Growing monument
Marta Wiśniewska
Abstract
Celebration with pigeons, The Holy Mountain, A. Jodorovsky, 1973
Monuments create the landscape of our values and therefore they become the subject of public disputes and can provoke conflicts. They commemorate statesmen, heroes and victims of wars but also represent the ideals shared by communities. In history they often served as a tool of the authorities for constructing collective identity. All monuments contain a story from the past but this does not mean that the story is finished. Because of its authoritative presence in space, other layers both physical ones and symbolic ones are built on top of the others. As monumental forms they dominate the landscape serving as landmarks of particular areas. Over time, they become not only the background of life, but also the targets of a variety of activities, sometimes objects of anarchist resistance from the community living around them. Thus, although the monuments are places of contradict actions, this actually is what makes them alive.
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Abstract
Talking about monuments firstly we think about the urban spaces but in the countryside we can find forms that remind us of city ones. Silos, chimneys, high voltage poles and other technical structures are accidently representing the power of technology that serves daily life and production. But the life in the countryside should not be treated only as a production site, a storage room for the city. By providing network of experimental type of cohousing and coworking, our residential farms aim to bring back the social life to flemish countryside. The growing monument intents to be a linking place between the past and present, work and leisure, conflict and celebration but also people and nature. By using the vast size of the abandoned greenhouse and putting inside and outside several monumental structures, the project becomes monument itself. As well as the residents are not perfect, the existing parts of the glasshouse are but that makes the place even more requesting the convival approach which is meant to be major principle on the farm. Builders of this collective monument are not only the thirteen residents of the farm but the whole community of the village including animals and plants. By staying in touch with old farmers and using their experience in agriculture, the farm is a space for exchanging knowledge. There are no labels and no exlusions. Considering that new residents might be beginners in farming, the plants that they are growing are not specially demanding ones. Using permaculture as a farming model community adresses the environmental predicament locally by stewarding self-sufficiency for their basic needs. Pigeons play significant role in organic farming by producing the fertilizer but it does not mean that they serve as a tool. They remain equal users of the space.
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This is not a prison farm and this is not a true story. The event I am about to describe has no existence, so are the people involved. There may be some truth mixed up with lies so it is up to you to decide whether any line of it is worth keeping in mind. Fiction here is given to contain more truth than fact. ***
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Agenda ORGANIZATIONS
NGO
FOR RESTORATIVE JUSTICE
VLM works with NGO to form a free society of extraordinary people
FARMER after land is sold farmer works with community as a link with villagers by sharing his knowledge about land
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secures funds to start a project
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finds people for community
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finds collaborators (artists, schools etc.)
NEIGHBOURS
COMMUNITY 13 extraoridinary people, including architect, animals and plants are living and working on the farm
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neighbours are linked with the community by exchaning knowledge between each other
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the community is hosting seasonal events for the village
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These are not prisoners
The monuments
These are thirteen people living and working together under the same roof. Their thoughts are hidden from me, so does the past they had and it will always remain like this. Before they started living on the Farm they might had been working as farmers, they might had no job at all, they might had been sent to prison or a mental health institution - it is not a matter of any importance. I am not saying that the past has no value but I see it as a very first layer usually built with no consciousness and knowledge. Some of them might had more wisdom, confidence or just a great luck in balancing and improvising at that stage but I can assure you that it has never been anyones’ plan to do something wrong.
Extraordinary people, chapter: Village People, Beyond Loneliness and Institutions, Communes for extraoridinary people, Niels Christie, 1989
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Agenda
ALL MONEY IN ONE HAT Incomes received from State, private sources or farm production are shared. Money is not deserved through the work therefore it does not depend on your job role since money comes in one joint account. By sharing many in one hat work is being protected from becoming a labour - work is valued as a ritual but not because of how much incomes it brings. rule formulated and based on text by Nils Christie “Beyond Loneliness and Institutions: Communes for Extraordinary People”
HORIZONTAL GOVERNANCE
A general assembly is every two weeks to discuss ongoing issues and take decisions.In case of conflicts too, dialogue is the main governance approach. A third party from another community can be involved, he/she can mediates the dialogue and bring back experience in his/her own one. Mediation practicie, Inside the distance - we are all victims, we are all offenders, documentary film, Sharon Daniel, 2013
OUTSIDE WORLD Every month someone is responsible of the outside communication and he/she is in charge of the outside relations wit outsiders (this person can be the third party mentioned above).
