Observing the Architectural Stigma of the Ugliness

Observing the Architectural Stigma of the Ugliness: The Cases of Albania and Galicia

Novas, María (TU Delft Teachers of Practice / A; University of Seville)
Pllumbi, Dorina (TU Delft Methods & Matter)

van den Heuvel, Dirk (editor)
Tanis, Fatma (editor)
Hwang, Sun Ah (editor)

2021

Shëmti and feísmo are the two names given respectively in the Albanian and Galician languages to stigmatize this unruly built environment: It is considered a material expression of both constructed and internalized myth of being the underdeveloped peoples in the European periphery.
This paper aims to explore how this stigmatization has been constructed and materialized in the built environment and the political and professional discourse. The paper presents a situational but also comparative analysis of Albanian and Galician realities, drawing similarities and different local perspectives present in academia, media, politics and architectural circles. This multi-layered and hybrid observation seeks to further explore the relational, ethnographic narratives of resistance, that subvert the myth of what is commonly understood as ugliness. Did the media or the political rhetoric of beautification had an impact over the years? Did the depreciation or demolition of heritage play a role in the production of identitarian stigmas? Are self-building practices at the root of this understanding of ugliness? We aim to see these architectural expressions differently, as playing a paradigmatic role in disrupting the hygienist industrialized models of European cities which are extensively promoted as the only way of designing the built environment.

http://resolver.tudelft.nl/uuid:38dd8d27-feb9-42b6-8bd3-d0e9acfacd03

TU Delft and Het Nieuwe Instituut, Rotterdam

The Observers Observed: Architectural Uses of Ethnography: Proceedings of the 8th Annual Conference of the Jaap Bakema Study Centre

The Observers Observed: Architectural Uses of Ethnography, 2021-11-24 → 2021-11-25, TU Delft / Het Nieuwe Instituut, Delft / Rotterdam, Netherlands

Institutional Repository

conference paper

© 2021 María Novas, Dorina Pllumbi