Expression as Knowledge: Sustaining Cities Through Socio-Spiritual Construction

Matri-Archi(tecture)

This MA episode is a component of a written article which features a significant amount of images which we encourage you to visit in the original post at www.matri-archi.com for maximum understanding and relating. This episode focuses on the construction of west African city Djenne in Mali. The plastering process of applying mud annually in this comparatively rural city brings together its residents in a spiritual festival to physically participate. This episode speaks about participation, and the importance of treating spiritual activity as an important factor in spatial practice, through Djenne as a current example. The city of Djenne is a living city, that faces death in the case that its residents, its users, are no longer allegiant to its existence. This episode introduces themes of impermanence as African architecture. Furthermore, it describes not only the beauty of these participatory processes, but additionally, the sustainability and logic of these construction methods. This particular episode asks evocative questions, challenging and imploring traditional western architecture schools of thought to thinking with intersectionality at the core of context and construction to not only evolve local building, but to ensure that these cities do not disappear with a disappearing youth sitting on computers, where these forms of knowledge can sometimes only be stored in participation and demonstration. This episode is narrated and written by Khensani de Klerk; originally published as an article on February 4th 2018.