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ARCH 684- Contemporary Theory
New Architectures of Spatial Justice
Course Description
This course will explore the following questions:
* Why spatial justice?
* How can designers contribute to the political ideal of the Open City?
* What kinds of technologies and tools are available to architects in the pursuit of spatial justice?
Visual manifestos of thinking “small” in architecture have proliferated in recent years. MOMA’s Small Scale, Big Change: New Architectures of Social Engagement (2010) and United Nation’s Design with the Other 90% Cities, (2011) both acclaimed exhibitions that focused on the developing world, advocated small-scale, short-term design interventions that could dramatically transform the lives of disadvantaged locals. The counterpart to these exhibitions, Actions: What You Can Do With the City (CCA, 2009) and Strategies for Public Occupation (Storefront for Architecture, 2011) featured again “small” architectures, mostly for First World situations. What is common is a major shift in the architectural culture of the past decade that has paralleled the drifts of global economy: from thinking “Big” in the mid-1990s of economic boom, we have arrived at thinking “small” at this time of recession.
From “guerrilla,” “tactical,” to “DIY” urbanisms, all celebrate the agency of the individual or small groups to make modest spatial changes without the need for extensive investments or infrastructure. Ironically, such calls are conveniently in line with the emphasis on the neo-liberal subject’s individual agency and capability. DIY-activism is celebrated and emulated within the designer community but tactics are often coopted by governments and corporations, undermining their effectiveness for change.
What happens when ordinary people demand not so modest but copious and radical changes? The political protests of the past year from Cairo to New York City suggest a shift in broader political culture where ordinary people have claimed their rights as citizens via the spatial tactic of occupation. What do architects have to learn from these experiences? And what do architects have to offer to citizen claims on the “right to the city”?
Ed Soja (2011) and other critical geographers are challenging architects to do more than thinking small but to contribute to spatial justice. Spatial justice links social justice to space. In the past decade or so, earlier pioneering works by Henri Lefebvre (1968) and David Harvey (1973) have been followed by a new generation of theoretical explorations in political science, geography, and planning, leading for instance to the recognition that space is not simply a container of politics or to the reconceptualization of citizenship in relationship not to the nation but to the city, and with an emphasis on its spatial dimension (Holsten and Appadurai, 1996; Isin, 2002). Both justice and injustice can be spatially produced or may become visible in space. Injustice, however, is usually invisible.
Can architects mobilize their environmental design knowledge to make visible the “urban invisibles”? How can new technologies help with collecting spatial data, and what are the effective mechanisms of visualizing and disseminating findings?
Among other tools and tactics, we will consider mapping as one of the ways effectively used by activists, artists, and architects to tackle the question of urban invisibles.
Most designers consider mapping a secondary, unimaginative activity compared to the inventiveness of the design process and assume the objectivity of the maps on which designs are based. A map is necessarily a selection that has undergone visual editing for communication purposes.
Maps can be utopian projections on the future of a city as well as powerful critiques of planning practices (as in Situationists’ use of “psycho-geographical” maps). Mapping, considered as activity, rather than product, can be an active agent of intervention. It can not only highlight previously hidden issues but produce questions that are generative of new creative activity.
term
instructor
lectures
location
Fall 2012, 2013, 2014
Winter 2015
Ipek Tureli
F 10:35 am-1:25pm
Room 207
Download Syllabus
Readings
Part I: Spatial Justice
Week 1 - Introduction: Small Architectures
* Tureli, Ipek. "'Small' Architectures, Walking and Camping in Middle Eastern Cities." International Journal of Islamic Architecture
2.1, 5-38. 2013.
Week 2 - The In(Just) City
Case study: Gezi Protests, Istanbul, Turkey
* Soja, Edward . “The City and Spatial Justice.” 56–72. Université Paris Ouest Nanterre La Defense, 2008. Available online at http://
books.openedition.org/pupo/415#text.
Marcuse, Peter. “Spatial Justice: Derivative but Causal of Social Justice.” In Justice et Injustice Spatiale, 76–92. Paris: Presses universitaires de Paris
Ouest, n.d. Available online at http://books.openedition.org/pupo/420
Soja, Edward. “Why Spatial? Why Justice? Why L.A.? Why Now?” In Seeking Spatial Justice, 13–30. Minneapolis, Minnesota: University of
Minnesota Press, 2010.
