UNIT 12

Women’s expression in the built environment has often been said to be at the scale of the domestic - relating to spaces of maternal care and nurturing (Rendell. 2000: 02). The history of the representation of women in the public space and the public imagination in Morocco is a complex one.

Pre-dating the advent of Islam to Morocco, Morocco was part of a region inhabited mostly by a non-Arab Amazigh people (Hsain. 2006). Most Amazigh tribes during the 4th - 6th centuries are recorded to have been matrilineal, such as the Tuareg tribes of North Africa. Thus, Amazigh women have historically inherited significant roles in local communities.

Amazigh women have had a lasting position in Moroccan folklore and myth - the tale of Aisha Qandisha has existed since at least the 7th century. She is said to have been a shape-shifting female spirit that takes the shape of multiple beings. Aicha Qandisha, unlike other spirits in Moroccan folklore, appears

mostly in men’s dreams and is said to make a man possessed by her impotent, homosexual or seduced into infidelity. Such folklore remains inherent in Morocco today. The position of Aicha in Moroccan folklore is also said to absolve men of their “ills”,and places the blame on the female spirit form. (Chambers, Curti 1996: 123). Morocco’s eras of colonisation and even some of its current politics still carry these manifestations of fears and biases toward the power and representation of women.

The word رحس (sihr) in Arabic is the word for “glamour” and also the word for “magic”. Interestingly, in English, the etymology of the word glamour is from the Welsh grameyre, which is also the word for magic, or illusion. Illusion and veiling are at the core of the word glamour, implying that there are tactics of deceit, concealment, power and mystery at the heart of what it is to be “glamorous”.

My Major Design Project, the Port of رحس ,is situated between these two constructs. At one level, it draws on the world of Moroccan mythology and folklore, both of which are very prevalent and play significant roles in daily life and belief systems of many Moroccans. On another level, it draws on feminine forms or forms of expression related to and expressing the feminine. Situated across three sites significant to the re-dressing of histories and legacies of female oppression and representation, the project takes the form of new story for Aicha Qandisha, one in which she is repatriated across the three sites - a concubine slave ship, the court of law and the King’s palace.

A mashrabiya, is an architectural element which is characteristic of Arabic architectures. It is a type of projecting oriel window enclosed with carved wood latticework. It is used as a veiling device to shield women in the home (or historically, the harem*) from prying eyes of men. Drawing on this construct, the Major Design Project proposes a number of new, reconfigured mashrabiya - playing critically with Arabic and Islamic codes and forms of feminine identity as a material for designing and consolidating physical and visual representation for women in the built environment.

The Port of رحس literally re-dresses the three sites, in its architecture and the new constructed narratives that play out on the sites. It draws on the notions of mashrabiya and burqa and other architectural and cultural dressings and adornments related to the female and concept of veilings and proposes new forms which seek to express, represent and empower the image of women.

In this project, I will adopt various roles of the zoologist, archaeologist, historian, botanist to examine an ever-shifting landscape of cross-pollination, animal species and rock formation. Through understanding existing landscape mechanisms which influence memory and migration, a new port of hybridisation will make concise changes to the landscape experience. This port and its alteration to the landscape will serve the purpose for allowing the crossing of species to become hybrid and to be given altered memory for this landscape, creating new ways for these species to exist and migrate.

In 1703, English scientist Charles Morton attempted to explain the migration pattern of birds by hypothesizing that birds migrated to the moon and back every year. Although fantastically incorrect, his argument explained the complete disappearance of certain bird species by them taking flight into space. “Now, whither should these creatures go, unless it were to the moon?” Morton asked as he published the first treatise to explain bird migration in England. Aristotle believed that birds transformed into different species during winter as a way of explaining their migration.

In many primitive and ancient religions, souls were identified with birds and certain of the ancients believed that souls resorted to the moon. Koi san tribes tell stories of intercommunication between the moon and the earth. There definitely is a human intuition for freedom of movement which birds epitomise.

Migration is intimately linked to landscape and memory. Contemporary Morocco has become a gatekeeper on the continent, restricting movement of fleeing immigrants seeking passage into Europe based on origin and creed. As with the birds said to have migrated to the moon, there is a sense of flight with people seeking to connect with an unreachable ‘moon’ if only given the freedom of movement.

Edward Nkoloso’s Zambia’s space program created an idea of unrestrained imagination, which believed space travel to the moon was simple because you can see it. “Look at that tree. Because I can see the tree, I can go to the tree. It is the same with the moon.” Nkoloso said. This imaginative way of thinking is elegantly simplistic yet radically redefines the way space can be interpreted. And re-interpreting the Morocco landscape could shift the western conservative thinking that memory should be preserved as pristine, when rather it could be emotive and non-static.

By adopting the role of the archaeologist, I will examine phantoms of cultural ruins in Morocco’s apparent barren desert landscape. Ruins from the roman empire leave traces of identity literal earthed in the landscape. The archaeologist attempts to uncover forgotten memories in order to retell the behavior and experiences of a culture.

Human fossils dating 400 000 years were discovered in Salé, Morocco, making it the oldest example of Homo Sapiens ever discovered anywhere in the world. This region is theorised as the arrival point for recurrent migratory episodes of Homo Sapiens back into Africa. This historic migration of humans serves as comparison for changes in movement patterns over long periods of time.

