deconcrete

^ Reconstructed map of sunken Dunwich, UK, by David Sear et al.

The sunken medieval town of Dunwich has been recently surveyed in the report Dunwich, Suffolk:Mapping and assessing the inundated by David Sear (UoS), Andy Murdock (GDI), Tim LeBas (NOC), Paul Baggaley (WA) and Gemma Gubbins (GDI).

The town collapsed in the 1400s due to storms that battered the coastline and flooded it with silt. DIDSON-DH acoustic imaging technology has allowed tracking the ruins of the buildings on the seabed with the help of divers. The reconstruction of the shoreline through the stone blocks provides information about the settlement itself, but also about the climatic, topographic and social features of the time.

^ Dunwich coast today via Wired

^ Yorkshire’s coastal erosion 2012_Image by Neil A White via The Guardian

After Charles Jencks proclaimed the End of Modernity on March 16, 1972 shortly after 15:00 (the demolition of Pruitt-Igoe Council Estate in St Louis), how can we situate more recent demolitions of similar failed projects? Can we read them as the End of another Modernity? May they rather be the Beginning of a new era? How long will expand Jencks’ End of Modernity into the present future or the future present? What implies that these demolitions provoke such joy amongst assistants to the spectacle? Are demolitions architectural tools for urban planning or rather a matter of planning ‘social cleansing’?

 


^ Red Road Housing demolition. Glasgow, 5 May 2013

^ Lasswade Road Housing demolition. Edinburgh, 25 October 2009

^ High Marnham Power Station demolition. Retford, Nottinghamshire, 15 July 2012

^ Ishma, Darfur, before and after attacks in 2004-2005. Image via Eyes On Darfur.

‘It’s been forty years since the first images of Earth from space were captured, but the sight of our planet is still inspiring. Now, Amnesty International is harnessing the power of these images and putting them to work for human rights. Thanks to high resolution satellite imagery, human rights advocates can now document abuses anywhere in the world – even in countries that are sealed off from on-the-ground researchers. All from 280 miles above the Earth’s surface. To make the Eyes on Darfur project possible, Amnesty International acquired commercially-available high resolution satellite imagery. The images were obtained in GeoTIFF format and imported into ERDAS Imagine and ArcGIS for viewing and analysis. The analysis of the images was undertaken by the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) to determine the extent of damage to the structures visible in each image.’

[source> Eyes On Darfur]

^ Saraf Jidad, West Darfur, before and after attacks in 2008-2009. Image via Eyes On Darfur.

^ Porta Farm, Sudan, before and after attacks in 2006. Image via Eyes On Darfur.

This is a series of photographs randomly found along the altered coast of Staten Island after Hurricane Sandy: rain-damaged and storm-battered images. The losses of visual data on these everyday souvenirs reflect the violence of a natural event. But we can also read both the physical and the chemical contact of objects on the photographs. The white linear doodle lines are the traces left by scratches. Either produced by pieces of wood, iron, concrete or stones smashing onto their surface, or by the simple movement of the photographs, blown up into the air, rubbing all sorts of building items on their trajectory. The psychedelic colour variations result out of salty water or dusty raindrops dissolving and reacting with the particles of the photographic paper.

In this sense, one could consider them as the ultimate impressionist depictions of weather. Not in a 19^th century painting tradition concerning subjective Monet-like brush strokes, but impressionist in the literal sense of imprint: physical matter colliding with an already-painted canvas and deleting layers from it. It is not the perception of light which blurs the depicted landscape, but the utter impact of weather.

[image source> Storm-Tossed Memories by Dan Barry/The New York Times]

Thanks, bea!

^ London Olympics landmark    |    Iron ore mine run by ArcelorMittal at Omarska, Bosnia i Herzegovina.

A MEMORIAL IN EXILE

Orbits of Responsibility for a War Crime from a Bosnian mine to London’s Olympic Park

On July 2 2012 London’s Olympic tower — the ArcelorMittal Orbit — will be reclaimed as A Memorial in Exile by survivors of the Bosnian concentration camp at Omarska, now a fully-functional mine operated by ArcelorMittal. Iron ore and profits extracted from Omarksa have been used to manufacture London’s newest landmark.

