An Architecture of Easements - Transecting the Land of a Thousand Hills

You are cordially invited to attend the research seminar by Killian O’Dochartaigh:

Date: Friday, August 30th 2024

Time: 9:30 AM – 10:30 AM

Venue: SDE3 Level 4 LT 427

An Architecture of Easements – Transecting the Land of a Thousand Hills

The UN predicts that by 2050, 68% of the global population will be urbanized, with 90% of growth occurring in the Global South. Coupled with the global climate emergency, we must rethink how we design and build our cities and homes. There is a need to reintegrate communities with other species and their habitats to alleviate the consequences of socio-economic extractive models rooted in colonialism that have led to our current environmental crises.

This seminar utilizes the transect—a section drawn across the earth’s surface for observations and actions—to examine how post-conflict-built environments continue to segregate people from their landscapes. Through transectional inquiries, design techniques, and pedagogies, in dialogue with lived realities on the ground, we will collectively speculate on alternative, inclusive design futures across Rwanda, Sierra Leone, Liberia, and Northern Ireland.

The transect serves as a method for creating egalitarian, spatial, political, and ecological propositions for architecture. It is a transcalar and transdisciplinary model that, I will argue, helps practitioners navigate racial and cultural borders with historical, geographical, and political depth.

This seminar will attempt to outline culturally inclusive and critical design research practices for working with communities displaced by urbanization and development. It intersects architecture, landscape, urbanism, anthropology, and ecology, appealing to design students and professionals in humanitarian, post-colonial, post-disaster, and post-conflict contexts. It is particularly relevant for academics and architects aiming to integrate social and environmental justice into their teachings and practices in real-life contexts.

Dr. Killian O’Dochartaigh is a qualified architect working across Sierra Leone, Liberia, Rwanda, and Northern Ireland.  Through ‘Architectural Field Office,’ he researches how ‘development’ standardizes cities, settlements, and land-use practices, co-constructing class-ethnic conflicts, and explores how design can be used as a tool to address social and ecological injustice. His work, teachings, and research have been exhibited at the ICA and the Venice Architecture Biennale, and have appeared in Architecture + Urbanism, Architectural Review, MAS Context, and VOLUME.

He received the Frederick Bonnart Scholarship for his PhD at the Bartlett School of Architecture, which supports research on combating racial, religious, and cultural intolerance. He is currently an Assistant Professor of Architecture and Urbanism at the University of Edinburgh, where he coordinates the MSc in Architecture and Urban Design programme.