New scientific instruments of observation have uncovered the answers of how, why and when birds migrate. Many birds are intimately linked to their geography, sensing smell, magnetic bearing, sun angles and physical wayfinding as a means of navigation. Every specie of bird has unique migratory patterns and timings. New migratory hybrid species will require new learning from the landscape, and therefore the landscape should offer new ways to be read.

No landscape can be considered as static, operating below the conscious human awareness. Human experiences of landscape are complex and cannot be reduced to visual perception only. Animals, plants and the physical environment are much a part of human society as humans themselves. Landscape cannot be separated into ‘social’ and ‘natural’. Thus, the question of ‘where’ a person lives and ‘who’ they see themselves as being literally grounds them to a place.

The identity of place is tied to its occupants. Landscape is used as an already occupied port for the crossing of old to new, discovered and undiscovered, actuality and myth. Landscape is used to talk about hybrid culture, shifting in the process, never static or pristine.

Territory is ambiguous, the way we undercover artefacts in the earth is influenced by predeterminate ways of seeing.

Nature is defined as “the phenomena of the physical world collectively, including plants, animals, the landscape, and other features and products of the earth, as opposed to humans or human creations.” Culture is defined as “the ideas, customs, and social behaviour of a particular people or society”, typically as invented by humans (Eagleton, 2013).

…places should not be oversimplified as some kind of fixed patchwork. Rather they suggest much more ghostly, blurred, flexing entities which have multiple forms, which are contested and in flux, which have multiple depths and scales, yet which also retain some form of coherence which sustains them as paces (Jones and Cloke 2002:79).

Plants have been a utility within landscape, clothing man, providing food and shelter. Human understanding of time attributed with the temporality of plants and rate of decay. Certain plants appear mature, wither and decay within period of months or years while longer trees life cycles are regarded as special, giving a grander sense of time within the landscape.

The bare desert landscape of Morocco offers little sense of time. Dunes are alive with motion, slowly etched by winds, earth tremors and inhabitants on its surface. Plants offer the greatest resistance to the dunes tidal-like movement.

“Diaspora, relates to forced movement, exile and a consequent sense of loss derived from an inability to return. This is applied to the mass movement of Africans via slavery… this association of movement and migration with trauma, and containing within it a constant loss and yearning for an obtainable home is one of the main foci of critiques of the classical model of diaspora”.

-Virinder S. Kalra

In his seminal work Black Morocco: A history of Slavery, Race and Islam, Chouli El Hamel writes that “the situation in Morocco (trans-Saharan diaspora) was similar to the trans-Atlantic diaspora, with zones of cultural exchange, borrowing, mixing and creolization as well as violation, violence, enslavement and racially segregated zones” (Hamel 2013: 5). He argues that although Moroccans do not claim that slavery never existed, their ‘culture of silence’ regarding the history of slavery and race has resulted in black Moroccans being located on margins of community. The trans-Saharan trade was the predecessor to the European trans-Atlantic trade, and existed for far longer, however it is the least discussed of the two. This project seeks to offer some redress to the silence from a speculative, architectural lens.

Moulay Ismail (Arabic: مولاي إسماعيل بن الشريف ابن النصر), was the longest reigning Sultan of Morocco from 1672-1727. He was romantically involved with many of his slaves, most notably with Lalla Aisha Mubarka, often referred to as Zaydana, who was his “favourite wife and queen of the palace” (Hamel 2013:192). Zaydana was purchased for the Sultan’s harem as a slave concubine for sixty ducats. Despite the fact that Sultans only married women from prominent families, the Sultan married Zaydana who grew to have a significant influence over the state’s affairs through her personal influence over him. The “Empress of Morocco”, Zaydana is described as “black, and of enormous height and size…[with] power over [the Sultan’s] mind…manag[ing] him as she pleases” (Hamel 2013:193).

The writing of history has always been curated and recorded by those in positions of power. This distortion of historical narratives continues to perpetuate legacies of colonisation and oppression. Despite her power at the time, Zaydana’s story is under explored yet holds revealing insights into black female slave historical narratives of triumph over the men and spaces that would seek to control them.

My Major Design Project seeks to uproot and unearth the ‘silenced’ narratives of the largely under-documented trans-Saharan slave-trade through a contemporary retelling of Zaydana’s history. Sigmund Freud would refer to exposing these ‘historical edits’ as unheimliche, meaning ‘[that which] should have remained hidden and secret and yet comes to light’ (Freud 1949:12). Architecture is often said to be a vessel for politics, memory and history, physically and metaphysically engaged with questions of the self and the environment in built form (Pallasmaa 1996). Through a speculative proposal - a home for Zaydana - I explore how retelling her story through a domestic architecture can reveal novel, emancipatory configurations and constructions of the home, particularly for black Morrocan women today.

As with any cultural grouping; in Morocco, traditional ‘home’ typologies are indicative of various social orders and hierarchies in family structures, societal structures, and private/public relations. Arising from the French colonisation in Morocco, Moroccan women lived in “enclosed households” with harems, where extended families lived together. Harems were also where concubines were housed, in the service of kings and masters. Social and communal life is played out in several public ‘home’ typologies in Morocco - in the mosque, the hammam (public baths),the riad (courtyard), and the communal bakery. Looking critically at the construction of ‘home’ and its complex history and relation to several dynasties of power in Morocco, my project uses a close reading of the history of slavery in the region, resulting power-relations and gendered exploitation today as a conceptual setting for the new house for Zaydana, where histories of oppression, subversion and triumph of black female slaves are housed; a repository of both fact and fiction.

