1. il-ġebla
english translation: the rock
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the golden days
& the living is easy
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hands hard at work, hands flowing like the waves
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meditating megaliths
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castles in the sky
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incisions & remains
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a man-made crevice slicing through time
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geological time is written in the rocks
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a geological playscape
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dust settles upon a lunar landscape
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glittering seas
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2021
looking for patterns in a scattered landscape
weaving new narratives from the disparate fragments left behind... it was the age of uncertainty, things changed slowly then all at once. we could all sense a new era on the horizon; so we distracted ourselves with the task of picking up the pieces, jumbling them up, & trying to form new patterns.
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how to befriend a rock
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like floating white clouds on the horizon
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sirens who grew legs & climbed ashore
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we are made of the same limestone we lie on & the sea we swim in, their particles forever infused within our bodies
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the island which shapes us, such that we follow the same curves
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wrapped in dappled sunlight as we lay beneath the olive tree branches
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boulders eroded slowly by the incessant soft kisses of the sea
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ta’ rita
landscapes of infrastructure
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2020
living in rocks by the sea
that summer the pandemic hit, we were like creatures crawling out of our homes to claim our own slice of seaside & sunshine
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carved by water nymphs
as summer draws to a close, the coastal realm slowly becomes an uninhabited shell as we retreat to the island’s centre, leaving a string of traces behind
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appendages of the coastline / human deposits
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the architecture of inhabitation
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the new doric
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is-simenta: what if islands just floated on the sea like rafts?
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kappella fuq kemmuna
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lunar landscapes
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coastal extractions
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fairy pools to bathe in
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grottli telgħin mal-blat
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dwellings, like seashells, cling onto the rocks & allows us to curl up in them
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earth moulded by sea & sky
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olive-picking & spiru
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flower bed
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the inhabited pathway
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2019
more stories from a limestone isle
reading the tales embodied within the rocks
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ode to the sister island
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2018
upon returning to the rock
i experienced a newfound sense of what it means to come home. suddenly, the landscape i previously believed to be dull & uninspiring was emerging as an exciting & novel form, begging to be discovered. the rocks looked different now. their colour no longer appeared homogenous but lured me in, tempting me to wrap myself in their honey-coloured hues.
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pater & rock:
the smooth back of one against the rough face of the other.
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2017
disposable daydreams
sweet memories of strawberry fields in early summer
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2. somewhere in the mediterranean
it’s not just a place, it’s a feeling
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all streets in santa flavia lead to the sea… a dream-like town which materialises when least expected & refuses to be found when you seek it
2022
sicilian roadtrips
il dolce far niente & other lessons on how to savour life
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lido livin’
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lonesome petrol pump
some photos you don’t manage to take
live in your head forever…
until you do
destinazione: caletta sant'elia
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an unexpected encounter
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destinazione: isole egadi, favignana & levanzo
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visions of the coastline:
stairs leading from the sea to an ancient fortress under which limpet-collecting nonni crawl
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visions of the coastline:
when we cut into the land, are we making the sky bigger?
visions of the coastline:
cuts and protrusions in the rock seducing the sea to kiss it
children playing in forgotten quarries emulating ancient temple ruins
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destinazione: cefalù
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breakfast beneath the fig tree
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beneath la rocca
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destinazione: scopello
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goddess of the sea
i faraglioni
destinazione: alimena
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a little town right at the centre of sicily with a hill, at the top of which the rest of the island is laid out beneath you like a map
destinazione: noto
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a convent airing its dirty laundry
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destinazione: ortigia, siracusa
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destinazione: ibla & ragusa
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garden of the gods, suspended amidst the clouds
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destinazione: scoglitti
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destinazione: scicli
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a town tucked away in a crevice overlooked by a monastery
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cicadas chirping, the scent of fig leaf wafting on the hot summer breeze, winding roads between the olive trees as we traverse southern sicily
destinazione: agrigento
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buried within the city walls,
a city of the dead exists encircling that of the living
an archeological daydream
destinazione: scala dei turchi
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a cloud-like cliff emerges from the glistening water
destinazione: modica
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2021
a day by the lake
a foggy arrival, a lakeside lunch, a hidden pasageway to the sea, watching children play as they climb onto a rock, a boat left to enjoy the lapping of the waves onto the shore, two hundred steps to a secret beach where we skim pebbles across the mirror-like lake. a sun-drenched hotel, a golden hour walk catching glimpses across the water, a cypress-lined odyssey, overhearing conversations while watching the sun set, lying on a dock as it bobs with the waves, watching the ducks as the sun paints the sky red before sinking beneath the mountains.
