Continuation of the public program organized by participants of Decolonizing Architecture 22/23 to discuss and share collective and individual researches.
March Hosted Session
Concrete Toxicity
Decolonizing Architecture Office, Royal Institute of Art, 3rd floor
on March 13th 2023 at 14:00-17:00
A session looking in to the relations between concrete, toxicity and corruption.
We are opening up the room with the following guests to shed a light on the topic they find most urgent in the theme of the session. We will open up for a shared discussion after the presentations.
*Barış Can Sever – PhD candidate in the Department of Sociology at Middle East Technical University, currently based in Turkey. He is working on the Ph.D. dissertation entitled “Migratory Movements as A Multifaceted Process Under the Impacts of Climate Crisis: The Case of Central Anatolian Agricultural Basin in Konya/Turkey”. He maintains socio-ecological and academic works by mostly focusing on the intersectional areas of social theory, sociology of migration, environmental sociology, and climate crisis.
*Tuba Kolat Lidén – Studied urban and regional planning in the School of Architecture at Mimar Sinan University in Istanbul and completed her master’s degree at KTH in Sustainable Urban Planning and Design programme. She has been working as a planning architect in transportation and infrastructure projects in Sweden since 2018. Tuba is interested in the conflict between public interest and the construction industry and how corruption affects the lives of citizens. She would like to compare the decision-making and control processes between Sweden and Turkey.
Collapsing buildings and infrastructure in earthquake stricken areas such as most recently Turkey, Kurdistan and Syria, as well as in war zones, produce toxic smoke and dust posing added risks to the people affected. Buildings often collapse due to poor construction as a result of corruption. The buildings kill, not the earthquake. We also have a toxic relationship with concrete as both provider and abuser. Concrete provides welfare, housing and a degree of comfort while extracting, polluting and exploiting.
Organized by Yasamin Ghalehnoie, Emma Dominguez, Herman Hjorth Berge, Ann Mirjam Vaikla, Hannah Wiker Wikström