Building on the notion of the Unheimlich as a concept related to “feeling” more than it is related to the visual, the project also draws on Pallasmaa’s ‘tools for memory’ (Pallasmaa 1996:47), tied to the haptic, the performed, the sensory and the felt, the realm of experience, rather than relying on the visual alone. The project uses these and other tactics through story-telling, performance and re-enactment to suggest a new architectural vocabulary of the Moroccan ‘home’ that attempt to undo the hegemony of the dominant narrative.

“But if thought corrupts language, language can also corrupt thought.”

- George Orwell (1945)

Our perceptions and realities of the world are largely shaped by media. Popular media forms a large proportion of the language that people hear and read every day, shaping both language use and popular opinion (Bell 2008:26). Specific linguistic tactics are used in media with purpose; including the use of different dialects and languages in advertising, tabloid newspapers using language as a projection of an assumed readers' speech, or radio personalities only using language “to construct their own images and their relationships to an unseen, unknown audience” (Bell 2008:28).

This project draws on Derrida’s deconstruction theory which states that the meaning of language is indeterminate and outside the author’s control (Wheeler 2000:1). Leitch states that deconstruction works to “deregulate controlled dissemination and celebrate mis-reading” with the intention of the text producing a language of its own (1983:122).

Orchestrated campaigns of disseminating information in line with certain political agendas has always been a strategy employed by ruling powers. Often, these political strategies also have a built expression. The political impact of media was displayed in Morocco in 2011, and it is asserted that the authorities’ power to control public discourse and to “convince a critical mass that it represents whatever form of government they identify with” as the main reason that the Arab Spring did not dethrone King Mohammed VI (Duke II 2016:3). Language and territory are interdependent and deeply connected to one another. Language is fundamental in the formation of territory (boundaries); identity (beliefs) and shared understanding (communication).

My Major Design Project seeks to create a piece of architecture that destabilises the singular, often highly censored and curated ‘democratic’ political image of Morocco disseminated by the Moroccan administration to allow for greater participation and democratisation in hearing and reading news media. The project becomes both a root and a route for the transmission of new stories, new words, new spaces and forms that more accurately describe the contemporary political views of the public. The project can be read both allegorically – a linguascape – and spatially– a port of information. It has both physical (space/site/orientation) and cognitive (words/drawings/meanings) implications.

My project is sited in the the political underbelly of dar el Makhzen in Morocco’s capital city, Rabat. Makhzen is the Arabic word for the King’s authorities including the police, light brigade and army closest to him. It refers to both the physical site of the king’s palace, mosque, and government buildings surrounding a public square, and the two thousand staff that live on the property (Daadaoui 2011:41). Annually on the King’s birthday and other days of national importance, Moroccans gather on the square to display loyalty to the king and state, the largest of which included 200 000 people in 1953. The word has connotations of censorship both historically and in present day Morocco (Daadaoui 2011:41). It came into the English language from middle French as “magazine”, first referring to a storehouse of ammunition and later to publications. The ideas of censorship, publications as ammunition and scaling up information dissemination are central to my project.

Historically, the radio station was one of the first targets in any military coup, allowing for control of information dissemination and limiting the communication channels of their enemy’s army and navy. The introduction of the internet delocalised broadcasting creating a global digital site linked to various physical spaces in various places, removing the strategic role of the radio station as a physical site. This thesis speculates what the new role of the specific, physical space of the radio station could be in the context of the crisis of media and democracy. It situated in the digital and physical shadows of the sites and programmes of existing sites significant to the media- and adminitrative-scapes.

In Freud’s framework, the consciousness acts as a mediator between the interior and exterior in a person, censoring and ordering their behaviour (Freud 1963:125). In many ways, architecture does the same. Makhzen: Radio Morocco is concerned with architecture as a mediator between people and language media in the context of democracy (rather than architecture as media). It takes the form of a series of ‘shadow’ programmes (a set of counter-architectures - platforms, forms, events and other ‘shadow’ devices) to the official broadcasting networks of Morocco, experimenting towards a truly public radio operating on architectural scales at multiple frequencies.

The Austrian artist and theorist Friedensreich Hundertwasser’s philosophy, The Five Skins of Man theorises a framework of five skins that define man’s identity; the epidermis, clothing, house, social identity and the earth. In present day, our definitions and understanding of these skins - from the skin of the body to the skin of the earth’s territory - are becoming increasingly destabilised and hybrid. Steven Connor asserts that “skin is not so much a swath of interconnected cells as a palimpsest, choked with meaning and symbol” (Connor 2004). Skin is as he asserts, “a substance, vehicle and metaphor”(Connor 2004:9).

