Transforming Perspectives of Development

TRANSFORMING PERSPECTIVES OF DEVELOPMENT

A l v a A l t g å r d

A n d e r s P e d e r L a r s e n

A n n e S o f i e K r i s t e n s e n

B e a t a H e m e r

B r i a n C h i F u n g L e e

C e c i l i e V i b e N i e l s e n

D a g P e t e r s s o n

E l s e S ø e b o r g O h l s e n

E m r e Ü s ü d ü r

K A D K THE ROYAL DANISH

ACADEMY OF FINE ARTS,

SCHOOL OF ARCHITECTURE,

CONTRIBUTING STUDENTS,

ARCHITECTS, PROFESSORS.

Po l i t i c a l : A r c h i t e c t u r e

C r i t i c a l : S u s t a i n a b i l i t y

Contact: pacs-chittagong.squarespace.compacs.exhibition.chittagong@

gmail.com

G e e t h i c a G u n a r a j a h

H a f s t e i n n Æ v a r

H a n n a h Wo o d

H e l e n a A h l s t r ö m

J a m e s A l d e r

J o e G i d d i n g s

K a r o l i n e W æ r i n g s a a s e n

K a t h a r i n a M a n e c k e

K r i s t i a n H o f f - A n d e r s e n

M a r c o K w a n Ye u n g S i u

M a s a s h i K a j i t a

N i c o l a i L a r a s s e

N i e l s G r ø n b æ k

O l y m p i a N o u s k a

S a m u e l D a u t h e v i l l e

S i l j e E r ø y S o l l i e n

S i m o n G u é r y

To b i a s B i s g a a r d N i e l s e n

Tr i n e S t o r c k -T h y

3

TRANSFORMING PERSPECTIVES

DEVELOPMENTOF

:

Introduction 5

7 Reuse : Transformation

Why Chittagong?

Who are we?

What are the themes?

Living Libary, by Hannah Wood

15

19

23

27

31

Public : Spaces

Production : Resources

Social : Constructs

Ownership : Control

Power : Hierarchies

4

In October 2014 an international group of 30 people - students and teachers of architecture participating in the MA-programme Political Architecture: Critical Sustainability - went from The KADK School of Architecture in Copenhagen, Denmark to Chittagong, Bangladesh. The purpose of this long journey across many thousand kilometers was to conduct fieldwork. A question that soon comes to mind is the one many people we met in Chittagong asked us: Why Chittagong?

Why Chittagong?

As evidenced in this catalogue the students of architecture have given a multi-facetted answer to the question “why Chittagong?” They have answered the question through architectural proposition – and the exhibition of their work in Chittagong, to which the catalogue relates, is their best opportunity to present and share their answers with people in Chittagong. Some of these answers, these ideas, are unexpected, and it’s tempting to think that such answers

are what it’s all about. Yet, it is not what it is all about; it is certainly also about the unexpected – which would often be the hypothetical, speculative or even utopian ideas. And maybe such ideas are in fact easier to come up with for the outsider or stranger - someone who doesn’t know too much about the conditions for getting something done in a particular context – in this case Chittagong. For that must indeed be another take on what it is also all about: It’s all about what can be

Topography of MemorySection II

Katharina ManeckePA:CS

June 2015

5

done; what can be implemented into Chittagong reality. Implementation! That would be another response from people we met in Chittagong, especially politicians: “it’s all about the question of implementation!” People who said so didn’t seem to demand realism from the architect – rather they advocated for pragmatism. Yet, the question “What can architecture do to support what people could do, but cannot yet do, due to circumstances?”, soon points beyond improvement.

It’s not simply about achieving improvement. To merely improve the given is not enough; nor is it enough to offer lofty otherworldly speculations. To try to establish new reciprocal relations between pragma and utopia, between pragmatism and utopianism through architecture offers a first rough indication of what we mean by political architecture.

Quite a few of the projects in this exhibition actually do bridge the gap

between reality and utopia. Some are more inclined towards reality, some more towards the speculative. Together they provide the first portrait of ‘political architecture’ carried out within the framework of a small institutional unit of architecture at the school of architecture in Copenhagen. They also contribute a portrait of Chittagong’s potential for developing new opportunities for its millions of inhabitants.

NScale 1:100

Topography of MemoryMuseum Interior IIIKatharina Manecke

PA:CSJune 2015

6

The exhibition and this catalog is divided into 6 themes, 6 ways of reading the Chittagong and its development.

At times the themes overlap, thereby create a network of graduations and connections.

The 6 themes are:

REUSE : TRANSFORMATION

PUBLIC : SPACES

PRODUCTION : RESOURCES

SOCIAL : CONSTRUCTS

OWNERSHIP : CONTROL

POWER : HIERARCHIES

The catalog provides a small sample of the projects, along with a text, inn parts showing the other side of the programs work, the work with research, writing and theories.

The Catalog show a collection of speculative student projects, proposing their interpretations of some of the issues Chittagong

is facing and giving their perspectives on how the city can go about an unavoidable development.‘Tranforming Perceptions of Development’ provides no overall solution, rather it gathers a group of investigative projects that may uncover some of the city’s inherent potential for sustainable future growth.

T h e C a t a l o g

7

REUSE : TRANSFORMATION

Topography of MemorySection II


June 2015

Topography of MemoryMuseum Interior IIKatharina Manecke

PA:CSJune 2015

8

What does REUSE:TRANSFORMATION mean in this Exhibition?

This part of the exhibition investigates how we value the built. Either by looking at the history, the structure or the potential of the existing buildings and the city fabric.

Using all or some of the layers to question neglect or to use neglect and ruin as a metaphor or inspiration for innovative proposals.

In the eyes of the OUTSIDER, how is the theme relevant in CHITTAGONG?

It can be said that culture is manifested in the built environment. Thus, architecture can be an valuable asset in the reminiscence of a culture and history.

As a foreigner, reading architecture is a way to learn about the people and

its history. Chittagong has housed settlements for thousands of years but only few built pieces remain to tell the story. However there are many traces to be found in both the old and the new, and through mirroring history, politics and economics.

Axiometric detail drawing of the ramp system and the esplaje

Scale: 1:20

Topography of MemoryElevation


June 2015

9

How has the theme proved relevant in the INVESTIGATIONS and REFLECTIONS brought forward in the student projects?

