Reflections on Architectural Design

Reflections in Architectural Design Lakshmi Srinivasan Architecture &Human Experience

“Who we are cannot be separated from where we’re from” -Malcolm Gladwell, “Outliers”- This booklet is designed to be read in a 2 page format.- This is the first left side of the booklet- Poems and quotes used as page separators have not been in-cluded in the word count

Contents1. Introduction 12. Method & Methodology 33. Narratives in Architecture 114. Probable Realities 185. Material and Assembly 236. In Conclusion 277. References 29

Introduction Studio Methodology & Chapter Descriptions The “I”: Architecture begins and ends with human experience. As a medium for living, it cannot ignore people and their stories. Therefore by this definition, architec- tural design is subjective and it is a collaboration of various “I”s in the form of human experience, vision, aspirations and creative processes. The first chapter of this essay “Method and Methodology” is a reflection on what it means to use a “method” in design. It centers around how the designer, as an individual or “I”, shapes the design method. The Studio : The project briefs for the “Border Topologies” studio revolve around spaces that involve people living in diaspora i.e. immigrants and refugees. The chap- ters beginning from the second (Narratives in Architecture) are predominantly critical reflections on my team’s design approach in semester 2. This project revolves around the design of spaces in the Z’atri refugee camp in Jordan. We designed a scenario game to understand & simulate the working of the camp. The chapter “Narratives in Architecture” talks about the design of the game based on feminist theory, intersectionality (various “I”s) and the need for such conversations in design. “Probable Realities” addresses how experiments like scenario games can help architectural methods (going beyond “I”). “Materials and Assembly” speaks about the obstacles we currently face in developing the project & the proposed trajectory for approaching them.1

Image : The thinkboard that was used to structure the essay 2

“Sometimes I wonder if there is such a thing as reality, an objec- tive and untouched nature of being. Or if all that we encounter has already been changed by what we had imagined it to be. If we have dreamed it into being.” - Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni, The Mistress of Spices3

Method andMethodology



I Am Sheffieldi walked up and down her twisting roads, like making my way into a human mind; With dark alleys and deserted roads, with sunlit paths dressed in sparkling crimson... I watched in awe as her skies shifted, the temperament of an anxious mind… Grey for long with darkening insides, cut abruptly with a burst of holy light... The plaster of graffiti smirked at me, the bricks hidden behind with grace; You’d be surprised by how often, we miss the smile behind a tattooed face… I held my knees, panting in pain, Upset with her stubborn, raggedy terrain! Then I lunged up for air only to see, The scenic folds of a rustic city… Today, I write beneath the comfort, of a shedding, warm autumn tree From under my skin and into my soul, now she is you, and she is me... Lakshmi S 6

When and how does an act become a method? A Case-Study of Walking The Cambridge English Dictionary defines walking as the act of “moving along by putting one foot in front of the other”. But what sets walking apart from other forms of “moving” is that it is the most non-mechanized and most prim- itive form of “moving” known to woman. Therefore, it is a fundamental human experience. Also, being the slowest form of “moving”, it allows for a more gradual change in experiencing the environment around. Because of this, it has often been used by architects and designers as a way of understanding space through movement. Walking To Assemble - Mapping As Assembly My first tryst with the use of walking to consciously understand space was in June 2016. I had to prepare for hosting a heritage walk (called House of Myl- apore) around the area of Mylapore in Chennai, India. Along with another archi- tect (who thankfully had prior experience with the walk), I was to take a group of heritage enthusiasts around Mylapore showing them the vestiges of colonial and pre-colonial architecture that remained there. In order to identify routes for the walk, the two of us began walking around Mylapore, trying to identify and correlate architectural elements around the city. We walked around with selective vision, looking for weathered walls exposing lintels, perforated wall patterns, window details, colours, roofing types and art-deco lettering. For the first time, I was walking around the city to assemble and put together spatially disconnected pieces of information & photographs of various elements to cre- ate a narrative for the heritage walk. In order to recreate the past, we had to look FOR details rather than AT buildings and temporally assemble the details to understand their evolution.7

