Bubblegum Club

Tag: infrastructure

  • Ilze Wolff on a transdisciplinary architectural practice

    Ilze Wolff on a transdisciplinary architectural practice

    Ilze Wolff is the co-founder of Wolff Architects, a practice she started with her partner Heinrich Wolff. They have a space in the Bo-Kaap where they produce designs for buildings and public spaces. Their space has a gallery that looks on to the street, which they use for hosting programs, discussions and exhibitions related to architecture, space and the city. Over the years their practice has placed increasing emphasis on ways to get the broader public to engage more directly with urgent questions relating to architecture.

    “Architecture is about the embodied experience of situations and of space linked to an imagination.” This statement is from an interview Ilze did with Design Indaba for an article mentioning her nomination for the Moira Gemmill Prize for Emerging Architecture. When I asked Ilze to unpack this statement, she humourously pointed out that it was one of the many things she says that she does not always have a clear answer for. However, her explanation reveals her dedication to a nuanced understanding of the interaction between people and space, and the role of architecture in paying homage to this interaction. “I think that I was trying to say is that we all experience space in particular ways and the production of architecture is linked to your experience of a space and the articulation of crafting a new space from your own imagination. It is about the interplay between subjectivity and imagination. Architecture is thus one of those sublime contradictions in that, yes, we design for a public collective experience, yet all our speculations and experiments are seated in a very individualistic and intimate space: the imagination.”

    The intersection between architecture, art and public culture is where Wolff Architects finds the most joy, as well as intellectual and creative stimulation. Taking on the point of view that the boundaries between these three disciplines are “inherently artificial”, Ilze expressed that imagining their work and creative production as transcending these borders has been productive. “Our training as architects brings specific readings and sensibilities to a project, which we cannot take for granted but research and engagement into art practices, socio-cultural debates and popular culture layers our approach beyond the technocratic responses that is the norm in our industry.”

    Documentation and advocacy also plays an important part in how Wolff Architects injects new life and critical questions into the field of architecture. Conscious of the way space, architecture, infrastructure and landscape has been used for separation in South Africa, “We feel it is our obligation to use our discipline (architecture) against itself and produce work that advocates for social cohesion,” Ilze explains, “We document our situation and built environment in order to develop wisdoms on how to intervene sensitively and with new readings. Research and asking difficult and critical questions is important for us to establish a project’s ethical framework. Ethics also in terms of aesthetics and imagination.”

    Ilze is also the co-founder of Open House Architecture, a research platform that embraces transdisciplinary knowledge production. Started in 2006, it began as a way to have thorough overviews of local architects’ portfolios through architectural tours, documentaries and monographs, some of which presented to the public for the first time. After a number of successful events, they realized that their audience was almost exclusively architects and other built environment professionals. With a desire to attract people outside of these spaces, Open House Architecture ventured into live art and public interventions, and in 2016 started a publication and interventionist platform called ‘pumflet: architecture and stuff‘, with artist Kemang Wa Lehulere. “With Wa Lehulere, we have co-produced two editions: Alabama and Gladiolus, both of which attempts to reinsert the destruction of Cape Town’s cinemas and black neighbourhoods, and their contemporary meanings back into the public imagination. We feel that it is important to research marginal architectural histories but it is even more important to cultivate a diverse audience and public culture around lost spaces, art and modern architecture.”

    Wolff Architects’ most recent poroject, under the direction of Ilze, was working in the design for the African Mobilities exhibition titled ‘This is Not a Refugee Camp Exhibition’ taking place at Architekturmuseum TU Munchen in Munich until 18 August. The exhibition engages with migration, mobility and space in Africa. Reflecting on the design process for the show, Ilze expresses that, “We allowed ourselves to engage with serious play where we purposefully tried to distort the very rational German gallery by introducing slight distortions on familiar pure geometries. We included a range of environments for speculation and engagement: in the first room we echoed the artist’s in that room’s notion of mixing up digital futures/histories by including a VR room that is both futuristic and nostalgic in its design; in the second room the library offers a public space for viewers to relax and look out onto a garden and in the last room we created a sound carriage where you could experience the sonic landscape of rail travel offered by the artists on display.”

    Another exciting addition to the notches in Ilze’s belt is the publishing of her book ‘Unstitching Rex Trueform: the story of an African factory‘. The book is about a factory that has haunted Ilze ever since she became aware of the connection between architecture and the politics of space. “I write about the way modern architecture in Cape Town is representative of the ways in which labour, capital and the city worked together to construct race, genders and identities in the mid 1930s and 40s.” Ilze mentioned that at she is currently working on an experimental theatre piece based on the research for the book, which will be presented at The Centre for the Less Good Idea later this year.