The historic properties of older houses alongside a fascination with ruins and decay, which is present many places in Chittagong, has catalyzed some interesting reflections and innovatory designs.

Hannah Wood describing the aim of her project ‘...” -exhibit[s] a radical departure - one where citizens hold the potential to re-shape their city, transforming the ruinscape into collectively active system.” Creating an architecture of the future past’.

While Karoline Wæringsaasen utilizes nature’s ongoing conquest of an old house to form a symbiosis of building, nature and human needs. Where trees become prostheses to the buildings structure, housing a clinic for human prostheses and transplants.

10

Hannah Wood : Living LibarySymposium Text

June 2015MINICONFERENCE TEXT: HANNAH WOOD June 12 2o15

The city was once a patchwork of enclaves; empirical formations subjugated from the archaic urban chaos which lay beneath. Delimiting forces contoured and carved through psychic and material space, rendering otherness and limiting access.

The building atop the hill was a masterpiece. It held face as a ghostly remnant of supposed departed power and glory, quietly being engulfed by jungle. From this great height, it projected its allegorical lament. If this situation had been allowed to continue forever, the future city risked splintering further; fostering opactity, disparity and contempt. Cue an unlikely figure: that of the trickster, an outsider with the ability to naïvely traverse deprooted predications of Bengali society. In happening upon this charmed circle, there emerged those without History, who make their homes within the cracks, the interstices of culture.Here there was no Architecture. This arena became, however, a realm of great portential, granting novel configurations and relations to the transitory outsider.

By occupying this contested terrain, the object of study was subjugated, transforming the frozen relic into the subject of the project; in this case, to bring into question the ongoing march of History. Besides, on what are we building if not on ruins? (There is no tabula rasa.) To interrogate architectural form through and despite time therefore remains omnipresent and critical; and is here brought to the fore. In a subversive move, the trickster set in motion a machine, that of architectural process (or aspect); this was their gift to the enclave. It operated on, but more crucially, within and upon history. From inside was witnessed its emergence, greeting those who moved in.

It is possible to imagine an architecture which revels neither in an iconisation or romanticisation of the past. Instead, it might occupy a non-authoritarian ‘common’ realm which holds the collective facility to accommodate individual desires, and is in this way responsive. It then becomes an open process adherent to the guided principles of the immediate present, an architecture of timely necessity.

It does not advocate the obsoletion of the past or a petrification of the negative; it is instead based on an allegory between past and present. Benjamin calls this a ‘tectonic strategy to corrupt established traditions from within’. By stripping away symbolism it induces a shift in the meaning and monumentality of architecture; critically questioning for what and by whom is cultural heritage produced. (Why should this ruin remain where others have crumbled to dust?). This proposition stands as not only counter-aesthetic, but counter to aesthetics and oppositional to the aesteticisation of history (or the political symbolism held by the icon).

It is an architecture which can not exist without its host, and in this tensile state of becoming, the ruin also leans on it. The material reality of the past shapes this progression, and in so doing develops a structural language reflective of material and construction methodology. This symbiosis is predicated on a ‘positive idea of limits and confrontation’ (Aureli). It cannot extend beyond the reaches of its host, which sets the framework for its expansion or contraction. In the radical act of sharing custody with the colonial, it curates what might be underpinned, and what should be left to rot. Therefore it is man, with nature as accomplice, which shapes the work of man.

The city was once a patchwork of enclaves; empirical formations subjugated from the archaic urban chaos which lay beneath. Delimiting forces contoured and carved through psychic and material space, rendering otherness and limiting access.The building atop the hill was a masterpiece. It held face as a ghostly remnant of supposed departed power and glory, quietly being engulfed by jungle. From this great height, it projected its allegorical lament.If this situation had been allowed to continue forever, the future city risked splintering further; fostering opactity, disparity and contempt.Cue an unlikely figure: that of the trickster, an outsider with the ability to naïvely traverse deprooted predications of Bengali society. In happening upon this charmed circle, there emerged those without History, who make their homes within the cracks, the interstices of culture.Here there was no Architecture.This arena became, however, a realm of great portential, granting novel configurations and relations to the transitory outsider.By occupying this contested terrain, the object of study was subjugated, transforming the frozen relic into the subject of the project; in this case, to bring into question the ongoing march of History.Besides, on what are we building if not on ruins? (There is no tabula rasa.) To interrogate architectural form through and despite time therefore remains omnipresent and critical; and is here brought to the fore.In a subversive move, the trickster set in motion a machine, that of architectural process (or aspect); this was their gift to the enclave. It operated on, but more crucially, within and upon history. From inside was witnessed its emergence, greeting those who moved in.

Hannah Wood’s symposium text is shown in its full length in this catalog, to convey the concept of the foreign outsider, the student, and the potential of their relation to

Chittagong.

Read more on pacs-chittagong.squarespace.com

MINICONFERENCE TEXT: HANNAH WOOD June 12 2o15

The city was once a patchwork of enclaves; empirical formations subjugated from the archaic urban chaos which lay beneath. Delimiting forces contoured and carved through psychic and material space, rendering otherness and limiting access.

The building atop the hill was a masterpiece. It held face as a ghostly remnant of supposed departed power and glory, quietly being engulfed by jungle. From this great height, it projected its allegorical lament. If this situation had been allowed to continue forever, the future city risked splintering further; fostering opactity, disparity and contempt. Cue an unlikely figure: that of the trickster, an outsider with the ability to naïvely traverse deprooted predications of Bengali society. In happening upon this charmed circle, there emerged those without History, who make their homes within the cracks, the interstices of culture.Here there was no Architecture. This arena became, however, a realm of great portential, granting novel configurations and relations to the transitory outsider.

By occupying this contested terrain, the object of study was subjugated, transforming the frozen relic into the subject of the project; in this case, to bring into question the ongoing march of History. Besides, on what are we building if not on ruins? (There is no tabula rasa.) To interrogate architectural form through and despite time therefore remains omnipresent and critical; and is here brought to the fore. In a subversive move, the trickster set in motion a machine, that of architectural process (or aspect); this was their gift to the enclave. It operated on, but more crucially, within and upon history. From inside was witnessed its emergence, greeting those who moved in.