Images 1 & 2 - Posters of Houses of MylaporeTop Left : Houses of Mylapore poster created by putting together pictures taken fromdifferent architectural elements in Mylapore from the colonial & pre-colonial eras.Top Right : A poster announcing the date of the heritage walk with a picture of door ofan agraharam house in Mylapore.Picture Courtesy : https://www.facebook.com/HousesofMylapore 8

Experimental Walking - How Technology Has Revolutionized Walking Last year, I was involved in an architectural project that architecturally examined Immigration Removal Centers (IRCs) in the UK in order to uncover how these spaces oppressed their residents. Since the IRCs were located in remote and hardly accessible parts of the UK, we began using Instant Google Street Views (IGSV) to examine their urban characteristics. During this exploration, we ob- served that almost all of the IRCs weren’t visible from any of the neighbouring roads due to dense foliage or neighbouring buildings (which turned out to be a deliberate government strategy) covering them. Interestingly, the roof profiles of the IRCs clearly showed on Google Maps but the minute, we shifted to the Google Street View, these places vanished behind the foliage. We then virtually “walked” along the streets around looking for gaps in the foliage. This exercise proved particularly useful because it showed us the gap between experienc- ing a space on a satellite map and experiencing it by walking around it - what seemed like a huge building on the satellite map almost magically vanished at the human eye-level on the streets around it. Jane Rendall points out some- thing similar in her article “Site-Writing” : “What does it mean to write a site that one has not visited, that can only be imagined, to know a place not with your feet, but with your eyes tracing lines on a map, words in a sentence, dots on a screen?”1 While we did miss out on some of the important sensory information that one gathers while walking (like sounds, smells and “knowing a place with our feet”), IGSV enabled us to virtually experience the space in a way that very closely simulated walking. The insight that we gained from the simple act of “walking” through IGSV would have been very hard to obtain by looking at photographs or maps. This is because of the simple reason that a viewer always sees a photo- graph or a map through the selective vision of the photographer or map-maker (which omits some information). IGSV, nullifies that effect to a significant extent leaving the user more room for critical exploration. Walking As - Narratives in Architecture “Jarred into an utterly complex version of what I formerly knew as reality, my eyes begin scrutinising and dissecting the cobbled street surface ahead into zones which I can and cannot access…. Whilst battling physical obstructions, I myself have become one. If the pavements were widened, perhaps disabled citizens wouldn’t be seen as causing an obstruction.”2 wrote Sophia Bannert, in her prize-winning essay for Berkeley Prize Es- say competition in 2013. The competition had invited essays on the topic 1Jane Rendell, “Site-Writing: She Is Walking About In A Town Which She Does Not Know”, Home Cultures, 4.2 (2007), 177-199 <https://doi.org/10.2752/174063107x209019>. 2 Sophia Bannert, “A Day In The Life Of A Wheelchair User: Navigating Lincoln”, Berke- leyprize.Org, 2017 <http://berkeleyprize.org/competition/essay/2013/winning-essays/ bannert-essay> [accessed 16 April 2017].9

Image 3Image 4Image 5Images 3 to 5 : Instant Google Street Views of Tinsley House and Brook House IRCs.The highlighted portions show the areas where the facades of the IRCs would be visibleif not for the foliage covering them. 10

“The Architect and The Accessible City”. So Ms. Bannert rented a wheelchair and began exploring the city in it. As is evident in her essay, when she “walked” as a disabled citizen around the city, her experience of the city was completely different. As individuals influenced by physical, social, culture and gender dif- ferences, we all experience spaces differently and we walk through them dif- ferently. Walking as someone gives us a glimpse into her personal narrative of the space and opens our eyes to the differences that color human experience in space. For my thesis , that shall aim to look at public transport infrastructure from a feminist lens, I intend to walk as different people (or shadow them) to understand how they experience space differently and by extrapolation, under- stand the underlying causes of these differences in experience. As seen in the three cases described here, walking in itself could become a subset of any of the three methodologies of narration, experimentation or as- sembly (or as is usually the case with me, is simply the medium used to fetch groceries upon the order of an irate grandmother). Thus, the role of an act (like walking) in Architecture, as Italo Calvino puts it elegantly, becomes “a result that depends less on the method itself than the way one uses the method”.1 Acts become methods because of methodology - the way in which the design- er according to her point of view (the i) decides to use them. 1 Italo Calvino, The Literature Machine, 1st edn (London: Vintage, 2002).11