Details of Press Conference: Monday 2 July 2012 from 2-3pm
Location 64 Broadway, Stratford, London E15 1NG (East London Centre)
Walking commentary and view of the ArcelorMittal Orbit at Warton & Loop Roads (Olympic Park perimeter) from 3-4pm

(see map below)

From 1990-1992, the Omarska mine in Prijedor, Bosnia was used as a concentration camp by Bosnian Serb forces. At least 3,334 Bosniaks and Croats from Prijedor were imprisoned in the Omarska camp, 700-800 were killed.

In 2004, ArcelorMittal assumed 51% of the ownership of the Ljubija mining complex that included Omarska and resumed commercial mining operations.

In 2005, ArcelorMittal made a commitment to finance and build a memorial on the grounds of Omarska.

Seven years on and twenty years after the war crimes committed there, still no space of public commemoration exists.

Grounds, buildings, and equipment that were once used for the perpetration of these crimes now serve a commercial enterprise run by the world’s largest steel producer.

On 14 April 2012, Mladen Jelača, Director of ArcelorMittal Prijedor confirmed to Professor Eyal Weizman, of Goldsmiths, University of London and artist Milica Tomic of the Monument Group, Belgrade, that iron ore mined at Omarska mine has been used in the fabrication of the ArcelorMittal Orbit.

In the absence of this promised memorial, and until such time that it is built, London’s Olympic tower — the ArcelorMittal Orbit — will be reclaimed as the Omarska Memorial in Exile.

SPEAKERS:
Survivors from the Omarska / Prijedor camps: Satko Mujagic, Sudbin Music, Fikret Alic, Mirsad Duratovic (note their organizational affiliations)
Srdjan Hercigonja, Milica Tomic, Antonia Majaca, (Four Faces of Omarska Belgrade), Adisa Pamukcic, Susan Schuppli, Eyal Weizman (Goldsmiths, University of London) and Ed Vulliamy (journalist)
Please join our press conference and help to bring awareness to this issue. With the Olympics fast approaching ArcelorMittal has a significant window of opportunity to make things right!

For co-ordination write to us at the following email:
forensic.architecture (at) gold.ac.uk

join us!

^ Victims of Omarska concentration camp. image by deconcrete

^ ArcelorMittal iron mine at Omarska. image by deconcrete

^ Press Conference A Memorial in Exile. London, Monday 2 July 2012 from 2-3 pm

^ Remains of the Hejaz Railway in Saudi Arabia, Von Medina an die jordanische Grenze, photographed by Ursula Schulz-Dornburg, 2002-2003.

 
Designed by German engineer Heinrich Meissner, the Hejaz Railway was built under the Ottoman Empire 1900-1908; a 1,300 km-long line linking Damascus with Medina (originally thought to connect Constantinople with the holy city of Mecca in 120 hours). It was meant to shorten distances for both population as well as soldiers, in order to strengthen authority within Arab provinces of the Empire. This strategy of controlling a vast territory through transport infrastructure goes very much in line with what Scott proposes as the Art of Not being Governed: remaining stateless by seeking refuge in remote regions beyond authority reach. Nonetheless, bedouin tribes in rebellion against Ottoman rule – supported by the legendary Lawrence of Arabia – torn out the railway tracks of the Hejaz Railway in 1916-17. What remains in the middle of nowhere are these abandoned railroad stations, where no train stops any longer. They consist of standardized pieces of architecture, made out of two L-shaped volumes and a few window openings. The lines can vaguely be distinguished today on the gravel surface of the desert.

^ Original building plans of Osama’s compound in Abbottabad, Pakistan. Graphics via bbc news.

