AN ARCHITECTURE OF EASEMENTS:
Transecting the Land of a Thousand Hills
My practice-based PhD uses the transect — a section drawn across the earth’s surface along which observations and actions are made — to survey how the architecture of Rwanda Vision 2020 segregates people from nature. Weaving anthropology, political ecology, and geography with architectural drawing, making and fieldwalking, I critique any attempt at segregating communities, particularly following former discriminatory, colonial, and ethnic lines.
Through developing a range of transectional inquiries and design techniques in collaboration with Rwanda’s indigenous forest communities, we collectively speculate upon alternative shared, multi-species and inclusive futures for Rwanda.
In this thesis, the transect emerges as a site of knowledge and a method for creating egalitarian, spatial, political, and ecological propositions for an architecture of easements. The transect is a transdisciplinary model of practising architecture with historical, geographical, and political depth that can aid practitioners in navigating borders of racial and cultural difference.
This PhD received the Frederick Bonnart Scholarship at the Bartlett School of Architecture, which supports research on combating racial, religious, and cultural intolerance.
Professor of Architecture and Experimental Practice
The Bartlett School of Architecture
Dr Jerome Lewis
Reader in Social Anthropology
University College London
Professor of Architecture and Director of Research and Knowledge Exchange
School of Architecture + Cities
University of Westminster
Professor Camilo Boano
Professor of Urban Design & Critical Theory
Development Planning Unit
Faculty of the Built Environment
Through developing a range of transectional inquiries and design techniques in collaboration with Rwanda’s indigenous forest communities, we collectively speculate upon alternative shared, multi-species and inclusive futures for Rwanda.
In this thesis, the transect emerges as a site of knowledge and a method for creating egalitarian, spatial, political, and ecological propositions for an architecture of easements. The transect is a transdisciplinary model of practising architecture with historical, geographical, and political depth that can aid practitioners in navigating borders of racial and cultural difference.
This PhD received the Frederick Bonnart Scholarship at the Bartlett School of Architecture, which supports research on combating racial, religious, and cultural intolerance.
SUPERVISORS
Dr Yeoryia ManolopolouProfessor of Architecture and Experimental Practice
The Bartlett School of Architecture
Dr Jerome Lewis
Reader in Social Anthropology
University College London
EXAMINERS
Professor Lindsay BremnerProfessor of Architecture and Director of Research and Knowledge Exchange
School of Architecture + Cities
University of Westminster
Professor Camilo Boano
Professor of Urban Design & Critical Theory
Development Planning Unit
Faculty of the Built Environment