It is possible to imagine an architecture which revels neither in an iconisation or romanticisation of the past. Instead, it might occupy a non-authoritarian ‘common’ realm which holds the collective facility to accommodate individual desires, and is in this way responsive. It then becomes an open process adherent to the guided principles of the immediate present, an architecture of timely necessity.

It does not advocate the obsoletion of the past or a petrification of the negative; it is instead based on an allegory between past and present. Benjamin calls this a ‘tectonic strategy to corrupt established traditions from within’. By stripping away symbolism it induces a shift in the meaning and monumentality of architecture; critically questioning for what and by whom is cultural heritage produced. (Why should this ruin remain where others have crumbled to dust?). This proposition stands as not only counter-aesthetic, but counter to aesthetics and oppositional to the aesteticisation of history (or the political symbolism held by the icon).

It is an architecture which can not exist without its host, and in this tensile state of becoming, the ruin also leans on it. The material reality of the past shapes this progression, and in so doing develops a structural language reflective of material and construction methodology. This symbiosis is predicated on a ‘positive idea of limits and confrontation’ (Aureli). It cannot extend beyond the reaches of its host, which sets the framework for its expansion or contraction. In the radical act of sharing custody with the colonial, it curates what might be underpinned, and what should be left to rot. Therefore it is man, with nature as accomplice, which shapes the work of man.

It cannot claim to be a clairvoyant architecture; it tends instead towards multiple futures. It certainly does not embrace design ‘ad minutia’- there is no matching chair. This framework is brought forward as a iterventional response driven by and from Chittagong, a dynamic city in flux; but more crucially, by the relation between Chittagong and the Western traditions, a relation of course Chittagonian in entirety.

Klee, on writing on poliphonic nature, also centralises the role of time; superimposing layer upon layer in his representations. The notion of simultaneity is then more richly revealed, in an attempt ‘not to reflect the surface as would a photographic plate, but to attain to inwardness.’In this way, history is copied, overlaid and copied again. Each image gathers inconsistencies, the accidents and improvisations of the present; mirroring the imperfect promise of history. In this way, the work is not relic but process. Deleuze also spatialises this concept as ‘the fold’: a gathering from the past, in pieces, re-using, ampliflying, transforming and becoming part of a new temporal regime in itself.

The modern cult of the ruin, at once tragic and dystopian, exemplifies the architectural imagination in crisis- as it tends to stasis. The artefact, fragment or wreckage, has inspired a vast body of writings, representations and practices which underpin the petrification of such sites as historical museums. As humanity continues to urbanise, an architectural language must be realised that has the ability to operate with the past rather than against or in denial of it. An architecture sensitive to and drawing from the history is necessarily progressive. One that can embrace the perishable, the material decay and growth, change and stasis; in essence a shanta-rasa approach to sustainability: an architecture which accepts and adapts to the passage of time (resilience).

If the ruin can become this site of radical potential, foregoing melancholia, it holds the capacity to revitalise and reinvent. No longer an emblem of destruction, ts fragmentary, unfinished nature becomes an invitation to fulfil an unexplored temporality. What is preserved then becomes politically incendary as process, not object.

The ruin and its supra-structure become more whole over time (in their destinies and transformations), but not in the image of what was before. (Akashara, or equilibrium). Siting the project in this psyco-cultural terrain between the modern and historic generates a productive duality; a waxing and waning which enables the re-casting of terms. To be in the world, according to Heidegger, is to be brought to peace, to remain in suspension. In Bengali philosophy, concepts of stillness and poise are central. The highest condition is where all cognition dissolves into shanti, the balance which surpasses all understanding. If the material totality of past and present can occupy this realm, unaffected by temporal transitions, the project can cite itself within this balance. All earthly objects objects progress in this cycle of manifestation and dissolution, just as bodies are bound to grow old in their journey from birth to death. One force perponders while another sinks into anhillation; which, nevertheless, offers a quietly abiding image, secure in its form. To strip objects bare, to drag the content which the image depicts before it is culture’s own decay. Part of the interaction between these forces is a creative manipulation of the ruin as a material subject. Without this connection, we cannot hope to understand separation. To cut through the ruin is therefore an act of refusal, the levelling of festering frontiers, and critically a step towards the deactivation of spatial empirical devices.

11

It is possible to imagine an architecture which revels neither in an iconisation or romanticisation of the past. Instead, it might occupy a non-authoritarian ‘common’ realm which holds the collective facility to accommodate individual desires, and is in this way responsive. It then becomes an open process adherent to the guided principles of the immediate present, an architecture of timely necessity.It does not advocate the obsoletion of the past or a petrification of the negative; it is instead based on an allegory between past and present. Benjamin calls this a ‘tectonic strategy to corrupt established traditions from within’.By stripping away symbolism it induces a shift in the meaning and monumentality of architecture; critically questioning for what and by whom is cultural heritage produced. (Why should this ruin remain where others have crumbled to dust?).This proposition stands as not only counter-aesthetic, but counter to aesthetics and oppositional to the aesteticisation of history (or the political symbolism held by the icon).It is an architecture which can not exist without its host, and in this tensile state of becoming, the ruin also leans on it. The material reality of the past shapes this progression, and in so doing develops a structural language reflective of material and construction methodology.This symbiosis is predicated on a ‘positive idea of limits and confrontation’ (Aureli). It cannot extend beyond the reaches of its host, which sets the framework for its expansion or contraction.In the radical act of sharing custody with the colonial, it curates what might be underpinned, and what should be left to rot. Therefore it is man, with nature as accomplice, which shapes the work of man.

It cannot claim to be a clairvoyant architecture; it tends instead towards multiple futures. It certainly does not embrace design ‘ad minutia’- there is no matching chair.This framework is brought forward as a iterventional response driven by and from Chittagong, a dynamic city in flux; but more crucially, by the relation between Chittagong and the Western traditions, a relation of course Chittagonian in entirety.Klee, on writing on poliphonic nature, also centralises the role of time; superimposing layer upon layer in his representations. The notion of simultaneity is then more richly revealed, in an attempt ‘not to reflect the surface as would a photographic plate, but to attain to inwardness.’In this way, history is copied, overlaid and copied again. Each image gathers inconsistencies, the accidents and improvisations of the present; mirroring the imperfect promise of history.In this way, the work is not relic but process. Deleuze also spatialises this concept as ‘the fold’: a gathering from the past, in pieces, re- using, ampliflying, transforming and becoming part of a new temporal regime in itself.











