Architecture is power. It is the power of creation as well as of destruction. Until now, the power of architecture has too often been concentrated in the hands of a select few. This select few, consisting of predominately white males, has abused the powers of creation and destruction in order to maintain control. I am not simply talking about architecture as individual buildings, but more as systems of organization and networks that inform physical construction and manifestation. Destructive patterns carried throughout history have yielded expansive landscapes of psychological, social, and physical scars.
The film Koyaaniqatsi, directed by Godfrey Reggio, portrays the shear magnitude of man’s destructive forces enacted upon the natural world. Created in 1982, it shows a quickening of pace of industrial production and its effects on physical landscapes and cities through a sequence of both slow motion and time-lapse cinematography.
The film starts with an image of a Native American pictograph found on a red rock cliff followed by a space shuttle being launched. Then come scenes of natural environments, which are untouched by man. This initial imagery is filled with grand motions of clouds and water transforming and interacting with mountain ranges and dramatic horizons. Slowly, signs of man-made intervention begin to emerge in forms such as a planted field of different colored flowers and power lines traveling across a desert. What is unique about this film is that it contains no dialogue: it is simply a composition of music by Phillip Glass overlaid on video footage of varying tempos and speeds.
After seeing the grandeur of natural cycles; of water, clouds, wind, and sand, the viewer begins to witness an equal vastness caused by man. This vastness is one of destruction and excess. The forces caused by man are represented as rows and rows of repetition in the form of army tanks, abandoned buildings, oilrigs, and freeway lanes. The shear magnitude and numbers implied by these images is astounding.
Koyaaniqatsi is brought full circle with a closing image of the space shuttle. This time, however, it explodes mid air. The actual footage was taken from the Atlas rocket, which was an unpiloted spacecraft that exploded shortly after it was launched in the 1960’s. After the several minutes of the shuttle’s plummet, the film ends with the Hopi definition of Koyaanisqatsi which is 1. Crazy life 2. Life in Turmoil 3. Life out of balance 4. Life disintegrating 5. A state of life that calls for another way of living. Thus implying that we are currently living in a state of Koyaanisqatsi.
The part of Koyaanisqatsi that affected me most was seeing the image of an assembly line of hot dogs followed by a shot of people moving on and off an escalator. It was this sequence of images that made me realize that humans are living as if they themselves are products of assembly lines; their lives controlled by something greater than themselves.
In today’s day and age it’s sometimes hard to determine to what extent we as humans are influenced by our technology and machines. In Donna Haraway’s “A Manifesto for Cyborgs” she suggests that as children of the modern age we make up a society of cyborgs. A cyborg is a cybernetic organism, exemplifying an image of imagination as well as material reality, and being a hybrid of both machine and organism. In a society based on Western science and politics and having been developed by “racist, male-dominated capitalism” there exists a polarity between public and private, male and female, and nature and culture (Haraway, 29). This polarity restricts our relationships by locking us down into thinking these forces conflict with one another. In this situation and way of looking at the world, organism and machines are constantly engaged in a border war. Haraway suggests, however, that a cyborg’s freedom from previously paralyzing worldviews and oppressive social structures can be obtained by taking on a different perspective of boundaries. Instead of seeing them as straight lines of separation, Haraway argues for the “pleasure in the confusion of boundaries and for the responsibility in their construction.” Furthermore she states that high-tech culture challenges these dualisms in interesting ways so that “It is not clear who makes and who is made in the relation between human and machine” .
Although Koyaanisqatsi portrays the rise of manufacturing and the assembly line as a force that leaves the individual powerless to larger systems, Haraway chooses to express how the recognition of the cyborg state can lead to empowerment of individuals. In the excerpt below, she examines how writing can be used as a tool for liberation and expression and how the reclamation of writing by Women of color have helped them in the process of self empowerment.
“Writing has been crucial to the Western myth of the distinction of oral and written cultures, primitive and civilized mentalities, and more recently to the erosion of that distinction in “postmodernist” theories attacking the phallogocentrism of the West with its worship of the monotheistic, phallic, authoritative and singular word, the unique and perfect name. Contests for the meaning of writing are a major form of contemporary political struggle. Releasing the play of writing is deadly serious. The poetry and stories of US women of color are repeatedly about writing, about the access to the power to signify; but this time that power must neither be phallic nor innocent. Cyborg writing must not be about the Fall, the imagination of a once upon a time wholeness before language before writing, before man. Cyborg writing is about the power to survive, not on the basis of original innocence, but on the basis of seizing the tools to mark the world that marked them as other.”
(Haraway, 34)
I propose that architecture, like writing, be reclaimed as a tool to fight abusive power structures and reclaim ownership of what should belong to the people; the ability to redefine and rebuild our boundaries.
