Architects in Ambulance

Abstract

Over the last decades, following increasingly neoliberal ideology permeating all layers of political life, centralization has taken an ever increasingly rigid hold on development on urban, regional, national and global scales. Power and resources are increasingly concentrated to higher instances, and an urban norm permeates public discourse. Simultaneously, processes of urbanization must be viewed as complex, multipolar and encapsulating much more than a simplified understanding of it as a rural to urban migration. Arguing that the static, distanced and projecting nature of ordinary architecture practice is complicit with such extractive processes, this thesis attempts to challenge conceptions of what architects can do. Utilizing the idea of crossbenching as a critical spatial practice, the aim is to use an ambulatory approach to architectural work in order to enter spatial peripheries without formal mandate, and in that place invite people to engage in collective building as a para-institutional space for discourse and unofficial democracy. Learning from performance theory, it is argued that such spaces can activate latent agency through forming networks, probing the concerns and desires in people and seriously assess them and create platforms to act on them. The thesis inquiry is tackled through a two-part project: Building a framework for ambulatory work, and testing it through action in field. The first part is conducted at the Chalmers School of Architecture, using methods of case studies, interviews with practicioners, and staging participatory events to test the performative functions of the built framework. The second part is carried out during a two-week field experiment in the small rural town of Virserum, Småland, where a space of participatory building is set up in collaboration with Virserums Konsthall, attempting to engage people in discussion about their local context and the architectural questions about local public space. Rather than producing a design proposal, the thesis emphasizes a processual focus. The outcome takes the form of a ”negative” manifesto, using the incongruence between hypotheses from the first phase and the complex relationality of the in-field operations to extract learnings that form fragments of an outline of what a decentralized and ambulant architectural practice could be.