March 19, 2024, 11 am-1 pm

PGR Colloquium 3

Tiffany Kaewen Dang

Federico Broggini

Mingxin Li

Fraser Curry

Tiffany Kaewen Dang, Edinburgh College of Art:
Decolonising Landscape Architecture

As a field, landscape architecture is steeped in colonial roots. Not only is the idea of “landscape” deeply linked to European imperialism and nationalism, the shape and scope of the contemporary profession practiced by landscape architects is directly Euro-American in its origins, as are the dominant theories associated with landscape architectural scholarship. The historical legacies of colonialism heavily shape landscapes today and perpetuate inequities across the world. In my work and research, I posit that it is the responsibility of scholars, professionals, and students in the field to address this problematic history of our field.

In this talk, I will explore some of the colonial structural foundations which have shaped the field of landscape both academically and professionally. Following this, I delve into a series of provocations for the profession to step away from these colonial underpinnings and towards a decolonial praxis. Through critical examinations of power structures, cultural landscapes, and non-western knowledge systems, I propose that landscape architecture can move towards decoloniality by incorporating more fully into its scope of work entanglements between identity, environment, and spatial justice.

Recommended reading: Tiffany’s paper Decolonizing landscape was awarded the Landscape Research Best Paper Prize 2021.

Tiffany Kaewen Dang is a Lecturer in Landscape Architecture at the University of Edinburgh. Her research interests lie at the intersection of landscape, settler colonialism, and decoloniality. Tiffany pursued her PhD in Geography at the University of Cambridge and has a MLA from Harvard University, as well as a Bachelor’s degree in architecture from the University of Toronto. She has previously taught landscape architecture at the Bartlett School of Architecture. She was born and raised in the Canadian prairies on Treaty 6 territory

Mingxin Li, Royal College of Art:
From Summer Pastures to Alpine Wetlands: The Politics of Knowledge in Zoige Plateau

Zoige Plateau, located at the border between Sichuan and Gansu provinces, covers four counties in Eastern Tibet. Since the establishment of the People’s Republic of China in 1949, cultural, ecological and social relations have been severely intervened by national politics, such as the wetland drainage, privatization of livestock and grassland, urbanization, government-led compulsory education, science-based environmental protections (national wetland park and exclosure of desertified grassland), the build of the market economy, among others. Overall, transformation always started with the redefinition or reinterpretation of the transformed ‘object’ (e.g. wetland, yaks, tent, among others), which broke and re-organized the original coexisting relations that are historically and culturally formed by Tibetans and more-than-human beings on Zoige.
In this presentation, I will speak about the local knowledge about the environment and the knowledge appropriated by governments for environmental transformation projects in Zoige, starting from the local story Ami Laguo - the mountain deity and ancestor of people living in Red Star Town in Zoige County - to the current Zoige Wetland National Natural Reserve managed by the government for ‘green development’ based on techno-science views.

Mingxin Li is an environmental architect and researcher focusing on the practice and modes of representation of Zoige Wetland. Before developing his PhD project at the RCA, he speculated the mode of the symbiosis of bacteria and stromatolite in Salar de Llamara through mapping, animation and fiction writing, which was his graduation project developed from Lithium Triangle Research Studio of MA Environmental Architecture. Currently, he is a spatial researcher of G.I.T. (Territorial Research Group) and studio INTERPRT. His collective and personal works have been exhibited at the Helsinki Biennial 2023, Galeria Municipal do Porto, Färgfabriken, Het Nieuwe Instituut, Design Chongqing Biennale 2022, and Tongji University.

Federico Broggini, Dipartimento di Architettura, Università degli studi Roma Tre:
Mundus. Designing landscape as wholeness, thickness, and fertility

The thesis is positioned in the disciplinary field of landscape architecture and explores, from a critical perspective, the concepts and perspectives of soils in the contemporary urban landscape, with particular reference to asphalt sealed soils. Soil is an inescapable condition to be confronted with in any discourse concerning urban and territorial transformations. Therefore, the positions that can be taken concerning its project are multiple and ambivalent.

Federico is an architect graduated at Accademia di Architettura di Mendrisio. Since the early experiences he focused his interests on urban and landscape design, in particular dealing with soils and water management concerns. Since 2020 he is part of Latitude Platform for Urban Design and Research, an interdisciplinary collective of architects, urbanists, anthropologists, and photographers based in Bruxelles, Venice, and Rome, that carries on research and design projects with a particular regard to socio-environmental themes. In 2022 he started a PhD in landscape architecture at RomaTre University. The thesis explores the world of urban soils, in particular sealed soils with asphalt, investigating their intrinsic values in landscape design practices intersecting ecology, art, matter sciences and history.

Federico’s paper “Mundus. Designing landscape as wholeness, thickness, and fertility” is available to download here (page 56).

