Response-ability: building together as performative political practice

Politics no longer works like the democratic ideal presumed it did. We need to find other ways of doing politics: not just representational and abstract, but situated and performative. Architecture can help us doing this. This project focuses on the situation of Reyeroord, IJsselmonde, Rotterdam. I propose a building process of three theatre typologies that provide a place for theatre as well as community gatherings. Using local building methods and materials, these three structures and their building process, aim to increase the response-ability of this place and its inhabitants. Through the building process, a "Skilled Practice involving Developmentally Embodied Responsiveness" (Ingold 2008) inhabitants learn new ways of relating to their environment, and by changing that environment, it becomes easier to respond to it. Building together can thus be a performative political practice, creating micro-kosmic instances of a reality as it could be, situated in the mud of a place, materials, bodies, thoughts and values. Even if this happens on a small scale, the experiences, agencies and skills emerging in this process will taken far beyond this immediate situation.Architecture, Urbanism and Building Science