Alienation of Production
Vs
Bodies as Temple
Gymnasium in Anaklia
Oxford Brookes University
MArch II (DS3), Dist
Nominated & Shortlist:
Ackroyd Lowrie Prize (Most innovative project)
Make Architects Prize (Consistent excellence of MArch I & II)
Tutor: Charlotte Grace, Maria Alexandrescu, Evelina Gambino, Cíaran Malik, Charles Parrack, Louis Schulz
Location: Anaklia, Georgia
DS3 is a studio confronts the imaginaries and materialities of power built by architectural and territorial projects, be they objects,cities, landscapes, states or extra-states. We unpack architecture’s role as an instrument of political agency through committed and critical reading of the site at a multitude of scales - from the individual subject of the worker and citizen
through to the global forces operating with extra-state power.
The site is the yet-to-be-realised Extra-state Zone of Anaklia, Georgia, set to be a major node in the largest infrastructure project ever project-ed, the New Silk Road. The logistics port being built there now meets an archipelago of the spectacular infrastructural objects left behind by other powers.
Abstract
With the history of conflicts & tensions, militarisation and merchant, Georgia is a place where commodities, migration and movement have not been together. Things are dismantled and fragmented because of conflicts and tensions in different scale.
This project would focus on workers in the port, the most intimate& frontier users facing global logistic development. It is argued that objects are alienated and dismantled, follows by bodies, with the history of conflicts & tensions in different aspect and scale. Logistic line and production process not only dismantled commodities, also workers, their conscious and their bodies are being dismantled. Commodities are made in separate process and traded to other place; At the same time, production line split jobs into meaningless task, tedious work.
The project reunites workers with their bodies through the gymasium. It addresses the abandoned and not yet developed promenade into a public gym. It is acting as a gateway between two spaces & tensions, also acting as a device that reunites Anaklian workers with their bodies and with each other. In this project, I argue that gym is between a stage and a festival space. It aims to (1) specialize the various stage for bodies; (2) encourage users see themselves, others and find other seeing them; (3) recognize their bodies as a whole by recognizing the bodies of others as your other.
Programme
A machinery indoor gym, outdoor elevated bandstand for performances and viewing, outdoor running track
User
Anaklian Workers & Tourists
Schedule
In the morning before work, at noon during lunch, in the evening after work
Formal & Contextual Gesture
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The gym is sitting on a plinth that raised above the existing promenade, where pass through the borders of conflicts and tensions in Anaklia.
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A elongated wall housed the indoor machinery gym located aside the promenade.
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A parallel stripe along the wall forms a stepped circulation for athlete that metaphor the wish of reaching perfection of god. A running track perpendicular to the wall that going back and forth between Black Sea and the Promenade.
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A elevated outdoor bandstand with spiral ramp and staircase that overview the Anaklia town, the port and worker housing.
Projection
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It brings the communities of bodies looking at bodies
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Reunites workers bodies as a whole (their conscious and physical muscle)
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Furthermore, reunited between bodies as a whole (collective power of worker)
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Empower workers to identify the truth of Anaklia and Georgia (The globaled force and development)
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Collective resistance to confront future development