12

The modern cult of the ruin, at once tragic and dystopian, exemplifies the architectural imagination in crisis- as it tends to stasis. The artefact, fragment or wreckage, has inspired a vast body of writings, representations and practices which underpin the petrification of such sites as historical museums.As humanity continues to urbanise, an architectural language must be realised that has the ability to operate with the past rather than against or in denial of it. An architecture sensitive to and drawing from the history is necessarily progressive. One that can embrace the perishable, the material decay and growth, change and stasis; in essence a shanta-rasa approach to sustainability: an architecture which accepts and adapts to the passage of time (resilience).If the ruin can become this site of radical potential, foregoing melancholia, it holds the capacity to revitalise and re-invent.No longer an emblem of destruction, ts fragmentary, unfinished nature becomes an invitation to fulfil an unexplored temporality. What is preserved then becomes politically incendary as process, not object.

The ruin and its supra-structure become more whole over time (in their destinies and transformations), but not in the image of what was before. (Akashara, or equilibrium). Siting the project in this psyco-cultural terrain between the modern and historic generates a productive duality; a waxing and waning which enables the re-casting of terms.

To be in the world, according to Heidegger, is to be brought to peace, to remain in suspension. In Bengali philosophy, concepts of stillness and poise are central. The highest condition is where all cognition dissolves into shanti, the bal-ance which surpasses all understanding. If the material totality of past and present can occupy this realm, unaffected by temporal transitions, the project can cite itself within this balance.All earthly objects objects progress in this cycle of manifestation and dissolution, just as bodies are bound to grow old in their journey from birth to death. One force perponders while another sinks into anhillation; which, nevertheless, offers a quietly abiding image, secure in its form.

To strip objects bare, to drag the content which the image depicts before it is culture’s own decay.Part of the interaction between these forces is a creative manipulation of the ruin as a material subject. Without this connection, we cannot hope to understand separation. To cut through the ruin is therefore an act of refusal, the lev-elling of festering frontiers, and critically a step towards the deactivation of spatial empirical devices.

13

The framework for intervention occupies sequential phases. The first, a palliative move, draws time inwards; concealing the ruin from the city. This allows a structure to be established in critical land-grab, which goes unnoticed by the authorities. This puts into motion a re-balance of power in the city, the de-enclavisation process. Parasitic at first, the intervening framework then pertains towards a state of balance, growing while the ruin fragments. The building in a future state can then provide an open platform for knowledge dissemination, an accessible collectivizing space (commons). Permenant elements can then be cast from the formwork of the structure. The project encloses at once both a state of anxious temporality and stable whole.

The heavy walls of the ruin secure an inner world providing both the catalyst and the delimitation for its architecture. Access and security, relation and privacy, connection and containment are driving forces. By hinging fragments of the ruin both inside and outside, what was hidden is now out in the world. The act of making such strategic movements enables a dynamic relation between adjoining spaces; an architecture adherent to and generative of place and purpose. Layer upon layer, it evolves its own striated language (mirroring in part that of the existing), to develop an organisational program adherent to need and scarcity, guided by a curator immersed in its day-to-day activity. A novel realm is realised in the occupation of this territory- a present playfully detchached from power and money. It can be imagined this arena may have the ability to facilitiate the projection of an alternate, albeit precarious notion of cultural heritage: that of the living. It might enclose values, customs, foods, trades, philosophies: that which is so hard to capture in an artefact. That which structuralist thought, in pursuit of writing as language in itself, has written out of the continuum of history (as an uninterrupted ‘dhvani’); favouring those voices which shout the loudest. (This was also the trap of the monument: in that it belongs to the biography of the artist rather than the history of society. It must be understood that writing, like language in itself, is but a part; a dialect in the totality of human experience.)

To ruin is also to ‘inflict or bring great and irretrievable disaster upon, to destroy agency, to reduce to a state of poverty, to demoralize completely’: a violent, destructive verb manifested in the oblique relations, dissociated and dislocated histories of the present. The cultural legacy of ruination in the tropical commonwealth serves to amplify resurgent inequalities and ostracise certain peoples, relations and things which accumulate in condemned places. It is these former silent voices which project from the occupied ruin, those communities which have fallen through the cracks of mainstream Bangladeshi society, which remain frozen in a remote historical time. Such conditions are enforced not through scarcity but the active misallocation of resources, an enduring heritage ground deep in the sensibilities of the present.The families which squat in the detritus of the colonial courthouse now reclaim and shape their own space. The ruin can now operate in the psychic mode of elusive accountabilities and lasting tangibilities. In the act of raising the fragments, architecture will then celebrate survival, redirecting the lens beyond the enclave and out into the city. In a reversal of the status-quo, the enclave brings in and forms a dialogue with the urban. The ruin then projects into a wider frame. Fujimoto can imagine this as a radically heterogeneous city: ‘a place where citizens hold the potential to reshape their lives and where the built landscape becomes a collectively more active, agile and soft system’.

‘Architecture only survives where it negates the form society expects of it. Where it negates itself by transgressing the limits that history has set for it’ (Tschumi, Advertisements for Architecture, 1975)

The framework for intervention occupies sequential phases. The first, a palliative move, draws time inwards; conceal-ing the ruin from the city. This allows a structure to be established in critical land-grab, which goes unnoticed by the authorities.This puts into motion a re-balance of power in the city, the de-enclavisation process.

Parasitic at first, the intervening framework then pertains towards a state of balance, growing while the ruin fragments.The building in a future state can then provide an open platform for knowledge dissemination, an accessible col-lectivizing space (commons). Permenant elements can then be cast from the formwork of the structure. The project encloses at once both a state of anxious temporality and stable whole.

The heavy walls of the ruin secure an inner world providing both the catalyst and the delimitation for its architecture.Access and security, relation and privacy, connection and containment are driving forces.By hinging fragments of the ruin both inside and outside, what was hidden is now out in the world.The act of making such strategic movements enables a dynamic relation between adjoining spaces; an architecture adherent to and generative of place and purpose.