destinazione: varenna
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2019
from one island to another
time flows differently under the sicilian sun
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destinazione: ragusa
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destinazione: ibla
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abandoned industry / would-be roller coaster
destinazione: taormina
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the city which clings to the side of a hill
2018
nel sud
the approach of summer called for one final trip down south; a week-long adventure with just one small backpack, travelling from place to place & meeting friends along the way. the goal was simple: eat as much good food as possible, soak up plenty of sun & sea, and appreciate every second of italian summer.
southern italy is a fantasy in which beach carnival meets ancient ruins. hot-tempered motorists zip through the same streets where children play. i kept expecting the vessuvio to blow at any second, bursting in the loud heat , covering the whole region in san marzano tomato sauce.
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destinazione: ischia
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destinazione: napoli
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destinazione: sorrento
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bagni della regina giovanna
destinazione: positano, amalfi coast
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destinazione: roma
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2018
train rides across northern italy
via lecco, 22, appartamento 2
catching the last metro home, tram parties, eating pizza on the floor while drinking wine, cremino ice cream at navigli, learning how to ride a bike while tipsy, 5pm spritz aperitivo, lying on the grass in the sun in sempione, eating chocolate doughnuts in the lidl parking lot with my favourite people, cutting my hair short, the sound of a trumpet & children playing streaming in through the open window.
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origine: milano
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spontaneous visits & waking up for coffee
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an unheard exchange; that conversation must still be stored somewhere within those glowing walls
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destinazione: torino
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destinazione: verona
destinazione: bergamo
destinazione: portofino
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walking to portofino along the coast feels like a sacred pilgrimage
destinazione: sestri levante
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destinazione: sirmione
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swimming below the ancient ruins @ lago di garda
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destinazione: lago di mergozzo
the lake under the hill
destinazione: cinque terre
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solo hike between the towns of the cinque terre, the melody of an accordion floating on the breeze, stopping for a dip at every village
destinazione: venezia
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4. ongoing travelogue
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2022
a spontaneous trip to this magical city to fulfill all our croissant & baguette dreams
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2021
easa / serbia... finally together again; frolicking through fields full of wildflowers, embracing, meaningful conversations with new friends
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2022
a parisian getaway
a spontaneous trip to this magical city to fulfill all our croissant & baguette dreams
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2021
kragujevac
easa / serbia... finally together again; frolicking through fields full of wildflowers, embracing, meaningful conversations with new friends
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2019
trpejca
incm / macedonia... like a migrating flock, we gathered in trpejca, a quiet lake-side community which we cohabited with its welcoming villagers
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2019
lisboa
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2019
villars-sur-ollons
easa tourist / switzerland; inalpe / désalpe
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a staircase draped across the hills
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2019
riga
one too many black balsams later... mid-winter
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2018
croatia
re:easa in rijeka
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2018
københavn
exploring botanical gardens, museums & planetariums, swinging in a hammock at the cherry blossom festival, being greeted by the smell of truffle at every corner, taking a wrong turn onto the bicycle snake bridge and flying over the city in our trusty box bike. copenhagen stole our hearts & filled our tummies.
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grundtvig's church
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2018
u-bahn state of mind
picture the urban mass that is berlin
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bauhaus
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2017
valencia
shot on disposable
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5. commissions
2024
qolla / arzella / kresta
3d printed lamps inspired by coastal geological formations
commission for sforma studio by clara azzopardi
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2024
an eternal holiday
handmade ceramics from portugal
commission for motel a miio
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2024
trails in gold
jewellery inspired by island-life
commission for swedish jewellery brand bon isla
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trails in gold i
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trails in gold ii
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honey-drizzled dreams
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nodes on a reed like rings on a finger
2024
of places yet to be
casa fortuna & its becoming
commission for daniel xuereb
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portrait of a house & the person behind it
“
O Fortuna,like the moon
you are changeable,
ever waxing,
ever waning,
hateful life
first oppresses
and then soothes
as fancy takes it;
poverty
and power
it melts them like ice
”
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2022
of places lost & imagined
id-dar ta’ mary vella & the stories interwoven within it
commission for luke dimech
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“When you turn and look back down the years, you glimpse the ghosts of other lives you might have led; all houses are haunted.”