(streaming video of public lecture) Soja, Edward. “Seeking Spatial Justice and the Right to the City”, Canadian Centre for Architecture (CCA), 2012.
http://www.cca.qc.ca/en/study-centre/1764-edward-soja-seeking-spatial-justice-and-the-right-to-the
On Gezi:
Bunch, William. “From Istanbul to Rio to Philly, This Democracy Thing Is Broken.” The Huffington Post Blog, June 18, 2013. http://
www.huffingtonpost.com/will-bunch/from-istanbul-to-rio-to-philly_b_3462891.html.
Fischer-Baum, Reuben. “Stop Calling It a Small Park.” Gawker, June 6, 2013. http://gawker.com/stop-calling-gezi-park-a-small-green-
Huffington Post’s Gezi Page: www.huffingtonpost.com/news/gezi-park
Kimmelman, Michael. “The Plan to Change Taksim Square.” The New York Times. June 7, 2013. http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2013/06/07/
world/europe/The-Plan-to-Change-Taksim-Square.html?ref=europe.
Jadaliyya’s Turkey Page: http://turkey.jadaliyya.com/
Jost, Daniel. “Istanbul’s Awful Plans.” Landscape Architecture Magazine, June 3, 2013. http://landscapearchitecturemagazine.org/2013/06/03/
Week 3 - The Right to the City
Case study: Urban greens; allotments and parks; People’s Park, Berkeley, CA; Washington Square Park, New York, NY
* Harvey, David. “Henri Lefebvre’s Vision.” In Rebel Cities: From the City to the Urban Revolution, IX–XVII. London, New York: Verso, 2012.
Crantz, Galen. Politics of Park Design: A History of Urban Parks in America. Cambridge: MIT Press, 1982.
Krasny, Elke ed. Right to Green: Hands-on urbanism 1850-2012. Hong Kong: MCCM Creations, 2012. (See also the website
Lefebvre, Henri. "Right to the City (Le Droit À La Ville, 1968)." In Writings on Cities, edited by Eleonore Kofman and Elizabeth Lebas. 63–181. New
York: Blackwell, 1968.
Mitchell, Don. “From Free Speech to People’s Park: Locational Conflict and the Right to the City.” In The Right to the City: Social Justice and the
Fight for Public Space, 81–117. New York, London: Guilford Press, 2003.
Stickells, Lee. “The Right to the City: Rethinking Architecture’s Social Significance.” Architectural Theory Review 16, no. 3 (2011): 213–227.
Week 4 - The Politics of Public Space
Case study: Gated Communities; Gurgaon, New Delhi, India
* Kilian, Ted. “Public and Private, Power and Space.” In Philosophy and Geography II : the Production of Public Space, 115–134. Lanham, Boulder,
New York, Oxford: Lanham : Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, 1998.
Low, Setha. Behind the Gates: Life, Security, and the Pursuit of Happiness in Fortress America. New York: Routledge, 2003.
--------------. “How Private Interests Take over Public Space: Zoning, Taxes, and Incorporation of Gated Communities.” In The Production of Public
Space, 81–103. London; New York: Routledge, 2006.
--------------. “Chapter 8: Public Space and Protest.” In On the Plaza: The Politics of Public Space and Culture, 274. Austin: University of Texas Press,
2000.
Smith, Neil. The New Urban Frontier: Gentrification and the Revanchist City. New York: Routledge, 1996.
McKenzie, Evan. Privatopia: Homeowner Associations and the Rise of Residential Private Government. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1994.
Piper, Karen. "Revolution of the Thirsty." In, Places (2012). http://places.designobserver.com
Smith, Neil. The New Urban Frontier: Gentrification and the Revanchist City. New York: Routledge, 1996.
Some of the classic texts that changed the practice of urban design:
Jacobs, Jane. “The Uses of Sidewalks: Safety,” From The Death and Life of Great American Cities (1961) in The City Reader, edited by Richard T LeGates and Frederic Stout, 103-108. London; New York : Routledge, 1996.
Lynch, Kevin. “The Image and its Elements,” from The Image of the City (1960) in The City Reader, edited by Richard T LeGates and Frederic Stout, 98-102. London; New York : Routledge, 1996.
White, William. “The Design of Spaces,” from City: Rediscovering the Center (1988), in The City Reader, edited by Richard T LeGates and Frederic Stout, 109-117. London; New York : Routledge, 1996.
Week 5 - Spatial Justice: Race and Gender
Case study: Pruitt Igoe public housing project; the shooting of Trayvon Martin in a Florida gated community; Ferguson, Missouri
* Lipsitz, George. “The Racialization of Space and the Spatialization of Race.” Landscape Journal 26.1, 10-23. 2007.