Narratives inArchitecture



International Insomnia Neat red-brick buildings. Grey cobblestone roads. My mind is a stained glass window, that dreams of the chaos of home. No bandhni, sari, salwar. But far away from the clutches, of sati savitri and gol roti, my maryada is no longer yours to mar. India now, is bottled culture, sold in oppression-free spice jars. No longer the pan-spit dark streets, where a lone walk can realign my stars.. Craving, dying, yearning, for the colours of home. Liberated, living, learning, far from the threat of it. I’m now in a grey, sterile zone. No colours, no smells or flavours, But no fear and my life is my own. Every minute, my mind wavers.. One foot in the East, another in the West, I’m the impossible knot in the notorious global twain... I’m lost in transition, dangling in mid-air.. Lost in translation, neither here not there... Caught between worlds,I’m kissing calamity, unhinging stereotypes i am a migrant, and I do not belong... Lakshmi S 14

The Need For Multiple Narratives in Architecture Scenario Games - Experimenting With Narratives Scenario Game - The Experiment Our scenario game was designed with the map of the Z’atri refugee camp as our baseboard (image 3), agent cards which represented the events that af- fected the characters (image 2) and actor cards (image 1) which contained the players’ descriptions. The first player draws a random agent card and after all actors have reacted to the agent according to their personalities (by moving or spending money etc.), the next player draws another agent card and so on. Different actors lived in different areas of the camp (board). Constructing Narratives As established in the previous chapter, due to physical, social and economic dif- ferences, everyone experiences space differently. Also, as Edward Soja points out, due to the varying kinds of oppression and power struggles that happen within a society, privilege and oppression are in no way, binary. There exist vary- ing levels of power (and resultant privilege) in a society. 1 In the context of the Z’atri camp, I wanted to explore ideas of intersectionality of privilege and gradation of oppression through space and time. My team- mates, also being obsessed with understanding power relations in the camp, agreed.* To understand these power differences and take a subjective position that ben- efited the residents of the camp, we decided to construct multiple narratives that would give as access to the experience of the multiple “i”s who use the 1Edward W Soja, Thirdspace, 1st edn (Malden: Blackwell, 2014), pp. 86-92. *In the refugee camp, power relations are lot more evident than in cities. There are obvious physical manifestations of control by hegemonic powers (NGOs) like police patrols during the night or regulations for moving out of the camp. This made pow- er-relations one of our chief interests in the camp.15

Image 1 - Various ActorsImage 2 - Example Agent CardsImage 3 - The Game Board - Map of Z’atri with existing infrastructure and actor loca-tions (green)Image 1: The front side of all agent cards designed for the games.Image 2: The deck had a mix of both positive and negative agent cards.Image 3: The game board was documented through photos after agent card was drawn. 16

space. We did this by designing 7 types of actors based on real life stories heard at the camp. Each of the actors was assigned a privilege pentagon (im- age 4) to understand how different privileges & their lack thereof (and their in- tersectionality) affected their happiness and well being. The rules of the game, helped us simulate probable quarterly events in the camp. This brought in, the element of temporality to the game. Image 4 Image 5 Image 6 Image 4 : The privilege pentagon designed to show happiness levels and 4 attributes of each player that would (probably) have an impact on his/her well-being in the camp. Image 5 : Mapping privileges of different actors. Each actor becomes an “i” - a symbol of a subjective position with her own narrative. Image 6 : Front & back of an actor showing his story and the privilege pentagon.17

ProbableRealities



“A simulation model is a description of an as yet non-existent state of affairs”- Hélène Binet and others, Urban Flotsam, 1st edn (Rotterdam: 010 Publishers, 2001), pp. 73 20

