After Property [M1]
“Is love a synonym for abolition?” Saidiya Hartman
How can we disentangle architecture from property? How can we use this moment of global lockdown and protests to disassemble the exploitative regimes of speculation and displacement that anchor the built environment? In other words, where do we go from here? This studio aims to identify temporal slippages and spatial practices that carve out moments of liberation from the limits of property. Studio participants will develop a collective intelligence that experiments with ways of seeing beyond the privatized enclosure, building a world that is not tethered to ownership. This work will be done by recognizing, drawing, and modeling ordinary spatial practices that operate against the hegemony of real estate—systems that value people over property—in order to develop a dynamic archive of spatio-temporal constructs. Through radical reinterpretations of historical and contemporary interventions where the everyday struggle begins to approach the surreal—or even, the sublime—we aim to liberate architecture from its inherent commitment to borderization. We will celebrate undervalued spatial practices that actively dismantle the cartesian frame of racial capitalism, as a gathering of performances committed to imagining a different world, because the status-quo is untenable. After Property reframes architecture in solidarity with contemporary movements of Black liberation, decoloniality, and mutuality, working against the ruthless policing, dispossession, and displacement of marginalized communities.
Structure:
Participants will work in pairs after the first week.
Site:
Participants will select and work with one ‘as found’ image: an emblematic image of the contemporary regime of property.
Samples:
Participants will gather ‘as found’ images of spatial practices working against the limits of property to the collective catalog of the studio.
After Property:
The strategies gathered from the samples will inform the imagination of a world after property.
Disciplines:
Architecture, Urban Design, and Landscape Architecture. The studio will require extensive modeling and drawing using Rhinoceros 3D and the Adobe Creative Suite.
Availability:
Instructor will be available for all studio sessions (Tuesdays and Thursdays 2 – 6PM) and office hours (Wednesdays 10AM – 12PM).
GSD students may view additional information on option studios: