Discussing Futurity in Architecture
I was one of many architects in New York City and around the world looking forward to Reconstructions: Architecture and Blackness in America at MoMA this winter, curated by Mabel Wilson and Sean Anderson (Figure 1). What I didn’t know when I visited was that the architects offered more than an exhibition. Each project presented constituted a world of its own, extended into websites, films, and broader research projects. MoMA also organized a full online course with additional material.
Figure 1. View of Olalekan Jeyifous’s Frozen Neighborhoods, 2020, in the Reconstructions: Architecture and Blackness in America exhibition, MoMA 2021. Photograph by Jilly Traganou.
One of the most mesmerizing works in the exhibition was Frozen Neighborhoods by Nigeria-born, U.S.-reared, and Cornell-educated architect Olalekan Jeyifous. I spent considerable time absorbing the incredible details of its multimedia presentation (digital collages, animation, and sculptural objects), which made me feel as if I were inside an architectural science fiction film (Figures 2 through 5).
The story is based on a commonplace pattern: a Black U.S. neighborhood becoming dispossessed as a consequence of physical isolation imposed from on high. Ostensibly to reduce the carbon emissions, policy renders mobility a privilege for the rich, leaving residents of the fictional zone all but trapped. Olalekan, though, turns this morbid premise into an opportunity for imagining a new infrastructure of care and solidarity. Characterized by the familiar landscape of Black churches combined with new urban farms (Figures 2 and 3), farmers’ markets, and VR technologies for simulating travel, Jeyifous creates a new sense of vibrancy and wellbeing while transforming a low-income area into an autonomous, self-organized community.
Figure 2. Frozen Neighborhoods, photomontage 4, “Plant Seeds, Grow Blessings: BKLYN Interfaith Seed Vault,” 2020. Mounted renderings printed on Luster 260 GSM 40 × 30". Courtesy of Olalekan Jeyifous.
Most intriguing to me was how Olalekan’s project, in turning dispossession on its head, offers hope—foreshadowing the numerous “hyperlocal” mutual-aid programs which played such a crucial role addressing extreme systemic inequality after the COVID-19 pandemic. Frozen Neighborhoods, in this respect, reveals not just the power of architecture imaginaries but architecture’s capacity as a source of liberation. What might have seemed futuristic a couple of years ago, today feels realistic.
Recently I met with Olalekan to discuss the genealogy of his thinking and the methodologies of his architecture of futurity. What follows is a record of our conversation, edited for clarity and length.
Figure 3. Frozen Neighborhoods, photomontage 1, “Grand and Flushing: Farm + Freshwater Corridor,” 2020. Mounted renderings printed on Luster 260 GSM 72 x 48''. Courtesy of Olalekan Jeyifous.
Jilly Traganou (JT): Was this project prepared specifically for MoMA, and was the pandemic an inspiration for the idea of immobility as generator of a new type of communal life?
Olalekan Jeyifous (OJ): Yes and no. I started the idea earlier but during the pandemic I started walking around my neighborhood in Crown Heights, Brooklyn, taking photographs of different spaces, usually interstitial spaces between buildings, which included alleyways and other quasi-urban areas. Then I started to remix the images and create this reimagined Brooklyn settlement, based on ideas of self-organizing instead of external policing and control. But the overall concept of limited mobility and turning the subway station into a virtual gateway kiosk, was developed before the pandemic (Figure 4).
JT: During the pandemic we all experienced a version of the frozen neighborhood. But your project anticipated it at a time when it seemed improbable.
OJ: For me it wasn't. Everything that happened—the pandemic, the protest, the revolution (the uptick in conversations about race and the protests around systemic inequality that reverberated around the world)—are effects of systems. A lot of my work that's projected into the future imagines an exacerbation of contemporary realities and it just so happened that the pandemic occurred, and that that reality became much more present not just a future projection.
Figure 4. Frozen Neighborhoods, photomontage 3, “The East New York Greater Gateway,” 2020. Mounted renderings printed on Luster 260 GSM 40 x 30. Courtesy of Olalekan Jeyifous.
JT: I totally agree with you; often the lines between dystopia and utopia are blurred. What is interesting to me is that despite all of these structural impediments there is a lot of social power. In fact, it is informal urban systems and small-scale design interventions more than traditional architecture doing the work here. Is this the way you always approach architecture?
OJ: Yes. I'm always fascinated by communities. Particularly marginalized communities and how they're highly self-organized and have a lot of sustainable practices as a function of necessity but also ingenuity.
I also like the way that informal economies are not subject to failure like capitalist markets: the stock markets, the subprime mortgage collapse. In my mind self-organized communities, and the collective economics, will prevail when the system fails, and so I’m interested in the way architecture becomes a part of that system of community, food, health, and education, as opposed to architecture being projected onto communities or driven by a real estate market and profit.
For me, this architecture becomes much more organic in terms of its relationship to its inhabitants and the environment it occupies, and so there's a back and forth. Architecture in some instances disappears into a kind of wilderness and in others it evolves or becomes a mechanism for sustainable practices that go into the production of things like food. In my Frozen Neighborhoods project we see this with “MTA” (Main Threshold Access) kiosks, the virtual gateway that allows the community to “travel,” so to speak, beyond their confines, even though they are restricted in the area (Figure 5).
“Everything that happened—the pandemic, the protest, the revolution (the uptick in conversations about race and the protests around systemic inequality that reverberated around the world)—are effects of systems.”
