Issue 2024
Dis-Ruptive Horizons
Preface
Transcending War Trauma through Architecture
by Hanna Sepúlveda
Reshaping Urban and Rural Landscapes
by Aikaterini Karadima
Massawa: An Island in Rupturesby Lavenya Parthasarathy and Sophie Schrattenecker
Infinite Possible Worlds
by Fanny Ciufo and Sami Yakhlef
Istanbul’s Lost Leisure Spaces
by Kıvılcım Göksu Toprak
Unveiling Gendered Spaces
by Chandrima Modgil
Towards a Sustainable Urban Mobility
by Martin Alvarez
Rethinking Progress
by Fritz Strempel
Unbuilding Neue Heimat West
by Cecilia Trotz and Paul Paptistella
Ocupações
by Paula de Castro Mendes Gomes
Homo Paulista: The Rise of a New Tribe
by Tolis Tatolas
Preface
Dis-Ruptive Horizons
The built world reflects human development - and human development has never been a straightforward process. While we can try our best to anticipate the changing needs of our cities, these needs are often shaped by complex forces moving more quickly or inscrutably than planners or designers can anticipate. The consequences are always disruptive, but they can also be existential. Environmental crises and associated phenomena such as rapid migration, violent conflicts, resource scarcity and biodiversity loss have historically disrupted ancient civilisations, just as they are affecting rapid change in modern societies, but on a planetary scale.
Human action has always been driven by a strong power of imagination. While this ingenuity has led to countless masterpieces it has also unfortunately led to some unforeseen disruptive consequences. This duality of power that human impact possesses puts forward an imperative question: Where do we place the fine line between imagination and insolence within this field of tension on the horizon?
In this edition of Urbanogram, a compilation of theoretical as well as practical works bears witness for ongoing disruptions. A total of eleven articles from young architectural designers, theorists and artists with a high diversity of cultural backgrounds allows insights into distinct anthropogenic [1] scenarios contemporarily encountered in urban environments in different parts of this world. At this, the plural notion of horizons acts as a provocative gesture to accentuate a multitude of pressing challenges, which can be faced if we are receptive to a diverse variety of scenarios and propositions.
Dis-Ruptive Horizons focuses on four key subject areas directly linked to the anthropogenic condition described above: Trauma, Infrastructure, Technology and Housing. While Trauma treats disruptions suffered by societies and their built environments through destruction and cultural displacement, Infrastructure addresses issues emerging within common and public spaces by raising questions about participation, identity, safety, and inclusivity. Technology shifts the narrative perspective from locally rooted studies to a wider investigation by analysing technocentric narratives in the context of climate crisis on a global scale. The journal concludes with three distinct works about Housing, which not only mirror current practices, but critically look into the future of cohabitation on a planet with limited resources and rapidly growing populations.
In their essays our writers explore how conflicting and disruptive forces manifest in the built environment, how they have shaped our material and immaterial world in the past and in the present, and how they might affect our future. It is the objective of this issue of Urbanogram to highlight pluralist approaches to the anthropogenic condition we are all part of. It has never been more important to conceptualise new inclusive, brave, nonconformist, and indeed, disruptive horizons. Our writers, architects and architectural theorists are meeting these new challenges with an open mindset and a toolkit full of creativity.
Editorial Team
Cover Image
Serving as a strong symbol as well as defining representation, the Anthropocene Working Group (AWG) searched for sites that clearly showcase traces of the profound and extensive impact of human activities on a global level. Nine sites were selected for consideration, ranging from coral reefs in Australia and the Gulf of Mexico, seafloor sediments in the Baltic Sea, one lake in Canada and another one in California, a peat bog in Poland, ice sediments in Antarctica, a volcano crater in China to a bay in Japan. Each site indicates physical evidence of human activity in the form of organic and inorganic sediments, radioactive isotopes from atomic explosions or residues of burnt fossil fuels or fertilizers. [1]
The cover image [2] contains satellite photographs of a Swedish island in the Baltic Sea. The island floats in the dark blue sea and is surrounded by swirls of bright green and yellow algae bloom that is strongly fueled by fertilizer residues in the water. Traces of the increased blooming and fertilizer concentration can be found in the sediments on its ocean floor. Despite the beauty of the blooming algae, its occurrence serves as a drastic visual reminder of the rupture in the earth’s geological timeline. [3]
[1] “Anthropocene Epoch, unofficial interval of geologic time, making up the third worldwide division of the Quaternary Period (2.6 million years ago to the present), characterized as the time in which the collective activities of human beings (Homo sapiens) began to substantially alter Earth’s surface, atmosphere, oceans, and systems of nutrient cycling.“
Rafferty, John, ’Anthropocene Epoch’, Encyclopedia Britannica (2024). https://www.britannica.com/science/Anthropocene-Epoch (accessed 03.05.2024).
[1,3] Schwägerl, Christian,
’A Golden Spike Would Mark the Earth’s Next Epoch: But Where?’, Yale Environment 360 (2024). https://e360.yale.edu/features/anthropocene-site-competition-golden-spike (accessed 03.05.2024).
[2] The abstracted collage on the cover is based on a satellite image of the Swedish island of Gotland in the Baltic Sea taken by the Nasa Goddard Space Flight Center in 2005.
USGS/NASA/Landsat 7, Van Gogh from space (2005).
Issue 2024