Layer upon layer, it evolves its own striated language (mirroring in part that of the existing), to develop an organisation-al program adherent to need and scarcity, guided by a curator immersed in its day-to-day activity.A novel realm is realised in the occupation of this territory- a present playfully detchached from power and money. It can be imagined this arena may have the ability to facilitiate the projection of an alternate, albeit precarious notion of cultural heritage: that of the living.

It might enclose values, customs, foods, trades, philosophies: that which is so hard to capture in an artefact. That which structuralist thought, in pursuit of writing as language in itself, has written out of the continuum of history (as an uninterrupted ‘dhvani’); favouring those voices which shout the loudest.(This was also the trap of the monument: in that it belongs to the biography of the artist rather than the history of society. It must be understood that writing, like language in itself, is but a part; a dialect in the totality of human expe-rience.)

14

The framework for intervention occupies sequential phases. The first, a palliative move, draws time inwards; concealing the ruin from the city. This allows a structure to be established in critical land-grab, which goes unnoticed by the authorities. This puts into motion a re-balance of power in the city, the de-enclavisation process. Parasitic at first, the intervening framework then pertains towards a state of balance, growing while the ruin fragments. The building in a future state can then provide an open platform for knowledge dissemination, an accessible collectivizing space (commons). Permenant elements can then be cast from the formwork of the structure. The project encloses at once both a state of anxious temporality and stable whole.

The heavy walls of the ruin secure an inner world providing both the catalyst and the delimitation for its architecture. Access and security, relation and privacy, connection and containment are driving forces. By hinging fragments of the ruin both inside and outside, what was hidden is now out in the world. The act of making such strategic movements enables a dynamic relation between adjoining spaces; an architecture adherent to and generative of place and purpose. Layer upon layer, it evolves its own striated language (mirroring in part that of the existing), to develop an organisational program adherent to need and scarcity, guided by a curator immersed in its day-to-day activity. A novel realm is realised in the occupation of this territory- a present playfully detchached from power and money. It can be imagined this arena may have the ability to facilitiate the projection of an alternate, albeit precarious notion of cultural heritage: that of the living. It might enclose values, customs, foods, trades, philosophies: that which is so hard to capture in an artefact. That which structuralist thought, in pursuit of writing as language in itself, has written out of the continuum of history (as an uninterrupted ‘dhvani’); favouring those voices which shout the loudest. (This was also the trap of the monument: in that it belongs to the biography of the artist rather than the history of society. It must be understood that writing, like language in itself, is but a part; a dialect in the totality of human experience.)

To ruin is also to ‘inflict or bring great and irretrievable disaster upon, to destroy agency, to reduce to a state of poverty, to demoralize completely’: a violent, destructive verb manifested in the oblique relations, dissociated and dislocated histories of the present. The cultural legacy of ruination in the tropical commonwealth serves to amplify resurgent inequalities and ostracise certain peoples, relations and things which accumulate in condemned places. It is these former silent voices which project from the occupied ruin, those communities which have fallen through the cracks of mainstream Bangladeshi society, which remain frozen in a remote historical time. Such conditions are enforced not through scarcity but the active misallocation of resources, an enduring heritage ground deep in the sensibilities of the present.The families which squat in the detritus of the colonial courthouse now reclaim and shape their own space. The ruin can now operate in the psychic mode of elusive accountabilities and lasting tangibilities. In the act of raising the fragments, architecture will then celebrate survival, redirecting the lens beyond the enclave and out into the city. In a reversal of the status-quo, the enclave brings in and forms a dialogue with the urban. The ruin then projects into a wider frame. Fujimoto can imagine this as a radically heterogeneous city: ‘a place where citizens hold the potential to reshape their lives and where the built landscape becomes a collectively more active, agile and soft system’.

‘Architecture only survives where it negates the form society expects of it. Where it negates itself by transgressing the limits that history has set for it’ (Tschumi, Advertisements for Architecture, 1975)

To ruin is also to ‘inflict or bring great and irretrievable disaster upon, to destroy agency, to reduce to a state of poverty, to demoralize completely’: a violent, destructive verb manifested in the oblique relations, dissociated and dislocated histories of the present. The cultural legacy of ruination in the tropical commonwealth serves to amplify resurgent inequalities and ostracise certain peoples, relations and things which accumulate in condemned places.It is these former silent voices which project from the occupied ruin, those communities which have fallen through the cracks of mainstream Bangladeshi society, which remain frozen in a remote historical time. Such conditions are enforced not through scarcity but the active misallocation of resources, an enduring heritage ground deep in the sensibilities of the present.The families which squat in the detritus of the colonial courthouse now reclaim and shape their own space. The ruin can now operate in the psychic mode of elusive accountabilities and lasting tangibilities.In the act of raising the fragments, architecture will then celebrate survival, redirecting the lens beyond the enclave and out into the city. In a reversal of the status-quo, the enclave brings in and forms a dialogue with the urban. The ruin then projects into a wider frame. Fujimoto can imagine this as a radically heterogeneous city: ‘a place where citizens hold the potential to reshape their lives and where the built landscape becomes a collectively more active, agile and soft system’.‘Architecture only survives where it negates the form society expects of it. Where it negates itself by transgressing the limits that history has set for it’ (Tschumi, Advertisements for Architecture, 1975)

In this future, time takes a central role - the structures required pertain directly to the duration of need. What would be the minimum structural elements to stay one hour? Or to spend the night? This is an architecture of immedicay. Temporary spaces allow occupants to organise their own space within a tectonic framework, and acknowlede its role as a stepping stone for new migrants to the city. Guided by a resident cartaker, there is also an opportunity in practice to trial a self-organising management process, autonomous of private donors or Government. This is stand for a making of common histories, rights denied as with the enclavisation of knowledge as formal institutions developed (colonisation of knowledge).

An extension of the study would be an investigation into what it might mean to trial this conceptual framework as method to enagage with the past in alternate scenarios. In Chittagong, this may take the form of consolidating bonds between minority and immigrant nomadic communities which remain clustered and spread across Chittagong (bound together by their shared oral traditions). The ruins can then provide a bridging point from rural to urban; both a first port of call and network of lasting, community-lead projects. In effect, an adivasi network, reclaiming the right to escape dogma enact upon history through the occupation of cultural heritage.

