Bonfire As Method
Thomas Burke (RA)
“Bonfire as Method” looks at the different spaces of identity, affect and sovereignty that are created by post-Brexit logistical contestations in the Irish Sea. Markets and regulations have the ability to create a virtual border that precedes future acts of cartography. This three-channel video attempts to draw together different elements which both produce, and are produced by, a new trade border.
Excepted Matter
Joseph Burrows(RA)
Excepted Matter remaps the British nuclear state through exceptional absence at the periphery, identifying nuclearity within the exception. By holding together disparate material practices, it extends the reach of nuclear things back to their geological beginnings and actualises their speculative toxic futures. It follows what is made to not exist through legislation and regulation for the sake of the nuclear state, yet persists as social or cultural pasts and imposed toxic futures. Excepted Matter is an assemblage of atypical nuclear things suspended within the various ontological thresholds that define them.
Tourist Exercises in the South China Sea
Joyce Wann Ting Choong(RA)
The South China Sea is one of the most contested spaces in the world: six countries claim sovereignty over it for the right to exploit its resources. Despite near-daily reports of conflict, tourists have been frolicking in its waters since 1990. Given the circumstances, tourism to the South China Sea is not without subterfuge. This project explores the web of touristic relations that constitute tourism’s territorialising function; an attempt to reframe practices of leisure as a counter to geopolitical narratives of the region understood primarily from ‘above’.
Wetlands of La Mojana
Luciano Antonio Andrés di Filippo Vargas(FA)
In the wetlands of La Mojana, located in the delta of Colombia’s main river, large cattle farmers have been drying the wetlands and dispossesing local populations from their communal lands for several decades to expand their own territories. This phenomenon is not only affecting humans but all the environments.
Footnotes On The Border
Pinelopi Gardika(FA)
“The control over the racialised bodies entering the borderscapes1 of the danish immigration system starts with their entry but the end is far less distinct. Their bodies carry the border and are carried by forces external to them, extending the bordering landscapes in space and time. The diagram of such thick border needs to have space for the material and the semiotic, the spatial and the temporal, the administrative and the affective.
To render visible the practices that have centred the disappearance of subjects from the public forum, their made invisible and dismissible, I study the physical footprint of these practices, as a form of resisting their profound ambiguity and grounding them in the architectural space that they seek to disappear from.”
To render visible the practices that have centred the disappearance of subjects from the public forum, their made invisible and dismissible, I study the physical footprint of these practices, as a form of resisting their profound ambiguity and grounding them in the architectural space that they seek to disappear from.”
Thirty Seconds to Broadway-Lafayette
Cyril Gilman(FA)
Jordan Neely was murdered on May 1, 2023, when he was strangled for four minutes on the floor of an uptown F train. He was Black and homeless, and the police initially released his killer, a white Marine, without charges.
Before addiction, mental health crises, and episodes of incarceration drove Neely into ‘chronic’ homelessness, he was a Michael Jackson impersonator who danced for tips on New York subway cars. In multiple phases of his life, then, Neely was a full-time inhabitant of the subway system, and thus in the crosshairs of an administrative and policing apparatus tasked with preserving the system’s liminality.
This project is an attempt to read Neely’s life, death, and public afterlife as it was structured by the rhythms, durations, and other temporal patterns with which New York’s subway space is produced, regulated, and secured.
Before addiction, mental health crises, and episodes of incarceration drove Neely into ‘chronic’ homelessness, he was a Michael Jackson impersonator who danced for tips on New York subway cars. In multiple phases of his life, then, Neely was a full-time inhabitant of the subway system, and thus in the crosshairs of an administrative and policing apparatus tasked with preserving the system’s liminality.
This project is an attempt to read Neely’s life, death, and public afterlife as it was structured by the rhythms, durations, and other temporal patterns with which New York’s subway space is produced, regulated, and secured.