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Secession New forms of self-reliant communes part with the metropolis, Taking the Country’s Side, Sebastian Marot, The poetics of Reason, Lisbon Architecture Triennale, Poligrafa, 2020
MEETINGS
Regular meetings allow to experience conflicts of like-minded members or to disagree with them. Potential conflicts are not being hidden or reduced to create a comfortable space, they are there to be expressed and they should be in the centre of each gathering.
rule based on text by Louise Meijering, Paulus Huigen, Bettina Van Hoven ‘Intentional Communities in Rural Spaces’
Celebration of the conflict, photography, Le Banquet, Bernard Faucon, 1978
TASKS ORGANIZATION
Taking care of the place should be done collectively (in pairs at least) and in a rotational manner.
Production and Reproduction in Artist’s Housing, Communal Villa, Dogma,2018
SUPPORT NETWORK Each community memver can engage in Support Network. Its aim is to support alternatives to discance from industrial farming and develop awarness regarding waste, technology use and associated emissions. Among its actions “comitee” organize a seasonal event (held in a commune farm) adressed to members, oursiders and the neighbour villages. Seasonal life organization, Take your time exhibition, M Leuven, Calendar dial, Brabant, oil on oak, 1500
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The farm The farmer that owned the land before is now walking through the village to visit his old greenhouse because they asked him to help with pigeons he left there. He lives a couple of miles from the Farm so it took him a few minutes by bus to get here. Not only has his property been turned into something new but also other farms of his friends from a village. You may ask me how it feels for him to be back and see it all changed and I think he is having a tough time being here.
No place like home, Jasmine Syedullah, chapter from Paths to Prison: On the Architectures of Carcerality, Columbia Books on Architecture and the City, 2020
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Photo Essay
51°11’03.6”N 4°34’46.2”E
51°11’03.6”N 4°34’46.2”E
51°11’25.2”N 4°34’55.7”E
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51°10’24.7”N 4°35’19.3”E
51°12’01.2”N 4°36’54.1”E
51°10’24.7”N 4°35’19.3”E
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51°11’16.7”N 4°34’28.5”E
51°11’16.7”N 4°34’28.5”E
51°10’41.0”N 4°34’52.0”E
51°11’25.5”N 4°34’51.2”E
51°10’55.6”N 4°34’45.6”E
51°11’05.2”N 4°34’39.5”E
51°10’50.3”N 4°34’39.6”E
51°10’50.3”N 4°34’39.6”E
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51°10’53.0”N 4°34’15.7”E
51°10’51.1”N 4°35’01.4”E
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51°10’55.6”N 4°34’45.6”E
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51°10’53.0”N 4°34’15.7”E
51°10’41.0”N 4°34’52.0”E
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51°11’05.2”N 4°34’39.5”E
51°12’01.2”N 4°36’54.1”E
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51°11’25.5”N 4°34’51.2”E
51°11’25.2”N 4°34’55.7”E
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51°10’51.1”N 4°35’01.4”E
The monuments Nothing special he is passing by - to the right and left bushes of some sort, well-kept lawns in front of single-family houses, huge shiny silos. Like monuments two tall chimneys made from bricks stand out from the plainness of flemish countryside. They remind him of old friends, also pigeon-keepers, that used to work there. But however simple it is, it has, nevertheless, the mysterious value for him. Putting back into the mind some memories of good times makes him feel like home again. Strolling through this collage of past and presence he is becoming a bit sentimental but the closer he gets to his land the more insecure he feels.
A tour to the monuments of Passaic, Robert Smithson, 1967
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The glasshouse So there he is again. The farm looks wholly different. Glass volume of the greenhouse now has a kind of entrance area, a red porch that stretches along the front wall. The pigeon house or let’s say pigeon tower seems to be hidden behind the building but stands out because of its height. The farmer is waiting for someone to let him in, standing in the shadow of the arcade and his mind is fulfilled with thoughts. His face expresses anger and indignation.
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The arcades This huge portico - what a waste of space, of land that could have been cultivated, what was it made for? What has one to do here? Sit on the steps and light a cigarette in the shadow? Certainly it was a lovely spring morning, the weather was mild, the wind warm and there was no hardship in doing so. While he was sitting on the edge of a round shaped recession in the floor and lightning a good cigarette the sound of pigeon reached his ear. One of them sat and started drinking water from a round pond at the end of the arcade, then left its dropping on the ground and flew away.
