Urbanarium, 2020

An exhibition with Stepping Stone Press in Durban, South Africa curated by Greg Hayes.

In an ongoing scholarly investigation, I engage in an extensive series of urban perambulations that serve as a methodological framework for interrogating the historical and aesthetic dimensions of utilitarian architectural forms. This inquiry is particularly concentrated on metropolitan landscapes, with a specific focus on Honolulu and its adjacent vicinities. These ambulatory exercises function as both a physical and intellectual journey, allowing for a nuanced exploration into the intentionality and authorship that underlie the aesthetic fabric of urban environments.

The resultant body of work serves as a critical commentary on the ubiquity and commonality of these architectural structures, which are often relegated to the periphery of aesthetic discourse as mere 'brute-forms.' However, these ostensibly utilitarian edifices are far from inconsequential; they serve as repositories of complex cultural narratives and architectural philosophies. My work aims to reposition these structures within the broader context of geometric abstraction and utopian modernist architectural paradigms.

By doing so, I seek to illuminate the intricate interplay between form and function, aesthetics and utility, thereby challenging conventional understandings of what constitutes 'significant' architecture. This endeavor necessitates a multidisciplinary approach, drawing upon fields such as urban studies, architectural history, and aesthetic theory, to construct a comprehensive analytical framework. The works not only serve as visual artifacts but also as theoretical constructs that invite the viewer to reconsider the complexities of urban landscapes. They prompt a reevaluation of the often-overlooked architectural elements that shape our daily experiences and influence our perceptions of space, place, and identity.

Through this expansive investigation, I aim to contribute to a more nuanced understanding of the architectural vernacular that defines urban spaces, thereby enriching both academic discourse and public appreciation for the manifold layers of meaning embedded within the built environment.

“Space, in contemporary discourse, as in lived experience, has taken on an almost palpable existence. It's contours, boundaries, and geographies are called upon to stand in for all the contested realms of identity, from the national to the ethnic; its hollows and voids are occupied by bodies that replicate internally the external conditions of political and social struggle, and are likewise assumed to stand for, and identify, the sites of such struggle. Techniques of spatial occupation, or territorial mapping, of invasion and surveillance are seen as the instruments of social and individual control. Equally, space is assumed to hide, in its darkest recesses and forgotten margins, all the objects of fear and phobia that have returned with such insistency to haunt the imaginations of those who have tried to stake out spaces to protect their health and happiness. Indeed, space as threat, as harbinger of the unseen, operates as medical and psychical metaphor for all the possible erosions of bourgeois bodily and social well being. The body, indeed, has become its own exterior, as its cell structure has become the object of spatial modeling that maps its own sites of immunological battle and describes the forms of its antibodies.”

— Anthony Vidler, excerpt from, The Architectural Uncanny