The labours of the plateau come to an end
Kevin Howard(FA)
The Colorado Plateau has been turned into a toxic landscape through the nuclear-colonial operations of the United States’ uranium extraction industry. The violence of nuclear colonialism is inscribed in the stratigraphy of the earth and the bodies of Indigenous peoples as radioactive contaminants are unearthed in the quest for global nuclear dominance. This project, titled ‘The labours of the plateau come to an end’, follows the traces of this nuclear-colonial violence through the infrastructures that enable it: the geologic survey, the mine, the processing mill and the disposal cell.
Architectures of Grief
Luis Angel De Dios Iriarte Tinoco(RA)
Architectures of Grief reimagines contemporary memorial museums by integrating mourning, remembrance, and healing through an interview-based design process. This novel approach culminates in the creation of the Andean counter-memorial museum, a commemorative site located in Ayacucho, Peru—a region profoundly scarred by the internal conflict of 1980–2000. The project transforms La Hoyada, once a place of terror, into a beacon of hope, creating spaces for meaningful encounters and honouring the victims—especially the women of ANFASEP—who continue their tireless pursuit of justice for their disappeared loved ones. The design embraces the traditions and beliefs of the survivors, prioritizing active engagement over passive remembrance. This dynamic approach offers a powerful example of how architecture can adapt to diverse cultural and geographic contexts across Latin America.
Compulsory Improvement
Leela Jadha(FA)
In 2020, Yoo Capital Investment selected Shepherd’s Bush Market for ‘edge-of-prime’ redevelopment. Around the same time, police reported increased rough sleepers in the area, removing them via Anti-Social Behaviour orders. Policing and planning share the common goal of making cities liveable - that is, clean, pleasant, and safe. Central to this project is the configuration of a class of people who are deemed unclean, unpleasant, unsafe - a ‘risk’ to the social and economic value of land. Compulsory Improvement traces the evolution of this class from its roots in 1800s colonial and industrial projects to its calculated forms at the frontiers of gentrification today. It asks: what happens – and what can happen - at the fraying edges of urban space?
Europe’s Externalised Green Transition: Flow, Friction, Foreign Agents
Tamara Keller(FA)
The extended spatialisation of the planned Black Sea submarine cable in Georgia serves to satisfy Europe's growing hunger for “clean” energy. The EU's green energy transition agenda, supported by international financial institutions like the EBRD, has fueled authoritarian responses to local opposition to controversial hydropower projects, such as Khudoni, Nenskra, and Namakhvani. The Georgian government's use of the term "foreign agency" to discredit local resistance is challenged here, suggesting that external influence lies not with the protests but with the various spatio-temporal extractivist interests driving these hydropower projects. These international resource interests are deeply embedded in Georgian energy strategies, while local resistance movements are unjustly labeled as foreign-driven. Protests against these hydropower projects reflect a broader conflict against the colonising forces of global finance and its greenwashed narrative of progress. This struggle highlights the urgent need for democratic engagement in shaping the future of energy, infrastructure, and development projects in Georgia and beyond.
Border Flux: Critical Investigations of Moving Territories
Melody Matin(FA)
The political and geographic boundaries of the Arctic landscape are constantly in flux. These boundaries are disputed, negotiated, shifting, fluid, and overlapping.[1] Evidenced by the planetary climate crisis, the dynamic conditions of sea ice reconfigure the region’s geography as the ice expands and contracts season to season. This project investigates the space-making practices of Arctic states and exposes the continuous attempts to negotiate, dispute and extend borders that conflict with a landscape constantly in movement and increasingly melting.
Federated Data Platform
Bethan Mckinnie(RA)
The project began with a heavily redacted contract between American data analytics company Palantir technologies and NHS England. The work on show represents a journey through the history of medical information that becomes increasingly fantastical and absurd as it progresses, mirroring my own experiences of illness and seeking medical care. A play on the word ‘Iatrogenic’, meaning relating to illness caused by medical examination or treatment, ‘Iatro-Capitalism: A Player’s Guide’ attempts to grapple with the relationship between technology and the body, drawing on fantasy RPGs and video games to frame Palantir’s ‘Federated Data Platform’ as a fictionalised warning, a virtual trap for our immortal souls.