“Arcades are altruism turned into architecture - private property given to an entire community.”, Arcades in Bern, XIV century, Architecture without architects, Bernard Rudofsky
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The farmer is tired of waiting and regrets coming here but here he is actually at the door which leads into the greenhouse itself. The bird reminded him about the certain reason for this visit. He will just check how the pigeons are doing, tell the new residents how to take care of them and then it will all be done. He does not even have to show up again, maybe just to watch pigeons from a distance to see them flying in the grey sky or sitting on high voltage poles from time to time.
Ideal territory/ ultimate refinment, Garden carpet, Iran, early 18th century
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He passes the greenhouse doors. Although the new residents just moved in a few weeks ago, the greenhouse is not sterile clean. You can notice some birds droppings on the ground and on top of the glass roof and sort of a mess between neverending forest of columns of the glasshouse. There is another arcade corridor inside that leads to the main farming space ended up with the pigeon tower. Certainly it was a shock to a farmer to see how different it all looks like.
the interior of the Great mosque of Cordoba
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The garden with pigeon tower The round shaped area is filled with greenery, cucumbers and melons climbing onto sunflowers, marigold flowers covering the ground. It looks rather like a garden than a farm. Thirteen people are working there in the mist of sweat spreaded over them. Some residents seem to be not happy about the hardship of gardening but all of them are focused on their work. One man with body almost fully covered with tattoos is having a break sitting near the pigeon tower, a source of fertilizer, sharing his sandwich with pigeon. The farmer, a bit touched by seeing this act of kindness, decides to come closer to him. Forgetting for a moment about his prejudices he starts talking to the stranger about birds.
Bec Helloouin’s valley, with ponds, mounds and stakes, 2019
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The Garden
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Lexicon
permaculture /ˈpɜː.mə.kʌl.tʃər/ In a nutshell, permaculture was explicitly concieved as a design approach to subsistence gardening, enabling households or communities to adress the environmental predicament locally by stewarding self-sustaining sites providing for their basic needs. A most consistent implementation of the alter-funcionalist principles delineated by Colin Moorcraft, its aim was to empower people to become the conscious and desponsible designers (architects and gardeners) of the multispecies ecosystems of which they were a part, and thus turn their mode of living into an art of resilience and relative self-sufficiency modelled on perennial forest ecosystems. What was at stake was to envolve what Mollison and Holmgren called “consciously designed landscapes which mimic the patterns and relationships found in nature, while yeilding an abundance of food, fibres and energy for provision of local needs”. Indeed, by applying design thinking to the field of subsistence gardening and local self-sufficiency, permaculture was radically questioning the rationality of modern planning, and reformulating the principles of architecture. “Taking the Country’s side - agriculture and architecture”, p. 158, Sebastian Marot, 2020
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The Garden
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They built this pigeon tower together but firstly they had to demolish some parts of the glasshouse to open the sky for birds. For some of the thirteen this collective deconstruction was even more refreshing than building up the tower and brought the feeling of relief. After that for the first time they had a small gathering under the frontal arcades and they even invited some people from the village but nobody came.
Pigeon towers in the Nile Valley, Architecture without architects, Bernard Rudofsky
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The Pigeon Tower
250,0
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Section B 1:20
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Conviviality This little celebration with wine ended up with some sort of fight between residents. One of the thirteen was very angry that they let pigeons fly and shit inside a glasshouse. The rest had already liked the bird’s companion so they decided on having an evening debate at the porch to think about how to share the parcel with pigeons.