<The Pentagon refused to release any official photographs that would credibly establish the al Qaeda chief as having been among those killed in the attack. […] In the society of the spectacle should we be surprised that the two most widely circulated images surrounding Operation Neptune’s Spear are pictures of people watching TV.> [Iain Boal in his essay Heads in a Box, Photoworks Magazine Nov-April 2011/12]

These pictures that Boal refers to consisted of: Obama’s team faces clustered around a screen in the White House (we cannot see what they watch), and Osama watching himself on a domestic TV monitor while sitting alone in his Abbottabad compound (we can see what he watches). Apart from that, two other relevant images widely circulated through the Internet, both low-res and high-res hybrids. First, a blurry image of a bed on top of a rug covered in blood inside Osama’s Pakistani residential complex after the US military attack. In our current hyper-technified age, low-quality footage recorded with some sort of mobile device still proofs more authentic than professional imagery. And second, a fake photocomposition of Osama’s corpse. The world was eager to find material proof of the event, but the intelligentsia decided that we should rather believe it.

Last week, the demolition of the site was accomplished, and with it, all remaining evidence of Osama’s presence disappeared. The process of tearing down his hideout physically exposed its interior to the world for some minutes before vanishing forever.

^ Obama’s team watching news. Released by the White House, 1 May 2011. Image via dailymail

^ Osama watching TV in his Abbottabad compound. Image via dailymail

^ Osama’s Abbottabad compound after US military attack. Still from abc news.

^ Photocomposite of Osama’s corpse. Image via indiavision.

^ Demolishing Osama Bin Laden’s compound. AFP. Image via deccanchronicle.

Give off / Give out, video, 3’30″. Video & Text by Philippe Van Wolputte, 2011

<”Give off / Give out” documents an intervention in Jakarta Januari 5th 2011, dealing with the problems of fine dust after the demolition of buildings. Indonesia is the second biggest importer of asbestos which is extremely dangerous when inhaled. In the video you see a small team trying to prevent the fine dust, which carries asbestos in it, of spreading through the air by watering the site. This intervention gets repeated in different parts of the city.>

^ Split, Croatia: Roman Emperor Diocletian’s Palace and the densely populated city in 1912. [images via American Urban Architecture & wikimedia]

^ Berlin, Germany: the medieval monastery, the Baroque castle, the communist Palace of the Republic and the shopping mall replicating the Baroque Stadtschloss. [image via stadtentwicklung]

^ Mexico City, Mexico: the pre-Colombian Tenochtitlán pyramids overlay the Conquistadors’ cathedral and governmental palace. [image via skyscrapercity]

^ Córdoba, Spain: Roman temple – Visigoth church – Muslim Mosque (8^th century) – Catholic Cathedral inserted inside the Mosque (13^th &16^th century). The minaret turned into a bell-tower.

< the mosque’s lamps were melted down to make new bells for the cathedral of Santiago de Compostela, 800 km to the north. This probably seemed only fair, since the lamps had themselves been made from Santiago’s original bells: when the Moors had conquered the city in 997 they had dragged the bells to Cordoba and melted them down into lamps. > [source: Bevan, R 2006. The destruction of memory - Architecture at War. London: Reaktion Books Ltd. Image via otraarquitecturaesposible]

^^  21/01/2010 Deconcrete is born: 1st post about Franco dictator’s ship Azor fell into disuse as Motel Azor. Photo by deconcrete.

^ 20/01/2012: Fernando Sánchez Castillo_Síndrome de Guernica. Installation at Matadero Madrid. Azor ship transformed into pressed scrap as a demystification of symbols of power. Photo by Paco Gómez.

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Thank you all!***

Before Radar was invented warfare tactics could rely on visual tricks and trompe-l’oeil as a means of passive defence. The half-accomplished project of a Sham Paris outside Paris (Faux Paris, 1918) was a fake city to be largely exposed and to attract the most attention from German bomber planes flying above at night. Sham Saint-Denis, sham Aubervilliers, sham Gare de l’Est, and sham Champs-Élysées…

< The powers that were in Paris at the end of World War I tried to […] create a Sham Paris located on the outskirts of the real city – it was to be doomed, offered with confusing lights and displays that would disorient German aviators into bombing and destroying it rather than the real city. […] There were to be sham streets lined with electric lights, sham rail stations, sham industry, open to a sham population waiting to be bombed by real Germans. It is a perverse city, filled with the waiting-to-be-murdered in a civilian target. […] Sham Paris is a city of created murders to save the innocent. > 

Manipulating aerial views is a tool that has lately been empowered by Google Earth. In 2006, ecological activists denounced regional authorities in the Spanish Canary Islands for providing Google with out-dated photographs. Hence, irregular urban developments destroying the coastline could be hidden from the public eye.