     

  • Patti Anahory // cross-disciplinary contemplations about urban imaginaries

    Born on a ship on the way to São Tomé and Príncipe, Patti Anahory lived there for 7 years before being raised in Cabo Verde. She ventured off to the US to do her undergraduate and graduate degrees in architecture. Throughout her studies Anahory maintained a desire to locate her work and sites of inquiry in and about Africa. This was initially a challenge as her formal architecture education offered little flexibility with regards to the content that could be explored as a student. At the end of her undergraduate education at the Boston Architecture College she won a travelling scholarship that allowed her to spend a month in South Africa. She later went to Princeton University to complete her graduate studies and Anahory began to direct her academic pursuits towards the continent. Her thesis project focused on Dakar, Senegal.

    This required Anahory to present loaded justifications to demonstrate why African cities should be viewed as legitimate sites for research within architectural academic programs. Her persistence continued to motivate her until she was awarded the prestigious Rotch Traveling Scholarship in 2000 through a two-stage architecture design competition. From this she was able to visit cities in East and West Africa. This was a significant moment for her, as she was still on the search for thematics that were able to unpack social, cultural and geo-political understandings of African cities. It also presented her with the opportunity to affirm that African cities are legitimate sites of inquiry. Anahory explains the significance of this by stating that around 2000 there were only a few architects engaging with African cities from this vantage point, or at least few getting recognized for doing so. “So you start to see your work as a political act because it was so out of the mainstream ways of looking into architecture, and modes of knowledge production about architecture,” she explains.

    Reflecting on the attitudes of the scholarship committee for the competition Anahory shares that, “they just could not understand the production of space and architectural critical thinking as a contemporary issue in Africa.” Her choice to explore East and West African countries allowed for a moment of rupture from her formal architectural education which did not place any emphasis on the contemporary conditions of the African city. After over a year of travelling she had to return to New York and worked as a freelance architect. A few years later her home country called her back.

    She was offered the opportunity to help setup a multidisciplinary research centre at Cabo Verde’s first public university. This presented an exciting challenge to setup an agenda for the relevant issues relating to the Cabo Verde built environment. This was a joint effort with her colleague Andreia Moassab at the centre with whom she shared similar interests in postcolonial studies, decolonising knowledge within the field of architecture as well as an exploration of how to think about development strategies and appropriate paradigms.

    While serving as director at the research centre, Anahory co-founded an art collective called XU:Collective with Andreia, who was  research coordinator, and Salif Diallo Silva, who was responsible for the research group on design and territory. “We decided we want to create a parallel practice that would allow us more freedom and a different language from scientific research and academic institutionalized setting, to speak about things such as environmental and social justice. Things we were addressing at the university but in a different way. In many ways the university and the collective informed each other,” she explains. An artistic language also allowed a different way to engage with society and to reach a larger public.

    When responding to my question about her views on architecture, urban planning and development on the continent, she expressed that rethinking new paradigms on all levels is important. This also involves how we can contribute more to cities and more sustainable development. “We also need to think and speculate about what future we want, and what kind of theoretical basis we want to produce. There are those of us carefully thinking about what kind of practice we want. Architecture is not only about producing buildings and objects, but also about critically thinking about our contemporary moment,” she explains.

    Due to this Anahory, like many others, has to take on multiple roles to tackle the double burden of contributing to an intellectual discourse while presenting a shift in what is seen as knowledge and how it is produced. “You have to be acting in so many realms in order to feel like you are making a change or contributing towards something,” she expresses.

    Working on curating her independent practice, Anahory continues to invest in urban activism and advocacy.  “I can only try to contribute to a more just city. And our cities and our models for development are very much imported from outside an in a neoliberal logic.” This is done through projects with young urban activists, specifically in neighbourhoods that have been neglected in terms of physical and social infrastructure.

    Considering that African Mobilities is a platform that offers multiple avenues for contemplating city-ness and all its associates (identity, culture, physical and social infrastructure, etc.), the inclusion of Anahory in the Praia Exchange made sense considering her experience in having to justify the exploration of contemporary Africa outside of the framework set out by western epistemological agendas.

    From the get go the participants bonded over questioning the terminology of “Lusophone” Africa, (as with “Francophone” and “Anglophone”) and the imaginaries they invoke. Anahory, speaking from an island perspective, and highlighting the ambiguous relationship Cabo Verde has with the rest of the continent, was able to present how our collective imaginaries from these labels craft our identities and place us closer or further apart. Drawing on the parallels between Luanda and Praia, cross-disciplinary investigations and conversations opened up new questions and debates.

    Anahory will be coming to South Africa again this year as a visiting research fellow at University of Johannesburg. Perhaps the Praia Exchange has offered a point of departure for the time she will spend here.