Neither Here nor There
16 moments on the Irish border
Rana Rana Osama Mahmoud Samy Abdelhamid (TU Delft - Architecture and the Built Environment)
S.E. Frausto – Mentor (TU Delft - Berlage)
C.H.C.F. Kaan – Mentor (TU Delft - OLD Complex Projects)
Ido Avissar – Coach
Thomas Weaver – Coach
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Abstract
The Irish border, runs for 499 km separating the Republic of Ireland from Northern Ireland. Since its implementation in 1912, the border fluctuated in its permeability and meaning, for there it witnessed great periods of instability, quietness, denial and insignificance. When the “Good Friday agreement was signed” the common ground of the EU helped blur the choice between a united island of Ireland and a united kingdom. Today, the Irish border, is just another Irish landscape that is only relevant because of its location, and that seamless transition, is once again to be debated in the aftermath of Brexit.
Given the glacial pace of the Brexit negotiations, the issue of the Irish border might not be resolved by 2020, in fact it might not be resolved by 2040.
Borders are never resolved, they change…
Hence, instead of designing a border, the project designs borders. In this moment of uncertainty, what is/are the future(s) of the Irish border? Like all borders, the Irish border was designed, drawn like a sharp line on the map, splitting the spaces hindering its precise cut through the territory. But how come we don’t design borders in relation to what is actually happening on the ground? Can we think of the borderwall as a device? An infrastructure? A place? A passage? A landscape? A home?
The focus on a specific aspect each time, and the resulting exaggerated visions, guides the discourse into an intended direction. From trade, to issues of identity, memory, war and immigration, the border wall is designed through different lenses.
In this uniquely contested site in Ireland, this speculation not only raises questions about the design and presence of the borders themselves, but also provide a framework in which to investigate pressing matters for architects: issues of politics, agency, compliance, resistance, longevity, materiality and symbolism.
In the spirit of Perec and Queneau, the project is a collection of different borders: infrastructural, public, domestic, hard, soft, optimistic, pessimistic, past, present and future.