Contrary to Sham Paris that built a new territory to be destroyed, the tactic in the Canary Islands was to build a new image of a sham coast in order not to be destroyed.

[text & images from the Illustrated London News, 6/11/1920 via Ptak Science Books]

thanks tito!

< The sculpture La Fisiología del Gusto [The Physiology of Taste] by Adán Vallecillo presents the contradiction between the stainless steel tray, from the world of gourmet cooking, and its content of hundreds of corroded teeth. This macabre recipient alludes to the foreign medical teams that have arrived at the indigenous communities in the poorest regions of Honduras, extracting the decayed teeth of the inhabitants. Vallecillo exposes the waste and precarious living situation of these groups, while shedding light on the accumulation of this extraction, and the need for a remedial politics. Physiology – the science that studies the organs, including the functions of taste – operates in this work as a critical metaphor to identify the socially approved and the rejected. The tray with the teeth therefore provokes in the viewer a physiological and social distaste, generating a moment of awareness and recognition of the violence involved in these politics of extraction. >  [text> Venice Biennale 2011]

[1> Adán Vallecillo_La Fisiología del Gusto [The Physiology of Taste], 2010. Carious teeth and stainless steel tray, 3 x 44 x 25 cm. via vvork] [2> Adán Vallecillo's installation representing Honduras at the Venice Biennale 2011 by daniel fernández pascual]

Three weeks ago Basque-separatist ETA terrorist organization declared the definitive cessation of its armed activity after 43 years of existence.

But the crime scenes where they perpetrated their assassinations still remain marked, as journalists Guillermo Abril and Álvaro Corcuera compile today in a very recommendable article in El Pais (Lugares Marcados). The article is not going through the whole history of ETA terrorist organization. Neither is the whole list of attacks included, nor the 829 victims of its terror. But it does show a series of 40 spaces where the terrorist organization left its trace in landscape.

Eduardo Nave has photographed some years later the crime scenes at the same hour and date as the assassinations occurred.

< These empty places make one think of the tragic moment when they were filled with death. > [Helena Taberna]

^ Murder of Miguel Ángel Blanco_Lasarte-Oria (Guipuzkoa)_16:50_12/07/1997

^ Murder of Estanislao Galíndez_Armurrio (Álava)_08:45_26/06/1985

^ Murder of Manuel Broseta_Valencia_10:15_15/01/1992

^ Murder of Carlos Arguimberri_N-634 Km.40_11:30_05/07/1975

In a world of perfection and appearances, we become more and more eager to peep at failures. Specially, we enjoy finding out that celebrities and myths also belong to our everyday realm. With irony, sense of humor and a great dose of Dutch transparency, emergent Rotor collective has just curated the work of OMA/AMO for barbican under the title Progress. But far from being a standard show of chronologically ordered fetishized projects, we are delighted with a labyrinth of things that could conventionally been regarded as failures. They are however celebrated here as part of a successful trajectory to generate spaces. Walls are recycled from former shows without repainting; everyday objects are shamelessly displayed with a honest attitude towards the audience.

Tired as we are of overabundance of glamorous and glossy representations of OMA/AMO’s projects, this exhibition provides a representation of reality through images mediated by failures. Hidden stories from processes of building a building are rescued; politically incorrect tricks behind-the-scenes are simply revealed. Therefore, labels underneath every piece of work become even more important than the physical work itself. This exhibition of exhibits resembles a cabinet of curiosities compiled by some enlightened collector; but every item is here for a specific reason. Thus, they make a close connection between the visitor’s experience and the everyday reality at OMA/AMO.

Rotor collective debuted in Venice Biennale 2010 with a brilliant exhibition on users wearing out building materials and leaving trace evidence (Usus/Usures):

As a trace of use, wear reminds us that most of the time other users have gone before us, and still more will follow. In some cases, wear even provides a valuable clue as to the nature of these uses. In this sense, traces of wear play a vital part in our ability to read our environment and, by extension, appreciate it. […] Wear is always about situations.