* Weismann, Leslie Kanes, “Women’s Environmental Rights: A Manifesto.” Heresies: A Feminist Publication on Art and Politics. 1981.
Anthony, Kathryn. Designing for Diversity: Gender, Race and Ethnicity in the Architectural Profession. Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 2001.
Harris, Dianne. “Race, Space, and Trayvon Martin” online available, SAH Blog. 25 July 2013.
--------------. “Race, Space, and the Destabilization of Practice.” In Harris Ed., Landscape Journal on "Race and Space" guest-edited by Dianne Harris. Vol. 26, n. 1, Spring, 2007.
Hayden, Dolores. Redesigning the American Dream: The Future of Housing, Work and Family. New York: W.W. Norton, 1984.
Rendell, Jane. “Tendencies and Trajectories: Feminist Approaches in Architecture.” In The SAGE Handbook of Architectural Theory, 85–97. London:
SAGE, 2012.
Weismann, Leslie Kanes. Discrimination by Design: A Feminist Critique of the Man-Made Environment. Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 1992.
Week 6 - Mapping Controversies
Case study: Latour’s “Mapping Controversies” project; and Albena Yaneva and her students’ maps of architectural controversies
*Till, Jeremy. “Lo-Fi Architecture.” In Architecture Depends, 135–195. Cambridge: MIT Press, 2009.
Dovey, Kim. “Chapter 2: Place as Assemblage.” In Becoming Places: Urbanism/Architecture/Identity/Power, 13–30. New York: Routledge, 2010.
Farias, Ignacio. “Introduction: Decentering the Object of Urban Studies.” In Urban Assemblages: How Actor-Network-Theory Changes Urban Studies,
edited by Ignacio Farias and Thomas Bender, 1–24. London, New York: Routledge, 2010.
Latour, Bruno, and Emilie Hermant. Paris: Invisible City. Translated by Liz Carey-Libbrecht, 1998. Available online at http://www.bruno-latour.fr/
virtual/PARIS-INVISIBLE-GB.pdf.
Latour, Bruno. Reassembling the Social: An Introduction to Actor-Network-Theory. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005. Available online at http://
site.ebrary.com/lib/mcgill/docDetail.action?docID=10233636.
Yaneva, Albena. “Mapping Controversies as a Teaching Philosophy in Architecture.” In Mapping Controversies in Architecture, 68–82. Surrey,
Burlington: Ashgate, 2012.
Part II: Histories of Activism in Architecture
Week 7 - Architecture-without-Architects & Self-Help Housing
Case study: squatter communities in the developing world; self-help housing; Hassan Fathy’s New Gourna; Christopher Alexandre’s Mexicali project
* Ruesjas, Ana Laura. “Lessons from the Mexicali Experimental Project,” Edited by Elke Krasny. Right to Green: Hands-on Urbanism
1850-2012. 200-302. Hong Kong: MCCM Creations, 2012.
* Vikram Bhatt, “Alternatives for a Developing India.” In Contemporary Indian Architecture: After the Masters, edited by Vikram
Bhatt and Peter Scriver. 89-97. Ahmedabad: Mapin Pub. Pvt. Ltd., 1990.
Miles, Malcolm. “Living Lightly on the Earth” In Non-Plan, Essays on Freedom Participation and Change in Modern Architecture
and Urbanism. 198-221, edited by Jonathan Hughes and Simon Sadler. Oxford: Architectural Press, 2007.
Klaus Novy, “Self-help as a Reform Movement: The Struggle of the Viennese Settler after World War I,” Edited by Elke Krasny.
Right to Green: Hands-on Urbanism 1850-2012. Hong Kong: MCCM Creations, 2012. (First published in German in 1981).
Rudolfsky, Bernard. Architecture Without Architects: An Introduction to Nonpedigreed Architecture. Garden City: Museum of
Modern Art (MoMA), 1964.
Rybczynski, Witold, Vikram Bhatt, Mohammad Alghamdi, Ali Bahammam, Marcia Niskier, Bhushan Pathare, Amirali Pirani,
Rajinder Puri, Nitin Raje, and Patrick Reid, How the Other Half Builds (Montreal: Centre for Minimum Cost Housing, 1984.
Turner, John. “The Squatter Settlement: An Architecture That Works.” Architectural Design (AD), 357–360. August 1968. See
also: http://www.communityplanning.net/JohnTurnerArchive/
Also see August 1963 issue of AD on “Architecture-without-Architects.”
Week 8 - Architecture’s Public & Participatory Design
Case study: Teddy Cruz in San Diego; muf in London
*Di Carlo, Gianni. “Architecture’s Public.” In Architecture and Participation, edited by Peter Blundell-Jones, Donia Petrescu, and Jeremy Till, 3–22.
