ARCHITECTURE FROM A NEW SIGHT AT PORTSMOUTH UNIVERSITY

My experiences of living with  a stick for a week First week (Friday, 31 January, 2025) During the first week of my second term at Portsmouth university, I, as a Spatial Practices student, had to be with a stick 24 hours a day for a week. Every where I went I carried the stick. It took me a little time to get used to carrying an awkward stick every where  and people's reaction in public spaces. Sometimes I forgot to take the stick out with myself.    During this journey the stick kept telling me how to move in different-sized spaces or how not to move.  According to Jane Bennett's concept of "Thing power" the stick, as an inanimate object, had agency to influence my movement. For example, when I was going to get in the car or fasten my seatbelt the stick, which was in my hand, had an impact on the way I was sitting or fastening my seatbelt. In fact the stick had the power to perform me. Also, the stick played the role of score, as Lawrence Halprin notes in his b...

RSVP Cycles As Lawrence Halprin notes in his book RSVP is a creative process for collaboration and improvisation, being comprised of four different parts which are Resources , Score , Valuaction , and Performance . Reference means what we work with whether human or nonhuman elements which include people, their motivation and aims, materials, and  rhythms. Score is the scenario by which participants take part in the process. Valuaction analyzes the results of actions or is the feedback of the process based on project value. Performance is implementation of project. The most significant parts of this book are dedicated to Scores. In this book Lawrence argues that Scores are means to illustrate reality in a way people can conceive the creative process without experiencing it in reality. Planning for the future events is the essential purpose of a Scoring mechanism. Using some symbols, Scores are defined at the intersection of  a period of time and space to communicate the noti...

Feminist approach to critical spatial practice by  Jane Rendell Seventh week (Friday, 8 November, 2024)   One of the first architects who brought up feminist debate in architecture was Jennifer Bloomer. Merging her drawings of female anatomy into architecture, she illustrated that the feminine can be a crucial part of architectural design. Discussions related to the correlation between gender and space emerged in 1990s. Feminist work from the 1990s by Bloomer and others mentions a gendered analysis of architecture, different forms of architectural representations in a space, and creating a space which challenges sexism and providing more equitably in spaces. Rendell describes the notion of practice in spatial practice and practice-led research as a process which happens not only through the design of buildings but also through the activities of using, occupying, and experiencing them, and through the various modes of writing and imagining used to describe, analyze, a...

  "MAKING DO": Uses and Tactics  Sixth week (Friday, 1 November, 2024)  CONSOLIDATION WEEK Consolidation week was a great opportunity for me to catch up on my studies. Also, I had to work on my artifact in workshop, completing it for the next week.   As our weekly reading, we students were supposed to read  "MAKING DO": Uses and Tactics by Jane Rendell.  The most important part of the text was the notion of  Strategies and tactics. Here is the summary of what I could gather by reading this text.   The type of operations and the role of spaces distinguishes  Strategies and tactics, that is, when operations take place, strategies produce or impose these spaces, while tactics can only use, manipulate the spaces. Instructions for use Thus operational schemas have to be clarified, which means  ways of operating, walking, reading, producing, speaking, etc,  like something that in other fields is shown for example in literature ways of w...

Thing-power, the  agency of inanimate objects  Fifth week (Friday, 25 October, 2024) To repurpose disarticulated artifacts to create new work with them   This week we were supposed to go to a charity shop, or a skip and buy, or find a domestic object such as a piece of furniture. Also, we had to  make a 1:1 'technical' drawing of the object. In the class we were provided with a verb list written by Richard Serra. We were asked to read the verbs and choose one of them. In the workshop we had to  take our object apart and remake it in relationship to a text by Jane Bennett   with accompaniment by the verb we had chosen from  Richard Serra's Verb list. My verbs were: to cut, to split, to remove, to knot, to fire, to collect. The Force of Things (the first chapter of Vibrant Matter) Jane Bennett in the first chapter of her book highlights the active role of nonhuman materials in public life . Also, she points out that things do affects other bodies, enhanc...

MY EXPERIENCE OF RHYTHM KNOTS IN THE CLASSROOM, ELDON BUILDING Fourth week (Friday, 18 OCTOBER, 2024 In this week of my academic year at Portsmouth University, students were required to study the first and second chapters of Henri Lefebvre's book named Rhythmanalysis. This book examines spatial and temporal rhythms and their impact on daily life.  Rhythm... , I had heard this word before but this time as a spatial architecture student at Portsmouth university I experienced it in a different way, in a way that caused me to gaze my tutor, Oren, in wonder. I did not know how ubiquitous and  influential Rhythm can be, how we as architects can organize it in our design for example to reach a much more peaceful place, something that in today's hectic and chaotic world is our urgent need...