Thinking Architecture with an Indian Ocean Aquapelago

Abstract

This article takes up the charge of thinking architecture with one of the Indian Ocean’s central coral atoll formations, the Maldives archipelago. It is undertaken as a critique of the concept of the archipelago as deployed in architecture since the 1970s. Architects have used the archipelago as a metaphoric metageographical concept based on a land–sea binary, to conceive of architecture as autonomous from its environments. This permits the discipline exemption from its contexts and frames its engagement with the diverse mobilities of contemporary globalization. To counter this, the article draws from a broad body of literature familiar to readers of GeoHumanities, namely island studies, urban island studies, political ecology, and thinking with water, to undertake a reading of the Maldives as an oceanic aquapelago, as an alternative metageographical concept for architecture in today’s globalized world.

本文负责透过印度洋的核心环状珊瑚岛之一——马尔代夫群岛的形成来思考建筑。该工作对建筑学自1970年代开始部署的群岛概念进行批判。建筑师们根据土地—海洋的二分，利用群岛做为隐喻的元地理概念，将建筑设想为独立于其环境而存在。这样使得该学门得以从其脉络中抽离，并製定其在当代全球化的多样流动中之涉入。为了抗衡上述概念，本文运用《地理人文主义》的读者所熟知的大量文献，亦即岛屿研究、城市岛屿研究，政治生态学，以及与水共同思考，从而将马尔代夫解读为海洋的水群岛，提供作为当今全球化世界中的建筑的另类元地理概念。

Este artículo asume la tarea de pensar la arquitectura con una de las formaciones centrales del atolón coralino del Océano Índico, el archipiélago de las Maldivas. La tarea se emprende como crítica del concepto de archipiélago como se usa en arquitectura desde los años 1970. Los arquitectos han usado el archipiélago como un concepto metageográfico metafórico basado en el binario tierra-mar, para concebir la arquitectura como autónoma de su entorno. Esto permite la exención de la disciplina de sus contextos y enmarca su compromiso con las diversas movilidades de la globalización contemporánea. Para contrarrestar esto, el artículo se apoya en un amplio cuerpo de literatura familiar para los lectores del GeoHumanities, o sea estudios insulares, estudios de la isla urbana, ecología política y el pensar con agua, para emprender una lectura de las Maldivas como un acuapelago, como alternativa del concepto metageográfico de la arquitectura en el actual mundo globalizado.

Key Words:

• aquapelago
• archipelago
• architecture
• island, Maldives

• 水群岛
• 建筑
• 岛屿
• 马尔代夫

• acuapelago
• archipiélago
• arquitectura
• isla
• maldivas

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

The author gratefully acknowledges Ghaanim Mohammed, Dean of the Faculty of Engineering Technology at the Maldives National University; the speakers at the Fluid Archipelago Symposium, Male, November 2015; opportunities to present draft versions of this article in Johannesburg, Newcastle, and London; and the three peer reviewers, in response to whose comments this article was greatly improved.

FUNDING

The author gratefully acknowledges financial support from the Faculty of Architecture and the Built Environment at the University of Westminster for travel to the Maldives to undertake the research for this article.

Notes

1. As remarked by Smithson, “It seems that architects build in an isolated, self-contained, ahistorical way. They never seem to allow for any kind of relationship outside of their grand plan” (Smithson 1973, cited in Moe 2014, 5).

2. In the Maldives, radiometric calibration of ages from three reef cores have shown that present sea level was first achieved 4500 BP, followed by a late Holocene high-stand of 0.5 m to 1 m between 4000 and 2100 BP, before it fell again to its present level (Kench et al. 2009).

3. Polyps provide the algae with a protective environment and the carbon dioxide and water they need for photosynthesis. In return, the algae provide the polyps with oxygen, glucose, glycerol, and amino acids derived through photosynthesis. The polyps use these nutrients to produce proteins, fats, carbohydrates, and calcium carbonate and to expel their wastes. This forms the skeletal structure that provides the algae with a protective environment and the carbon dioxide and water they need for photosynthesis (National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration 2008).

4. The warmer sea temperatures associated with the 1998 El Niño event caused extensive bleaching in the Maldives, killing 98 percent of its shallow reefs (Hoegh-Guldberg 1999).

5. Coral survives in temperatures of 18°C to 29°C. Average surface water temperatures in the Maldives, as per daily satellite readings, currently range from 27.7 ^oC to 30.4° C (World Sea Temperature 2016).

6. This appeared in a brochure I was given in Hulhumale in November 2015 (Beach Club Watr Sport 2015).

7. By neoliberal, I refer to the ideological shift from state-led development to a procapital bias that limits state regulatory capacities and supports privatization, relying on governments to facilitate capital expansion. For a comparative study in Cyprus and Trinidad and Tobago see Karides (2013).

8. This does not include the large expatriate work force now residing in Male, according to the Employment Ministry amounting to 77,455 registered expatriate workers in 2006 (Faisel n.d.).

9. In an environmental impact assessment report for Hulhumale Phase 2, “borrow site” and “burrow site” are used interchangeably to designate the area of a lagoon identified for dredging. It is not clear whether this is a typographical error or not, but even if it is, both are interesting. In later reports, “borrow site” appears to have become the preferred term (Zahir and Sattar 2015).

10. Takaful is an insurance concept based on Islamic commercial law, a cooperative system in which contributors share risk through a fund to which they contribute regularly.

Additional information

Funding

The author gratefully acknowledges financial support from the Faculty of Architecture and the Built Environment at the University of Westminster for travel to the Maldives to undertake the research for this article.

Notes on contributors

Lindsay Bremner

LINDSAY BREMNER is Professor and Director of Architectural Research in the Department of Architecture at the University of Westminster, London NW1 5LS, UK. E-mail: [email protected]. She has recently been awarded ERC Starting Grant (no. 679873) to investigate the urban monsoon in three South Asian cities: Chennai, Delhi, and Dhaka.