Close
search
Un-built
Imaginary
Interviews
Acts of Resistance. Place and policymaking in the Danube Delta, Romania
A conversation with Tea Marta on her field investigation “Acts of Resistance'' analysing the political, social, environmental and cultural implications around the Danube Delta.

With its ecological complexity and abundance of resources, the Danube Delta - the mouth of the Danube River in the Black Sea, is allegedly one of the most successful rewilding projects in Europe, listed as a UNESCO Biosphere Reserve and World Heritage site. However, Western governance models for protected areas suffered disparate reinterpretations at national and regional levels. The caring process has been put under the authority of a corrupted ecological discourse that generally promotes regional political interests and faces strong resistance from local communities.

Developed within the context of the Bartlett School of Architecture, the project uses interdisciplinary research methods to investigate the possibilities of architecture as a catalyst for political change. Building upon the findings of two weeks of fieldwork conducted in Letea, the proposal translates local everyday experience, emphasizing the intricate relationship between people, place, ecology and power.

It is an architecture both of protest and deliberation. On the one hand, it accompanies existing resistance acts, exposing a governance mainly characterized by poor policy choices. It articulates the pressing need for a reconfiguration of the governance model, advocating for a participatory, bottom-up policymaking process. On the other hand, it seeks to bridge the gap between locals and authorities by hosting localized debate spaces, where international, national and local involved bodies engage with the context they affect.

1/4

KOOZ What prompted the project?

TM As part of the Romanian diaspora, I always found myself somewhere in between the European "West" and the European "East", grappling with issues of cultural identity, social memory, and belongingness. As a result, my work stems from a need to bridge the socio-political and cultural disparity between the two by using architectural activism to probe current social issues and demand social justice.

The contemporary West-East cacophony is very well reflected in the contradicting geopolitics of the Danube Delta, a symbol for the clash of international green ambitions with national political interests. Since the fall of the Communist regime in Romania in 1989 and as a consequence of the massive environmental destruction imposed on the region during Ceaușescu's administration, the Danube Delta has become the focus of an international ecological discourse on biodiverse restoration.

However, due to both a lack of understanding of the community's needs as well as corruption at both national and regional levels, the creation and development of a new management plan for the area has since resulted in a long and exhausting process that raised a lot of issues. Moreover, international funds rarely reached their target enabling the association of the Danube Delta Project with large-scale fraud.

The contemporary West-East cacophony is very well reflected in the contradicting geopolitics of the Danube Delta, a symbol for the clash of international green ambitions with national political interests.

The project exploits this condition as an ideal site to start investigating notions of defiance and architecture with the ambition of questioning both the role of architecture in such politically fuelled locations and how architecture can itself give public voice and identity to fragile communities acting as both protestor and mediator in an international environmental dispute.

When first visiting the Danube Delta last winter, I soon perceived the little trust held in the current management scheme by the local community, whom although have repeatedly voiced their complaints are continuously ignored by the authorities. I noticed how intuitive, small-scale architectural strategies were frequently deployed to both survive the harsh conditions of the site and confront the absurdity of some of the imposed laws. I was intrigued by the creativity and peculiarity of these interventions and decided to go back and learn from these.

The fieldwork demonstrated the pressing need for a radical reinterpretation of the policies put in place in the Danube Delta to include local voices. By simulating and exaggerating current contradictory regulations and framing drastic environmental changes, the proposed architecture becomes the translation of local everyday experiences to start a political debate in the face of the Delta's rapid depopulation and ecological vulnerability.

The project explores the potential of the "architect" as a collection of multiple identities which include: the researcher, the translator, the artist and the activist.

KOOZ What questions does the project raise, and which ones does it address?

TM The project asks whether architecture can change societies and, specifically, to what extent can architecture contribute to the political and social evolution of corruption-torn countries such as Romania.The project investigates the architect's role in present Eastern European society and explores the potential of the "architect" as a collection of multiple identities which include: the researcher, the translator, the artist and the activist.

The project also demonstrates the urgency of using interdisciplinary research methods to produce more thorough architectural knowledge, detaching itself from the closed loop of name-dropping, general references, and quick intellectual appropriations prevalent in architectural research.

1/4

KOOZ What tools did you use when undertaking the two weeks of fieldwork? How did your finding inform the project?

