Spaces and Rituals of Surviving Memory

Rio Sumpul Masacre Memorial, 2023 © AgwA


Tutors	Sophie Laenen + Harold Fallon
Campus	Brussels
Engagement	craftmanship
Titular	Sophie Laenen
Language	engelstalig /nederlandstalig
Semester	Semeser 2 , related to Master Dissertation studio

Discription of the studio

In the studio “Spaces and Rituals of Surviving Memory” we will develop design proposals for sites where collective traumas of civil population related to situations of violence are commemorated, intersecting with historical memory and community engagement.

Exploring international contexts and the civil war in El Salvador (1980- 1992), students in the studio will choose to develop: a design proposals for a site within the “Surviving Memory in Postwar El Salvador” initiative (www.elsalvadormemory.org – www.instagram.com/memoria_el_salvador) or for a site in their region of origin. This dual approach allows the studio to reflect on the specificity and the universality of diverse settings, adapting architectural strategies to varying cultural and historical landscapes.

Spaces for memorials and historic memory address collective and individual emotions, with the symbolic value of interventions and architectural spaces affecting the physical and psychological state. The architectural designs will strengthen solidarity and community building, while also conditioning individual healing rituals. The limitations inherent to these bottom-up projects impose a strategic approach towards resources and constraints.

The studio emphasizes a sensitive, artistic, documentation-driven design process. Collaborative interactions with community members, artists, and professionals from multiple disciplines ensure that the proposals are deeply rooted in community needs and historical awareness. An important aspect is how to construct, how to materialize these sensitive architecture. Details will be explored.

Final projects are envisioned to be shared with the communities through exhibitions and publications, fostering dialogue and engagement. This approach not only memorializes past events but also activates public spaces for community building, education and reflection.

By participating in the “Spaces and Rituals of Surviving Memory” studio, students will engage in a design practice that is as locally relevant as it is globally resonant, contributing both to their personal growth and to the broader discourse on architecture and memory. Constructing and detailing are part of this process.

Histories and sites

According to the local context, these memorialization processes can address very different facts : torture, killings, racism, discrimination, abuse, bullying, etc. The projects can address a wide array of sites : ritual and commemoration spaces, community-based museums, artistic interventions in public space, etc.

Participation and documentation

To develop design proposals in these sensitive contexts, it is essential to develop a refined understanding and sensibility to the human and physical context. This happens through documentation and participation: important to identify sources. This will be condensed in a visual account.

Perception and emotion

Spaces for memorials and historic memory address collective and individual emotions. Attention will be paid to the symbolic value of interventions and architectural spaces affecting the psychological and emotional state, and enacting a physical (bodily) relationship to memory. This is related to explicit symbolic value and implicit spatiality. By developing architectural interventions we will explore the mechanisms of perception and sensoriality at play in our experience of space.

Community and Individuality

By realizing spaces of memory, the projects aim at fostering community building and solidarity, to strengthen the claims and recognition of the facts, to prevent future violence by providing tools for communication and pedagogy. At the other end of the spectrum, the spaces allow for individual processes of healing and mourning, intimate rituals, relationships with close relatives, friends, or victims. Attention will be paid to enabling community building and the individual engagement.

Constraints and limitations: constructions and details

As these projects are envisioned as bottom-up process, they do not benefit from institutional or governmental support. Consequently, attention must be paid to the rationality of the proposals. This comprises not only knowledge about local techniques of constructions and availability of materials, but also a strong focus on circumscribed interventions to achieve significant impact.

Surviving Memory in Postwar El Salvador and in the student’s contexts

The studio is related to the “Surviving Memory in Postwar El Salvador” project (https://www.elsalvadormemory.org/), an international partnership to documenting the history of the Salvadoran Civil War (1980-1992) and preventing future violence. All activities by the Asociación Sumpul (https://www.asociacionsumpul.org/), Since 2017, KU Leuven and AgwA architects are engaged.

Spaces and Rituals of Surviving Memory is an Elective, a Master Studio and a Master Dissertation studio at Campus Sint Lucas Brussels.

