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| In addition to natural hazard vulnerability, the lack of access to basic infrastructure and financial services imposes restricted production and consumption conditions for this population, as well as limits technological innovations that for some privileged experts, would be promising for reducing our environmental degradation [2]. Hence, when thinking along the United Nation’s promise of “leaving no one behind” for a sustainable future, one must think – What is really possible in marginalized, peripheral, poor contexts?
In my diverse experiences in social projects in Brazil, I came to face situations where from the lack of options, these populations have been actively resisting their existence through informal and creative ways of production, consumption and education. Ways that have been excluded from the respect of government officials and policymakers, but that we can learn from to ressignify our modus operandis that have overpassed the bearable impact on the planet.
I bring to the discussion the practice of mutirão, a word with indigenous roots from Tupi-Guarani mutyrõ (within many other variations), freely translated to English as “common work”. The practice, with debated origin [3], has been present in diverse cultural contexts and geographical regions, suggesting a common intrinsic human trace of solidarity [3], but that aggregates different layers of political and social challenges. Deteriorated by the growing individualization of work configuration, some practices of mutual help survive their remote past’s heritage [3], yet incorporating new complexities of contemporary urban configuration.
In Brazilian cities, despite the legal effort to make cities accessible [4], these challenges include housing deficit, lack of basic services such as sanitation and electricity, and restricted land access [5]. In the overall neglect of this urban ill by some government officials, it creates a condition that obliges people to find informal ways of occupying the city – usually in configurations such as favelas, and ocupações. In these scenarios of poor infrastructure assistance, climate vulnerability is enhanced, being common phenomena of landslides, extreme rainfall and floods that cause significant dwelling damage and human loss. Yet invisibilized by officials, the segregated people find political and social strength by unification of their voices, knowledge and workforce abilities in a territory that is not assisted by formal governance. They collectively construct housing, infrastructure, and collective spaces in labor that are generally non-remunerated, non-hierarchical, and do not aim for a financial profit. Therefore, the mutirão incorporates a political view of anti-hegemonic activity that is contrary to capitalist work relations [6].
To bring this into practical terms, I share a practice of an informal occupation located in Santa Maria, a city in south of Brazil, that is in a current legislative process for the State to formally allow 53 families to live where they have been for the past seven years – “Vila Resistência” – in direct translation – “Villa of Resistance”. The name coherently suggests their will of power, as 15 of the pioneer families came from a situation of eviction from a past land they occupied, and in the current site, they have already been through at least three direct threats of removal [7]. The disputatious situation introduces other various conflicts these organizations encounter, and their need to urgently resist to be able to live.
In addition to natural hazard vulnerability, the lack of access to basic infrastructure and financial services imposes restricted production and consumption conditions for this population, as well as limits technological innovations that for some privileged experts, would be promising for reducing our environmental degradation [2]. Hence, when thinking along the United Nation’s promise of “leaving no one behind” for a sustainable future, one must think – What is really possible in marginalized, peripheral, poor contexts?In my diverse experiences in social projects in Brazil, I came to face situations where from the lack of options, these populations have been actively resisting their existence through informal and creative ways of production, consumption and education. Ways that have been excluded from the respect of government officials and policymakers, but that we can learn from to ressignify our modus operandis that have overpassed the bearable impact on the planet.
I bring to the discussion the practice of mutirão, a word with indigenous roots from Tupi-Guarani mutyrõ (within many other variations), freely translated to English as “common work”. The practice, with debated origin [3], has been present in diverse cultural contexts and geographical regions, suggesting a common intrinsic human trace of solidarity [3], but that aggregates different layers of political and social challenges. Deteriorated by the growing individualization of work configuration, some practices of mutual help survive their remote past’s heritage [3], yet incorporating new complexities of contemporary urban configuration.
