Hijra الهجرة

Ministries (2019) | Studio Work

Gugulethu Mthembu 'The Port Of Sihr'

Chris Rojas 'The Zerzura Terrarium'

Heidi Lu 'Casablanca: The Compendium of Home'

Roanne Moodley 'Makhzen مخزن‎ : Radio Morocco'

Tonia Murray 'The Book Of Skins'

Frederick Kannemeyer 'The Arab Summer: A Digital Republic'

Terrence Mxolisi Mkhwanazi 'The Border Bureau'

Kamal Ranchod 'Maghreb Tarikh'

Saanye Zahidi 'The Atlas Of Invisible Islands'

Izak Potgieter '10 X 10500'

Jessica Cristovao 'Being, Belonging, Becoming'

Leo Chicwamb 'Bureau Of Labour Affaris'

Gloria Pavita 'Notes On Manoeuvring: Ports Of Service'

Jana Cloete 'Port Of Yennayer'

Superviser Sumayya Vally

The void contains in itself all the potential of the space, all the relations not written or experienced. Void is the place of tension of something that will be, a space in power, but also the only place where the recollection of reality, the composition of the parts, the fragments of life, can happen.’ - Simone Pizzagalli From the Greek διασπορά (‘scattering’, ‘dispersion’) the term ‘diaspora’ refers to a scattered population whose origins lie within a smaller, usually fixed, geographic locale. Diaspora has come to refer in particular to the historic dispersions of an involuntary nature, such as the Jewish Diaspora; the fleeing of Greeks after the fall of Constantinople; the African trans-Atlantic slave trade; the Irish after the Great Famine and, more recently, the dispersion of Syrians, Iraqis and Kurds in the aftermath of the Gulf Wars. Scholars have historically distinguished between different types of diaspora, based on different causes: imperialism, trade, labour or wars, for example. Social cohesion within diasporic communities and the strength of ties to their original or ancestral lands also varies, with some communities maintaining strong political ties with their homelands and others dreaming endlessly of return.

Within architecture, however, scant attention has been paid to the spatial, urban and architectural implications of migration. Refugee camps, deportation centres and prisons appear to be the only spaces or architectural programmes that deal in any way with this most contemporary of issues, yet the epistemological potential locked into the history and experience of diasporic communities around the world has far-reaching consequences for all built environment disciplines, at multiple scales and levels, and from multiple perspectives.

Unit 12 visited the island of Réunion, a region of France separated from the ‘mainland’ by 6,000km and the outermost region of the EU, in order to uncover new potential spatial languages of movement, migration and diaspora to augment the architectural vocabulary of our times. The Major Design Project of the year was the Ministry of Home Affairs. Projects look at landscapes, seascapes, edge conditions, boundaries between land and sea, between past and present and between 'home' and 'away'. The aim is to challenge each student to find their own appropriate architectural tools of representation, form, structure, materiality, programme, with which to propose a new architecture that, in Derrida's words, 'bears some resemblance to that which might be found in it.'

Ports (2018) | Studio Work

Tonia Murray 'The Liberation Carnival'

Ruby Mungosh 'The Ministry of Acculturation, Seduction and Sedition'

Heidi Lu 'The Ministry Of 'Créolisation'

Chris Rojas 'Linnaeus And The Garden Of Early Delights'

Nhlakhanipho Mashinini 'The Music Bureau'

Steffen Fischer 'Metro'

Shasha Movies (@shashamovies) presents Hijra, a special film programme created for @ads11.hijra and screening in-person for all students across the School of Architecture.

Here, the idea of ‘gathering’ and ‘carrying’ inherent within hijra الهجرة is explored. Spaces where politics, presence and futures are discussed and declared. And through which relations are built, tested and performed. ‘Hijra’ celebrates a different kind of spatial politics—the imaginative politics inherent to all groups of people migrating to survive and thrive, escaping conditions of inequality and vulnerability to a warming climate.This is a special programme created by @shashamovies for ‘Hijra’, taught by Sumayya Vally and Shumi Bose.