One of their most relevant study cases when tracing back how building environment mutates was their photograph Blue Limestone Plinth (Brussels, 2010). It automatically unveiled how an area of the city was informally used:

The traces of wear on the plinth shown in this picture reveal the activity of prostitutes leaning against it, on a strategic corner in the centre of Brussels. The darkest marks show a polishing of the stone’s surface by different parts of the women’s bodies, while the lighter marks are scratches caused by their high heels. An analysis of the different traces of wear on the entire wall reveal the most popular spots, either because they are in full view of the street or because they offer slight protection from the rain.

This approach to architecture is what made them been commissioned for a similar curatorial concept. The unusual tandem at barbican composed of a curator that is not a great fan of the curated has made the collaboration even more thrilling. In words of Rem Koolhaas: This exhibition was a risk for us and we multiplied the risk by suggesting Rotor for curating it.

In addition, and following OMA/AMO’s current research on Preservation, the exhibition has opened up the Gallery West Entrance for the first time in history after completion of the building. A dead end has been turned into a public path, where pedestrians are allowed to see (only) part of the show free of charge.

[images 1-13> OMA/Progress, Curated by Rotor. barbican art gallery London 6/10/11-19/2/12. By deconcrete2011] [14> Blue Limestone Plinth by Rotor 2010]

Dale Farm is a territory of contradiction, where a legal border divides a community. Two adjoining sites, 30-min-train away from London, used to be scrapyards that were turned into living quarters. The first estate was self-established as a nomad settlement for Irish Travellers and Gypsy and Roma families some sixty years ago (45 plots). The other one is an extension that dates back to 2000 and is composed of 52 plots. The former is authorised, but the latter is not. These ethnic minorities purchased both sites and legally own them. Prefab-houses and caravans are scattered along the lanes. However, after many applications, the most recent one still lacks any building permission, whereas the neighbouring one was built in a formal way in past decades.

Consequently, conservative-run Basildon District Council decided to carry out the demolition of the second settlement, the largest eviction in UK history, with a total cost of £18 million for the clearance and without providing any other site for the resident families. Today, the Court should have decided the final fate for the settlement. Activists had already started a protest camp inside (“Camp Constant”), and built several barricades across the inner lanes of this community together with the residents by applying the wittiest military resistance tactics. But the verdict has been postponed till Monday, so dwellers are returning some of the caravans that were brought to the legal site in case of eviction back to the illegal one.

Irish Travellers minority used to share with gypsies a nomad lifestyle. Today what remains is still their seasonal working schedule. Activists have referred to the eviction as “ethnic cleansing”. But personally, I do not think it is a matter of cultural identities, but aporophobia and fear to the unstable. The contemporary spatial habits of Irish Travellers are just a direct result of social exclusion. Their cultural identity is very much influenced by the fact of being “out of established society”. That’s what joins them and makes them configure a strongly tied community. Unfortunately, it is the society that they cannot belong to what eventually gives meaning to their identity.

Dale Farm is located in the middle of the countryside, about 10 km away from the nearest village. One can only wonder why it is so important for authorities to evict the settlers living in that remote site lacking building permission.

Why did the Council even provide the needy families on-site with tax benefits if their dwellings were not legal?

If their mere existence makes villagers feel so uncomfortable, why not directly promote the eviction of both sites?

Why has their application for allowance to build on the site they legally own been constantly denied?

Authorities argument that the illegal site lies on a green belt land, but at the same time, there used to be a scrapyard in the same area only 10 years ago.

The only way for us to reach Dale Farm from the nearby railway station was by taxi. And maybe the only explanation to these questions, as absurd as coherent, was revealed to us in a conversation with the extremely prejudiced driver, who took us to the nearest crossroads to the site from the station (he refused to drop us off at the very entrance):

You will understand it when you grow older.

[1-8>Dale Farm Protests by deconcrete2011][9> Dale Farm_aerial view via bbc]