One example of the hybrid nature of earth and epidermis is evident through the control of movement in which exclusionary notions of race determine where and how bodies can migrate. The history of the world is intrinsically tied to the history of movement; from the earliest hunter-gatherer nomadic groupings, slavery and colonisation, and current migration movements. The global political impetus to maintain and define boundaries is more pressing, intensive and contested than ever . At no time in human history has move-ment been more strictly and, increasingly, violently controlled, including on racial grounds. Architecturally, the nomad is a construct which “undoes” architecture. Architecture’s mandate seeks to solidify and impose identity and place, while the nomad resists notions of home and identity that are tied to fixed place. For the nomad, notions of territory and identity are more linked to ritual, language, traditions and cultural practice. One such example is the Tan-Tan Moussem, an annual gathering of more than twenty nomadic tribes from Northwest Africa; and parts of the Middle East, including Saudi Arabia . My Book of Skins draws on the Tan-Tan Moussem and other ritual and cultural practices related to the identity of nomadic tribes, as a proxy for overlapping, clashing and interweaving ethnicities, identities, politics and geographies of various political-ly contested and opposed regions. It takes inspiration from these contradictions and complexities to develop new architectural skins, which express and counter the arbitrary nature of imposed legal political bounda-ries. These skins speculate on an alternative political future and a new set of relations between regions, where relationships, borders, and territories allow for permeability, build on long-standing histories and can exist in a productive state of tension.

“If you please - draw me a sheep...” said the little Prince, thinking not about a real sheep, but a virtual one. For virtual sheep requires very little space and can live a long time.

-The Little Prince (1943)

Morocco, the West-most region of the Middle East, is a constitutional monarchy with an elected parliament. The King of Morocco holds vast executive and legislative powers, especially over the military, foreign policy and religious affairs. (Khan, M. 2019)

The Arab Spring was a series of anti-government protests, up- risings, and armed rebellions that spread across the Middle East in late 2010. In the news, social media has been heralded as the driving force behind the swift spread of revolution throughout the world, as new protests appear in response to success stories shared from those taking place in other countries. The use of social media platforms more than doubled in Arab countries during the protests. Facebook, Twitter and other major social media played a key role in the movement of Egyptian and Tunisian activists in particular. Nine out of ten Egyptians and Tuni- sians responded to a poll that they used Facebook to organize protests and spread awareness. (Mitchell, A., Brown, H. and Guskin, E. 2019.)

On 20 February 2011, thousands of Moroccans rallied in the capital, Rabat, to demand that King Mohammed give up some of his powers, chanting slogans such as “Down with autocracy” and “The people want to change the constitution.” The protests in Morocco were inspired by the Arab Spring protests and revolutions in other North African countries. They were centered around demands for political reform, which included reform against police brutality, electoral fraud, and political censorship (Bouhmouch, N. 2011). But, post-Arab Spring, little or no change to laws can be observed. Morocco still follows many strict doctrines, which, played out in its civic spaces results in very curtailed public space. Homosexuality in Morocco is punishable by law. Though it may not be exercised by law, women are still excluded from the public realm in many respects.

Historically, architects have dealt only with the physical and tan- gible realm, projecting onto the ground in built forms that represent the ideologies of their time(s). According to Stefano Boeri, the Italian ar- chitect, a great shortcoming of contemporary architecture has been its inability to keep astride with the structural spatial changes that infor- mation and communication technologies have brought about in recent years (Boeri, S .2003). Our architectural vocabulary and forms largely still belong to an earlier age and have not hybridized and morphed to accommodate and inspire changing spatial conditions.

In urban design terminology, we still speak of ‘private’ and ‘public’, ‘in- side’ and ‘outside’ as static functions, yet our contemporary spatial ex- periences in the digital public realm belong to a different kind of order: shifting, intangible and often without scale.

Now, the public sphere is virtual, digital and dispersed across billions of desktops, laptops and mobile phones. As a result, the public sphere is not just a bourgeois indulgence but a global phenomenon. Digital space has overturned conventional thought about space both ex- perientially and politically. It is fundamentally different to other public spaces in so many ways and while it is held together by hashtags in- stead of bricks and mortar, its impact in actual physical space has been nothing short of revolutionary.

I intend to write a new policy and rules for this cyber-port by accessing the extent to which freedom of expression is enhanced or un- dermined in the digital age where the computer systems of driverless cars, google maps, urban management systems and CCTV surveillance are now fundamentally reshaping urban experience and the cultures of our cities. Are ‘fundamental’ writings about public space, such as the work of Jane Jacobs, Robert Moses and Kevin Lynch at all appropriate for this public space? Perhaps, they have only ever been relevant for certain kinds of publics and certain kinds of cities? My project seeks to create an entirely new “public”, an expanded urban lexicon relevant for this time.

The project takes the form of an online ‘place’ - loose from all the trappings and ceremony of any town square, and drawing on digital research and online tendencies in Morocco. What would this new dig- ital place, which is home to many functions that are not allowed in the physical city allow? In a region with a highly curtailed public space, my project becomes a speculation of a new type of public space that exists entirely in the digital realm. The Arab Summer speculates on an opti- mistic, celebratory, digital public - a public entitled to and allowed ac- cess into a world they fought to bring into existence in the Arab Spring. My project is both a spectacle (making the invisible visible) and per- formative, it is digital (as a website) and ‘real’ (it draws on real places in Morocco’s economic centre, Casablanca)

“The idea behind deconstruction is to deconstruct the workings of strong nation-states with powerful immigration policies, to deconstruct the rhetoric of nationalism, the politics of place, the metaphysics of native land and native tongue... the idea is to disarm the bombs... of identity that nation-states build to defend themselves against the stranger, against others, and against immigrants.”

- Jacques Derrida

The focus of my Major Design Project lies in understanding contradictions and complexities in systems of border control to produce new, subversive readings and configurations of border forms.