- Mantel, 2003
“
Every so often, if we’re lucky, we are struck with what Virginia Woolf called ‘moments of being’. I say ‘we are struck with’ as opposed to ‘we come across’ because that’s what it feels like, or rather, that’s what it has felt like to me. Not quite a slap in the face, nor some divine revelation. You are suddenly faced with a reality that seems almost new, though in the light of that newness everything seems realer and clearer than ever. Who you are. Where you are. Who you are with.
This house, this space that was occupied by my family for decades struck similarly every time I stepped into it. This house was, IS, central to my existence. I feel that everything I am has only been made real through this house. Every single person that has occupied it - the people born, the people that passed on, the people cared for, the meals cooked and eaten around the tables, the oranges picked peeled and savoured, the jokes told and laughs had. The chairs so worn in by the weighty bodies that claimed them they’re dented. Their seats now leather craters made by great buttocks… great-grandparent buttocks. This house, which I’ve always known as Aunty Mary’s house, is a moment of being in itself, this house makes us all real. This is where my grandmother grew up, this is where my father spent a fair deal of his childhood. This is from where we’ve inherited our sense of humours, our love of food, our appreciation for gathering around a table and being together as a family.
But any moment is fleeting, every moment has an end. And unfortunately this one is nearing its end, at least in the physical realm. This moment of my family’s life shall live on in our memories and in our blood. It is part of our inheritance for many more decades to come. Ths is a testament to what the house was and what it meant to us, but also to the lives that filled it and the purpose it served.
‘Id-dar ta’ Aunty Mary’ is still standing, though not for much longer. I will forever be grateful to have been one of the many to haunt its rooms, even if for a brief moment of being.
But any moment is fleeting, every moment has an end. And unfortunately this one is nearing its end, at least in the physical realm. This moment of my family’s life shall live on in our memories and in our blood. It is part of our inheritance for many more decades to come. Ths is a testament to what the house was and what it meant to us, but also to the lives that filled it and the purpose it served.
‘Id-dar ta’ Aunty Mary’ is still standing, though not for much longer. I will forever be grateful to have been one of the many to haunt its rooms, even if for a brief moment of being.
”
- words by luke dimech
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mary’s spot when peeling & savouring oranges after picking them fresh from the garden
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uncle victor’s spot & grandmother’s spot
“my dad tells stories of playing at this water pump as a child”
fresh from the garden
layers of a house
locking up
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1. the architecture of inhabitation:
transgressing the boundaries of formal architecture
2021
m. arch. dissertation
This dissertation challenges the notion that architecture can ever be complete, shifting the conversation
from ‘architecture as product’ to ‘architecture as process’ and effectively accepting that architecture is subject
to change.
The inhabitant can act as this force of change over the course of the building’s lifetime, making
it ‘living’ architecture.
Unfortunately, formal or conventional architecture tends to forget this, negating the
dweller’s inhabitation and agency as a valid contribution to architecture. Instead, it perceives the dweller as
a contingency, reducing the creative inhabitant to a generic user in an attempt to create a false sense of
stability and completion.
However, inhabitation and dweller agency produce their own architecture: the architecture of inhabitation.
If to inhabit is to create and to contribute by means of this agency, then to inhabit is inevitably to transgress
the boundaries of formal architecture.
While designing with people rather than for people is a step in the right direction, it is imperative that we seek ways to facilitate designing by people.
In emphasising process over product, the dissertation itself is very process-driven. Structured in an inductive manner, different parts of the study continuously loop and feed into each other reciprocally.
Different sources of data (literature, observation, and interviews with dwellers and professionals) are layered onto each other and triangulated to ensure the validity of the study.
Rather than oversimplifying the formal and informal as a binary condition, it is essential that such concepts are understood along a spectrum, recognising hybridisation instead of difference.
