Studio 17

Public space, Pigeons, Palestine

Marijke Davey and Mathew Azzalin

This studio is available to students enrolled in ABPL90142 Studio C, ABPL90143 Studio D, and ABPL90115 Studio E.

Studio Description

Palestine

What is public space in a country that is under occupation ? Is there even such a thing ? What has been lost through demolition ? What has the relationship to public space become over time ? How has it changed ?

How do we learn about a place we cannot visit ? What tools do we employ ? Can we remotely look at a place, take care of a place, learn a place, converse with a place, pay respect to a place, telling the story of the people that use the space, the shop; to talk, to play, to work.

How do ideas of ‘public’ operate in Palestine? Definitions are not what they once were. Space is not what it once was.

This is the new landscape. Learn.

We are everywhere you are.

Pigeons

Pigeons are the keepers of history. They have watched us develop and destroy our land, our cities, each other. We once threw them in the sky, worshiping them as symbols of peace, of love, of freedom, utalised their skills for communication, made them witness to wars, targets of enemies, interrupted their natural flight paths, their language, their nesting, come to hate them, festering in our streets, adopting our deep fried diet, adopting our pace, our parasite clustering.

They know more than us about the development of cities, the gentrification of public spaces, the skateboard deterrents, the spikes that stop them landing on all the precious ledges. Keep the city clean. Keep the sky rats out. City pigeons can no longer speak to country pigeons, increasing the decibel of their dialect to reflect the increasing white / grey / purple noise of the city. Excluding them from the discussions of countryside, of ocean, of mountains. What other languages are we losing ?

This is the new landscape. Adapt.

We are everywhere you are.

Studio Outcome

Public Space

How public is the public space ? Is it where you sit, out of the office, an hour of relief, where you walk to, take a telephone call, pacing. Why do you go there ? It is proximity, it is the height of the buildings beside, or because you can lay on the grass, sit in shade, hide.

This studio will look at public spaces in two different locations; one in Melbourne and the other in Palestine. You will learn, map, photograph, clean, and listen. The studio will use the tools of architecture to perfom the documentation of each space as they sit in their own political. geographical, familiar/unfamilar context. Emphasis is placed on care, discussion, sharing. Work will be exhibited through drawings, models, diagrams, photography.

What can proximity teach us ?

What can distance teach us ?

This is the new landscape. Care.

We are everywhere you are.

Studio Leaders

Matthew and Marijke have a small architecture practice in Melbourne.

Matthew likes yoga.

Marijke likes pigeons.

Readings & References

• Berger, J. (2009). About looking. London: Bloomsbury.
• Byrne, G. (2016). Borders, barriers, walls. Place of publication not identified: Monash University Museum.
• Chomsky, N., PappeÌ, I., & Barat, F. (2015). On Palestine. London: Penguin Books.
• Danahar, P. (2015). The new Middle East: The world after the Arab Spring. London: Bloomsbury.
• Dufour, D., & Delage, C. (2015). Images of conviction: The construction of visual evidence. Paris: Le Bal.
• Ehrenreich, B. (2017). The way to the spring: Life and death in Palestine. London: Granta.
• Hammond, M. (2014). Arabic poems: A bilingual edition. London: Alfred A. Knopf.
• Hinkinson. J. et al. (2017). Security, Terror, Panic. ARENA journal, Number Forty-Seven/Forty-Eight, North Carlton: Arena Publications.
• King, R. (2014). Democratic desert: The war in Syria. Amsterdam: Schilt Publishing.
• Lahoud, A. (2010). Post-Traumatic Urbanism. Architectural Design, 80(5), 14-23. doi:10.1002/ad.1128
• Littell, J. (2016). Syrian notebooks: Inside the homs uprising. Brooklyn, NY: Verso.
• Malek, C., Hoke, M., & Carp, A. (2014). Palestine speaks: Narratives of life under occupation. San Francisco: McSweeney's Books.
• Pinchbeck, C. (2016). When silence falls. Sydney, N.S.W.: Art Gallery of New South Wales.
• Sahner, C. C. (2016).
• Shehadeh, R. (2018). WHERE THE LINE IS DRAWN: Crossing boundaries in occupied Palestine. S.l.: Profile Books.
• Silva, C., Drake, D., Jarvis, R., Smalley, U., & Williams, V. (2016). Garden state: The politics of planting in Israel/Palestine. Cardiff: Ffotogallery Wales Limited and The Mosaic Rooms, A.M. Qattan Foundation.
• Statement of the Prosecutor of the International Criminal Court, Fatou Bensouda, at the opening of Trial in the case against Mr Ahmad Al-Faqi Al Mahdi. (2016, August 22). Retrieved November 10, 2017, from https://www.icc-cpi.int/Pages/item.aspx?name=otp-stat-al-mahdi-160822
• Tamdgidi, M. H., (2009). "If I touch the depths of your heart … ": The Human Promise of Poetry in Memories of Mahmoud Darwish, Human Architecture: Journal of the Sociology of Self-Knowledge, Volume 7, Issue 5. Belmont. MA: Okcir Press. Available at: http://scholarworks.umb.edu/humanarchitecture/vol7/iss5
• Vet, A. D. (2007). Subjective atlas of Palestine. Rotterdam: 010 Publ.
• Virilio, P., & Polizzotti, M. (2006). Speed and politics: An essay on dromology. Los Angeles, CA: Semiotext(e).
• Weizman, E. (2012). Forensic architecture: Notes from fields and forums. Forensische Architektur: Notizen von Feldern und Foren. Ostfildern: Hatje Cantz.
• Weizman, E. (2017). Forensic Architecture: Violence at the threshold of detectability. Brooklyn, NY: Zone Books.
• Weizman, E. (2017). Hollow Land. S.l.: Verso Books.
• Weizman, E., Tavares, P., Schuppli, S., & Studio, S. (2010). Forensic Architecture. Architectural Design, 80(5), 58-63. doi:10.1002/ad.1134

These will be provided to you in the Studio Library

Schedule Mondays and Thursdays 10:00-16:00 in MSD Room 140

Contact Handbook Key Dates