Experiments in Reparations, 2023

▣ TYPE: Postgraduate Design Studio

▨ INSTITUTION: The Architectural Association
▦ METHODOLOGY: Mapping / Modelling / System Design / Drawing

▥ COLLABORATORS: George Massoud / Merve Anil / Lina Ashour

We live in the world order that colonialism and capitalism built, whose consequences continue to construct our identities and define our political, social and economic systems. Space is weaponised for population control; it continues to be classed, gendered and racialised, leading to the unequal distribution of rights, resources and land. Spatial apparatuses such as the factory or the museum enforce social hierarchies that serve the interests of the powerful at the expense of the marginalised. The accumulation of resources creates fictions of abundance for nations of the Global North, with violent consequences for the communities and ecosystems involved. Entire continents are being reconfigured by extraction, from open cast mining and shale oil drilling to sand dredging and monoculture forestry.

Learning from other disciplines such as feminist and critical race theory, our projects are dual in nature. Firstly, we have investigated the spatial means through which social, environmental and land-related injustices come to be. We looked at who spaces are for, what maps make visible and what they obscure. Secondly, we considered how to repurpose and infiltrate spaces to subvert their logic, allowing us to imagine alternative ways of being and becoming. We critically investigated current examples of reparations projects between nations, institutions and communities through the operative role of space and architecture. Projects propose the construction of spaces, algorithms, institutions, buildings, laws, social movements or revolutions for a restorative future.

STUDENTS: Anvi Aggarwal, Banu Gaffari, Isaac Ching Fung, Hafsa Syed, Iren Turkkan, Julia Barbara Lubner, Leela Keshav, Rachael Milliner, Reishin Kunishima Watabe, Shanna Sim Ler Chung, Sharvaree Prashant Shirode and Vang Anh Tran