I’ve just uncovered an exhibition at MIT curated by Tali Hatuka that ran from February 28th to June 9th back in 2008 on the connection between urban design and protest, or, between ‘voice’, ‘boundaries’ and the ‘appropriation’ of space:
The press release sums it all up in a nut-shell: ‘…visiting architect and urban designer Tali Hatuka, creates a laboratory for examining the socio-spatial dynamic of protest as a public dialogue between citizen and regime...[t]he exhibition also identifies key moments during protest when violence or contention unfold as the outcome, underlining the complexities of urban form, architecture and human reaction in a place and time of protest.
Luckily the website is still up and running for a look-around: urbandesign-civilprotest.com:
‘What makes citizens choose a particular form of protest? How does space function as mediator between these citizens and their political acts? Whose power and control drive negotiations between citizens and regimes during protests? As a laboratory for examining the socio-spatial dynamics of protest, the exhibition looks at the relationship between three themes: Boundaries, Voice, and Appropriation, as the key interrelated elements of protest, which become its Spatial Choreography. These themes are investigated, both separately and in relation to one another, as abstractions that re-position space as an actor in the discourse of protest’.
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