In this future, time takes a central role - the structures required pertain directly to the duration of need. What would be the minimum structural elements to stay one hour? Or to spend the night? This is an architecture of immedicay. Temporary spaces allow occupants to organise their own space within a tectonic framework, and acknowlede its role as a stepping stone for new migrants to the city.Guided by a resident cartaker, there is also an opportunity in practice to trial a self-organising management process, autonomous of private donors or Government. This is stand for a making of common histories, rights denied as with the enclavisation of knowledge as formal institutions developed (colonisation of knowledge).

An extension of the study would be an investigation into what it might mean to trial this conceptual framework as method to enagage with the past in alternate scenarios. In Chittagong, this may take the form of consolidating bonds between minority and immigrant nomadic communities which remain clustered and spread across Chittagong (bound together by their shared oral traditions).The ruins can then provide a bridging point from rural to urban; both a first port of call and network of lasting, com-munity-lead projects. In effect, an adivasi network, reclaiming the right to escape dogma enact upon history through the occupation of cultural heritage.

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PUBLIC : SPACES

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What does PUBLIC:SPACES mean in this Exhibition?

Public:Spaces focuses on the areas of Chittagong that everyone may have the right to use. The theme focuses on both accessibility to public spaces, as well as encounters in the public realm and how the built environment give room, affect, nuge and/or create these interactions.

Public:spaces deals with the rights to the city and how to create different kinds of common spaces in the dense city of Chittagong.


Public spaces are linked to democracy and demonstration of public opinion. In Chittagong, it seems, the only accessible public space is the street. Here the public is expressed by crowds taking over the street

space to hold both celebrations and demonstrations. In other cities such as Beijing, New York and Copenhagen, public gatherings are normally referred to the squares and plazas.Squares and plazas describe a classic view of a public space, but there is a lot of architectural potential in the investigations of different forms of public, like the ones you find on the streets, rooftops and riverbanks of Chittagong.


Intentionally or unintended a city’s public spaces tells a story of the liberties and limitations the citizens have to face. The investigations and proposals made by the student contain both a cultural and architectural fascination with the status quo.

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Cecilie Vibe Nielsen plays with the idea of a moving market. Working with the commercial public space of New market, she transforms the relations of the built by celebrating “...Chittagong’s symbiosis between traffic and the market,..”

Anders Peder Larsen approaches public spaces tangentially, with his preoccupation with liminal space and its social and tectonic qualities, he explores interactions, their physical

settings and place in time.

A third way of looking into public spaces is represented by Simon Guery’s project ‘Thought Transgressive Artefacts’. This projects investigates the intersection of the desires of the public and the force of nature. With his pavilions (artefacts) he creates an opening for dialog between the changing landscape and the user of the city.

Static shops, hawkers, people with portable tools, vans in the street create different meetings: a cultural, a visual, a private and a movable face-to-face. These situations are parameters for the creation of the space.

Unfolding the InteractionsThe Invisible Hand of Architecture in The Market

Cecilie Vibe Nielsen; June 2015

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19

PRODUCTION : RESOURCES

Assemblies

The Water Quarter’s borders

The main route

Reserviors and purifying ponds

Areas of potential �ooding

The sections below shows the assemblies’ and canals’ location in topography

Location of the main infrastructural string1:20.000

SalonSection b-b 1:50

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What doesRESOURCES :PRODUCTION mean in this Exhibition?

What is a recourse? Is it a rock or knowledge? To produce something you mostly need both. Thus implying a physical entity, often derived from nature, and something metaphysical as creativity or knowledge. To produce something sustainable, it makes sense to produce goods from locally available resources.

That said, the metaphysical aspect of the product isn’t necessarily locally anchored. Knowledge and creativity can create local richness; booth economical and cultural by developing the resources already there.

To use what is at hand, be it water or sand, to create meaningful architecture could be said` as a common denominator for these projects.

In the eyes of the outsider, how is the theme relevant in CHITTAGONG?

Chittagong is a port city with ancient history. A focal point for trade and goods. Riche resources from inner Bangladesh has found its way through Chittagong and out in the world, and still does. But what resource does Chittagong possess?

Most obvious is the river, connecting the fertile lands with the ocean, as a trade route and natural harbour. The Karnaphuli river and water is both the richness and the threat of the city’s existence. Flooding, drought and arsenic poisoning are among the many water related issues in Chittagong.

The water storage becomes this ‘localized physical setting’, where people will meet daily, amplifying the existing community.

WaterwaysTrine E. Storck-Thy; May 2015

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The river’s ability to carry not only boats with goods, but also big amounts of sediment, reshaping the coastline and affecting the infrastructure, has forged a struggle between port and nature.

Both Hafstein Ævar and Samuel Dautheville has taken this into consideration in their projects. Proposing how sediment can be seen as a resource and how architecture can frame it.

While Beata Hemer investigates clay, among other resources, and its potential to create community around a production. She is looking to deconstruct and understand the normative dichotomies of nature/culture, urban/rural, resource/waste etc.

Trine Thy on the other hand looks at rainwater harvesting as a great resource and potential, not only for obvious practical reasons, but to unite communities and empower them with a novel political force as well as a reshaping of the city’s infrastructure.

The production will be further merged with the landscape, dissolving the boundaries and creating a park of production, which is the memorial.

Introductio to The Garden and The SalonExtended program text to Hybrid Reflections, Mediating

GroundsBeate Hemer; May 2015

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23

SOCIAL : CONSTRUCTS

1:200

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What doesSocial:Constructs mean in this Exhibition?

This part of the exhibition looks into how social life and norms are connected to our surroundings. Of particular interest have been how the social life may take form from, and shape its physical surroundings and vice versa.

The theme exhibits the students interest and involvement with the individual and the culture, and how a culture can be read, understood and may be challenged through architecture.


Social norms and the way people act towards each other in Chittagong was at first very different from what the students were accustomed to in Europe; The sheer amount of people and how

close people live, compared to the visitors background, was apparent when looking at how the buildings lean onto each other, a density that probably has affected the way people view privacy.