London, New York: Spon Press, 2005.
* Barthes, “Death of the Author (1968),” In Participation, edited by Claire Bishop, 41-45. London: Whitechapel; Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press,
2006.
An Architektur, and Mathias Heyden. “On Consensus, Equality, Experts, and Good Design: An Interview with Roberta Feldman and Henry Sanoff.”
In Agency: Working with Uncertain Architectures, edited by Stephen Walker, Donia Petrescu, Tatjana Schneider, Renata Tyszczuk, and Florian
Kossak. London, New York: Routledge, 2010.
Barker, Paul. “Thinking the Unthinkable,” In Non-Plan, Essays on Freedom Participation and Change in Modern Architecture and Urbanism, edited
by Jonathan Hughes and Simon Sadler, 2-12. Oxford: Architectural Press, 2007.
Comerio, Mary. “Community Design: Entrepreneurialism and Idealism.” Journal of Architecture and Planning Research 1, 227–243. 1984.
Davidoff, Paul. “Advocacy and Pluralism in Planning.” Journal of the American Institute of Planners 31, no. 4 , 331–338. 1965.
Fisher, Thomas. “Foreword: Public-Interest Architecture: A Needed and Inevitable Change.” In Expanding Architecture: Design as Activism, edited by
Bryan Bell and Katie Wakeford, 8–13. New York: Metropolis Books, 2008.
Jenkins, Paul, Joanne Milner, and Tim Sharpe. “A Brief Historical Review of Community Technical Aid and Community Architecture.” In Architecture,
Participation, and Society, edited by Leslie Forsyth, 23–38. London, New York: Routledge, 2010.
Schumann, Anthony. “Introduction: The Pedagogy of Engagement.” In From the Studio to the Streets: Service-learning in Planning and Architecture,
edited by Mary Hardin, Richard Anthony Eribes, and Corky Poster, 01–15. Sterling: Stylus, 2006.
Solomon, David. “Plural Profession, Discrete Practices.” In The SAGE Handbook of Architectural Theory, edited by Greig Crysler, Stephen Cairns, and
Hilde Heynen, 430–443. London: SAGE, 2012.
Tuscano, Cleila. “The Underlying Reason: Interview with Giancarlo De Carlo, Ralph Erskine and Aldo van Eyck: Milano, Circolo Della Stampa on
Corso Venezia: 9 November 1990.” In Team 10: 1953-81 In Search of a Utopia of the Present, edited by Max Risselada, Dirk Van den Heuvel,
Team 10, and Nederlands Architectuurinstituut, 370. Rotterdam: NAi Publishers, 2005.
Week 9 - Humanitarian Design
Case study: Rural Studio
* Stohr, Kate, Cameron Sinclair, and Architecture for Humanity. “100 Years of Humanitarian Design.” In Design Like You Give a Damn: Architectural
Responses to Humanitarian Crises, 33–55. New York: Thames and Hudson, 2006.
Jann, Marcia, and Stephen Platt. “Philanthropic Architecture: Nongovernmental Development Projects in Latin America.” Journal of Architectural
Education 62, no. 4, 82–91. April 24, 2009.
Oppenheimer Dean, Andrea, and Timothy Hursley. “Experiencing the Rural Studio: Interviews with Students, a Teacher and a Client.” In Proceed
and Be Bold: Rural Studio after Sam Mockbee, 160–167. New York: Princeton Architectural Press, 2005.
———–. “Introduction.” In Proceed and Be Bold: Rural Studio after Sam Mockbee, 6–17. New York: Princeton Architectural Press, 2005.
———–. “Lucy’s House.” In Proceed and Be Bold: Rural Studio after Sam Mockbee, 20–39. New York: Princeton Architectural Press, 2005.
Sinclair, Cameron, Kate Stohr, and Architecture for Humanity. “I Hope It’s a Long List.” In Design Like You Give a Damn: Architectural Responses to
Humanitarian Crises, 11–32. New York: Thames and Hudson, 2006.
Further reading on “scarcity”:
Awan, Nishat, Tatjana Schneider, and Jeremy Till. Spatial Agency: Other Ways of Doing Architecture. New York: Routledge, 2011.
Goodbun, Jon, Jeremy Till, and Deljana Iossifova. “Scarcity: Architecture in an Age of Depleting Resources.” Architectural Design (AD) 84, no. 4,
144. July 2012.
MacDonough, William. Design, Ecology, Ethics, and the Making of Things, sermon.