TM Architects are very used to undertaking sitework, but I believe we are still very new to fieldwork. As Suzanne Ewing argues in "Architecture and Field/work",1 site and field are two different things: while the first one is fixed and non-reactive, usually a place upon which the architect projects their view and intervenes, the latter one is more fluid and capable of change, a place to learn from/in/with. Although fieldwork is mainly anthropological in its origin, Anthropology and Architecture are closely related and while the former seeks to comprehend human conditions, the latter is responsible for accommodating these very conditions. In this sense, I believe that a shift, within the design discipline, toward social and cultural sensitivity is crucial for a more inclusive and socially responsive practice.

Throughout the fieldwork, primary research tools as interviews, informal participation in daily local activities, field notes and time-based media, were essential in the collection of knowledge and in inducing me to distance myself from the architectural urge to instantly intervene on a site and embark on a more anthropological path of observation. Recalling observational filmmaking, the gathered material was then translated into a 7 min long video where verbal interviews would overlap with moving images.

The combined technique of filming and interviewing has allowed me to unveil a series of domestic and intimate acts of architectural relevance (portrayed in the documentary as the five acts of resistance).

As a medium which has the power to unveil and respond to the fluidity and the abstract conditions of the field, through film one can in detail unravel both the material and lived dimensions, bringing to light the subject's temporal, climatic, and emotional character. Film is simultaneously an inquiry tool and an aesthetic production that depends on and feeds back into the field. The filmed acts of Letea are thus assemblages of knowledge, having both a visual, a temporal and an oral quality attached to them and, consequentially, manage to reveal a more profound reading of place compared to more canonical sitework.

The combined technique of filming and interviewing has allowed me to unveil a series of domestic and intimate acts of architectural relevance (portrayed in the documentary as the five acts of resistance). The acts unfold through the film as a collection of subjective and inter-subjective expressions created between the inhabitants of Letea, their immediate biodiverse living environment and the policies that regulate this environment. The acts examine multiple levels of complexity: rooted in intimacy, they expand towards the social, ecological, and political realms opening a space for critical analysis and debate.

Combined, these individual recordings, create a “commons” specific to the place and circumstance. These anti-hegemonic commons, reflected in the region's broader social, ecological, and political scale, stands at the basis of the design approach.

KOOZ You talk about the project investigating the possibilities of architecture as a catalyst for political change. Could you expand on this notion further?

TM Architecture is not a passive actor. Buildings are political signifiers and the spaces which enfold around them, can instigate political action. The project challenges a way to assign political meaning to both the process of designing and the design itself - to make political architecture and architecture political.

Throughout the past few years, the inhabitants of the Delta have involuntarily ascribed political reading to various architectural elements and routines. An example of this can be seen in how, as a reaction to the confusion created by the international desire to preserve the Delta vernacular and the federal restrictions imposed on reed harvesting, traditional houses have recently started to feature (what I have come to call) a "double" roof. Current UNESCO regulations impose that the roofs of traditional houses should be built with reed, while at the same time, reed harvesting in the area is mainly prohibited. This collective confusion regarding what natural resources is available and in what quantities has resulted in counterproductive and almost absurd house maintenance routines, culminating with the appearance of the "double roof". Featuring the traditional thatched roof below and a second tin roof on top, the outer one serves for weather protection, while the one below is representative of traditional value. The tin roof gets dismantled and hidden away whenever tradition needs to be re-enacted (in most cases, when the Biosphere Authority conducts controls), revealing the old roof underneath.

The project challenges a way to assign political meaning to both the process of designing and the design itself - to make political architecture and architecture political.

This seasonal architectural performance can be read as an act of resistance with the appearance of this new typology being strictly political and coming from both a need to survive and to resist current regulations. The roofs of Letea have exceeded their mere function of offering shelter and have managed to become signifiers in an international dispute on preservation and cultural heritage. Personally, it was inspiring to see how communities with no architectural background have turned to architecture to protest - especially in a country still in the process of finding a protest culture after its socialist past.

Nonetheless, rules alter when directly addressing the relationship between protest and architecture, or architecture designed for protesting. Architecturally, these structures appear loud and symbolic and, looking to resistance strategies found in the field rather than conventional design methods, was more instrumental in helping inform a series of structures that might at first seem out of place but are the built expression of the place's political upheaval.

