Pollinators, Keepers, and Builders

The World Around: Architecture’s Near, Now, and Next, a summit organized by independent curator Beatrice Galilee in collaboration with the Guggenheim, kicked off with Galilee and Cyra Levenson, the Guggenheim’s deputy director of education and public engagement, emphasizing ideas about civic space. “This is a civic space, a place for dialogue, and for a collective sense of wonder,” said Levenson of the Guggenheim. Galilee followed with the statement, “We’ll be hearing from scientists and visionaries who are changing the conversation around race and civic space. Giving visibility to new narratives, representing and amplifying the voices of Indigenous communities, creating new canons, and dismantling stereotypes.” What was made clear throughout the all-day symposium on January 30 is that twenty-first century civic space is not centered around institutions, but is instead being shaped by architects, urban planners, and activists across the globe.

The summit went digital following its first iteration at the TimesCenter last year, and has made the most of its online format by sending professional film crews to the studios and sites of 20 featured projects. In effect, The World Around felt like spending the day watching a documentary film festival, a welcome relief from the Zoom conversations and conferences to which we’ve lately become accustomed. The productions were visually engaging, informative, and inspiring. Each set ended with a live “Town Hall” where viewers could send in their questions to the projects’ leads.

Divided into three thematic sessions titled “Pollinators,” “Keepers,” and “Builders,” Galilee’s curatorial prowess was evident in her selection of works, which ranged from more traditional projects like Ryue Nishizawa’s Ochoquebradas House in Chile to Feral Atlas’ illustrated, digital map-cum-catalogue that tracks the effects of industrialized infrastructure. The roster was truly international, though projects from South and East Asia were underrepresented. Each project addressed issues that societies across the world are – or should be – reckoning with: the destructive effects of global capitalism, climate catastrophe, and (de)colonization.

In “Pollinators,” a session devoted to projects that “sow seeds” of ideas about how people interact with space, Fernando Frías’s film Ya No Estoy Aquí (I’m No Longer Here) was a clear stand out. Following a gang of young people, “Los Terkos,” in the Mexican city of Monterrey, Frías unveiled how urban planning separates poor youth from the city’s central spaces. At the fringes, the youths take ownership of the space to which they’ve been sequestered, creating a counter-cultural community around traditional cumbria music.

“Keepers,” dedicated to works concerning land, the environment, and (de)colonization, included a number of exceptional projects. Cave_bureau’s Anthropocene Museum transforms natural tunnels off the coast of Kenya associated with the slave trade into anti-colonial spaces for reflection. In Tipologías: Hábitat y libre determinación (Typologies: Habitat and Self Determination), photographer Onnis Luque and architect Mariana Ordóñez Grajales, along with the human rights organization Indignación A.C., document traditional Mayan building techniques in Mexico and interview members of indigenous communities about the government’s provision of substandard housing. In doing so, Tipologías speaks to larger questions about indigenous rights and building as an act of independence from the state. Virtual Girjegumpi, an online archive of Samí architecture created by Joar Nango, a member of the Samí community in modern-day Sweden, counters the “folkloric perspective” often associated with indigenous peoples. Shown in tandem with ArkDes’s exhibition Kiruna Forever, which studies the Swedish government’s undertaking to move the city of Kiruna whose foundations are threatened by mining tunnels, the two projects raise important questions about the limitations of natural resources and who has the right to build where — Kiruna was, after all, a mining village founded in the 1890s on Samí land.

The third session, “Builders,” saw projects focused on inclusive space and social justice. Members of the BlackSpace Urbanist Collective presented the BlackSpace Manifesto for an urbanism centered around “healing and restorative practice.” BlackSpace emphasized the importance of putting these principles into practice, creating authentic relationships with the people you are building with (as opposed to building for), and “moving at the speed of trust” when working with communities which have no reason to place faith in city government intervention. Along similar lines, Deanna Van Buren of the Oakland-based non-profit Designing Justice + Designing Spaces, discussed their efforts to design for “restorative justice” by working with incarcerated communities. “The things that we value, we build” stated Buren, urging that architecture itself will not change society, but we, as members, must change our values to better reflect the society we want to build.

Unsurprisingly, the Guggenheim’s own connections to racism, land exploitation, and history of stifling radical architectural projects went largely unmentioned. Perhaps ironically, the Guggenheim’s director, Richard Armstrong, stood in front of Rem Koolhaas/OMA’s Countryside, The Future when delivering his opening statement —an exhibition curated by Troy Conrad Therrien, previously the museum’s curator of architecture and digital initiatives. Therrien stepped down from the Guggenheim in June 2020 after signing a joint letter from the curatorial staff which decried the museum’s “inequitable work environment that enables racism, white supremacy, and other discriminatory practices.” Levenson recognized in her opening statement that “2020 was a year of reckoning and change for us as an institution.”

In an interview last year, Galilee expressed her hope that “The World Around will become an institution.” But I hope it doesn’t. Institution implies red tape, self-selecting audiences, and structural rigidity. As a non-profit working alongside the Guggenheim, The World Around has the flexibility to honestly and forcefully push against the boundaries of traditional architecture and present built, conceptual, and artistic alternatives to the mainstream discourse. Though still too early to tell, this model of an independent organization taking up residence in an institution to foster change seems to me a successful approach. The museum is not a civic space by default. True civic space, where people can gather and discuss their views and opinions, is outside of institutions, as the projects presented in The World Around demonstrate.