Demolition to Expropriation

The timeline below shows the evolution of the site as outline in the city as body politic below.

Market Interrelations

The slides below show thee dependance of the markets upon the wholesale market and the knock on effects of its closure.

The City as a Body Politic

Occupation of public space as a political act has allowed a system of non-hierarchal government to entrench itself deep within the organizational and administrative operations of the occupy movement. As the process of occupation develops, the ephemeral nature of the protest camp, and its subsequent urban form, is superseded by a more permanent habitation. Through a combination of appropriation and expropriation of the city’s existing void spaces, a burgeoning new body politic evolves from the roots of the occupy movement.

One such burgeoning void space is that of the former bullring markets, once set for redevelopment under the big city plan. The demolition of the wholesale markets, as a result of managed decline and privatization, has a detrimental effect upon the indoor, outdoor and rag markets. As the relationship between produce (wholesale market) and trade (market) is severed, the market traders are unable to sustain and compete with the business model as it currently stands. As such they are forced to vacate the market infrastructure and trade elsewhere. This leads to the emergence of informal markets across the southern gateway site, adopting the nomadic/ephemeral tactics previous employed by the occupy protests.

The vacant market site then falls into disrepair as private investment stagnates and the state is forced to follow a policy of austerity imposed by the IMF/World Bank. The indoor market eventually has to be demolished as it falls victim to arson and is deemed unsafe. The occupy movement then decide to expropriate the Rag market building to ensure that it does not suffer the same fate. The threshold location and the nature of the internal spaces result in the building becoming the political heart of the movement. The now demolished wholesale market is adopted as a public space that forms counter-spectacle to that of the Selfridges commodity-spectacle. The informal markets relocate upon this threshold space. As a result of the amalgamation of Market traders and customers, innumerable small eating and drinking establishments emerge, becoming centers of sociality and politics.

The former rag market, as a house of government, then connects symbiotically with this heterogeneous space creating a relationship between the private, public and commercial spaces. This therefore creates a radically different spectacle to that of the Selfridges site to the north. It develops a counter spectacle, a public space for the public, the city as a body politic. 

Future History

Good link for inspiration and developing the context of the project:

http://www.futuretimeline.net/index.htm

Post-capitalist bank (?)

“Modern bourgeois society, with its relations of production, of exchange and of property, a society that has conjured up such gigantic means of production and of exchange, is like the sorcerer who is no longer able to control the powers of the nether world whom he has called up by his spells.” (Marx, Engels, 1848)

The project is the culmination of an investigation into protest as a construct of architecture and an ‘urban design’ exercise based in Birmingham’s southern gateway.  The Urban Synergies project envisions a scenario set in 2030, in which the Occupy movement (originating from Occupy Wall Street) has established a permanent presence - a shadow city (Neuwirth, 2005) in Birmingham in its quest for social, economic and political reform.

Founded in Marxist theories of dialectical materialism (philosophy of motion and change) (Trotsky, 1939) and value, and Guattari’s Three Ecologies (Guattari, 2000), the project explores the role of the bank in a post-capitalist society.

Guattari, F. (2000) The Three Ecologies, Continuum Publishing:  London.

Marx, K. Engels, F. (1848) Manifesto of the Communist Party

Neuwirth, R. (2005) Shadow Cities, Routledge:  London.

Trotsky, L (1939) The ABC of Materialist Dialectics

ABG Statement of Need

In the context of deepening recession and increased unemployment, the occupation of the southern gateway has come to a critical threshold by the year 2020:  the crossover from nomadic occupation of open space, to permanent habitation and formation of place.

The Occupy Movement has traditionally been given the label ‘anti-capitalist’.  However, whilst the majority of the movements protests takes on a somewhat socialist spirit, the issues against which the movement campaigns are actually diverse and wide ranging.  Money is not therefore to be ignored by the movement.  It has a purpose but for different ends.

The goals of the Alternative Banking Group are inextricably linked to the goals of the occupation, and other socialist groups. It is therefore agreed that a post-capitalist bank should form part of the permanent occupation of Birmingham's southern gateway, founded upon the following principles:

• Democratic decision making by the bank’s customers

• Accessibility to all

• Stability

• Non-profit

• Competitiveness

• Transparency

• Equality amongst its workers

In the same way the ABG will challenge capitalist banking methods and motives, the architecture of this new bank should challenge the traditional typology of a bank, and strengthen the ABG’s principles. 

Masterplan

“Southland wasn’t constrained by it’s material conditions. Instead the human spirit radiated out from the metal walls and garbage heaps to offer something no legal neighborhood could: freedom.” (Neuwirth, 2005).

The project explores the idea of protest as a construct of architecture, and the tension of threshold spaces. It is driven by economic and
political issues and is intended as a critique of consumerism and the kind of insatiable capitalistic thirst described by Mike Davis (1999).

An initial study into the void spaces of Birmingham’s ‘Southern Gateway’ has opened up the idea of Eutopia (literally ‘no place’) and how this could be reappropriated as a ‘shadow city’. Reading of Guattari (2000) has led to an investigation into how the existing skill-set of the labour force in Birmingham could be reappropriated leading to a new ‘creationist subjectivity’.

The project imagines a future scenario in the context of an ever-worsening jobs recession, the collapse of the European currency, and an increasingly polarised society. As global unrest escalates, the Occupy movement gains momentum and a nascent community forms, which relies on illegal occupation of the Southern Gateway’s voids (once set for redevelopment under the Big City Plan).

The threshold between the Bullring Shopping Centre and the site of the now demolished wholesale markets develops into a ‘soapbox’ area: A space for occupants of the shadow city to petition for their community to be acknowledged as a legitimate form of urban development.

With increasing ‘third-worldization’ of the UK, as seen with the squatter ‘cities’ of the developing world, in the absence of any alternative solution to homelessness and unemployment, the authorities are left will little alternative but to allow the Occupiers to remain and for a shadow city, with its own systems, infrastructure and economy, to develop.

David, M. (1999) City of Quartz, Pimlico:  London.
Newirth, R. (2005) Shadow Cities, Routledge:  London.
Guattari, F. (2000) The Three Ecologies, London:  Continuum Publishing, p41.