I am calling for an Architecture of Justice. One which empowers and includes rather than oppresses and pushes away. Remaining neutral is not enough; we must go above and beyond in challenging oppressive forms of power that leave us paralyzed and locked down. I believe every architectural proposal or statement has political charge and social implications. I want to explore a form of architecture that embraces sharp places seeing these spaces, which are oftentimes laden with tension and darkness, as potent and pregnant with possibility.
Through my practice I will strive to ask questions such as how can the architectural process be used as a catalyst for change by and for the people? How can a design proposal truly engage a demographic of people who have otherwise been forgotten, displaced, and swept between the cracks? How can architecture get at the core of the human condition and critically respond by representing the spirit of a place and the struggle of its people? How can sharp and volatile histories be recognized and honored in a way that uncovers and exposes transformative forces waiting to emerge from beneath layers of oppression, abuse and violence?
The School of Warriors Without Weapons program was created by Brazilian architects Edgard Gouveia, Rodrigo Alonso, and Mariana Gauche in response to the hopelessness and problems they encountered all around them. Instead of waiting for someone else to solve these problems, they took action by gathering students and young professionals from over fifteen countries around the world to help in collectively uplifting a neglected and troubled community. I was fortunate to attend this program in January 2007 and witness the transformative powers of collective work in action. Edgard, would frequently use storytelling and narration to introduce us to possible scenarios before we would go out and do work in the community each day.
One of the frequent stories he told went something like this:
Imagine that all of you are on a rescue team and have been called to arrive on a scene of a disaster. As you all parachute from a plane and land on the ground, all you see are ruins and destruction. There are people dying all around you. You must take immediate action. What are you going to do? How are you going to organize yourselves to take best advantage of each of your strengths? You have to save the world, people are dying, and you only have 20 minutes! Take action, the time is now!
Throughout the month we were taught how to trust each other and truly recognize that each of us had diverse talents and strengths to offer. This process took a lot of work because we found out early on that coming from different backgrounds, fields and cultures, we had undetected misconceptions of each other. It took some time to stop trying to compete with one another and realize that we would benefit most by recognizing that our strengths as a group lay in our diversity. It was quite inspiring to witness people letting their “weapons” fall away and allowing their true strengths and tools to guide them.
The goal of the School of Warriors without Weapons was to teach both us as a group and the community how to reclaim our abilities to dream, and to take collective action in realizing these dreams. We dove right into working with the darkest place in the neighborhood of Paqueta in Santos, Brazil. It was a building called APENE that had formerly been an Apple refrigeration facility but had been abandoned and become rundown through the years prior. It had decayed into a place filled with trash, where people would go to abuse drugs, and the police would take people to beat. There were actually people living among the rubble when we arrived on the scene. There had also been cases of people who had overdosed on drugs and died there.
I remember entering the space on that first day. The smell of rot was overbearing and the realization of how low living conditions could sink made me feel an overwhelming sense of hopelessness and sadness. Through the next month, however, I would witness how powerful the dedication of a group can truly be when there is a vision of a different way of being.
We spent the next month cleaning out the layers and layers of garbage in this abandoned building. After the days’ workshops, activities, and involvement in the community we would take 15 minutes a day to go and remove trash from APENE. As the people of the neighborhood realized what we were doing, they too began to come and help. They contributed brooms and mops as well as fresh water and snacks to keep us energized. One of the biggest challenges was keeping the neighborhood children occupied. They were excited to see new people in their neighborhood and wanted to help in any way they could.
Through our involvement in the Paqueta community each day, we began to recognize the complex relationships and networks already present there. What had at first seemed like a hopeless place of utter confusion, began to transform into a place of abundance where people were dedicated to transforming their realities and bringing about a new and more balanced way of living; one that supported life rather than destroyed it. We saw several local leaders emerge and find their voices. We witnessed the power of taking collective action and realized that if we want to see change happen around us, it needs to start with us. The people of Paqueta began to see that it was not worth waiting for the government to make things better, they had to take action and responsibility for the future of their neighborhood or be pushed away.
Edgard and Rodrigo often painted pictures of apocalyptic landscapes and asked how we could learn to see points of light and help those grow when surrounded by darkness. How could we realize that there is actually an abundance of resources around us when we live in an illusion of scarcity?
If we are to survive the apocalypse; this crashing and crumbling of outdated structures and paradigms, we must learn to live in balance with the earth, with our physical environment, with all our relations. We must learn how to work together in transforming and shifting systems and patterns around us. We must regain control of our own lives, environments, and relationships. Like in A Manifesto for Cyborgs, we must “seize the tools to mark the world that marked us as other.”
I demand we reclaim the power of architecture as a tool for reshaping and redefining boundaries. Those of us dedicated to seeing this planet survive must be actively involved in the transformation of our day to day environments as well as the complex and dynamic networks we are a part of. At this time we must not restrict the definition of architecture but realize its full potential and strengths as a fluid and dynamic entity that is inevitably intertwined with all aspects of humanity.
*A proper Bibliography is in the works