Figure 5. Frozen Neighborhoods, photomontage 7, “TFN - MTA: A/C/E DOCK 4, Gateway Line,” 2020. Mounted renderings printed on Luster 260 GSM 30 x 40''. Courtesy of Olalekan Jeyifous.
JT: Do you work closely with communities, and do you see relationships between your work and social movements?
OJ: I don't have a social practice where I go in and discuss with the community. I am working through ideas which are more speculative. Sometimes the architecture that I'm producing is intentionally dystopian, so I can't directly involve a community. But there is a connection to communities and social movements because of the value of art and imagination. I’ve had communities reach out to me to come speak because they see something in the work that could be potentially viable, a model for a reality they might want to gravitate towards.
JT: Your work is also inspired by gaming, fashion, and other types of design. The way you’re moving between different modes, technologies, and media must be inspiring to a younger generation of architects. Did you have a lot of fun working on Frozen Neighborhoods with the variety of media it involved, transforming photographs of current conditions into imaginary universes?
OJ: Yes. I love world building, gaming, and imagined realities. Before COVID I wanted to have a VR experience in the show, but of course headsets were not allowed.
JT: I’m interested in how you your work fits into the broader movement of “futurity,” which involves a variety of design disciplines, even though it’s associated primarily with science fiction. As an architect, what are your methods and techniques for doing the work of futurity?
OJ: I'm looking at contemporary realities, the current political environment, and I try to highlight precedents for the future.
We know that marginalized communities often bear the burdens of society. Cities designate homeless encampments as unsanitary. “Blight” emerged through eminent domain, where they would bring a neighborhood to a condition beyond repair. Ostensibly it’s an environmental, safety, or health issue. But those are tactics used to take over communities.
My work amplifies those issues. In Frozen Neighborhoods, to reduce the carbon footprint government gives everyone a certain amount of “mobility credits.” It is supposed to be a good thing. But the reality is that in the free market context, it quickly becomes something that places marginalized communities at a disadvantage. These systems preserve freedom and access for those with money.
“We know that marginalized communities often bear the burdens of society.”
JT: In the 1980s, Blade Runner's representation of “extreme” urbanization modeled on Asia, especially Japan, motivated many architects to think of space in new ways. In your visions, which we might liken to a new Blade Runner, inspiration seems to come from the Global South. You were born in Nigeria. Is there is a dialogue in your mind between things you see there and the U.S.?
OJ: I was born in Nigeria, left at six, and I grew up in the States. But I've always been fascinated by megacities like Lagos. I think it’s slated to be the most populous city on Earth in less than a decade. That already makes it very futuristic to me, and it is a great place to think through the kind of architecture I’m interested in.
Japan and the U.S. are considered “highly developed” countries, and the perception of technological advancement is always through that lens, with materials like glass, steel, aluminum, new metals, and all of these shiny, hard edge surfaces.
I am interested in the use of local materials in the informal economy, in how slum settlements are developed. I like to imagine what would happen if there were technologies for expanding access to clean water. I'm very interested in presenting that alternative.
When I started creating this kind of imagery back in 2012 and 2013 people had not seen a juxtaposition between high-tech gadgetry and prosthetic devices with architecture in these settlement communities. It was very intriguing for people, because they hadn't considered technology looking that way, or that it could come out of the Global South (Figure 6).
Figure 6. Lagos Falomo Roundabout, 2015. Courtesy of Olalekan Jeyifous.
I also want to question architecture as many think of it in the West, with the pursuit of huge, massive buildings. Whose is the tallest luxury tower in Midtown Manhattan?! These projects are highly impactful on the environment. I’m thinking more in terms of impermanent or evolving structures that are very low impact, or sometimes not even structures at all!
JT: This reminds me of the work of AbdouMaliq Simone, the African urbanist who writes about “people as infrastructure.”
OJ: I was on a student design review not too long ago and a woman had a project on the South Side of Chicago trying to preserve a building that was deeply important to the community but not landmarked. But professional standards in historic preservation give little weight to how important a building has been to a community. It’s hard to get a building landmarked if it doesn't have a certain façade, a certain kind of ornamentation. In the Global South the importance is the community; people’s interventions in space.
“In the Global South the importance is the community; people’s interventions in space.”
JT: Your method of “remixing” and amplifying photographs to generate new forms and systems is at odds with conventional architectural production, which begins from the plan and the section. Can you tell me more about your practice?
OJ: Each practitioner has different ways of working. There are the ways I was taught at Cornell: the modern tradition of doing all of the due diligence around the study of the site, the neighborhood, its demographics, etc. Then you move into what your “parti” is and that becomes your guiding principle. I only briefly had a firm, with some classmates from 2008 to 2012, so that was really the only moment I was designing as a practicing architect.
My current approach says that while the general public believes that architecture solves problems, it is in fact at the mercy of a much more rigid system. The reality is having a client who's coming to you. And rarely are they not thinking eventually of profit: floor area ratios and how much rent they can charge per square foot.
JT: As practiced today architecture is a very conservative institution. Βut so is MoMA. Is the museum changing with exhibitions like this?
OJ: I’m not optimistic. Curators Sean Anderson and Mabel Wilson did a fantastic job of coming up with a strong theme, but it felt like we were renting space from MoMA and that the museum expected and wanted a more traditional show with models and drawings and possibly solutions. Also, the show perplexed a lot of people because it didn’t follow what they think architecture is. That was a challenge.
