Common, Wealth, a proposal for the British Pavilion at the 19th International Architecture Exhibition in Venice, explores land as an architectural resource and cultural phenomenon. A collaboration between YAA Projects, Material Cultures and Sandra Githinji, the proposal focuses on the United Kingdom and Kenya, exploring myth and ritual, building culture and material extraction, and power and territory. Land, while local and contextual, is also the result of global processes and flows. Typically conceived as static, land is continuously made, unmade, and remade according to our needs for subsistence, shelter, and material resources.
In her memoir Unbowed, Wangari Maathai describes the Kikuyu myth of origin and the land they settled from Mount Kenya to Garbatula. In this story, God is the giver of land, the people are its collective caretakers, and the land is a commons, a source of wealth. Colonisation, capitalism, and an abundance of cheap oil fuels define our extraction from the land, building and material culture. Fossil-fuel-based technologies facilitate violent land practices from industrial agriculture and mass deforestation through to mining, dredging, and land-forming. We witness the consequences of this violence on damaged ecosystems, landscapes, communities of human and non-human populations and through architectural cultures without reference to geography (place, culture, ritual) or geology (material resource). To shift away from this extractivist mindset, we need to transform our relationship to the land, reimagining how we manage and access it; how we build with it and how we understand it.
Land is a fundamental source of power for those who control it. In the UK, land is the epicentre of our housing, food, and environmental crises. For example, half of the UK landmass is used for grazing or growing animal feedstock, and only 20% is used for arable farming and dense urban centres combined. As a result, we import 50% of our food from overseas - a legacy of the colonial project which has impacted land use and economy in other parts of the world. A study by the RSPB and WWF found that UK imports of just seven forest-risk commodities accounted for a land footprint of 88% of the size of the UK yearly. In forming enclosures within the land, our commonwealth has become a privatised asset. As Vandana Shiva writes, “colonialism was the enclosure of the commons on a global scale.”
In the world we once lived in, land was protected through myths and tales - a warning to the Kikuyu child to avoid collecting firewood from a particular fig tree (its deep root system prevented landslides and aided rainwater management) or to the Asante farmer not to farm on dabɔne or risk upsetting the gods (this gave the land time to replenish) or the tale of a smith whose cow, Glas Gaibhneach, pastured on the fertile mountain of Sliabh-na-Glaise and provided him with nourishment for many years (the abundance of nature when respected and treated with care) - and these protoecological tales were steeped in the recognition of indigenous knowledge systems.
In an age of new ecological, social and material crises, we need new myths for the land. Our future lies in the reclamation of land as common-wealth – a praxis of care and repair, cultural continuity and ecological wealth.
Exhibition Concept
Translating the theme of land as ‘common-wealth’, each room in the pavilion is transformed into a space relating to land, resource and building. The four rooms: Courtyard, Mine, Plantation and Settlement, can be read and experienced singularly or in combination, exploring the relationship between the different elements of the main theme.
Courtyard
Entering the pavilion from the veranda into the ‘courtyard’, this is the main room of the exhibition with its focus on the human connection to the land as memory, ritual and place. The 'courtyard' of the kikuyu homestead is the centre of the home or community - the large, thatched auditorium made from locally sourced straw has a similar function within the exhibition, as space for convening and gathering.
Mine, Plantation, Settlement
Surrounding the ‘courtyard’ are the three other rooms: mine, plantation and settlement. The ‘mine’ is conceived as a narrative of material extraction. It considers land as a resource and explores exploitation and depletion. Minerals: earth and clay are the core materials within this room. A series of screens embedded within an elevated floor present research relating to architecture, geology and contemporary material culture in the UK, Kenya and other Commonwealth countries.
The ‘plantation’, imagined as a forest, presents land as ecological wealth - materials cultivated in woods, fields and wetlands. Columns made from tree trunks (barked and unbarked) mimic the rhythm of the building’s columns and reveal the process of deforestation, which turns ecology into construction material. The plants that line the central boardwalk - tea, coffee and cotton - allude to the economy of cash crops. In contrast to the place-based experience of walking ‘through’, looking above presents the forest as conquered territory, mapped for the purpose of extraction.
‘Settlement’ visualises land as home and community. The adobe structures explore earth as a sustainable building material, presenting the relationship between land, architecture and dwelling. Like the ‘courtyard’, the rooms and the interstitial spaces between them are conceived as places for convening and gathering.
The exhibition’s design and curation embrace temporality and circularity as design principles to limit the exhibition's carbon footprint, proposing a palette of ecological materials that can return to the land after the exhibition.
Collaborators: Material Cultures and Sandra Githinji
Finalist for British Pavilion at the 19th International Architecture Exhibition in Venice