Experimenting With Probable Realities Scenario Games As Windows To The Future Looking Beyond Now The game contained an agent card called “The End of The World” which sig- nified that the camp was going to shut down either due to lack of funds or because the emergency of the war was over. When the card was drawn after 3 rounds of play, each player was asked to envision what life for her actor would be like after the camp shut down. After having played scenario games for a number of times, we were able to extract cause and effect diagrams (right) for each of the actors. This gave us a probable story for each actor. Before we had begun designing scenario games, we were asked to sum up our experience in Z’atri at a workshop in Petra university. In our proposal, we had tried to formulate collaborative social spaces for the camp based on our understanding of the camp. The proposal was based on what we believed the camp lacked and the creative ability that the refugees seemed to have demon- strated in the design of their homes. However, the proposal failed to address non-hegemonic power relations, potential conflicts over appropriation of social space or how these social spaces would be constructed in the camp w.r.t time. Experimenting with scenarios opened our eyes to these holes in our under- standing and pushed us to think beyond what was “obvious” to us. It gave us the tools to understand the impact of time-based decisions and effects of non-hegemonic power relations rather than to create a utopian vision built on an imaginary/unknown timeframe. Thus, the game became the experimental setup for us to understand and evaluate possibilities temporally and for indi- vidual needs rather than a collective of refugees. The experiments done with scenarios has helped us contemplate more realistic collaborative solutions.21

Bottom Right : A “key map” showing the combined mapping of the causes and effectsin the narratives of all actors.Center : Mapping of Noreen (a female actor) is highlighted in colour. Her narrative im-plied the possibility of her commiting suicide if the camp ended.Top Left : A snapshot of Noreen’s actor card. 22

“Don’t turn away from possible futures before you’re certain you don’t have anything to learn from them.” - Richard Bach, “Johnathan Livingston Seagull”23

Material andAssembly

Obstacles In Translating Ideas To Form Understanding Materials & Their Assembly The scenario game had left us with thoughts on relationships between power and the creation of infrastructure. Our analysis of the camp showed that the NGO-made public “buildings” in the camp did not meet the needs & aspira- tions of the refugees. In order to visualize our understanding & to create solu- tions for collaboration, we made a physical model.* As seen in images 1,2 & 3 (as explained in their footnotes), we were faced with problems in the execution of a fully functioning model. Our design for the movement joints on the levers made them extremely sensitive to even mild variations in weights. Therefore, as seen in image 4, we had to stabilize the model with our hands after loading the levers with weights The base map was introduced to contextualize it specifically to the camp and to prevent it from becoming a metaphor for all power relations. However, due to problems with the scale of the shadow & the base map, the model failed to do so sufficiently. To remedy this, we plan to create a base map that manages to translate the power dynamics spatially with higher accuracy and manages to fully contextualize the model. For us, this experiment raised many important questions - how could we effi- ciently assemble the spatial narrative of the camp (map) with the intangible nar- ratives of it (power, privilege etc.)? How can we quantify privilege or power in order to account for it in design? However, the ultimate question was this - how do we operate under the current model of power relations in order to create spaces that would liberate people from this vicious cycle of privilege? * Layer 1 (image 2) of the model had holes which could be plugged with levers based on the relative location of the actor. The weights attached to the lever were propor- tional to the power the actor held. When light is shined from the top, the shadow of the ball would represent the location of the public space to be created. Layer 2 which represents the power of the NGO, has a light which can be used to completely flip the25 location of the shadow.

Weights Layer 2(Power) Layer 1Ball LeverMove-mentJointImage 1 - Non-Hegemonic Power Inter- Image 2 - NGO - The Hegemonic PoweractionsLayer 0Image 3 - Introduction of Map & Mech- Image 4 - Working out alternatives foranism Failure model-interactionImage 5 - Final outcome (successful but Next course of action?lacked clarity)Image 1 & 2 - The vision for the model. The shadow of the ball (center) would be loca- 26tion of infrastructure.Image 3 - The model fails due to extreme sensitivity to weightsImage 4 - More direct forms of interacting with the model are devised.Image 5 - The model succeeds in functioning however it still needs a more sophisticat-ed base map to contextualize it.

In Conclusion Having tried to access the intangible workings of the border via models, draw- ings and maps for the past half year, it has become increasingly evident that the story of a migrant is a story that shapes all our lives, be it in the form of immigration policies1, data processing algorithms2 or political & social oppres- sion3. As Dr. Nishat Awan puts it, “the space of the undocumented migrant is somehow a space that we all occupy”4. While the greater forces that exert their political autonomy cannot be dealt with, by us as individuals, we can collectively, as a profession of connected minds and a collective of “i”s, use our spatial knowledge to create greater transparency and more inclusive spaces. 1 ”James Bridle: Seamless Transitions - The Photographers’ Gallery”, The Photog- raphers’ Gallery, 2017 <http://thephotographersgallery.org.uk/james-bridle-seam- less-transitions-2> 2, 4 Nishat Awan, “Theory Forum 2016 - Nishat Awan (Ssoa): Forms Of Non-Belonging”, Youtube, 2016 <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k0xvn7Y6EjY&t=914s>27 3 Leslie Kanes Weisman, Discrimination By Design : A Feminist Critique Of The Man- Made Environment, 1st edn (Urbana and Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 2017).

