The AHRA Research Student Symposium 2022, "Voices in Architecture", considers voices in architectural research, posing the critical questions: who speaks and for whom? How do we give voice without assuming authority? How do we listen without judgment? How do we adjust the volume of our own voices?
Review of ‘Voices in Architecture’
Iman Keaik (PhD Candidate and Visiting Lecturer in the School of Architecture and Cities
Voices in the urban fabric are the collection of concrete experience and encounters both planned and accidental and act as a product of collective opinion outlined by researchers around the most controversial topics in the city. Voices are the essence of the city’s fabric and during the two-day hybrid event organised by AHRA Research Student Symposium 2022, issues of subjectivity and objectivity of the researchers were tackled by also fine-tuning the research journey to consider not only the ‘singular space’ but rather engage with different voices.
Voices can be channelled through heavy and loud noises in the city trying to shift attention to create a centre for debate. Other voices can rather be low whispers channelled through rough and invisible layers buried in the busy underground of the city. Tuning in to these different harmonious or unmelodic tunes is the instrumental role of the researcher to unpack critically different urban conditions.
Listen rather than hear, address rather than acknowledge, propose rather than observe was the underlying common denominator between the 20 different research presentations in the two-day symposium that took place at the University of Westminster. Therefore, the remarkable purpose of the AHRA Research Student Symposium 2022 entitled "Voices in Architecture" was to pay attention to what resides at the margins of our sight and at the deep end of the fringes of noises in the urban environment. Addressing controversial issues around democracy and political positioning of the researcher, the presentation transported us on a journey between projects covering different global contexts and tackling sensitive issues around vernacular traditions, informal settlements, transient and temporary architectures among others. Each presentation gave a unique insight on how to address questions like who speaks and for whom? How do we give voice without assuming authority? How do we listen without judgment? How do we adjust the volume of our own voices?
Importance of courage as a researcher was one of the redundant topics during the symposium. Using courage to disseminate the work especially when tackling sensitive issues such as investigating processes of public engagement and empowerment, social stratification, and elitism. The need to propagate and discuss the research with the wider community can attract criticism and might feel daunting for the researcher. However, formulating a solid argument and taking a stand to use the researcher’s own voice is as crucial as any other technical skill one can acquire. At its best, this symposium was opening up a stage for these 20 researchers to take a position and express other people’s voices through different mediums. Creativity in addressing the most sensitive issues was the most fascinating part of the symposium. Thus, it goes beyond the submission of papers by exposing us to different methods of representing the research, from audio archives, films, drawings, site visits, creative hybrid drawings, architecture propositions, puppet making, photography, fiction, love letters...
Researchers touched on the importance of subjectivity of the researcher when crafting the conversation especially when the researcher is an insider voice. Insider and outsider voices were defined during the symposium to position the person in or outside the context indulging with the hidden stories of the city. Whilst the outsider researcher can find it harder to pick up on the hidden gems of the city, it can give a fresh and analytical perspective on the controversial issues. The role of the researcher’s voice was associated with a ‘nomadic mind’ where the perspective lies on asking fundamental questions that goes beyond the Why, How, Who… The intensive field works can have repercussion on the positioning of the researcher in the ethnographic research where it can move ‘from me and them to us’. The attachment of the researcher to the subject in a specific context drove endless discussion on the prejudice and subjectivity of the researcher.
In addition, notion of ‘intersectionality’ was mentioned in a couple of presentations highlighting the importance of recognising the identity markers while interviewing or conducting any field work. The identity markers do not exist independently, and it inform the others which creates a field of opposing oppressions. Whilst each dimension of oppressions is developed through a network of interconnected identities, the ’micro moments in the city can have macro impacts’. The voice of the researcher is to unpack these layers of inequalities and oppressions by investigating the hidden ‘micro moments’ that feed in the ‘macro implications’ in order to create a consistent voice of its own without any authority assumptions. For example, statements like ‘I am not a female architect, I am an architect’ questions how and why history should be adjusted to accommodate the modern ideas of feminism in architecture (Appoline Vranken). Other researcher studied the importance of dust in shaping the identity and ecology of Maltese landscape by stating that ‘dust became a place of agency - its drift characteristic and ability to travel became a state of present in each stone wanting to become’ (Katrina Galea). Transported from dust to science fiction in architecture, novel becomes part of an imaginary story that articulate fears and thoughts of lived spaces. It strips away the spaces from power that are deep in the spaces we inhabit and thrive to ‘create democratic spaces to address the agency’ rather than live harmoniously with it (Amy Butts). Voices in architecture then becomes protagonists in novels seeking to escape the man-made environment to discover new ways of living.
