Session 9: Where Even the Buildings are Frightened

3rd Global Conference

Saturday 19th September – Monday 21st September 2009
Mansfield College, Oxford

Fear Based Forms:Investigating the Role of Fear in Producing Architecture and Urban Environments
Abdulmuttalib Ballam
Department of Architecture, Kuwait University, Kuwait

What is the relationship between fright and Architecture? Was human response to fear, as a primeval internal instinct, a source of a prominent architectural artifact throughout the history of mankind? Can the congenial city experiences be raised out of our response to an apprehensive urban space? Can fearful spaces and forms be utilized by architects and urban designers as a tool to attract spectators? Could the splendor be the product of fright?

Current development in human related fields, such as biology, psychology, and sociology encourage architectural and urban scholars to investigate their historical and theoretical materials via profound understanding of social/individual hereditary and intuitive behavior. Scientists of biology are increasingly acknowledging the imperative role of primal instincts, such as fear, in protecting many species from extinction. Organisms equipped with a high-quality fear mechanism have better chance to survive natural process of elimination. Psychologists and sociologists are more convinced that such fundamental instinct is playing a major role in determining many basic human and social activities. It is time for architectural historians, equally, to investigate attentively the role of fear, as a survival mechanism, in shaping the history of architecture and urban design.

In general, this paper sheds light on the vital association between fear, as a protecting tool shielding human genetic materials from extermination, and the erection of significant architecture and urban environments. In discrepancy to many architectural historians, this document argues that many appealing cities around the world, specially the one rose during the Middle Ages, specifically in Middle East, have been the product of direct social reactions to imminent and possible threats. Essential reactions to fear of death, fear of an invasion of privacy, fear of losing supportive group member, and fear of assault from internal and external adversaries have led human to many significant architectural and urban features throughout history. Urban and architectural characteristics, such as, narrow alleys, sudden plazas, zigzagged streets, irregular road levels, unbalanced house layouts, dead-ends, and thick towered city walls are often the results of direct and indirect encounter of trepidation. Fear is one of the most poorly acknowledged sources of architecture and urban forms, and this paper is trying to overturn this state.

Everyday Fear: Parenting and Childhood in a Culture of Fear
Leanne Franklin
Loughborough University, United Kingdom

In a media fuelled society we are never far from hearing stories about paedophiles, abductions, recession and violent crime. The real world can often seem more terrifying than that portrayed in horror movies. While watching the news we eat our breakfast or relax with a glass of wine in the evening and listen to tales of body parts being found in fields and fathers imprisoning and abusing their daughters in the basement for decades. The symbolic world we are part of shapes our perceptions of the world around us and is enhanced by our material experiences of increasing individualisation anddecreasing community, while families are trying to shape new identities in a world where there are no clear roles for women and men, mothers and fathers (Simon, 2007).

Sociologists have suggested that contemporary society inhabits, possesses and produces a culture of fear created from an overarching anxiety about our fellow human beings and an uncertainty about the future leading to the adoption of fear as an ideology and protectionism as a political stance (Furedi, 2002; Glassner, 1999; Simon, 2007). The family unit is where this culture of fear can be seen most visibly as the relationship between adults and children, while historically always muddled with contemporary issues, is seemingly more complicated than ever. Child rearing is no longer a shared social responsibility, but is constrained to the immediate family while strangers are viewed with a mistrust that comes too easily. Parents are bombarded with advice from ‘experts’, often conflicting and regularly at the expense of their own instincts, and battle to walk the line between allowing their children to be ‘free range’ or ‘cotton wool’ kids. This paper aims to investigate the effect this everyday fear is having on parenting and childhood.

Download Draft Conference Paper (pdf)

The Horror of Imposition: An Exploration of Memory, Amnesia and Artistic Expressions
Carlo Brescia
Cultures and Development Studies, Katholieke Universiteit Leuven, Belgium

Human groups have collective memories. Memory is a social practice and sometimes we do not remember everything from our past. We tend to think that we have been good. This paper focuses on the shocking experiences that occurred during encounters with foreign ‘others’. Our main argument is that these shocking experiences sometimes lead to an eclipse of reason.

The three case studies we present are the imposition of ‘liberty, fraternity and equality’ in Spain by Napoleonic forces in the 1800s, the imposition of ‘civilization’ in Congo by the Kingdom of Belgium and the imposition of ‘commerce’ in Peru by the British-owned Peruvian Amazon Company, both latter cases beginning in the 1880s. It is important to note that these apparently exogenous impositions came with collaboration by endogenous actors.

In order to support the our argument we make use of different artistic expressions such as paintings by Francisco de Goya, literature by Joseph Conrad and photography by Roger Casement & Sammy Baloji.

After shocking experiences, the temporary solution for the perpetrators is collective amnesia. Nevertheless, if we do not acknowledge our complete past, we may be doomed to repeat history. We discuss that contemporary politicians such as George Bush and Nicolas Sarkozy symbolize this collective amnesia in their discourses. Instead of using myths such as ‘liberty’, ‘civilization’ and ‘commerce’, they now speak about ‘freedom’, ‘democracy’ and ‘development’. And, although time flows, the horror of imposition continues: the Battle of Algiers, the 9/11 in Chile and New York, and Blood Diamonds from Africa are just three examples.

Finally, the paper concludes that in order to stop this repetition of history, we must bring from our common past the entire story to the collective memory. The use of memorials is the permanent solution. Memorials can take different forms such as sculptures, films and performances.