The contrast between the visitors earlier experiences and this new social structure created questions, such as; why are there no women in the streets? And why are people’s housing based on their employment?

These phenomenons, which seem alien to the outsider, are mostly rooted in religion and traditions. A part of the web of unspoken inter-human rules creating our Social:Constructs.


It is important to recognize that humans create ‘the social’, which in turn create aspects of life like

BRICK AND BAMBOO

FACADE AND MATERIAL CONSTITUTION

BRICK AND CORRUGATED IRON

6. DEWATS (Decentralized Waste Water Treatment System).A collaborative project where women, from the enclaves and other women connected to the NGO, would help build and run the plant. Policies in many different national sanitation strategies during the last decade have “emphasize decentralization, user participation [and] the role of women “.The system can manage up to 1000m3 waste water per day, which makes it able not to only handle the drain water and the waste water from the enclave, but waste water from other buildings as well. The plant will, other then save the environment, provide clean water for gardens and become a park, bridging the hindu enclave with the government quarters. A bi-product of wastewater is biogas which will be utilized for powering kitchen stows in the enclave. Avoiding the smoky fire stoves still used in some houses.

Fragments of functionality and uselessness A common-ing architecture of ambiguity

Architecture can be seen as a tool to facilitate life. All aspects of it. Thus I believe that architecture relates and depends on life. Ordering and rationality can only take you a part of the way. We must plan for life and expect it happening in the architecture. Human life is ambiguous; sometimes repetitive, slow and rhythmical, other times it changes fast or uneven. To keep architecture dynamic we must govern it lively, with all the speeds and turns that might come. We must cooperate to construct, use and change it to something that benefits not only one or a few. The agency of people in community has the potentiality of making the becoming of, and the architecture a common — a com-mon-ing architecture. Fragmented, lively and ambiguous.

Commons or communis in Latin means, “belonging to all, general,” 1. The historical notion of the commons in i.e. England, used in the middle ages, was a way to co-use land or recourses for the common good. For example the herder could graze her sheep while another family gathered firewood on the same land. The “tragedy of the commons” was a land reform metaphor to promote private land ownership in the dawn of capitalism. It stated, “everybody’s property is nobody’s property” and “the most common good is the least guarded” 2. ¬¬Elinor Ostrom proved that this was not the case even if there where a few important variables that, in order to make it work, had to exist. One was the need for a resource, secondly that this resource had to be scarce, third a community with a good social network, and fourth they needed “appropriate community-based rules and procedures in place with built-in incentives for responsible use and punishments for overuse”3 The resource of this project is an active/activating public space/ar-chitecture, by and for women, a very (!) scarce recourse in Bangladesh. Dougald Hein, a British social thinker, argues that Ostrom missed to emphasized a crucial ingredient - friendship. The commons, he says; ”was not simply a pool of resources to be managed, but an alternative to seeing the world as made of resources. Specifically, the commons was not something to be exploited for the production of commodities, but something that people could draw on within customary limits to provide for their own subsistence.”4 The governing rules should thus be based on a trust founded in friendship and understanding rather top down rule and order, a similar value transformation as patriarchy to matriarchy. The commons enter as an alternative to both public and private. A platform, more suitable to femininity, enabling agency to negotiate change in traditions.

In the urban, life is a negotiation of space and benefits thereof. We are forced to relate to each other, either by repression or cooperation. In feminist literature patriarchy

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religion and traditions; parts of the Social:Construct.

The theme Social:Constructs ask questions which can create a debate. The projects spires from the views and ethics of the students, who were forming these questions in the interaction with this new foreign context. questioning after the meeting with the foreign context. An architectural proposal may take form in the negotiation between, intent, site and culture.

An example of this is Nicolai Larasse’s ‘Dismantling the Veil’ that works with the physical and cultural vail of the women in, and around a hindu enclave; architecturally asking how to empower them? Asking how to make them aware of and able to engage with, the social constructs regulating their life. A sort of empowerment through architecture.

When Alva Altgård proposes a project directed towards children it is with the intent of letting them

Having time slots for men and women, will there be traces of the other sex; a lingering scent of perfume or sweat, a lost toothbrush or a forgotten tampon? Shared bathwater could be the start of an alliance.

The EventHelena Ahlstrom; June 2015

meet across social and physical walls. Motivated by the belief that the separation of people creates bigotry and inequality; both unsustainable for the city.

The projects in the theme Social : Constructs investigates how people relate, and reflects on how to change the current perception and preconceptions.

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27

OWNERSHIP : CONTROL

N

Scale 1:100

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What does OWNERSHIP:CONTROL mean in this Exhibition?

To own something or have control over someone/something, is a complicated matter and causes both divides and unions. In this exhibition Ownership:Control is closely linked to resources, urban development, responsibility and accountability - in short the right to space.

By investigating and formulating the problematics around Ownership:Control, the students come to define a political stand in regard to the current and future development of Chittagong and its architecture.


The value of land is increasing in Chittagong and multiple conflicts

concern the ownership of land. Landlords house climate refugees in organised slum areas, high rises are taking the place of old buildings and the city’s fringe areas are becoming ever more valuable for investors.

The challenges of a growing city is not exclusive for Chittagong, but the changes’ velocity and spiraling development of such significant infrastructural challenges, both physical and social, makes the situation unique. As Geethica Gunarajah writes in Goshaildanga - Better Value: ‘The Stable element here seemed to be change.”

In addition to the influx of people Chittagong is experiencing, Ownership:Control is significant with regard to the city’s geographical and climatic location and the challenges it causes the city. For example: floods, mud slides and shifting land due to the river or groundwater exhaustion

etc. How has the theme proved relevant in the INVESTIGATIONS and REFLECTIONS brought forward in the student projects?

It is present in every project represented at this exhibition, weather the projects deal with the control of human behavior, nature and natural forces or in relation to urban renewal and development.

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As when Emre Usudur questions who has the right to determine what is a good functioning neighborhood and more generally questions the need and obsession with development of the cities. Furthermore he has investigated if the rights to a place, truly has any relation to the official ownership of a place. Geethica Gunarajah on the other hand explores the possibilities of rigid ownership rights and proposes a unique development for an area in the city, with the freedoms; control and ownership that Chittagong provides.