Fraser Curry, King’s College London:
Race, rent, and the politics of housing in Hounslow, West London

In the years leading up to the Brexit referendum of 2016, former Conservative councillor for Hounslow, Sheila O’Reilly (quoted in Reid, 2013) remarked: “once, it was a rural scene around here. Now, many areas resemble shanty towns.” This otherwise underfunded local council was pumped with money to pursue ‘proactive’ measures to weed out suspected ‘rogue landlords’ operating ‘overcrowded’ Houses of Multiple Occupation (HMO’s) and ‘beds-in-sheds’ supposedly housing ‘illegal immigrants’ (Barry Born, 2021). In the ‘back-garden-sheds’ and ‘crowded’ rooms of Hounslow, tenants and landlords come together in deeply ambivalent rental relations of unequal exchange, blurring the economistic use- and exchange-value dichotomy that has characterised both scholarly and activist approaches to the housing ‘crisis’ in the global North. In Hounslow, those that dispense insecure housing as a form of ‘personalised security’ (rentiers) develop a form of emplaced social power (Chari, 2022, p. 71). In dialogue with Garboden (2023, p.232), this research argues that investigating the housing question in this context requires an approach to rentier-renter relationships that “embeds the nexus of exploitation not in the specifics of exchange but in the social relation that frames that exchange.” As such, this PhD focuses empirically on landlords and their relationships with tenants, drawing from postcolonial and agrarian Marxist thought to think through histories of accumulation and inhabitation relationally through the concept of rent (Chari, 2004, 2022; Gidwani, 2008; Cowan, 2022; Pati, 2022).

Fraser is a PhD student at King's, College London interested in housing, urban popular economies, political ecology, postcolonial studies, and critical urban theory. Prior to joining King’s, while completing his MSc in Urbanisation and Development from the London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE), Fraser spent three weeks conducting fieldwork with migrant property guardians in Dakar, Senegal exploring their relationship to land, property, and the built environment. For this research he was a co-recipient of the LSE’s Firoz Lalji Institute for Africa MSc Dissertation Prize. Fraser’s work has appeared in the Journal of Youth Studies, and he has written elsewhere on young people's social infrastructure, sonic geographies, and art-based and creative methodologies. He also holds a BA in International Development from King's.

March 12, 2024, 11 am-1 pm

PGR Colloquium 2

Marco Veneri, KSA:
Curating Urban Futures - Meanwhile Tactics and Ecologies in the Context of Urban Regeneration Strategies

Marco's doctoral project, 'Curating Urban Futures,' delves into the challenges and opportunities of "meanwhile" tactics and urban farming within the context of urban regeneration strategies. With a profound interest in rediscovering craft, situated, and traditional knowledge, as well as performative and embodied practices, Marco's research frames community gardens and urban farming as art projects. It interrogates the ways in which curatorial and pedagogical approaches can support a shift in the language and methods used to initiate local "meanwhile gardens" projects, aiming for long-term community benefits.

Marco is a spatial practitioner, educator and PhD researcher at Kingston University London funded by Techne (AHRC). His research and practice focus on urban transformations through participatory action, curatorial projects and inclusive & ecological approaches to landscape design, urban design, and planning. He is a co-founder of OFF-POF (Office for Possible Futures) a multidisciplinary and collaborative platform that works at the intersection of spatial design, ecology, sound art, performance, and architecture. He has been teaching at Greenwich University and the Architectural Association.

Dimitris Venizelos, KSA:
Between the ‘Oneiric’ and the ‘Political.’ The development of Bafra’s Tourism Investment Zone

After the failure of the UN-authored Annan Plan of 2004, and at a time of declared political dead-ends for Cyprus and its protracted political problem, Kaya Resorts, the Turkish patrons of the iconic Artemis Resort and Casino in Bafra’s bay (northern Cyprus’ flagship tourist enclave) presented their landscapes, pools and architecture as sites where the political and social alienations that kept ‘Greeks’ and ‘Turks’ apart for decades could be overcome. Their rhetoric echoed utopian tropes of an ‘oneiric’ counterspace that were attached to spaces of leisure by a non-ascetic Left back in the 60s and early 70s; and equally, a longstanding belief of the United Nations that tourism can be a catalyst for peace, and reconciliation.[1]

This presentation will tell a different story. The transformation of Bafra’s bay into a strip of large-scale  tourist enclaves reveals that under the iconography of the ‘oneiric’ lies a ‘political architecture,’ that operates as an agent of alienation, a symbol and instrument of power (Lefebvre, 2014).  In dialogue with Marxist works that study colonization and alienation as interrelated notions, this research argues that the colonial character of Bafra’s resorts must be studied in relation to a project of aesthetic alienation that contributes in distinctive ways to the geopolitical project of Islamism. In Bafra, this aesthetic alienation manifests as the formal output of an architectural language that carries a geopolitically convenient symbolism; and equally, as a process of erasure and distortion of everything in the landscape that is familiar and related to the human experience.

[1] This has been a recurring topic of debate in the United Nations agenda; for example see De Kadt (1979) and a more recent 2016 ‘UNWTO Conference On Tourism: A Catalyst For Development, Peace And Reconciliation.’

