This is an opportunity to shape public spaces and communities within your city.
Image courtesy of Cycle 4 Fellow klein MUIS.
The space in a city, framed by the various scales of the built environment, is often conceived according to logics of the control of the body. Space in the city is designed and built to control the location, behaviours, and relationships of bodies with each other. African cities are experiencing dynamics such as increasing urbanisation, shifts in response to the high pressures of imposed modernisation, changes in climate, and burgeoning populations, which increases the pressure on this control.
Despite this, there are spaces and communities that are reconsidering the logics of control by consolidating the material conditions of the physical city with the dynamics of the living city. Creatives engage with the built environment as an interpretive and alterable world and are poised to move it beyond its perceived confines. They engage with the built environment as the intersection and interaction of people and objects, spaces and material, and personal and shared identities. Their practices offer productive forms that align our city making with the constellations that our urban environments hold.
Are you an artist or cultural practitioner engaged with modalities of spatial examination or intervention in your urban context? We invite you to apply for Cycle 5 of Building Beyond.
Building Beyond is a multi-disciplinary programme that supports creative practices exploring how communities relate to each other and public space in cities, creating opportunities for collectively imagined realities.