Master Studio in Semester 2 : designing, detailing, exhibiting

In this studio, the students will focus individually on one project, choosing between a project in El Salvador or in the student’s context. Designing and documenting/researching happen simultaneously, as design is a way to question the ongoing research and reciprocally.

Situations can be identified in the student’s own contexts. This means that the students can engage their profound knowledge of the place in their reflection and in their design proposals. The definition of the events, sites, and stakeholders is essential prior to designing. The events needs to stem from the recent past, so that victims or relatives are still personally engaged in commemoration. Individuals need to be identifiable and possibly to contribute to the understanding of the situation and of the current state or possibility of commemoration. This comprises also the knowledge about techniques of constructions and availability of materials for the design proposal.

The Master Studio is related to the Master Dissertation studio: both studios will run in parallel and form a unique environment, where cross- pollination and possible short collective assignments may be organized.

Necessary materials / further reading

proposals to fill up:

This studio addresses spaces of memorialization.

https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/315362-most-things-are-forgotten- over-time-even-the-war-itself

They address traumatic events impacting a collectivity.

Regina José Galindo: https://www.reginajosegalindo.com/

These events also involve people individually.

Our Mothers: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Our_Mothers Rituals are actions enabling commemoration, they synchronize diachronic events.

(Rio Sumpul Massacre Memorial, 2023 © AgwA)

Expected output, deadlines and formal criteria

The output of the studio is an architectural detailed project for a carefully (beautifully) documented site and context – both human and physical.

This project consists of precise interventions, enabling the different aspects of Surviving Memory.

The output of the studio is presented in the form of an exhibition IN THE SELECTED SITE and a publication in the language(s) of the community (with English translation). The exhibition (along with the architectural project) is documented as a single large scale model. This double output serves a double objective. First, it is a way to represent the output in a concise yet evocative and rich way, while revealing the qualities of the (architectural) space and the nature of the commemorated events.

Second, it is a communication tool to provoke exchange with the community and possibly set the first steps towards the realization of the memorial space.

Franci Alÿs: https://francisalys.com/

Surviving memory counters the absence of recognition.

Nick Cave: https://jackshainman.com/viewing_room/nick_cave Memory and memorialization fluctuates between fact and fiction, and enactment

Bowling for Columbine: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bowling_for_Columbine

It is arguably a first step towards recognition, truth, and eventually reparation.

Anatomie d’une chute : https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anatomie_d%27une_chute

It is a means to support healing.

Hippocampus: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hippocampus

It is a way to support community building.

Massacre of the Innocents: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Massacre_of_the_Innocents_(Bruegel) Surviving Memory is addresses memorialization from below

Grassroots Memorials: https://www.jstor.org/stable/j.ctt9qd4xs

It is about real people involved the events, or closely related to them.

Walking the trails: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JxfcmkTPmSI

Somehow, these situations are related to you too, directly or indirectly.

Memento: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Memento_(film) At the same time, it is about learning to observe the details, to develop empathy.

Teresa Margolles: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a7q8sKRLttc

Timing

MARB SEM 1 – only Master dissertation: preparing

In the Master dissertation Studio the students will embrace two projects simultaneously, meaning that it is essential to them to foster progress in semester 1. Master 1 students start the studio in SEM 2

SEM 2 week by week (provisional)

W1 General info – presentation master dissertation students – reading all info W2 Presentation of different sites – themes – WE START THE WORK

W3 Joint Studio W4 Joint Studio W5 Joint Studio

W6 REVIEW + presentation by guest office W7 intensive week

W8 Joint Studio – structural model

W9 Joint Studio – construction and materiality W10 Joint Studio – materiality and details W11 REVIEW

W12 Joint Studio – output and presentation W13 Joint Studio (final REVIEW before jury) W14 Jury 1° master

W17 Jury master dissertation

procedure of evaluation

Evaluation by teaching team, this is a unique quotation based on the total work, not the result of the addition of partial results.

The evaluation is achieved in consultation with the relevant teachers on the whole of the assignments/sub-tasks: Reviews and final presentation.

evaluation criteria

Quality of the design proposal in regard of the sense of ambition on all aspects covered

Quality of the representation (scale model, drawings, sketches, collages) Quality of the engagement in a multidisciplinary context