Photo by Andrew Renneisen/Getty Images
The Black Lives Matter protests from this Summer have demonstrated that the world we live in is still impacted by historical colonial narratives. We need to both reframe how we think of the past, as well as address its ongoing impact on the present. For this reason, 4 students at the TU Delft, including myself, decided to organise a workshop questioning our agency as architects relating to postcolonialism and social change.
Indeed, the built environment recounts stories and, much like a history book, it selects the truths it shares. Passerbys, more or less consciously, read a version of the past, without noticing what is not said, written or shown. As such, we will encourage workshop participants to identify which narratives are depicted in Delft and, more importantly, acknowledge those which are invisible to the naked eye.
The workshop consists of three parts, giving participants time to process the subject matter.
The first part will be a virtual tour through the historic city centre of Delft looking at the architectural manifestations of racism, colonialism and imperialism. The tour will focus on buildings from the Dutch golden age, during which the Netherlands' colonies were at the peak. The tour will be presented by Nancy Jouwe, a renowned cultural historian who has worked over 20 years on women’s rights, transnational movements, art, culture and heritage. She is actively researching the repercussion of slavery on the current environment and leads Mapping Slavery NL.
The second part will be a mini-lecture series focusing on Dutch horticulture and its manifestations in the Global South. Dutch companies have set up huge, cheaply built, greenhouses with thousands of underpaid employees and higher up positions are almost exclusively held by Dutchmen, reflecting the power dynamics at play.
We will invite journalist Romy van der Burgh to lecture on her research on tax avoidance by Dutch rose growers in Kenya. This investigation was informed by significant fieldwork in Kenya and was published this year in the Dutch press, such as the Groene Amsterdammer.
Boris Baars, one of the workshop organisers, will also give a lecture providing historic insight on Naivasha, a floriculture hub in Kenya, and the present-day architectural manifestations of Neo-colonialism. Boris, having lived in Kenya for 13 years, provides a good example of how one can reflect on past experience.
We will invite journalist Romy van der Burgh to lecture on her research on tax avoidance by Dutch rose growers in Kenya. This investigation was informed by significant fieldwork in Kenya and was published this year in the Dutch press, such as the Groene Amsterdammer.
Boris Baars, one of the workshop organisers, will also give a lecture providing historic insight on Naivasha, a floriculture hub in Kenya, and the present-day architectural manifestations of Neo-colonialism. Boris, having lived in Kenya for 13 years, provides a good example of how one can reflect on past experience.
In the final event, participants will be asked to reflect on the impact of these themes on both architecture as a whole, as well as on their graduation thesis topic.
Work in Progress