a sharp and aggressive architectural device, perhaps perfect for hurling through a window.
Further to this, Rose proposes to take a hole out of Tufton Street. The indigo screen prints (on the next spread) depict the assemblage of disparate architectural elements which are extracted from the interior. Screen printing onto textiles uses the graphic and material language of protest, whilst the traditional elevation and isometric
format of the drawings renders them a permissible object that could make their way into the building. Eventually, the architectural debris will be bigger than the Georgian town house itself. This assemblage will begin to inform a new democratic space on the street outside, subverting the political instruments of private exclusivity.
Rose Miller @rosemiller6
Rose Miller @rosemiller6
Lynch’s Broken Dream
In a city where the built history is threatened in a way that would bring to mind Constant’s tabula-rasa *, the problems are destroyed without stopping first to see what caused them, creating an environment for repeated mistakes in a new way. An urban tautology. We cannot change our mundane scenery anymore, but we can try to understand it. Before we rush to leave our mark in history, we should make sure there is one left to speak of.
*Antonino Saggio, Architetura e Modernita’. Dal Bauhaus alla rivoluzione informatica, Carocci, Roma 2010.
Endri Kicaj @bad_luck_kicaj
As a 21 year old American college student, I do not own a drivers license. Instead I rely on public transportation to travel around the city, from town to town, from state to state. This has become my personal protest against the disconnections caused by the car. The human has bowed down to the automobile. Across my window is a parking lot of 15 by 15 spots, a highway interchange ramp, and a parking garage 6 levels tall. For every tree I see there are 10+ cars. The sheer amount of space that these machines require for storage, let alone only use, is overpowering to the human. I believe that the prominence of the car is detrimental to the human experience.
Beyond the striking amount of physical space dedicated to the car, I have grown aware of its effect on interpersonal space. My protest has allowed me to become aware of my fellow traveler in a way that commuting by personal vehicle does not afford. On the road, I am surrounded by cars that I see as obstacles. On the train, I am among people. I am aware of the space that I occupy, where my arms and legs rest, how much room my bag takes up. This shared temporary occupancy allows for recognition of other people’s humanity and calls for responsibility to maintain such an environment.
When heavily crowded, there is a specific sequence that requires me to briefly exit the train and let others off before I re-enter and continue towards my stop. This movement is one of many courtesies picked up through experience and observation. The macro and micro scale of movement through the city is both obvious and nuanced. Quite literally the infrastructure of the
interstate and subway systems are built for the movement of people, but while the train journeys underground through winding tunnels, there is a manneristic movement to the passengers onboard. The close proximity demands my attention. Gaze and body position allow each other the feeling of personal space. However, being so close to one another it is impossible not to eavesdrop. Initially I considered it rude, but quickly realized it inevitable and now it actually brings a strange comfort to my daily travels. I hear and presume I am heard too.
Other sounds of people in the city, typically tuned out or undetected, make up a delicate symphony. As I shop at a local market, I hear the calls of the vendors. As I walk under the open windows of the conservatory practice rooms, the voices of an oboe, piano, and violin coherently clamor, each unaware of the other. As I pass a row of restaurants, all with facades open, hearty chatter softly floats over me. The human element of the city soundscape creates a subtle intimacy which is lost to the impatient drivers stuck in traffic and the low rumblings of their engines.
Although a transient protest, as I recognize I will eventually need to acquire a license for practical purposes, the experience of making do and getting by without one has made me more aware of my surroundings and myself; Aware of shared space, movement, and noise. Through this experimentation of sorts, I am reflecting on what it means to be human in the ever expanding image of the city. I am protesting the eminence of the car.
Daniel Jones @lucien.ph
Glasgow, or to use its proper Gaelic spelling “Glaschu”, is frequently translated as “the dear green place” and to anyone who lives there, this is no surprise. With Glasgow having the second largest proportion of green space of any European city, the parks, fields and woodlands provide an essential reconnection with nature for its residents that is difficult to find in other such comparable ex-industrial cities around the country. One of the most notable green spaces is Pollok Country Park, located in the city’s south side.
In 1939 John Stirling Maxwell brokered the first-ever conservation agreement for the National Trust Scotland that agreed his grounds of Pollok Country Park would remain open ‘for the enhancement of the beauty of the neighbourhood as well as the citizens of Glasgow’. Maxwell gave Pollok park to the people to help enrich the communities of the area by allowing unrestricted access for all to the largest green belt in any European metropolis.
In 1974 the National Trust Scotland agreed to an extension of the nearby M77 motorway that would cut through the southwest side of the park, removing two conservation woodlands and cutting off direct access for the working-class communities of Pollok, Corkerhill and Mosspark to the space. The idea was that this extension would save travel time for those commuting between Ayrshire and Glasgow and reduce congestion in the more middle-class areas of Giffnock, Thornliebank and Newton Mearns.
