Gil M Doron
”The Dead Zone & the Architecture of Transgression” research centres on everyday life in non-planned urban spaces (mainly derelict sites, urban voids, in between spaces) vs. designed public space and the ways in which marginalized communities use both spaces. The research (conducted at the Bartlett, UCL under the supervision of Prof. Iain Borden & Prof. Colin Fournier) is multidisciplinary in nature, using architectural history, urban design, urban anthropology, human geography, and arts (mainly photography and film) while also looking at these urban spaces from discourse-critique, post-colonial, socio-political, economic and aesthetic perspectives. The research is international in scope and includes examples from Europe, America, Asia and Africa.
The aspect of methodology has been crucial in my research since it started as a critique of conventional planning and design methods. For the research I have used literature review, spatial analysis, ethnographic observation, go-alongs, photo elicitation and interviews.
“The Dead Zone & the Architecture of Transgression” stemmed from an examination of the genealogy of architecture and the planning discourse of void / derelict areas / terrain vague / brown land / S.L.O.A.P.s (etc) tracing it back to antiquity (the space / philosophical concept of the Chora), then moved to examining the colonial perspectives of the Terra nullius and in particular the view of 19th century Palestine as “wilderness”, expanding to the 19th century view of parts of London as the abyss, to more concrete, yet indeterminate urban spaces that resulted from modern and postmodern planning.
Some key examples are Jane Jabocs’ Border Vacuum, Mark Auge’ Non-Places, Stefano Boeri’s Nameless Spaces, and Willam Lim’s Space of Indeterminacy. The emblem of these spaces / concepts is the post industrial landscape described by Sola Morales as Terrain Vague. On a more theoretical level the “dead zone” or “No Man’s Land” was viewed by some, chiefly Fredric Jameson, and Ed Soja as “The postmodern condition”. .
Whilst this attempt at genealogy of the void aims to draw a clear picture of such spaces, a literature review of contemporary definitions of such spaces shows that even within the most authoritative bodies that deal with such spaces, there are fundamental problems in qualifying and quantifying them (Naabarro et al. 1980, Urban Task Force 1999, CABE 2003. NLUD 2007). Furthermore, it seems that the planning discourse, as reflected in professional literature, is least tolerant towards these spaces.
In contrast, the research has found that such spaces have been gaining more and more attention and importance in other disciplines such as geography, ecology, and the arts. The research also notes that whilst in mainland Europe some positive aspects in these spaces have been recognized, the situation in Britain is not so.
The inability to define such spaces and the contrasting reading of it by various agencies leads to the conclusion that the representation of such spaces within the hegemonic architecture and planning discourse is sometimes at odds with the realities of these spaces.
Therefore, at the core of the Ph.D. are surveys of ostensible “dead zones” in more than twenty cities around the globe. Although I have obtained many examples of such areas, the field research has been qualitative and has involved experimental methodologies of gathering information.
The research has shown that what is ostensibly wasteland and S.L.O.A.P is used for various activities by minority communities (as informal playgrounds, spaces for artistic intervention, informal recycling compounds, community gardens, small scale agriculture, flea markets, cultural centres, informal residential sites, spaces for rumination and meandering, places that have unique aesthetics and poetics, alternative modes of historical conservation and more).
The informal activities vary in scale and duration. Most of it, in its specific forms, could not have taken place elsewhere in formal and often over regulated public spaces.
The survey was translated into two main modes of writings within the Ph.D. thesis: one, influenced much by Walter Benjamin’s writings, and Michael de Certeau’s ideas, is a series of narratives that describe my observations, conversations and experiences in these spaces; the other, a taxonomy of the spatial characteristics of these areas and their uses by mainly marginalized communities.
On the basis of my research, and similar studies I have argued for the need to maintain a certain amount of such sites within the high density city. This, I believe, is even more important in the face of the segregation, gentrification and sterilization of formal public spaces.
A more radical possibility, considered in the light of proposals by architects such as Lebbeus Wood, Rem Koolhaas, and Daniel Libeskind, is to appropriate some of the qualities of the “dead zones” such as weak program, liminality, and temporality into the formal public spaces and even private ones.
PUBLICATIONS
For a list of publications, please see Gil Doron's CV