Till, Jeremy. “Scarcity Contra Austerity.” Places. http://places.designobserver.com/feature/scarcity-contra-austerity/35638/.
Week 10 - Situationist & Agency of Mapping
Case study: Situationists
* Corner, James. “The Agency of Mapping: Speculation, Critique and Invention.” In Mappings, edited by Denis Cosgrove, 213–252. London:
Reaktion, 1999.
Amoroso, Nadia. "Graphic Integrity and Mapping Complexity, the Works of Lynch, Wurman, and Tufte." In The Exposed City: Mapping the Urban
Invisibles. 41-67. London: Routledge, 2010.
Borges, Jorge Luis. “On Exactitude in Science.” In Collected Fictions, translated by Andrew Hurley. New York: Penguin, 1998.
Debord, Guy. Society of the Spectacle. New York: Zone Books, 1994.
Dignazio, Catherine. “Art and Cartography.” International Encyclopedia of Human Geography. 1. Amsterdam, Oxford, London: Elsevier, 2009.
Available online at http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/book/9780080449104#ancpt0185.
Lynch, Kevin. The Image of the City. Cambridge: MIT Press, 1960.
MVRDV, and The Why Factory. The Vertical Village: Individual, Informal, Intense. Rotterdam: NAi Publishers, 2012.
Sadler, Simon. “Formulary for a New Urbanism: Rethinking the City.” In The Situationist City, 69–103. Cambridge, London: MIT Press, 1999.
Wollen, Peter. “Mappings: Situationists And/or Conceptualists.” In Rewriting Conceptual Art, edited by Michael Newman and Jon Bird, 27–46.
London: Reaktion, 1999.
Wood, Denis, John Fels, and John Krygier. “Counter-Mapping and the Death of Cartography.” In Rethinking the Power of Maps, 111–155. New
York: Guilford Press, 2010.
Wu, Rufina, and Stefan Canham. Portraits from Above: Hong Kong’s Informal Rooftop Communities. MCCM Creations, 2009.
Week 11 - Guerilla Urbanism & Interventions
Case studies: Reclaiming the Streets; Rebar
* Bourrriand, Nicolas. “Relational Aesthetics (1998),” In Participation, edited by Claire Bishop, 160-171. London: Whitechapel; Cambridge, MA :
The MIT Press, 2006.
* Hou, Jeffrey. “(Not) Your Everyday Public Space.” In Insurgent Public Space : Guerrilla Urbanism and the Remaking of Contemporary Cities, 1–17. New
York: Routledge, 2010.
Becker, Jochen, Mirko Zardini, Giovanna Borasi, eds. Actions: What You Can Do with the City. Montreal: Canadian Centre for Architecture and SUN.
2008.
Bell, Bryan, and Katie Wakeford, eds. Expanding Architecture: Design as Activism. New York: Metropolis Books, 2008.
Bishop, Peter, and Lesley Williams. The Temporary City. London, New York: Routledge, 2012.
Chase, John, Margaret Crawford, and John Kaliski, eds. Everyday Urbanism. Monacelli Press, 2008.
Ferrell, Jeff. “Reclaiming the Streets.” In Tearing Down the Streets: Adventures in Urban Anarchy, 131–141. New York: St. Martin’s Press, 2001.
Lepik, Andres, ed. Small scale, Big change: New Architectures of Social Engagement. New York. New York: Museum of Modern Art; Basel: Birkhäuser, 2010.
Merker, Blaine. “Taking Place: Rebar’s Absurd Tactics in Generous Urbanism.” In Insurgent Public Space : Guerrilla Urbanism and the Remaking of
Contemporary Cities, edited by Jeffrey Hou, 45–58. New York: Routledge, 2010.
Reinhold, Martin. “Occupy: The Day After.” Places. 2011 . http://places.designobserver.com/feature/occupy-the-day-after/31698/.
———. “Occupy: What Architects Can Do.” Places. 2011. http://places.designobserver.com/feature/occupy-what-architecture-can-do/31128/
Smith, Cynthia, ed. Design for the Other 90%. New York: Smithsonian, Cooper-Hewitt, National Design Museum, 2011.
Thompson, Nato, Arjen Noordeman, and Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art. The Interventionists: Users’ Manual for the Creative
Disruption of Everyday Life. North Adams: MASS MoCA, 2004.
Zeiger, Mimi. “The Interventionist’s Toolkit: Project. Map, Occupy.” Places. 2012. http://places.designobserver.com/feature/the-interventionists-
At McGill University School of Architecture