If, for example, one takes current fishing regulations, they exist as vague and contradictory, making it very hard for the local population (traditionally fishermen) to sustain themselves. There is a fixed daily quota of specific fish available to each family, regardless of the family members or the success/failure of the fishing day. Yet, fish is the primary food supply in the region pushing locals toward poaching and harming the protection of wildlife. The proposed "Fishing Dock" is designed in response to this condition as an evolution from the typology of the carrelet (fishing huts found along the Gironde Estuary). The structure is designed with two fishing arms which function as scales: to take one net out, you'll need to add the weight of the imposed daily allowance to the other, renderingthe structure both absurd and redundant by establishing a "fishing house that cannot fish" and, consequentially,exceeding its typological function and existing as a form of protest.

The other two structures were treated in a similar way. They emphasize illegal practices of reed burning or draw attention to the drastic environmental changes that affect the reed growing/harvest balance whilst keeping a programmatic identity as pavilions or stages for cultural events. Whether or not successful, all these structures frame existing critical issues that the community has long tried to raise while hosting the needed space for deliberation and negotiation. The proposed design is a composite of all the recordings collected in the field: it is weird, contradicting, desperate, sarcastic, and urgent.

KOOZ Between protest and deliberation, how do you imagine the proposal informing the future of the Danube Delta?

TM Looking to the near future, these structures operate as tools for the community to deploy in preparation for the next diplomatic conversations planned for the Danube Delta. The three proposed pavilions and the filmed material address the most urgent issues threatening the areas and they can hopefully serve as discussion points for a future bottom-up debate. Seeking to give a visual identity to the struggles and demands of the community, the proposals mimic and magnify the adverse effects of the policies currently put in place on biodiversity whilst presenting the community with the opportunity for self-organization and participatory governance.

Of course, one can’t anticipate how the community will deploy these structures. Still, one can hint at further uses of these to host events such as cultural festivals, debates, summer schools and exhibitions to attract and educate people on the region’s ecological, cultural and social complexity while sustainably supporting the local economy.

The three proposed pavilions and the filmed material address the most urgent issues threatening the areas and they can hopefully serve as discussion points for a future bottom-up debate.

On a larger scale, the Danube Delta project draws attention to the current issues of outdated governance models for environmentally protected areas. A more inclusive and participatory policymaking process is required to accommodate both humans and non-humans in their shared environment. Bruno Latour and Peter Weibel use the term “Critical Zone”2 to define the skin of the Earth, “a barely visible surface a few kilometres up and a few kilometres down”, which encompasses the totality of our limited world. Against the backdrop of global crises, they point out the necessity of finally “landing” on Earth, that is, to acknowledge and protect the shape of the land we reside on, including all entangled life forms and systems that populate it. Alternative processes of care between humans and non-humans, as well as a new “earthly politics”, have to be developed in order to sustain life on this newly discovered ground. The focus has to shift once and for all from our anthropocentric world towards a geopolitics of life forms and matter, where agency is shared among living beings and things. And so, a series of questions arise and they should be the basis of future research on the topic: how can architecture be part of this critical new form of “earthly politics”? What is its further role in the caring process, and how can it affect the intricate web of interconnected systems?

Bio

Tea Marta is an architectural designer and photographer based in London and currently working for Niall McLaughlin Architects. She holds a Master’s Degree in Architecture from the Bartlett School of Architecture and a Bachelor of Arts from the Academy of Fine Arts Vienna. Her creative practice crosses over the fields of architecture, art, anthropology, and photography with a focus on Eastern European societies.
The short documentary “Acts of Resistance”, developed as part of her thesis, was shortlisted for the Earth Photo Awards 2022 and exhibited at the Royal Geographical Society London. In addition, her photographic work has been exhibited in several shows in Germany and Romania.

Notes

1 Ewing, S. (2011) Architecture and field/work, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon.: Routledge
2 Latour, B. and Weibel, P. (2020) Critical zones: the science and politics of landing on earth / edited by Bruno Latour, Peter Weibel. Karlsruhe, Germany: ZKM Center for Art and Media

Interviewee
Interviewer
Published
28 Nov 2022
Reading time
12 minutes
Share
Related Articles by topic Student projects
Related Articles by topic Research for Action