For systems of power and control to be deployed, they rely on institutional frameworks and protocols of standardisation which are projected onto ungoverned or otherwise-governed elements. Control cannot exist without the definition and quantification of what it seeks to regulate. Border architectures are shaped by these systems, regulations and analyses.

There are disputes in how the Moroccan government and the Algerian Polisario Front demarcate the border between Morocco and Algeria. These disputes result in contested ‘slivers’ which are claimed by both sides. This project is situated in and amongst these ‘sliver zones’, through which I explore the concept of the border as ‘an in-between space’.

Not least to note, the Algeria-Morocco border has been in a state of closure since 1994 due to the politics between the nations, with no land-crossing legitimised between the nations, and the borderlands heavily surveyed by law and order officials. This costs the Algerian and Moroccan economies in excess of $2 billion annually - has separated many families, undermined business prospects, and affected tourism in the nearby areas, etc., with many resorting to risky methods of achieving this.

My Major Design Project, the Border Bureau investigates the architecture of borders as political projections of nation-state. In the context of the sliver zones, where two competing notions of the nation-state exist - the Moroccan and the Algerian - I explore how a new concept of the border can be produced. Instead of the border simply presenting a barrier, I offer an architecture of the border which is simultaneously a ‘connection, transition or threshold, a line of tension’ (Brookes 2012 in Shahlaei et al 2015:75) - by producing new ‘utopian’ port of entry architectures that allow for a set of functions to take place in these no man’s lands.

The border architectures misuse translation, scale, shifting, etc., in producing open or more accessible spaces within and around the port of entries to facilitate functions that can’t take place at the moment, such as trade between Morocco and Algeria, spaces for conflict resolutions, and a meetings/gatherings venue that could possibly host cross-border weddings, funerals, etc. These architectures are located within these territorial slivers and subvert the typology of the defunct port of entry that lie in the current borderlands.

Drawing on Boeri’s concept of ‘other’ gazes, which subvert the plan view of the border and Weizman’s (2017:58) work which manifests invisible systems of control through forms of architectural representation, my project further seeks to find ways of representing the border as ‘an in-between space’ through working with multiple perspectives in parallel. Through this, I offer a mode of representing borders as unstable delineations where power, economy and security are constantly in negotiation.

Representation is the means by which society re-presents itself. It is the mode by which we define our place in “life and mediate our identity, revealing the ways in which we see ourselves and others. Representation in art, literature, curriculum & classrooms, and media and politics tells our stories and histories, proclaiming and reinforcing our culture and our sense of self. These representations, in turn, influence the ways in which we see and know, make meaning, and recognize ourselves as human subjects. The facades, codes, associations, memories and sediments of past representations inform our images, creating ideology or ways of seeing ourselves and the other.” – Shehla Burney, Pedagogy of the Other: Edward Said, Postcolonial Theory, and Strategies for Critique, 2012.

Perspective is defined as the ‘science of optics’ in which the art of drawing objects is used as to give an‘ appearance of distance and depth. It originates from the root words ‘per’ which means ‘through’ and ‘specere’ defined as ‘look at’. We design spacevw through drawings and models as an illustration of our perception of space. This in turn shapes the space and world around us.

My Major Design Project will explore the various methods of drawing construction that are linked to specific cultures from both Western and Eastern regions. My position is that by changing our perception, we can change the way we see, thus creating an alternate way of perceiving and shaping space. This study will specifically investigate drawings from Persian, and Moghul empires in contrast to perspective representation born out of the Renaissance.

Drawings have evolved across time and after the discovery of perspective by Fillipo Brunelleschi, we have used drawings as a means of communicating space. While western drawings have focused on accuracy and guiding one’s eye to specific elements of an image through hierarchies of power, the eastern method of representation has been more concerned with grasping emotion and atmosphere (Sasaki,2013). The method of drawing and.)its representation directly affects the narrative and construction of the space (Sasaki, 2013 Through the use of the visual tools of perspective, drawing and the language of geometry a hybrid way of illustrating space may be produced. By the deconstruction and analysis of various drawings from the Renaissance, Persian, and Moghul cultures, we may discover their underlining geometries, qualities and structure. Through this process we may then reconstruct drawings that challenge our conventions of space and seeing. Through using this hybrid way of constructing and seeing space, we can create alternate perspectives of spaces and ways of engaging the world around us.

“I once called architecture political plastic – to describe the elastic way by which abstract forces; political, economical or military is slowing into form. How one can start from a bit of material reality and start weaving through and moving across networks of connections and association, to the ideology that is behind it. The drawing itself starts producing a political reality.”

-Unknown

It is my intention to delve into the world of architecture through a renewed perspective: Through the eye's of a child. By dissecting space trough a child's perspective I hope to approach broader themes of Utopia, Dystopia and Escapism in current-day contexts.

In order to view the world from a child's perspective, one has to understand the basic principles that differentiate the outlook of an adult to that of a child. I would like to import these visual tools into my work as a means of gazing into scenes.

According to Nathan Collins, an expert on child psychology, the human brain has two separate visual circuits for words and images. An adult brain can process the information by looking at things straight ahead. A child's brain struggles to process words and images at the same and has to position his/her head at specific angles in order to process the information. Top-right perspectives denote for visual gazing, and bottom-left perspectives process words.

