The latest instalment of our series of AR Reading Lists: seven carefully chosen pieces from our archive, free for registered users
Since March 2020, the AR Editors have been carefully curating these Reading Lists with stories from our vast archive, as a way to unwrap architectural ideas and connect points through time. Delving into this archive has allowed us to explore ideas which are still today unfurling and can offer a glimpse into the past to illuminate contemporary architectural discourse. In a pause from our usual Reading Lists, selected by the AR Editors, this week’s Reading List is curated by you, the reader, as we bring together 2021’s most read stories so far.
This bank holiday weekend, the AR website is open and free to explore for registered users, welcoming you to read from current issues or articles from the archive.
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Under Jerusalem: Israel’s subterranean expansion, AR April 2021, Nadi Abusaada
‘Simpson’s paintings depict the museum’s forgotten basement: the city’s long-buried tunnels, conduits, cisterns, old pavements and desolate tombs. In them, the European imperial encounter with Palestine chiefly appears not grand nor territorial, but intimate’
Outrage: the false promises of floating gardens, AR February 2021, Sabrina Syed
‘When peeled back we see the sour truth: highly pruned, stunted mini-trees and shrubs bolted into concrete were never designed to behave, nor ever qualify, as a forest. Against this shallowness, for now, the narrative of control needed to sustain them runs deep’
The coloniality of planting: legacies of racism and slavery in the practice of botany, AR February 2021, Ros Gray and Shela Sheikh
‘Much of mainstream white environmentalism tends to perpetuate the idea that ‘‘nature’’ or ‘‘the environment’’ needs to be protected from people, rather than understanding human beings as part of ecological systems’
Outrage: the flawed premise of the luxury bunker, AR April 2021, Kate Wagner
‘The desire to be buried among one’s worldly possessions in anticipation of some sublime outcome – be it death or apocalypse – is what unites Tutankhamun with Jerry Henderson. The difference is that Henderson buried himself alive, and he is not alone’
Stepwells of Ahmedabad: water-harvesting in semi-arid India, AR April 2021, Tanvi Jain
‘State water provision requires political action and intent to build infrastructure, which creates disparity and inequality around access. Minority and economically weaker groups have to rely on more precarious water sources, illustrating the emergence of exclusive hydraulic citizenship’
Pushed to the periphery: Lisbon’s rehousing policies lose the life of the neighbourhoods they demolish, AR December 2020/January 2021, Ana Naomi de Sousa and António Brito Guterres
‘The overarching aim of Portugal’s rehousing programme was “to eradicate the shanty towns” and the “social evil” they represented. Hundreds of neighbourhoods were earmarked for destruction, to be replaced with purpose-built housing estates, where all of their residents would be moved’
Revisit: Quinta Monroy by Elemental, AR December 2020/January 2021, Sandra Carrasco and David O'Brien
‘Elemental’s design strategy has inadvertently created household spaces that in many instances replicate the “slum-like” conditions they attempted to address. At the same time, they have set the scene for a range of ongoing and contested community interactions that might have been avoided’
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