Image above : Picture of semester 1 project that explained how data collected inspaces like airports during immigration (and surveilance) and the way it is processedshapes the oppressive immigration policies which in turn shape spaces created be- cause of borderss. 28

References Adichie, Chimamanda, “The Danger Of A Single Story”, Ted.Com, 2017 <https://www.ted.com/talks/chimamanda_adichie_the_danger_of_a_single_ story#t-150772> [accessed 17 April 2017] Rendell, Jane, “Site-Writing: She Is Walking About In A Town Which She Does Not Know”, Home Cultures, 4 (2007), 177-199 <https://doi. org/10.2752/174063107x209019> Calvino, Italo, The Literature Machine, 1st edn (London: Vintage, 2002) Bannert, Sophia, “A Day In The Life Of A Wheelchair User: Navigating Lincoln”, Berkeleyprize.Org, 2017 <http://berkeleyprize.org/competition/essay/2013/ winning-essays/bannert-essay> [accessed 16 April 2017] Soja, Edward W, Thirdspace, 1st edn (Malden: Blackwell, 2014), pp. 86-92 Madanipour, Ali, and Sabine Weck, “Social Exclusion And Poverty In Europe : Territorial Patterns”, Local Economy, 30 (2015), 721-750 <http://journals.sage- pub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/0269094215601628> [accessed 8 April 2017] Binet, Hélène, Raoul Bunschoten, Takuro Hoshino, and CHORA, Urban Flot- sam, 1st edn (Rotterdam: 010 Publishers, 2001), pp. 73, 192-195 Crenshaw, Kimberlé, “The Urgency Of Intersectionality”, Ted.Com, 2016 <https://www.ted.com/talks/kimberle_crenshaw_the_urgency_of_intersection- ality> [accessed 18 April 2017] Hartmann, H. I., “The Unhappy Marriage Of Marxism And Feminism: Towards A More Progressive Union”, Capital & Class, 3 (1979), 1-33 <https://doi. org/10.1177/030981687900800102> Awan, Nishat, “Theory Forum 2016 - Nishat Awan (Ssoa): Forms Of Non-Be- longing”, Youtube, 2016 <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k0xvn7Y6E- jY&t=914s> [accessed 6 April 2017] “James Bridle: Seamless Transitions - The Photographers’ Gallery”, The Pho- tographers’ Gallery, 2017 <http://thephotographersgallery.org.uk/james-bri- dle-seamless-transitions-2> [accessed 14 April 2017]29

Weisman, Leslie Kanes, Discrimination By Design : A Feminist Critique Of TheMan-Made Environment, 1st edn (Urbana and Chicago: University of IllinoisPress, 2017)Thomas, Katie Lloyd, Material Matters, 1st edn (London: Routledge, 2007)Careri, Francesco, Walkscapes : Walking As An Aesthetic Practice, 1st edn (Bar-celona: Gili, 2003)Calvino, Italo, Invisible Cities, 1st edn (London: Vintage, 2009)Divakaruni, Chitra Banerjee, The Mistress Of Spices, 1st edn ([Place of publica-tion not identified]: Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group, 2009)Nawratek, Krzysztof, Radical Inclusivity : Architecture And Urbanism, 1st edn(Barcelona: DPR-Barcelona, 2017)Michel Agier, “Humanity As An Identity And Its Political Effects (A Note OnCamps And Humanitarian Government)”, Humanity: An International Jour-nal Of Human Rights, Humanitarianism, And Development, 1 (2010), 29-45<https://doi.org/10.1353/hum.2010.0005>The End 30

”Education never ends, Watson. It is a series of lessons with the greatest for the last.”-Arthur Canon Doyle as Sherlock Holnes in “The Adventure of the Red Circle”