This is all occurring in the shadow of the notorious M8 motorway, which sliced through the centre of Glasgow and had a lasting impact on the areas of Charing Cross, Anderston and Kinning Park, reducing these communities to props in the windows of those on their daily commute. As is usually the case in projects that aim to increase production efficiency, the benefits are seldom felt in the areas which are affected by them. Corkerhill for example had one of the lowest car ownership rates in the whole of Europe, making it difficult to see how any of this would be beneficial for them.
declared independence from the tory-led government that enveloped it.
Pollok Free State wasn’t just a protest against the M77 but a space for members of the surrounding communities and beyond to gather to eat, listen to traditional Gaelic music, learn skills and engage in critical discussions about the issues that were affecting them. The practice of having a level of autonomy over one’s own local area has historical roots in Scotland, tracing back to the appearance of burghs. These settlements allowed their inhabitants to exist outside of the feudal system and, in the case of Police burghs, had control over local issues such as policing and maintenance of public spaces. Pollok Free State attempting to take back control of these issues could be seen as a continuation of this tradition and as a reaction against the ever-growing involvement of the national government’s bureaucracy in everyday life.
Signs set up in protest of the M77 extension, source: Given to the people film (Pollok Free State)
Preliminary construction started in 1992 and was met with widespread opposition that argued the funding should go into more eco-friendly and community-oriented infrastructure, such as better public transport. This led to now local-legend Colin MacLeod, AKA the birdman of Pollok, who grew up in the local estates setting up camp in a tree for 9 days to obstruct building work. This one-man spectacle led to others setting up their own encampments around the tree, birthing the Pollok Free State, a community-led, autonomous space that
Entrance to Pollok Free State, source: What do you think you have to lose here? Pollok Free State
The community-led aspect of the camp was so successful and engaging that students of the neighbouring schools staged strikes, refusing to go into lessons until the plans were scrapped. All of this activity gave rise to a strong feeling of consciousness and solidarity that created a community of all different types of people, where there were no lines drawn in regard to class, gender, age and ethnicity. By existing outside of the system, Pollok Free State was able to renegotiate the social contract of its inhabitants in a way that was more egalitarian for all, and that would not have been able to occur under the conditions imposed by the nation it seceded from.
By predominantly consisting of local people, Pollok Free State distinguished itself from other similar protests at the time by avoiding an all-encompassing and idealistic goal and instead staying rooted in the community and geography that surrounded it. The message was simple, we don’t want the M77 slicing through our community and destroying the environment of the park that belongs to us. Being led by, and connecting to, the downtrodden, working-class communities of the area meant a grassroots movement was started, which spoke to everyone from school children to their grannies.
This feeling of community solidarity is no better exemplified than on Valentine’s day 1995 when there was an attempt to forcefully evict people from the camp and cut down the tree houses that had sprung up around it. Nearby students who were taking part in the school strikes heard about this and marched in while the eviction was happening, saving much of the camp. When witnessing this many security staff resigned on the spot when realising that the residents of Pollok Free State were mostly locals and that instead of escorting some fringe protestors out of a construction site, they were instead acting as enforcers in a blatant act of class warfare. The narrative that all of those who take part in protests are radical, middle-class mercenaries is one that is still very present today, and has, if anything, intensified with the popularity of what can be called “anti-woke” media. By doing this the focus on the original message of any movement can easily be shifted away from the voices of genuine concern by working-class communities that are being expressed, to the all-tooeasy spectral scapegoat of “Cancel Culture”.
In the end, even though the development of the M77 ultimately went ahead, the legacy of Pollok Free State lives on not only in the history books but in the hearts and minds of the people of Glasgow and beyond. It showed that not only were community-led movements effective means of protest but also a tool for raising class consciousness, educating people about their history and culture and facilitating conversations on current issues in society. The spirit of grassroots protest and community engagement continues to this day with organisations such as GalGael and Kinning Park Community Kitchen having been passed the baton of resistance. In 2008 the construction of a Go Ape park was successfully stopped by the Save Pollok Park Group, demonstrating the ongoing interest of the local community in their green spaces and their use. In many ways the Pollok Free State became a Martyr for these movements that followed, providing the blueprints for how to effectively organise a protest.
Sources: - https://sghet.com/project/thepollok-free-state-and-its-legacy/ - http://www.giventothepeople. org/media/pollokfreestate.pdf - https://www.enough. scot/2021/11/10/free-statescontested-territories-new-imaginaries/ - https://www.youtube.com/ watch?v=4x9-Wzzkp1w - https://www.youtube.com/ watch?v=JZ9YEJVgSZY - https://www.youtube.com/ watch?v=LkSz3H60ld8 - https://www.scan.org.uk/ knowledgebase/topics/burgh.htm - https://archive.org/details/ PollokFreeState
Blank Slate - A Manifesto
I want to be a blank slate, With no higher cause, No view of actions and their weight, No inhibitions nor laws.
I wish to start all over, Want not to have a clue, To see from the eyes of a new lover, To wash myself anew.