In Brazilian cities, despite the legal effort to make cities accessible [4], these challenges include housing deficit, lack of basic services such as sanitation and electricity, and restricted land access [5]. In the overall neglect of this urban ill by some government officials, it creates a condition that obliges people to find informal ways of occupying the city – usually in configurations such as favelas, and ocupações. In these scenarios of poor infrastructure assistance, climate vulnerability is enhanced, being common phenomena of landslides, extreme rainfall and floods that cause significant dwelling damage and human loss. Yet invisibilized by officials, the segregated people find political and social strength by unification of their voices, knowledge and workforce abilities in a territory that is not assisted by formal governance. They collectively construct housing, infrastructure, and collective spaces in labor that are generally non-remunerated, non-hierarchical, and do not aim for a financial profit. Therefore, the mutirão incorporates a political view of anti-hegemonic activity that is contrary to capitalist work relations [6].
To bring this into practical terms, I share a practice of an informal occupation located in Santa Maria, a city in south of Brazil, that is in a current legislative process for the State to formally allow 53 families to live where they have been for the past seven years – “Vila Resistência” – in direct translation – “Villa of Resistance”. The name coherently suggests their will of power, as 15 of the pioneer families came from a situation of eviction from a past land they occupied, and in the current site, they have already been through at least three direct threats of removal [7]. The disputatious situation introduces other various conflicts these organizations encounter, and their need to urgently resist to be able to live.
In addition to natural hazard vulnerability, the lack of access to basic infrastructure and financial services imposes restricted production and consumption conditions for this population, as well as limits technological innovations that for some privileged experts, would be promising for reducing our environmental degradation [2]. Hence, when thinking along the United Nation’s promise of “leaving no one behind” for a sustainable future, one must think – What is really possible in marginalized, peripheral, poor contexts?
In my diverse experiences in social projects in Brazil, I came to face situations where from the lack of options, these populations have been actively resisting their existence through informal and creative ways of production, consumption and education. Ways that have been excluded from the respect of government officials and policymakers, but that we can learn from to ressignify our modus operandis that have overpassed the bearable impact on the planet.
I bring to the discussion the practice of mutirão, a word with indigenous roots from Tupi-Guarani mutyrõ (within many other variations), freely translated to English as “common work”. The practice, with debated origin [3], has been present in diverse cultural contexts and geographical regions, suggesting a common intrinsic human trace of solidarity [3], but that aggregates different layers of political and social challenges. Deteriorated by the growing individualization of work configuration, some practices of mutual help survive their remote past’s heritage [3], yet incorporating new complexities of contemporary urban configuration.
In Brazilian cities, despite the legal effort to make cities accessible [4], these challenges include housing deficit, lack of basic services such as sanitation and electricity, and restricted land access [5]. In the overall neglect of this urban ill by some government officials, it creates a condition that obliges people to find informal ways of occupying the city – usually in configurations such as favelas, and ocupações. In these scenarios of poor infrastructure assistance, climate vulnerability is enhanced, being common phenomena of landslides, extreme rainfall and floods that cause significant dwelling damage and human loss. Yet invisibilized by officials, the segregated people find political and social strength by unification of their voices, knowledge and workforce abilities in a territory that is not assisted by formal governance. They collectively construct housing, infrastructure, and collective spaces in labor that are generally non-remunerated, non-hierarchical, and do not aim for a financial profit. Therefore, the mutirão incorporates a political view of anti-hegemonic activity that is contrary to capitalist work relations [6].
To bring this into practical terms, I share a practice of an informal occupation located in Santa Maria, a city in south of Brazil, that is in a current legislative process for the State to formally allow 53 families to live where they have been for the past seven years – “Vila Resistência” – in direct translation – “Villa of Resistance”. The name coherently suggests their will of power, as 15 of the pioneer families came from a situation of eviction from a past land they occupied, and in the current site, they have already been through at least three direct threats of removal [7]. The disputatious situation introduces other various conflicts these organizations encounter, and their need to urgently resist to be able to live.
