AR Reading List 030: land

The word ‘land’ originally inferred that which is not covered by water: terra firma. Its connotations now run much deeper than the Earth’s surface. Land is just as much formed by social, political and economic powers, as the geographic forces that created it. Lines drawn on a map form an indelible boundary on the land it divides, which is then endlessly mobilised through transfers of capital. Tensions rise as some hope to leave their mark on the land and others believe it is not ours to dent.

‘Improvement of the soil, land, buildings, and those people who dwell upon and within these spaces,’ Brenna Bhandar writes in the October issue’s keynote, ‘has been a primary justification for the making of land into property and for the appropriation and control of the built environment on a global scale.’ The seven selected pieces below scratch beneath the surface of the land to unveil the layers of inequality, capital, ownership, that are woven into the ground we build on.

Buffer zones and golf estates: do we really need more Garden Cities?, Guy Trangoš, AR September 2014
‘A static, inward looking city is created, devoid of cultural complexity, diversity and tradition’

A new threat to favelas: gentrification, Theresa Williamson, AR June 2015
‘We should fight for policies that embody the collective spirit of favelas, such as collective ownership’

‘What does living in space herald for the future of architecture?’, David Nixon and Jan Kaplicky, AR July 1984
‘Designing for space environments may not be everyone’s idea of the future of architecture, but it could certainly widen our perception of our ability to design earth-bound objects’

Outrage: ‘Architects are complicit in the commodification of UK housing’, Giles Smith, AR January 2016
‘Accommodation should be designed to suit the ways in which it is used rather than to suit the requirements of the accretion of capital’

How tech giant Airbnb is rewriting the rulebook on domestic architecture and fueling a housing crisis, Luis Ortega Govela, AR October 2014
‘A destabilising agent in a dysfunctional housing market might do some good, but even a stopped clock is right twice a day.’

Typology: Public Square, Tom Wilkinson, AR March 2017
‘Created to facilitate the functions of the state and to endow its rituals with a field of action, the square has an equal and opposite function as the incubator of its critics, even its demise’

On the money: the merits of degrowth, Phineas Harper and Maria Smith, AR September 2019
‘Today architects are merchants of value. Speak to any developer about what an architect brings to a construction project and the reply will be that they “add value”’