I want to behold nothing of purpose, To see things just for beauty, To take all things in earnest, To have no higher duty.
I want not to know off their growth, To see them progress with haste, I wish to see neither nor both, Nor their enormous waste.
I wish to know not of use, Forget all that I desired, Care not for what I lose, Let the world grow tired.
I want to learn the rules, So I can pick and choose Which ones are made by fools, And which we cannot lose.
I wish to learn and learn and learn, Season after season, No propensity to earn, No end goal, no reason.
I want my new amnesia, To shape this life from base, To discover at my own leisure, Beauty, nature, space.
Nirali Jade @niralijade
Bianca Pedrina @piancabedrina
The solid nature of concrete so often juxtaposes the lucidity of its residents. You could dream of Piccadilly Gardens, and it wouldn’t compete with its surreality. Commuters, consumers, dealers, under aged drinkers, all spiral around the harsh architecture in a centrifugal hypnosis, each completely numbed to the other, each gnawing at each other’s subconscious. It’s a jackhammer, piercing the heart of the city, its reverberations echoing through the tramlines and the bus routes, trawling through the thick membrane of the city like snowpiercers.
Queen Victoria, the monarch of opium, finds herself commemorated in spice’s brutal ramifications upon the psyche, as synthetic daydreamers lay wasted upon the steps of her monument. Police Tactical Aid Units (TAU’s) lie waiting by out of place burger joints and Italian restaurant chains, gagging to be let off the leash. Protestors, sick of the hygienic conditions of the otherwise empty St Peter’s Square’s milquetoast rallies, descend upon the footfall as pigeons do, trying to rock a sinking boat, forever sinking. Covid truthers spit bile across yellow grass. College lovers hold each other under the trees. Builders, the midwives of the city, rest under the grey skies of Cafe Nero’s outdoor dining experience.
Piccadilly Gardens has been privatised. It hasn’t been a public good for a long time. It’s a sprawl of timber and clicheseven before the Christmas markets. Law enforcement is replaced by a bored host of Showsec legions, bursting flumes of yellow from the auburn submetropolis, like dandelions suffocating out of cracked tarmac, like mushrooms blossoming from dead wood. Great cacophonies of
sleepwalkers mindlessly echo through candles, cheeses, craft beers. A thin veneer of novelty and tradition dusts itself across the population, insipid as microplastics, brash as the exhausting advertisements clinging to the walls on busy junctions. Piccadilly Gardens is a heterotopia, a city turned in on itself, simultaneously absurd and reflective, the madness that betrays the sanity, the exception that proves the rule.
The Garden is beautiful because it is honest. It does not allow the city, the council, to forget its pre-gentrification past. As they cover Piccadilly Gardens with commodities, as policemen chase 13 year old girls around like toddlers running at shitting birds, agape at their power, in the worst playground in the country, it never ceases to be the centre of the cities true counterculture, the culture of poverty that the rentier economy proliferated. Its towers, vertical oceans of glass seemingly ready to shatter and splinter at any moment, burst forth around the garden like great petals of a plastic flower. It is one of the last of Manchester’s signs of life, with a vivid pulse, as impossible to get rid of as bone, as unforgettable as an oil spill.
The garden is an inescapable truth, an undeniable force; it reminds you where you are, that you’re not in any other saccharine urban entity; you’re in the place where these places were born, where the world that was robbed came to be processed and sold. Piccadilly Gardens is a problem without a solution, it’s an afterbirth of the industrial revolution, a mirage in the middle of the desert, it’s hell on earth, it’s like if Hieronymous Bosch did 12 elf bars and a pill all at once, what happened to the Garden of Eden after it was left to the devil; it’s people’s home. You could dream of Piccadilly Gardens; in fact,
Joseph Conway @j0keon / @noke0j
most people who walk through it can only experience it as such.
The resultant urban fabric within a postcolonial South Africa is still made up of mechanisms that inform the way that informal settlements congregate
marginalization/segregation within social interactions. However the exact methodologies of how we are still haunted by these spatial ghosts. This is information that is gatekept by architects, held behind a wall of jargon.
body of research. With an attempt to convey complex spatial phenomena and typologies, in a method that may be understood by the layperson.
The images directly below are called
Below that collection are diagrams of some urban typologies as a result of the Group Areas Act, stripped of jargon in order to inform those not working within information to spatial niches, and bring to light these mechanisms.
Brick Through a Glass Window.
extracted
Lissa Lai @lissal.aiCan be known to protect people, memorialise an event, allow influence to spread more effectively
Suppress arebellion, protect privilege, withholding the truth
LIBERATE SURPRESS
tangible
walls, boundary, barricade, border, barrier...
from part (a) of Lissa's thesis publication, (a)politics in architecture
BERLIN WALL
GREAT WALL OF CHINA
BERSIH 4 RALLY
Map of pathways of occupiers entering the tower simultaneously.
Siege Tools for entering, occupying, building, and living within the tower
Drawing of collective dwelling floors
Drawing of elementary school floor