According to New Scientist, another major difference between an adult and a child is the way we see objects. A child's brain is unable to to understand the trajectory of light – and therefore cannot understand shade, concave, convex, and to a certain extent colours. Children see primary colours brighter than the norm. This leads to the indefinite range of colours to become more vibrant.

Most intriguing is the tool of: 'Forced Perspective”. Science Daily states that perspective and binocular tools are not fully understood by children. This tool has been used throughout time as an important form of illusion throughout 'art history'. This optical illusion is used to emulate the natural perception of depth.

In 1907 a young German art historian named Wilhelm Worringer published an essay entitled ‘Abstraction and Empathy’, in which he attempted to explain our shifts from a psychological perspective. He began by suggesting that during the span of human history there had been only two basic types of art and architecture, ‘abstract’ and ‘realistic’, either one of which might, at any given time in a particular society, be favoured over the other. He believed that abstract art or architecture, infused as it was with harmony, stillness and rhythm, would appeal chiefly to societies yearning for calm – societies in which law and order were fraying, ideologies were shifting, and a sense of physical danger was compounded by moral and spiritual confusion. Therefore, I would like to recreate these contexts with principles of abstract art in mind i.e vivid colours, symbolism, unorthodox forms, use of fictitious characters etc.

This specific style of drawing ties in with the idea that a child views the world in very imaginative concepts – almost utopian like. Utopian architecture would, by definition, be rooted in a social ideal, an ideal geared towards the betterment of the lives of many rather than an ephemeral, escapist ideal of the few and the privileged. The notion of utopia has existed in a faraway place, whether in the past, present, or future. However, for me it has sparked an epic journey inspiring the creation of architecture as a tool to express social and political issues in societies.

Utopian ideals are evident in all aspects of human creation. Even though there is much criticism written regarding the fallible and laughable nature of such desires, this ideal continually reinvents itself in the face of eventual undoing and the inherent consequences to signal our progression and united journey towards enlightenment. Architecture plays an integral role in the pursuit of these ideals as both catalyst and component. I would like my visual manifestations to ultimately reflect humankind’s current beliefs and deepest desires.

Oscar Wilde famously argued that ‘a map of the world that does not include utopia is not worth even glancing at’. Today, after some decades in the doldrums, utopia is back in fashion. Boosted by the 500th anniversary celebrations of Thomas More’s classic text, the theme of utopia now permeates the realms of art, literature, fashion, design, architecture, theatre, film and beyond. In contrast to the common recent view of utopian thinking as moribund and even dangerous, some commentators now proclaim that a revitalised utopian tradition can help us engage with ‘some of the fundamental issues facing humanity’ and fuel the imagination with new possibilities for the future.

I believe that the revival of utopian thinking is extremely useful, especially in today's disturbed world. In the 16th century, the dream of an ideal world coincided with a new age in European thought. The quest for Utopia and the urge to discover new horizons led to unprecedented levels of creativity. While More’s visions of abundance, freedom and peace were taken up as rallying cries, today’s utopias often seem self-consciously to eschew the pursuit of such ‘big ideas’.

Author Davina Cooper, for example, proposes that, rather than dreaming about a better world, people should instead seek to create ‘everyday utopias’ by ‘enacting conventional activities in unusual ways’. I agree with this sentiment. By viewing the world through a child's eyes – I would like to re-imagine everyday scenes in utopian fashion.

I would like to further explore themes of Dystopia in my work: should utopianism be practical – or is it enough that it stimulates blue-sky thinking? Is utopia an unattainable ideal, or does it offer the sort of vision and ambition that are necessary to promote change in the real world? Is the idea of an urban utopia only celebrated today because it is a fantasy with no practical consequences? When Thomas More coined the word ‘utopia’ he was playing with the Greek eu-topos meaning ‘good place’, but it could also refer to ou-topos, ‘no-place’. Is the latter a better description of utopianism today?

The project attempts to investigate the relationship between architecture and video games as a design tool. Sanchez (2016) argues that “Video games can enable a rediscovering of the commons in an age of social connectivity, it then becomes possible to make an argument for the production of design and value in distributed non-exploitative networks” Such emancipatory politics calls for a living Utopianism of process as opposed to the dead Utopianism of spatialized urban form, Harvey (1996)

In this spirit the project attempts to explore this medium as an emerging methodology for the shifting of power relations between the current dualism of market and user driven design in the image of Cedric Price’s vision for user generated spaces within a top-down implementation of infrastructure in his project the Fun Palace (1984).

The border wall and all intermittent layers of activity between Morocco and Melilla, Spain offers an extreme top-down scenario where a fortress to the neo liberal order has been established and continues to be expanded upon. Here the tactics of the video game can be deployed in order to tweak and subvert this bastion thereby translating it.