Dimitris Venizelos is a Senior Lecturer at Kingston University London, and Director of the Landscape Architecture and Urbanism Courses. His research interests are interdisciplinary and span across cultural and political geography, urban studies, and architectural history and criticism. Before joining Kingston, Dimitris served as adjunct instructor at the University of Cyprus (2017-18), and as Seminar Leader at King’s College London, Faculty of Social Science & Public Policy (2019-21).  Since 2017, he has been a Research Associate at the Mesarch Lab of the University of Cyprus and prior to that he worked in research projects at Harvard University (2014-15) and at the National Technical University of Athens (2013-2017). Dimitris holds a Diploma of Architect Engineer from the National Technical University of Athens (2013); a Master of Architecture in Urban Design with Distinction from Harvard University Graduate School of Design (2015), where he studied as a Fulbright Fellow; and a PhD in Geography awarded by King’s College London (2023) and funded by the AHRC and the Sylvia Ioannou Foundation.

March 5, 2024, 3-4 pm

PGR Colloquium 1

Sara Nikolić, Department of Ethnology and Anthropology, Faculty of Philosophy, University of Belgrade:
Navigating Layers: Ethnographic Exploration of New Belgrade Housing Estates

My research is centered around an ethnographic "journey" through the layered everyday life of the New Belgrade large housing estates. The research process itself was designed to collage innovative ethnographic techniques such as sensobiographic walking and participant-generated photo-elicitation with "traditional" ethnographic research tools like in-depth interviews (at home) and participant observation. This methodological diversity allowed me to balance between the broader economic, cultural, and political landscape relevant for analyzing the everyday life of large housing estates on the periphery of neoliberal capitalism, and the intimate and private spaces - the homes and daily lives of the research participants. Besides allowing me to balance between a “telescopic” and a “microscopic” gaze, this multi-layered research process correlates with the layeredness of the interpretative framework of the research.

The fieldwork itself was also conducted on three different, interdependent levels – blok (LHE), building and apartment. The reason for such a conception of the research is found in the functionalist explanations of the designers of the New Belgrade blocks. Within the orthogonal, modernist urban matrix, a house or apartment could not exist in isolation, as an object, element and function for itself but it is already part of a dedicated functional system. "Although it is an initial cell, it acquires its true meaning only in relation to the whole" (Arhitektura urbanizam 1975, 15). With the aim of critically re-examining this point of view through research, I decided to carefully navigate between these three levels.

Sara Nikolić is an anthropologist and activist who, through her research practice based on critical, visual and sensory ethnography, explores housing cultures and dwelling practices after the "give-away" privatization of the public housing stock in Yugoslavia. She is a doctoral candidate at the Department of Ethnology and Anthropology of the Faculty of Philosophy in Belgrade. As a research assistant at the Institute for Philosophy and Social Theory, she conducts interdisciplinary qualitative research on new social movements, appropriation of urban space in post-socialist city and (social) housing.

Ziva Cheng, KSA:
The Remaking of Simulacrascapes: An Ethnographic Study of Shanghai’s Suburban Areas

My research explores the intricate interplay between inhabitation, maintenance and governance within ‘‘Simulacrascpaes,’’ as articulated by Bosker (2013, pp. 37-67), tracing their evolution over the past decade and their implications for the perception of spaces. With a specific focus on Shanghai’s “suburbia” (Wu, Shen, 2012, pp. 199), this research delves into the multifaceted role of inhabitants in shaping and managing the ‘‘One City, Nine Town’’ initiatives. Through this investigation, I aim to elucidate how residents’ evolving perceptions of lived spaces influence their daily practices and experiences. This study seeks to uncover the intangible relationship between urban development policies and individual spatial narratives.

Building upon the observations of scholars such as Piazzoni (2018) and Minost (2023), who have noted the emergence of an authentic ‘‘civilisation mix’’ within artificially imposed urban spaces, my research posits that this blend of cultural settings is not merely superficial but deeply integrated into individuals’ original encounters. I hypothesise that the interplay between inhabitation, maintenance, and governance within simulacrascapes has shaped the various perceptions of spatial practice and everyday activities, which have become integrated into residents’ original experiences. To test this hypothesis, I examined Shanghai's "One City Nine Towns Plan" of 2001 and on-site fieldwork of Thames Town (British style) and Anting New Town (German style) using innovative methodological approaches. Employing a mixed-method approach that integrates architectural anthropology, visual ethnography, mappings and interviews, I collaborate with local non-profit communities, authorities, and diverse groups of inhabitants to gain insights into these spaces.

Ziva Cheng is an architect and PhD student at Kingston School of Art who studies the spatial and social practice in China's suburbanisation, specifically focusing on the simulacra cities. After graduating with MA & MRes Architecture degrees at RCA in 2022, Ziva chose to extend her research trajectory, looking at the regional governance, maintenance and inhabitation in suburban Shanghai. In June 2023, she presented her research at the KSA PGR Festival of Research Symposium 2023 as a speaker from the Architecture & Landscape Department.