In the 60s and 70s the ‘grand’ masculine eurocentric visions dreamt up by the modernists were being challenged by an uprising of non-traditional collectives. A revolutionary spirit of resistance found groups experimenting with furniture design, music, installations and visual art. These methods were used to critique the architecture of the era and its position in a socio-political landscape of war, austerity and inequality.
During this time, a post-independence renaissance was unfolding in Khartoum Sudan. In the 60’s and 70’s, the rise of several modernist movements radically transformed the artistic scene, resulting in a flurry of dynamic creative and experimental outputs in literature, music, theatre, visual arts and architecture. Masjid at Nileen, (The 2 Niles mosque) is a landmark example of the era. The impressive and futuristic design of the mosque was a thesis project by Gamer Eldawla Eltahir, a student at the University of Khartoum.
Wrapped up and sheltered by the timber rooftop structure of Croydon’s nonconformist Quaker Hall, our participants, comrades and their friends collaged and assembled their own unique manifestations of these terms, reflecting upon the oral, aural and performative subjectivities of the spaces they chose to highlight. People’s conversations, pencils and accompanying mini printouts drifted from relationships formed across the chess boards in Ridley Road’s beloved Social Club to Lithuanian hairdressers in Beckton’s Retail Park, eventually gently returning back to the Whitgift Centre in Croydon, where these commonalities and solidarities blossomed in the first place.
For some these intricate notions of care and resistance were difficult to envision in the context of London, a city that is steadily becoming unlivable amidst multitudes of crises and deprecating living conditions. Layered on top of the dense London landscapes, the image of an Iroko tree in peoples’ ancestral village of Ikpoba-Okha near Benin City, or notes from walks during wellbeing retreats in Kent became external spaces of spiritual refuge, allowing people to process and imagine through the challenges that come with being in London, surviving the socio-economic disparity and hostility of prevailing neo-colonial conditions.
At the core of Theatrum Mundi’s Re-Staging Croydon programme was the necessity to collectively reflect upon these tensions, rethinking methodologies and vocabularies that we apply when thinking about Croydon’s current and future imaginaries. What does care and resistance look like in Croydon? Who can afford to be part of these imaginaries? What can we learn from what is already in place and what ultimately is architecture’s role (and its limitations) in shaping new networks and modes of knowledge exchange where care, interdependency and creativity are foundational to self-emancipation?
None of these terms are naturally effortless bedfellows for architectural practice; a practice concerned with the need to build, construct, compartmentalise, silo, anchor and fix. When we think about space-making and community building in Croydon, we analyse these processes in parallel to the processes of displacement, physical and social exclusion, inevitably forming and negotiating the micro-politics of urban spaces and subsequent community arrangements. We can think about heavy policing and displacement of migrant and racialised families, erasure of local businesses due to wider regeneration processes – in a borough where “container colonisation” [1] of the Boxpark structure sits next to disused buildings that lay empty despite the increasing collective homelessness, from houseless people to the many businesses and organisations in limbo over contractual lengths and the longevity of their physical spaces. Over the entirety of its existence, central Croydon has been continuously built up and torn down, revitalised and distorted, holding a thin paper over cracks that drowns out the emergence of new imaginaries.
Beneath and in-between these physical, cultural and economic boundaries, in the shadows of the menacing ‘Lunar House’ Home Office panopticon, the sociality and produced cultural resources, particularly within diasporic community spaces, serve as a foundation to renegotiate ownership of spaces they have been historically excluded from. Rituals, routines and improvisations that transpire on the neverending North End Quarter, or the Surrey Street market stalls hold together to form people’s day-to-day realities, agile and fluid, continuously in flux, in the process of making and reconstituting themselves. Despite the very fragile, often romanticised and ‘meanwhile’ constitution of these spaces, the knowledge exchange, visibility and care transpiring behind the glass walls of Turf Projects, beneath the heavy timber roof of the time travelling Quaker Adult School Hall, provide space and shape for alternative modes of gathering, storytelling, collective liberation and education, in search of livable and resilient futures.
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