ARCHITECTURE FROM A NEW SIGHT AT PORTSMOUTH UNIVERSITY

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...

SPATIAL PRACTICES Third week (Friday, 11 OCTOBER, 2024) As a weekly reading, students should have read first chapter of SPATIAL PRACTICES Modes of Action and Engagement with the city by Melanie Dodd, named Space is always political. When I first started reading, it seemed to be extremely challenging to understand so I tried to find answers for questions which had been shaped in my mind:  How something is considered political? What politics means? When space can be political? and.... -When Something is political that it is a social activity linked to the existence of diversity and conflict and to a willingness to act collectively. -Politics means Interactions amongst free and equal citizens acting in concert in search of processes of conflict resolution.  -Space is political when  Instead of acting as the mere backdrop for an unfolding time, it  becomes intimately linked to lived experience. On Friday, 11 October, 2024, tutors and students were supposed to b...

An Unfamiliar Experience (Making drawings from texts) Second week (Friday, 4 October, 2024)  Our class started at 10 in the morning. Oren, Belinda, and  Rachael  created a friendly atmosphere for students to become familiar with each other and students had to memorized each other's names. There were nearly 40 of us from all around the world, from Ukraine to India, Iran, Egypt, Sudan, Germany, Pakistan, and England. Tutors and  artists  Heinrich & Palmer  talked about Fratton and some students had a presentation of their work named WE SHINE.   On  4th October, 2024, I experience something completely new, something that I had never experienced before. Belinda asked us to close our eyes and imagine the air, breathing, our classmates sitting next to us, the sounds around us, and.... Then t he introduction to a book called Enduring Time was read by students and we were asked to start to draw whatever we want by some medium provided for us. Although...

Going around Portsmouth,  A city of interest Second week (Wednesday, 2 October, 2024) As the first session, Marius and Elizabeth provided us with the notion of research and installation. After break Marius took us around Portsmouth to be more familiar with this amazing portal city. This is my unique experience around Portsmouth. Places were;  F irst,  a land which had been occupied without the consent of the owner. There was a direction from Portsmouth City Council which asked occupants to leave the land forthwith.  S econd,   RAVELIN PARK , part of this park lies over the foundation of 17th century fortifications designed by Sir Bernard de Gomme and built between 1665 and 1685. At that time old Portsmouth was protected by inner defence walls, bastions, a surrounding moat and a series of high triangular constructions known as ravelins.             T hird,  Portsmouth Museum and ART Gallery which is home to a huge variety o...