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Politics of dissensus in geographies of architecture: Testing equality at Ed Roberts Campus, Berkeley
Author(s) -
Kullman Kim
Publication year - 2019
Publication title -
transactions of the institute of british geographers
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 2.196
H-Index - 107
eISSN - 1475-5661
pISSN - 0020-2754
DOI - 10.1111/tran.12276
Subject(s) - politics , architecture , identity (music) , sociology , power (physics) , order (exchange) , destabilisation , identity politics , law and economics , political science , law , aesthetics , social psychology , economics , psychology , history , philosophy , archaeology , physics , finance , quantum mechanics
This paper evokes the writings of Jacques Rancière to propose a concept of politics for geographies of architecture that is attentive to the polemical conditions under which more equal ways of composing built environments emerge. Discussing Ed Roberts Campus, a building designed and operated by the disability community in Berkeley, California, it argues for a politics of architecture that does not entail conflicts over power or identity, but revolves around a testing of materials that alters the bodily circumstances built form offers for collective inhabitation. Such testing sets in motion an uncertain process where a building undergoes constant destabilisation by new claimants who verify and expand its equality. The paper then counterpoises this disruptive politics to institutional practices in order to investigate how its fragile after‐effects might be sustained.