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[re] claiming identity: a mirage nation

Year May 2023 

Location Everywhere, Anywhere, All at Once

 

Studio Self-Directed Project by Mark Stanley

2023 Distinguished Design Awards Supported by Tau Sigma Delta Honor Society Finalist

To narrate muffled voices and erased stories of unknown realities gives rise to a [post]reality dilemma that carries a culmination of ideas that deal with erasure, territoriality, identity, cancellation, etc. Is it "could have", "should have", or neither because it had already had? If the past is in the past, is it worth questioning, imagining, dreaming of what another universe may have held, looked like, crafted? What makes one reality more true than another? If everything is already written, are we in a place to redefine destiny and fate? 

 

The intimacy of silenced experiences sets the basis of the reality, it is studied through the narratives that are being untold. As social, political, religious, economic interactions act as the basis of our everyday, opinions, ideas, beliefs, aggravations, alleviations rise, fall, intertwine to define images and interpretations about one other. In a sense, each of these elements acquires a separate reality. Do they actively cause the decline of what others deem real? What makes one reality more true than the other? In a [post]reality, people will be able to answer the questions at hand. There, another narrative will unfold, will be architected. One of, not "the" truth, but another truth. One that could provide another viewpoint, another perspective on matters that are so well defined and structured in our world today. To imagine an alternate space based on existing factors is to use memories, dreams, feelings, truths as building material to construct the barriers of this dilemma. Here, the colonized will be returned, the displaced, replaced, the wronged, comforted.

This thesis explores the impact of colonization on the Middle East, focusing on the perspectives of those who suffered the consequences of erasure and displacement. The research aims to understand the hopes, dreams, even the anxieties of the affected people through their voices and uses them as building material to construct spaces that don't only exist in this reality, but possibly other ones. The study uses an interdisciplinary approach that draws on history, architecture, anthropology, and literature to examine the complex and multifaceted impact of colonization on the social fabric of Middle Eastern societies, both the physical and mental. Where this could be seen as an attempt to decolonize architecture's role, it is in fact what strives to materialize the possibilities of what could be or could have been, the intangible to the tangible. 

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