Agency, defined as the creative action of individuals to induce change, also varies across the spectrum.
The study recognises that inhabitation and transgression of formal architecture occur across a spectrum. While this is not a dissertation about boathouses, the boathouse serves as a means of exploring agency & inhabitation within the local context. In most cases, the boathouse serves as a secondary seasonal dwelling, verging closer towards the ‘informal’ and inhabitation.
The three fieldwork locations, selected based on the largest number of boathouses and area, are Armier, St Thomas Bay, and Mellieħa (beneath Gerbulin Area and Santa Maria Estate). The three sites too exist along a spectrum in terms of their origins.
Such settlements are situated by coastal peripheries. On an island, we are even more susceptible to categorising land and sea as a duality; however, the transitional space between the two opens new opportunities of hybridity. Their marginal setting endorses freedom, endowing such in-between realms with a sense of otherness.
Thus, the coast emerges as a forgotten fantasy open to all possibilities while tempting playfulness and transgression. “A border is an undefined margin between two things. ... It is an edge. To be marginal is to be not fully defined” (Levy, 1993, p.73). The gaps which open up at such edges allow the inhabitants to claim them as their own and make a space for themselves.
At the boundary between land and sea, we play with the boundaries of architecture. Its peripheral qualities make the coastline a space where terms such as ‘architecture’ and ‘architect’ can be contested and negotiated, boundaries are transgressed, and formal distinctions are blurred.
The dwellers interviewed welcomed me into their homes and shared their life stories with me. They acted as co-researchers in this study. The social connections formed with the participants was one of the most meaningful outcomes of this research.
thematic discussion
Theories of liminality suggest a continuum between creating and experiencing space. Such a reconceptualisation of architectural time hints at the idea that completion is an illusion, constituting only a single moment in a building’s lifetime and signifying its beginning rather than its end. Redefining architecture as ongoing and unfinished accepts it as a never-ending work-in-progress open to incremental change.
The unending evolution of dwellers’ needs and wants manifests as a succession of changes and adaptations of space through inhabitation.
Outward extension represents extended dwelling as a gesture of life pouring onto the street.
The transition from impermanence to permanence connotes improved resilience, comfort, and liveabilityas part of gradual change. The initial state of impermanence is usually strategically executed for the sake of quick appropriation and claiming territory until it is secured and made more durable and habitable.
Extended living and accumulated permanence imply all kinds of ancillary functions and integrated facilities as the boathouse accrues a myriad of appendages. These appendages can be interpreted as inevitable traces of living, creating a secondary village of support
structure as a consequence of human deposits and accretions clinging onto the coast.
As part of an ongoing process, maintenance is treated as a seasonal ritual, symbolising the care & dedication invested in one’s space.
Visiting the sites across different times of year allowed seasonality to be explored in terms of what remains. Once most of the population relocates back to the primary dwelling in winter, the settlement empties, like a mollusc that migrates leaving its shell behind.
The residual appendages range from metal frames stripped of their enclosures, to folded chairs seemingly-forgotten in the parapett and patiently waiting for their inhabitants’ return.
The fallacy of passive users incapable of transforming space must be replaced by the notion of active and creative dwellers who are able to not only change an existing space and its meaning, but to create a new space themselves. This potential to contribute to one’s environment is the essence of agency.
As humans, we experience an innate urge to make stemming from the “latent architect” within each individual. This instinctive capability and creativity should not be inhibited, but developed further.
Thus, “the [dwellers]’ experiences construct the architecture as much as the architect”
(Bo Bardi, n.d., as cited in Sara, 2013, p.54).
Dwellers’ agency and contribution are explored along a spectrum.
When questioned about their spatial contribution to the boathouse, most dwellers proclaim that as far as they are able to do so, they will create and adapt the space themselves. This in itself allows them to develop their skills and abilities, additionally imbuing the space with passion and pride. Moreover, the boathouse grants more liberty in fulfilling their wishes than the primary dwelling as the absence of regulations compels people to experiment and contribute to architecture. Personal contribution to the boathouse encourages dwellers to self-inscribe and weave their own narratives within space, infusing the process of caring for their boathouse with meaningful memories.
