Where to build the walls that protect us

Abstract

Working at a tangent to Wrights & Sites' disrupted walking practices and the notion of the architect-walker, commissioned by Kaleider and funded by Arts Council England, Where to build the walls that protect us was an opportunity to imagine a future city. Originally focused on Exeter in 2013-14, the work was later reiterated for Leeds as part of Compass Festival 2016. Framed as an architectural charrette, participants experienced two distinct phases of activity: initially framed by a series of themed reconnaissance excursions; later followed by an iterative period of generating future-facing models of the city. Literal and poetic drift underpinned the work, for example, through the use of: • post-Situationist walking-art practices drawn from Wrights & Sites and others, e.g. Simon Pope's 'constrained drift', where geographical (or temporal) limits bound the scope of the journey; • strategic, location-specific encounters with 'experts' (whether professional, municipal or resident), as spurs to the imagination; • creative intervention into the process of city planning (Exeter was undertaking a consultation process about its new flood defence scheme at the time); • physical interruption of everyday city life, as unsuspecting members of the public suspended their A to B journeys and join in the reimagining of their city.