Tools for Conviviality, Ivan Illich, Marion Boyars Publishers, 1973
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Negotiations The space on farm has no owner which makes residents frustrated from time to time. There is always something to negotiate about - the tasks that have to be splited and even some parts of the greenhouse that seemed to be not dedicated for anything important. Once, the two of the thirteen wanted to expand their housing and they did with approval of the rest. But some of the residents are not necessarily aiming to posses these “empty” parts for themselves. After long discussion they had under the arcades someone came up with the idea of small nesting shelves that can be placed near the housing part. Now, everyone wishing to have more space has to share it with pigeons. After hours of farming all of the thirteen are refreshing themselves in the shadow of arcades with a companion of birds. The farmers’ head is fulfilled with thoughts again but now he feels that not only the pigeons need him to be here and that sometimes there is nothing wrong to be wrong. ***
Birds attack, The Birds, horror movie by Alfred Hitchcock, 1963
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Lexicon
conviviality /kənˌvɪvɪˈalɪti/ Conviviality is a quality which encourages human interaction and liveliness. The human tendency to feel satisfied and happy exists in living with others. Conviviality turns out to be the very essential social and cultural requirement to provide every individual with a space in the public realm where participation is appreciated. It is a sense of acceptation of both positive and negative sides of peoples character. The convivial approach focuses on culture and its positive development rather than economistic development. It tends to focus on everyday life of people where free time, free space, convivial technology, convivial organization act as social capital which comes from cultural networks rather than existential resources such as income. Conviviality is not something which can solve serious problems, but it is a way to rise above them by celebration, it can happen when resources are scarce, and its utility rises above economic and political benefits. People want conviviality because it gives them and others a taste of happiness which they could not conjure up on their own. Thus it can be understood as a fundamental element for feeling the sense of community. Collective rituals such as eating can be a good cause to generate conviviality, eating alongside others in public spaces is an activity in which good times are spent. In a well-designed and well managed public space, the regression of daily life can be kept aside for a while. Being with people different from oneself responding to the same setting similarly creates a temporary bond. Such bonding resonates into increase in a feeling of having good times with strangers.
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Lexicon
parcel /ˈpɑːs(ə)l/ Parcel is a plot of land that can be either owned by a private subject or government. The use of the parcel can be both intended for private or public. Parcellation is an outcome of formalization of the land that is a tool for state administrators of land to document, legalise, normalize and make legible to themselves land rights on the ground. Thus by formalization parcels are controlled areas and its territories become blank pages for ideology implementation provided by its owners and menagers. That means that ownership of the land might lead to use of it as an ideological framework. Parcellation led to form the class of the owners that started to make capital out of it. Parcels can be bought, sold, mortgaged, leased or otherwise transferred through financial transactions in markets. That allows land owners to manipulate. Each parcel has its neighbours and affects them as well as its neighbourhood affects it. It might cause either positive affection (co-operation, sharing) or non-positive (conflict). The social values of land are often not taken into consideration by promoters of land formalisation, in part because of the assumption that land needs to be made into a commodity with commonly accessible mechanism of transfer. The formal document of parcellation is a map. Parcels as lots of land can be mapped as if they are flat, in spite of curvature of the earth although the terrain of the parcel may be not flat the area is typically determined as if the land is flat.
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Lexicon
pigeons /kənˌvɪvɪˈalɪti/ Companion specie of birds with enormous sense of home. Released in unfamiliar places thousands of kilomiters from home, they find a way back to their home even on cloudy days. These navigation skills and ability of colour recognition shows unique intelligence making pigeons one of the smartest animals. Pigeons have tendency to nest near humans, in human-built structures, for instance on the hottest parts of rooftops. Nowadays discrimination that is present in the cities (rats with wings) contradicts with past approach towards pigeons. Used as a messenger birds or source of fertilizer in agriculture, they played significant role in history of inter-species relationships. Over time pigeons turned out to be socially important having healing influence for mentally ill people. Thus they became more than just tools but social partners
Bird Man of the Mission, mural of a homeless mentally ill man called Lone Star Swan and some of the urban pigeons who have been his friends and companions on the street in San Francisco’s Mission District, Daniel Doherty, 2006, found in Staying with the Trouble - Making Kin in the Chthlucene, Playing String Figures with Companion Species, Donna J. Haraway,
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Outro
Monument for conviviality To grow the monument goes beyond designing spatial form that dominates in space. Rituals such as taking care of pigeons, domestic duties, gatherings and all sort of social activities that are taking place inside the glasshouse are non-material monuments itself. The role of designer is to provide spaces that help to encourage human and non-human residents to take active part in shared lifestyle but with understanding its nature. Furthermore, the nature itself is ever-changing, seasons come and go, so the monument has to be ever-changing too. It’s purpose is not to provide one fixed way of thinking but to reflect on the ways of the people living in its shadow. It does not destroy what came before, it builds on it, adding another layer of meaning. ***
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