If inhabitation intrinsically entails creative agency and contribution to a greater or lesser extent, then to inhabit is to transgress. The conscious exclusion of inhabitation insinuates that formal architecture is choosing to ignore an elemental fact of life: an unavoidable and often subconscious manifestation of living and dwelling.
At one end of the spectrum, one may question how dwellers, as creative agents, inhabit and possibly transgress formally designed space, i.e., designed by an architect. At the other end of the spectrum, one could explore how people transgress the boundaries of formal architecture by creating architectural space themselves. This verges deeper into the realm of bottom-up architecture and extends the notion of inhabitation beyond the occupation phase to the stages of design and construction too.
Inhabitation, being an inherently transgressive act, can be framed through deterritorialisation as a process of breaking away from patterns of living conditioned by space, and reterritorialisation through which people find their own patterns.
The boathouse is well positioned to explore de/re-territorialisation as it is not always a predefined building which is then appropriated, but it is itself a process of appropriation.
Affordances define potential actions and meanings relative to space, hence affecting one’s agency. An environment offering restricted affordance demands more energy to resist and re-establish patterns. On the other hand, the boathouse is open to appropriation, affording infinite ways of engaging, manipulating, and inhabiting. The spectrum of affordance and agency between boathouses and apartments was conjointly studied in the researcher’s Thesis Project alongside this dissertation.
The remoteness of the boathouse lends itself to the sense of escape or żvog (release/escape) it exudes. The routine and everyday problems entangled with the primary dwelling are all but forgotten when fleeing to the boathouse. Thus, the need for escape can also be read as a form of transgression.
In contemporary discourse, agency carries political undertones of protest, which need not be interpreted as negative; it is a claim for power. While agency can be political, it sometimes emerges as unintended power. Transgressive agency can materialise as an accidental by-product of inhabitation. After all, the agency of forming one’s environment is a primal and natural habit.
The reimagining of space from abstract container to space as active and socially produced was propagated by Lefebvre (1991). The liberation of our agency contributes to the creation and transformation of space, be it in terms of material or meaning. Thus, space as a social construct is dependent upon human action and agency.
The social relationships embedded within space make it politically charged and can be envisioned as “lines of power and agency written and unwritten in space” (Boano, 2013, para.16).
The political dynamics of space are also rooted in territoriality, a socio-spatial relationship by which people seek control over other persons and resources through the control of space.
The initial move in consolidating one’s territory involves setting boundaries to define one’s property and lay claim upon it. This first step of infiltration is facilitated by pre-fabricated components. Although such land-grabs are more controlled today, they are still visible towards the peripheral hinterland of such settlements at the borders with unoccupied territory, making for active zones of no man’s land in which boundaries are constantly negotiated. Once base-camp has been secured, the next phase involves further expansion and colonisation.
Under these conditions, space is produced in a scattered and fragmented way arising from spatial appropriation, which subverts space through unanticipated modes of inhabitation.
Appropriation is a political and transgressive act with the potential to create new space and meanings by the fluid redefinition of social space and innovative interchanges between the public and the private.
These gestures are often manifested through small traceable acts of production or transgression which can be read in space. “To live means to leave traces” (Bejamin, 1986, p.155), and it is these remnants and by- products of everyday life and dwelling that intertwine to create the rich narratives which enliven the architecture of inhabitation.
Ever-changing appropriation is enacted by a chess-like game with its own set of rules where domestic traces replace the usual pawns and bishops.
The material and meaning of social space is continuously made and remade, enacting its contested nature. Social negotiations and intersecting agencies partake in the endlessly active reconfiguration of space.
Apart from the ever-changing constellations of intentionally/unintentionally-politicised paraphernalia varying from potted plants, dining sets, and barbecues, to laundry, vehicles, and chalked hopscotch, space is also appropriated by parapetti and canopy structures, some of which evolve into external living rooms with the finishes and fixtures to match.
Apart from uncovering the unwritten rule sof negotiation, such manifestations also represent a sense of tolernce which is missing in most urban settings today.
Boathouse communities make basic human nature perceptible by hosting slightly more extreme conditions to reveal otherwise-unclear human patterns and behavioural code. The concentration of life in such settlements distils how all of us inhabit and dwell.