In the book “Space Time Play” (Kelley et al. 2007) the history of the video games’ manifestation into the everyday has been documented. This trend towards the gamification of the mundane has yet to reach the field of architecture and has the potential to become a control panel for grassroots architectural manipulation and a subsequent democratization of space. This is not an inevitable outcome. In Keiichi Matsuda’s short film “Hyperreality” (2016) he presents us with a world where the gamification of money, advertising, work and human interaction has been implemented fully in service of our contemporary Neoliberal agenda thereby envisioning a “Dystopia of Process”

Presented with this dystopian version of a gamified world as the logical outcome of our societies current value systems this project asks what the video game as a tool could look like when put into the service of a different type of value system beyond the current world order. A Hegelian analysis of history will be deployed in order to speculate on what systems of power and empowerment could look like in response to the present state of global power. The inputs and algorithms that had generated the Melilla border will be identified and contextualized within the logic of the existing world order. After these configurations have emerged a forensic eye can be deployed as championed by Eyal Weizman (2017) in order to reverse engineer and chart which inputs produced which outputs at the site. Once this information has been compiled these inputs can be tweaked and modified in order to produce a different type of architecture based on a different functional order with the goal of generating an “Utopia of process”

This imagined future becomes pertinent as a methodology for imagining alternatives to our present neo-liberal world orders’ accelerating manifestation of dystopia, an ever unfolding homogenizing system of market liberalization steamrolled across the globe at the expense of democratic values, economic empowerment and the particularities of person and place.

“When language was not transcendental enough to complete the meaning of a revelation, symbols were relied upon for heavenly teaching, and familiar images, chosen from the known, were made to mirror the unknown…”

-William H. Hunt.

As per the definition of the Oxford Dictionary, a symbol is “a mark or character used as a conventional representation of an object, function, or process”. My Major Design Project is a collection of symbols of identity and communication. Architecture is determined by numerous factors – the climate, the contour of the land, the materials forthcoming, religion, social, political and economic conditions, as well as scientific and technological advancement. Architecture is therefore determined by the needs of the people in their time, the currently available materials and their aesthetic preferences. Despite these factors that create inconsistencies, who would have known that an architectural style can be expanded and diversified to another architectural style.

In this project, I take architectural elements, legislative insignia, as well as attire and how they are used to convey a message, and I begin dissecting them into smaller parts, each resembling an aspect of power and identity. Communication is predominantly symbolic. There are two major groups of signals that people send: signs and symbols. Signs are the basis of all communication. A sign describes something other than itself, and meaning becomes the link between an object or idea and a sign. These primary ideas link together a wide set of concepts dealing with symbols, language, speech and nonverbal forms, and ideas that clarify how signs are connected to their meanings and how signs are disposed. The study of signs is generally referred to as semiotics. Identity of Place and People “…identities emerge at the intersection of the interior psychic space and the exterior historical”, Stuart Hall.

With an ever increasing amount of migrants moving into and through Morocco, my Major Design Project will focus on the different signs and symbols created within the emergence of new identities, but mostly creating a breakdown of the symbols that lead to the process of becoming a Moroccan citizen.

Borrowing from the phrase “the devil is in the detail”, my Mayor Design Project will be dissecting the decorations and patterns of beadwork, tapestry, traditional tattoos if any, architectural (hard) elements such as mosaics, arches, roof tiles, columns, gates, windows and doors, soft elements such as the material and colors of royal guard uniforms, police and military wear, and digital elements such as advertising languages and methods, local graffiti as medium of communication, amongst other local images and symbols, to understand their origin and relevance to life in Morocco today and what a person gains or loses in the process of gaining Moroccan citizenship.

Hybridizing Culture

My Major Design Project is a New Port Authority that uses symbolic references to investigate the different ways in which identity is policed, acquired or changed, and then subverted through the ever-changing use of certain symbols. My aim is to expose the different expressions of existing hybrid cultures in ways that help us interpret various social and possibly digital identities at work. The process of being, becoming and belonging are all represented symbolically, yet step-by-step, to show the fluidity of identity, its acquisition, its revocation and hybridization. In terms of symbols, I am particularly interested in those of power and identity. Identity, as defined by the Oxford Dictionary, is “the characteristics determining who or what a person or thing is”, and power is “the capacity or ability to direct or influence the behaviour of others or the course of events; the ability or capacity to do something or act in a particular way; political or social authority or control, especially that exercised by a government”.

With this, I am looking at questions such as:

-What makes a place different from the next?

-Where is the uniqueness of a space?

-What makes an individual Moroccan and

what is the line that is drawn to differentiate

between a Moroccan and non-Moroccan?

-What are the steps and procedures that one

must take in order to become Moroccan?

-What are the informal ways in which a person is accepted in a community and belongs within it?

I am interested in how communities create communication techniques that cut across class, culture and religion. Morocco is very well known for textiles and is one of the greatest tourist destinations to date. People collect ornaments, jewelry, mats, clothing and kitchenware because of how carefully handcrafted these items are, with intricate details and patterns. Patterns go beyond handheld items and are also found on buildings. None of these patterns and moldings are by chance, as they have meanings and represent rituals, beliefs and traditions. These are what make up the identity of place, and consequentially, people. My position is that these decorative patterns are the repository of a place’s identity and I would like to find out what new signs and symbols are being created and what they are being used to communicate. It is in the smallest details where one learns what is cherished by a place and its people.

Timeless Architecture

In this project I aim to destroy the myth of an inheritable or otherwise prefabricated identity, while attempting to dismantle constructs of identity that have long been considered as “solid” and unbreakable. Through these methods of “destruction” of what is believed to make up an identity of a place or person, I will be methodically unravelling the “construction” process of identities in a place/people, to prove its malleability and fluidity while still remaining original.