Another angle on the theme is represented here with Kristian Hoff-Andersen and Tobias Bisgaard Nielsen’s projects. Where they are more invested in the city and man’s attempts to control nature and the natural forces. In the way that Tobias Bisgaard explores how to conform and cope with what is out of our control, like the flood and ebb of the Karnapuli river and ocean.

GBETTER VALUE

FUTURE CONSTRUCTIONS 2016 CHITTAGONG

WWW.PROJECTGOSH.COM

Section 1:200

Goshaildanga, ChittagongUncertain futures30

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POWER : HIERARCHIES

4Archival Campus

3Archival Reception

2Archival Study

1Archival Exchange

5m diameter underground pistons

200mm flexible rubber layer with drainage boards

when intensity of use increases, pistons proportionally moves upwards, and vice versa.

50mm artificial grass finish

user and institution exchange boxes on nodes attached to fixed platforms.

1901

2005296o W

2013

1913

2016

1993 1990

1947

1960

1860

1690s

1895

1896

1955

1971

19931981

(1981-93)

15 o N

1947 19711757

(1981-93)

20161960

1993

1895

1990

1690s 1901

19811913

18601993

20132005800 1896 20061955modern stadium

MA Aziz Stadium

MA Azizdis-used

IndependenceWar Headquarters

JamiatulFalahPlaza

JamiatulFalah

Mosque

Islamintroduced toBangladesh

Ziaur RahmanAssassinated

Old circuit house

circuithouse

Zia Memorial

gentleman’s club

ChittagongClub

Zia Shishu Park

modern amusement

park

CCC established

Radisson Blu Hotel

Radisson Blu established

New Circuit House

Indian-Pakistani

Independence

BangladeshIndependence War

British East IndiaCompany rule

800

modern amusement

park

circuithouse

gentleman’s club

Islamintroduced toBangladesh

ChittagongClub

Radisson Blu Hotel

JamiatulFalah

Mosque

towardsMecca

JamiatulFalahPlaza

modern stadium

Radisson Blu

established

BangladeshIndependence War

IndependenceWar

Headquarters

MA Aziz Stadium

Indian-Pakistani

Independence

New Circuit House

CCC establishedZia Shishu Park

Zia Memorial

Old Circuit House

Ziaur RahmanAssassinated

StadiumAxis

The Post-colonial Axis of Bangladeshi History(The 7 recruited Institutions and their historical roles)

GlobalismNationalism

Colonialism

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What does Power : Hierarchies mean in this Exhibition?

This part of the exhibition Power:Hierarchies, focuses on the part of development which shows how a project is entangled in the hierarchies and power structure of its context.

The theme is included in the exhibition to stress how the uncovering of the systems of interest and influence may inform and develop a proposition.


Chittagong is rich with diverse intentions and opinions, these may for the outsider form a complex and layered web of influences and relationships. Who is shaping the public space? is it the city planers,

businesses or locals? These are some of the questions the outsider starts asking, when encountering the city of Chittagong.

By looking closer at a part of the web, observing and asking questions, what seemed to be a chaotic entanglement, could in fact be structured and possess its own logic.

Chittagong has a unique physical location and colossal internal steel market, with which an architectural intervention can utilise as leverage to interrogate the globalised hypocrisy that unfurls itself upon the ship-breaking beaches of Chittagong.

Eight Bells of ArchitectureAn Auction House for the Accountable Scrapping

of Ships within Chittagong, Bangladesh.James Alder; June 2015

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Power and hierarchies take on many cloaks and are not excluded to the obvious places of the Mayoral office or police station.

As many of the projects here show, Power:Hierarchies acts in the smallest to the largest of details, from new urban development to a bathhouse. A number of projects questions the existing institutions and proposes their own take on the problematic, like when Joe Giddings’ propose a new ‘free press’ extension to the old courthouse or when Chi Fung Lee introduces a new institution Campus : Archive in the MA Aziz Stadium, discussing; democracy, access to information and the border of institutions.

In general the awareness of the city’s hierarchies and power-structure have heightened the awareness of ‘the users’, thereby helping to clarify whom the proposed project is intended to.

Thank you for the colaboration,

making this exhibition possible.

W E W I S H T O T H A N K

T H E F O L L O W I N G F O R

T H E I R G R E A T S U P P O R TT h e 5 t h s e m e s t e r s t u d e n t s a t t h e F a u l t y o f A r c h i t e c t u r e a t P r e m i e r U n i v e r s i t y ( P U ) C h i t t a g o n g | T h e M A s t u d e n t s f r o m R o y a l D a n i s h A c a d e m y o f F i n e A r t s , S c h o o l o f A r c h i t e c t u r eV i c e - C h a n c e l l o r o f P r e m i e r U n i v e r s i t y ,

K A D K THE ROYAL DANISH

ACADEMY OF FINE ARTS,

SCHOOL OF ARCHITECTURE,

POLITICAL ARCHITECTURE

CRITICCAL SUSTAINABILITY

P r o f e s s o r D r . A n u p a m S e n | S e c r e t a r y o f I n s t i t u t e o f A r c h i t e c t s B a n g l a d e s h , C h i t t a g o n g C h a p t e r , A r c h i t e c t S o h a i l S h a k o o r | D e a n o f R o y a l D a n i s h A c a d . O f F i n e A r t s – S c h o o l s o f A r c h i t e c t u r e , D e s i g n a n d C o n s e r v a t i o n [ K A D K ] L e n e D a m m a n d L u n d | C h i e f C i t y P l a n n e r , C C C R e z a u l K a r i m | H e a d , D e p t . o f A r c h . P U A b u J u s u f S w a p a n | D i r e c t o r

o f C h i t t a g o n g A r t s C o m p l e x A l a m K h o r s h e d | A s s o c i a t e P r o f e s s o r C U A , W a s h i n g t o n D C A d n a n M o r s h e d |H a b i b R a h m a n & M a n n a n M u n n a , K a z n o v a | M a h m u d u l H a s s a n S a d i , S a d i C o m p u t e r & P r i n t e r s |

Produced and sponsered by Political Architecture:Critical Sustainability

KADK, Copenhagen Curated by

Nicolai Larasse : Trine Storck-Thy2015

Documents

Transforming Perspectives of Development