Despite their apparent chaos and lack of top-down control, bottom-up settlements exemplify an emergent order and capacity to self-organise emanating from a “multiplicity of small acts” (Ceridwen et al., 2013, p.214). It is by virtue of this meshwork of productive forces that the community can collaborate in the collective construction of its spatial identity.
Collaborative agency can build community just as much as it builds dwellings.
These tightly-knit networks are revealed in the community-based system of supply and knowledge; it would seem that dwellers are a lot more dependent on each other in boathouse communities.
Communal agency provokes self-organisation, perhaps most apparent in activities organised by the community itself, many a time quite spontaneously. Perhaps the sense of community is strengthened by the common threat of eviction and mutual transgression.
Such settelemts tend to feed into the myth of an ideal community. furthermore, links with traditions, family, & religion act as tropes in attempting to legitimise their existence & indicate the politico-kinship basis of Maltese society.
The origin of architecture and dwelling is often attributed to caves, nests, shells, and other forms of shelter which inspired the first signs of building by man, heralding stories of the primordial hut. However, the genesis of dwelling is frequently reduced to the need for physical shelter, overlooking the sheltering of the soul linked to the psychological requirements of dwelling.
Like a nest for our embodied selves, the house materialises from the act of moulding the earth around our bodies. Hence, the house is not merely the built house, but it is created and adapted through inhabitation and experience: “One must live to build one’s
house, and not build one’s house to live in” (Bachelard, 2014, p.126).
Heidegger (1971) further defines the relationship between building and dwelling: “To build is in itself already to dwell” (as cited in Sharr, 2007, p.39).
The process of dwelling and actively transforming one’s context into a supportive habitat inherently bestows meaning upon those surroundings. When the people who make are the same as those who dwell in a place, it inescapably ignites feelings of embeddedness within that space and community.
Apart from adapting the environment to suit one’s needs, self-actualisation and self-expression emerge as important facets of this process. Home is both an extension and an expression of the self, whether consciously or unconsciously.
Uniquely personalised spaces and façades become the realm for differentiation through the expression of identity and pride. The outdoor space serves as the face shown to the outside world with the parapett acting as an inverted living room by putting the family on display.
Many boathouses express signs of resourcefulness, conveying practical adhocism, a process by which immediately-available resources are assembled in juxtaposition to fulfil a specific need. Leftovers from the primary dwelling are often recycled at the secondary boathouse in the form of architectural bricolage.
By acknowledging the dweller as a creative agent, this study questions
formal architecture and the agency of the architect. This is interpreted not as a threat, but as an opportunity to self-reflect as a profession while opening up architecture to include and enable the inhabitant and the everyday processes of inhabitation, generating new forms of hybridity and co-creation.
To further explore how architects can enable the architecture of inhabitation, we must understand that our involvement can range across a spectrum, from formal to more ‘informal’ approaches and contributions.
The proposed shift in mindset reimagines our own agency as architects as a conduit for dwellers’ agency and has the potential to transform our role by expanding our scope beyond building, simultaneously reprioritising humanistic motivations.
Thus, the notion of architecture beyond building introduces a new axis to the spectrum.
While realising that this is an ongoing conversation with no definite conclusion, initiating the dialogue is already a step in the right direction in exploring alternative ways of doing architecture.
The passion and motivation behind this dissertation have always lied in the potential recognised in individual human beings. This creative potential and agency should be harnessed as well as celebrated, not only as a productive resource towards architecture, but also as a human right by nourishing self-actualisation and fulfilment.
These sentiments have made me question what kind of architect I want to become and my own agency. On a personal level, this study has fuelled my desire to pursue socially-relevant work and has inspired me to make an effort to involve and empower the inhabitant as much as possible through my own agency while intentionally seeking to create the right environment for collaborative relationships to blossom.
May this serve as a reminder of why most of us were inspired to pursue a career in architecture to begin with, i.e., to help people. This seemingly-simple purpose has perhaps become overshadowed by a multitude of other factors, yet it is vital that people remain at the heart of architectural intentions. People’s direct involvement in the field could only serve to ensure this, thus reorienting our primary ambition towards helping people help themselves in the bettering of their lives.