Space for Disorientation
finding, creating and allowing other urban directions
J. Lageschaar (TU Delft - Architecture and the Built Environment)
R.R.J. van de Pas – Mentor (TU Delft - History, Form & Aesthetics)
V. Muñoz Sanz – Mentor (TU Delft - Urban Design)
R.R. van den Ban – Mentor (TU Delft - Teachers of Practice / AE+T)
C. Forgaci – Graduation committee member (TU Delft - Urban Design)
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Abstract
Urban environments offer excellent qualities for queer life: simultaneously allowing to acknowledge diversity and to find common ground. It is where a desire for difference can actively challenge the fear of the unknown. This city-based potential is decreasing due to urban optimisation practices, which can be understood as the (re)production of orientations that narrow the 'corridors of spatial possibilities'. In some case studies, the process of continuously creating an orientation could even be considered a form of 'smooth violence'. As a counter, this project offers an explorative inquiry of developing a design philosophy rooted in disorientation.
Through understanding disorientation not only as an emotional mode, but as a concept that spans phenomenology, philosophy and spatial theory, several situated interventions imagine alternative ways of use, design and projection within the context of the Parisian Historical Axis. They show how spatial disorientation (as a design approach) could serve to expose imposed systems, to question inequitable dynamics and to create openings for other ways of living together. Ultimately, it calls for a reconsideration of the position of architecture and the role of the practitioner in scripting and guiding openings in dialogues between orientation, disorientation and re-orientation. In doing so, we could find other urban directions that should be supported by our architectural practices through open-mindedness, care and allowance: to embrace the unexpected turn, to value other interpretations and to make space for difficulties beyond, and against, normativity.