Adjusting the volume of key of the researcher voice is key to shed a light on the discrepancies and offer new possibilities to feed in the design process. The everyday contested spaces are too often lost in the shadow of the high rise of expectations and fears. This does injustice of the cities we inhabit and drive hope to depict new realms for the future we might hope for. Residing in the smaller domestic spaces we can give voices to others by accentuating the spaces of gathering and spaces that needs to be heard.
On an end note, Kate Jordan and Maja Jovic concluded the symposium by shedding a light on the importance of actually listening not only to the ‘singular space’, but to also include the different voices in the city and the various views around controversial and sensitive topics. In turbulent space and as researcher we are at the core mission to open up to new possibilities and to place ourselves at the centre of debating the dichotomy. In my opinion, this symposium by its turn gave voice to researcher by opening up the room for open minded and enlightening discussions to highlight the most challenging, vulnerable, and invisible voices in the urban environment.
To all the speakers, audience, and readers of this review, continue to push onwards and upwards by giving the voice to those who need it the most.
Iman Keaik, May 2022
About the event
A key objective of the symposium will be to connect architectural research with wider political concerns around democracy, protest and populism and we are particularly attentive to processes of public engagement and empowerment, social stratification and elitism. The symposium also seeks to investigate diverse modes of production and their social worlds and is interested in submissions that explore vernacular traditions, informal settlements, transient and temporary architectures.
Keynote lectures
The keynote lectures will be delivered by Professor Christine Wall (University of Westminster) and Alexandre Apsan Frediani (International Institute for Environment and Development). To further provide the early career researchers with an insight into ways of ‘using’ their research, besides paper presentations and discussions, the symposium will offer three sets of activities that participants can choose from. These activities will each include a visit to a site, followed by a workshop:
- A visit to a rapidly gentrifying area with a workshop on design charettes, interrogating the need to invite different voices to decision making processes, questioning whose voice is being heard and how is this practice changing
- A visit to a heritage site with a workshop on public engagement, supporting creative thinking of the ways research can reach the public sphere and benefit from augmenting the voices – both those of the researchers as well as those the research is focusing on
- A visit to an archive focusing on minority voices, with a workshop on archival research
All activities will be offered in a blended form and include physical visits with digital counterparts.
Registration
Registration is via Eventbrite
Call for papers
The organisers invite contributions that consider human-centred research methodologies both within and beyond the discrete boundaries of architecture, welcoming submissions from disciplines including literary theory, cultural studies, art history, anthropology, geography and planning.
In line with this, we welcome paper presentations, as well as non-standard proposals (film, performance, photography, etc.). The research methods explored will include (but not be limited to) oral histories and interviews; ethnography; participative and interactive practices; social media and digital technologies, use of archives and material culture. We will explore the practical and ethical boundaries of such research, giving consideration to questions of privacy and to the politics of identity.
We are interested in modes of dialogue: can we find ways of speaking ‘with’ as suggested by Ariella Azoulay in her recent work? Research that offers a platform to voices of otherness is particularly encouraged - the symposium is committed to the objectives of decolonisation in architectural history, theory and praxis, foregrounding narratives of gender, sexuality, race and non-conformity.
Please send your abstracts, if the contribution is in standard paper presentation form, or proposals for other forms of contribution and participation by Monday 14 February 2022 to [email protected]. Other forms of participation (film, performance, photography, graphic work, etc.) should be discussed in advance with the Organising Chairs.
Abstracts and proposals may be in Word, Notepad or PDF format with the following information: author(s), affiliation, e-mail address, title of proposal, type of proposal (ie. paper presentation, film, performance, etc.), body of proposal (300 words), up to 10 keywords, and biography (200 words).