The Exceptional Place
Evan Patrick Moffitt(RA)
‘The Exceptional Place’ is a journey to an offshore island in the heart of London. A tour of the docks and plazas of Canary Wharf follows clues about the financial district’s past and present into subterranean tunnels and executive suites high above the Thames. Various architectural typologies within this space of exception funnel money to a vast archipelago of tax havens along military and trade routes of the British empire.
Voids in Earth
Rami Msallam(FA)
The "voids in earth" left behind by Italian colonial gold mines in Eritrea bear witness to the toxic legacy of land and labour exploitation. The enduring impact of these extractive practices has created not only spatial voids in the soil but also deep structural gaps and lasting scars in the social fabric, now fertile ground for a new gold rush led by multinational corporations. While shareholder reports celebrate these voids as evidence of gold, this investigation serves as a counter-memory, offering an alternative perspective for interpreting contemporary material flows, the (im)mobility of people, and the persistence of global racial injustice.
Incendiary Patterns
Joel Schülin(FA)
Incendiary Patterns scrutinizes the recurrent phenomenon of fires in refugee shelters and migrant living spaces. Examining moments of combustion — whether through arson attacks by right-wing perpetrators, fires set by residents, or those caused by technical defects — allows to illuminate the broader intricacies of German migration policies and bordering practices that immobilize asylum seekers while exposing them to the risks of both intentional and accidental fires.
Standing at the Gates: Britain’s Anduril Maritime Sentry Towers
Sam Storey(FA)
Since the UK’s Stop the Boats campaign, asylum seekers crossing the English Channel have faced increasing criminalisation and illegalisation. In response, the Home Office, including the Border Force (and His Majesty's Coastguard on their behalf), has discreetly deployed Anduril Industries sentry towers along the South-East coast. These autonomous surveillance towers, like those on the US-Mexico border, are framed as humanitarian tools which facilitate the rescue of migrants, often portrayed as victims of human traffickers. However, these towers mark illegalised asylum seekers' entry into the UK's hostile environment. This projectmakes visible this contemporaneous and emergent techno-solutionist AI surveillance assemblage, deconstructing its dehumanising gaze with respect to the illegalised asylum seeker.
Sea Walls in Eastern Japan
Tatsuki Tsushima(RA)
The 2011 Great East Japan Earthquake triggered an unprecedented tsunami disaster, prompting the Japanese government to construct massive seawalls along the eastern coastline. However, many coastal areas were not only fortified under the pretext of protecting lives and land, but also declared legally uninhabitable after a reassessment of land use policies. This creation of uninhabited fortified zones represents not merely a political failure, but rather conceptions of Bosai (disaster prevention) and Fukko (recovery from disaster) being more aligned with global finance and cement production than with the needs and well-being of local residents.
Felling not Falling
Wai Yin Yan(FA)
The colonial depiction of Hong Kong as a "barren rock" laid the groundwork for British modernity and social hierarchies. Early tree planting addressed aesthetics and land stability, while contemporary greening policies, though aimed at urban development, often displace marginalized communities and erase ecological and historical heritage. Despite official claims, mismanagement in these initiatives frequently leads to the removal of significant trees. Rooted in colonial legacies, these policies perpetuate socio-environmental inequities, highlighting the need for more sustainable, community-driven urban development.
Blue Crab Red Line Yellow Sea
Sun Woo Yoon(RA)
Less than 3 kilometers from the contested maritime border between North Korea and South Korea lies Yeonpyeong Island, a once-wealthy crabbing island where, according to an old tale, ‘even street dogs walked around with crabs in their mouths.’ Today, however, Yeonpyeong fisherfolk are riddled with debt, growing ever desperate in increasingly crowded waters. A look at time on the island reveals lasting, temporal forms of violence that are both the result and feature of cumulative years of military occupation and border dispute. The story is narrated in 21 parts, thought of as 21 overlapping temporal strands.