“The economic and political powers that make our cities and our architecture are enormous. We cannot block them but we can use another tactic, which I call the tactic of Judo, that is, to use the force of one’s opponent in order to defeat it and transform it into something else.” (Tschumi, 1995. P.299 referenced by Fraser. M)

Migration meaning is at once publicly engaged and highly contested, context specific and internationally important, immensely embedded in rational policy controls and personal stories as well as emotive narrative subjects. Undoubtedly, migration has become significant publicly and continuously recognized in opinion polls as one of the most important public issues. It acts as a platform for entrenched political positions and public debates that are impassioned, nevertheless it remain open as a concept. Inherently, the meaning of migration remain political. (Moore, 2015). Known to many as the keenly movement of people from one country to another by travelling long distances in hopes of settling temporarily or permanently in new locations. Countries internal migration remain an overlooked framework although this is the dominant form globally. With little initiations to promote it, the desire to migrate to other countries for greener pastures remain an all-time high.

Bordering the Mediterranean Sea and the Atlantic Ocean, Morocco - the country of focus, is easily distinguishable by its cultural influences of European, Arabian and Berber. Bordered by spain to the north (water border through three small Spanish-controlled exclaves, Ceuta, Melila, and Penon de Velez de la Gomera), Western Sahara to the South and Algeria to the east. Partially free with a hybrid regime, “Morocco is a source, destination, and transit country for children subjected to forced labor and sex trafficking” (Moroccan Moderate Advancement, 2018, pg2). Morocco has a population of 35.74Million people. Of this population, 92 000 of children aged 7-15 engage in child labor. A part of them trafficked from rural areas to urban areas. What is worrisome, is others claiming them to be one of the regions vital assets, necessary in maintaining a stable economy.

Bureau of Labour affairs focus on general labor affairs in Morocco. Opts to improve local economic opportunities to lure people from the notion and attempts of wanting to flee to European states in hope of acquiring better opportunities. It lightly enquires on illegal labour policies and child labour in attempt to understand its legislation. Its programme narrows down to a ministry consistent of 2 phases. The main - labour affairs uses techniques such as the logic of Neoliberalism, where the local market is improved and become generalized throughout the social body. (Spencer, 2016). In parallel with a ‘child escape space’ as proposal to child labour affairs. Marrying the imaginary and factual as a tool for change. Using different means of representation (sketches, drawings, films, narrative, photography and models/fabrication). The assumption is migrants will find work locally and prevent the ongoing attempts of fleeing into Europe. Preventing frequent occurrence of border overpowering in Ceuta and Melilla. Ideally this initiation hopes to act as a reference point for other nations experiencing similar distress to provide unprecedented information to the wider audiences.

Heterotopia

Spaces that function in non-hegemonic conditions, spaces of otherness.

Becoming Other

Other : one who is fluid in identity

:

hijra

Daniel Libeskind, wrote, “Space is not one, but space is plural, space is a heterogeneity, a difference” (Libeskind 2000: 68).

This notion of space makes itself most evident in the idea of the event, which Hannah (2017:121) describes as being able to transform the built environment when actualized in architectural space. She goes on to suggest that through the element of time the event allows for architecture with its supposed homogeneity or object nature to become something more uneven, contracting and expanding.

I am for this reason interested in event spaces as microcosm of experience. Hannah defines event-space as a compound term combining the disciplines of performance and architecture through the hyphen, “a punctuation mark that simultaneously separates and joins while enacting a break or interruption.” (Hannah 2017:122)

Architecture, no longer recognized as a fixed, eternal entity, is rendered performative, realigning it as active becoming rather than passive being (Hannah, 2017:124)

Waiting

The condition of staying in one place in expectation of something.

The primary performance of this event space is the everyday act of waiting – a condition of the (im)migrant, where a person’s mobility is in constant suspense, in lapse, stuck between departure and arrival. In the context of waiting an interchange occurs between appearance and performance wherein one’s immobility is on display for all to see.

Appearance, speaks to participation in an event. In the context of Lhola Amira’s practice, it is expanded to constitute an engagement with the past and present.

Becoming Other

Within this realm of the waiting the possibility of becoming other is presented. Rajchman (2000: 97) suggests that Deleuze’s concept of ‘becoming other’ is the ‘process in which we depart from our given or constituted selves without knowing quite who or what we may become. The state of being that this MDP focusses on is that of waiting, those in lapse, a state of immobility.

Through the tool of appearance, my MDP hopes to make these realities visible, through this visibility this MDP hopes to create a platform from which to become other.

Perhaps even who is able to partake in legislature.

In this dissertation, I investigate how memory and history are recorded in physical place, and how the small details of our memories combine to form a larger collective cultural history.

These topics are explored in relation to the Amazigh, who are the indigenous and marginalized people of Morocco and North Africa, who have a unique almanac and New Years’ traditions. Gregorian and Hijri calendars use lunar or solar patterns as a way of keeping time, while the Amazigh almanac focuses on ephemeral natural phenomena.

Their new year celebration, Yennayer, does not align with the Islamic or the Western New year. It is also not recognized by the Moroccan government as a public holiday while the Western and Islamic new years are. Traditionally the day was celebrated by the sharing of a meal. In recent years, the Yennayer is marked by protests, calling for the day to be made a public holiday.

The state’s failure to recognize Yennayer in the Moroccan Almanac is seen as a failure to recognize the Amazigh way of life and identity. This dissertation recognizing Yennayer is a pivotal step in making the Amazigh way of life visible. It is to that end that I propose a set of devices that aid the Amazigh during the Yennayer protest in Casablanca.