Conjuring up the Jinni (Three Manifestations)

Thursday 26.10.2023 @17:30-19:00 at BPB506

Rahesh Ram is an Associate Professor in Architecture, Programme Lead for Master's in Architecture, and Associate Head at the School of Design at the University of Greenwich. He has taught for seventeen years at the BA and Master's levels. At the university, he also leads a Master's unit, Unit 12, which places speculation at the centre of pedagogic practice. The unit is particularly interested in fiction and storytelling as tools to speculate. Rahesh recently co-ran a design unit at the first-ever architecture college at the Venice Biennale 2023 with a brief call “Radical Empathy”. He also co-ran a fictional workshop at the Aral Sea Cultural Summit in Uzbekistan at the invitation of the Art and Culture Development Foundation (under the Cabinet of Ministers of the Republic of Uzbekistan). The workshop served to reimagine the region around the Aral Sea, which has suffered greatly due to the man-made environmental disaster that caused the sea's disappearance.

Synopsis

The use of fictional narratives as a conduit for experimentation and speculation in architecture has been widely practised by paper architects and students alike, but what are the qualities of fiction that give it credibility as a tool for such investigations? What is the nature of fiction that can enable an architectural discourse? Is it a form of a thought experiment? Can it be seen as an instrument for experimentation that can reveal new insights, understanding or new knowledge.

The speaker sees fiction as a Jinni that needs to be conjured up. Here are three manifestations of the Jinni: