Poisonless:a bare city, bright, the colours light and hard, the air pure. It was quiet." The Disp... more Poisonless:a bare city, bright, the colours light and hard, the air pure. It was quiet." The Dispossessed, Ursula K. Le Guin (1974) This is how Ursula K. Le Guin describes the city of Abbenay in The Dispossessed. It is modest and unassuming. It is quiet. This architectural restraint is jarringly at odds with predominant portrayals of the science fiction city. As noted by Graham (2016) and Hurley (2008) the future city has become synonymous with rapid vertical urbanisation, closing off alternative urban visions and the possible futures they contain. While there is a growing call for the study of sf by scholars in the spatial disciplines such as Abbott (2016), Collie (2011), Hewitt and Graham (2015) and Kitchin and Kneale (2002), the unassuming, everyday spaces of feminist sf are often lost in the shadows cast by the dystopian high rise. As Le Guin argues, these passive and participatory utopias become visible only when we 'adjust to a dimmer light' (1989). In response, this paper lingers in shared spaces of sf which are possible examples of what Washida Imarisha terms 'visionary fiction' which is sf that 'has a relevance towards building new, freer worlds' (2015: 4) including; N.K. Jemisin's Broken Earth trilogy (2015-2017), Sally Miller Gearhart's The Wanderground (1979) and Marge Piercy's Woman on the Edge of Time (1976). By imaginatively inhabiting the utopian enclaves within these feminist texts it is possible to explore geographies of alterity-to adjust to the dim light and learn to cherish the quiet.
Future Impermanent brings together workshops, discussions, performances and talks themed around s... more Future Impermanent brings together workshops, discussions, performances and talks themed around science fiction narratives and science fictional thinking. It aims to explore speculative methods of facilitating engagement, agency and a sense of responsibility regarding the issue of human impact on the natural world, to experiment with science fiction as a method of reading the social and environmental demands of the future. These speculations and experiments emphasise the importance of seeing science fiction as being grounded in the challenges of the present moment, while rendering that present impermanent
This article explores the role that science fiction (sf) texts might play in the museum, offering... more This article explores the role that science fiction (sf) texts might play in the museum, offering a perspective on acts of collection, curation, exhibition, and museum architecture, to ask what the museums of science fiction futures can offer those of us concerned with the role and responsibility of the museum in the present.It draws together methods, content and reflections from a workshop held at the Horniman Museum with art and curation students from University of the Arts London in 2019, which explored the spaces and imaginaries of the museum. Over the course of this workshop, participants were asked to restage the museums described in three science fiction novels: H.G. Wells’ The Time Machine (1895), Yevgeny Zamyatin’s We (1924), and Sally Miller Gearhart’s The Wanderground: Stories of the Hill Women (1979). By bringing the spaces of science fiction into the museum, these interventions reframed the terms of our engagement with museum objects and provided a site for broader refl...
Set against the soaring skyscrapers of much canonical urban science fiction (sf), the single stor... more Set against the soaring skyscrapers of much canonical urban science fiction (sf), the single storey structures of Abbenay in Ursula Le Guin's The Dispossessed might be easily overlooked. But, as this paper argues, the sparse description of this city 'as plain as spilt salt' offers a rich and complex vision of architectural possibility. This paper dwells within this moment of description, drawing on personal association alongside architectural and literary theory to consider how this image of a city might cast strange new light on embedded aspects of architectural practice. It explores how the sustained consideration of the built spaces of feminist sf can provide designers with an empathetic appreciation of how the built environment reflects and informs social relations.
In the light of the rapid proliferation of high-rise urbanism, can the science-fiction (sf) citie... more In the light of the rapid proliferation of high-rise urbanism, can the science-fiction (sf) cities of an imagined future provide an insight into the emotional impact of those currently under construction? This paper builds on the call from within urban studies for greater scholarship into vertical urbanism through the common ground of sf, to reflect on the emotional affect of building high. The emotional implications of living at height are most strongly felt through the experience of vertigo, a fundamental human response to our embodied sense of self within our environment overlaid with potent emotional connotations. This paper focuses on two sf texts; Robert Silverberg's The World Inside (1971) and JG Ballard's High Rise (1976), where the reader is prompted to both empathetically engage and imaginatively enact the experience of vertigo. The critical estrangement of these novels allows the emotional impact of vertigo on the imagined inhabitants to be critically appreciated alongside the personal experiences of the reader. They provide a space to reflect on the cities we already inhabit, and reveal the importance of attending to the emotional affect of built environment to establish a sense of place in this new vertical world.
Most of an architect's life is concerned with that which has not yet taken place, both forese... more Most of an architect's life is concerned with that which has not yet taken place, both foreseeing the near future and expressing an intention of how this future world should be remade. However small the intervention, all design proposals are utopian works. With this in mind, this article is a celebration of the utopian potential of reading science fiction (SF); to make the familiar strange, to reveal fears about the future, to confront us with ourselves, and to shape the world we inhabit. It is an unabashed call from an architect and avid SF reader, for architects to raid the bookshelves for the most lurid cover and glaring font and lose themselves in the exuberant worlds of science fiction.
This article has been peer reviewed through the double-blind process of Open Library of Humanitie... more This article has been peer reviewed through the double-blind process of Open Library of Humanities, which is a journal published by the Open Library of Humanities.
This polyphonic paper draws together methods, content and impressions from a workshop on utopian ... more This polyphonic paper draws together methods, content and impressions from a workshop on utopian spatial practice. It provides a critical reflection on the utopian possibilities inherent in small scale performances of spatial reorganization which restructure existing patterns of behaviour. Over the course of this workshop, held as part of the 'Utopian Acts' conference, the mundane space of a university seminar room was briefly transformed. Participants were asked to read extracts from three works of feminist utopian science fiction (sf):
Poisonless:a bare city, bright, the colours light and hard, the air pure. It was quiet." The Disp... more Poisonless:a bare city, bright, the colours light and hard, the air pure. It was quiet." The Dispossessed, Ursula K. Le Guin (1974) This is how Ursula K. Le Guin describes the city of Abbenay in The Dispossessed. It is modest and unassuming. It is quiet. This architectural restraint is jarringly at odds with predominant portrayals of the science fiction city. As noted by Graham (2016) and Hurley (2008) the future city has become synonymous with rapid vertical urbanisation, closing off alternative urban visions and the possible futures they contain. While there is a growing call for the study of sf by scholars in the spatial disciplines such as Abbott (2016), Collie (2011), Hewitt and Graham (2015) and Kitchin and Kneale (2002), the unassuming, everyday spaces of feminist sf are often lost in the shadows cast by the dystopian high rise. As Le Guin argues, these passive and participatory utopias become visible only when we 'adjust to a dimmer light' (1989). In response, this paper lingers in shared spaces of sf which are possible examples of what Washida Imarisha terms 'visionary fiction' which is sf that 'has a relevance towards building new, freer worlds' (2015: 4) including; N.K. Jemisin's Broken Earth trilogy (2015-2017), Sally Miller Gearhart's The Wanderground (1979) and Marge Piercy's Woman on the Edge of Time (1976). By imaginatively inhabiting the utopian enclaves within these feminist texts it is possible to explore geographies of alterity-to adjust to the dim light and learn to cherish the quiet.
Future Impermanent brings together workshops, discussions, performances and talks themed around s... more Future Impermanent brings together workshops, discussions, performances and talks themed around science fiction narratives and science fictional thinking. It aims to explore speculative methods of facilitating engagement, agency and a sense of responsibility regarding the issue of human impact on the natural world, to experiment with science fiction as a method of reading the social and environmental demands of the future. These speculations and experiments emphasise the importance of seeing science fiction as being grounded in the challenges of the present moment, while rendering that present impermanent
This article explores the role that science fiction (sf) texts might play in the museum, offering... more This article explores the role that science fiction (sf) texts might play in the museum, offering a perspective on acts of collection, curation, exhibition, and museum architecture, to ask what the museums of science fiction futures can offer those of us concerned with the role and responsibility of the museum in the present.It draws together methods, content and reflections from a workshop held at the Horniman Museum with art and curation students from University of the Arts London in 2019, which explored the spaces and imaginaries of the museum. Over the course of this workshop, participants were asked to restage the museums described in three science fiction novels: H.G. Wells’ The Time Machine (1895), Yevgeny Zamyatin’s We (1924), and Sally Miller Gearhart’s The Wanderground: Stories of the Hill Women (1979). By bringing the spaces of science fiction into the museum, these interventions reframed the terms of our engagement with museum objects and provided a site for broader refl...
Set against the soaring skyscrapers of much canonical urban science fiction (sf), the single stor... more Set against the soaring skyscrapers of much canonical urban science fiction (sf), the single storey structures of Abbenay in Ursula Le Guin's The Dispossessed might be easily overlooked. But, as this paper argues, the sparse description of this city 'as plain as spilt salt' offers a rich and complex vision of architectural possibility. This paper dwells within this moment of description, drawing on personal association alongside architectural and literary theory to consider how this image of a city might cast strange new light on embedded aspects of architectural practice. It explores how the sustained consideration of the built spaces of feminist sf can provide designers with an empathetic appreciation of how the built environment reflects and informs social relations.
In the light of the rapid proliferation of high-rise urbanism, can the science-fiction (sf) citie... more In the light of the rapid proliferation of high-rise urbanism, can the science-fiction (sf) cities of an imagined future provide an insight into the emotional impact of those currently under construction? This paper builds on the call from within urban studies for greater scholarship into vertical urbanism through the common ground of sf, to reflect on the emotional affect of building high. The emotional implications of living at height are most strongly felt through the experience of vertigo, a fundamental human response to our embodied sense of self within our environment overlaid with potent emotional connotations. This paper focuses on two sf texts; Robert Silverberg's The World Inside (1971) and JG Ballard's High Rise (1976), where the reader is prompted to both empathetically engage and imaginatively enact the experience of vertigo. The critical estrangement of these novels allows the emotional impact of vertigo on the imagined inhabitants to be critically appreciated alongside the personal experiences of the reader. They provide a space to reflect on the cities we already inhabit, and reveal the importance of attending to the emotional affect of built environment to establish a sense of place in this new vertical world.
Most of an architect's life is concerned with that which has not yet taken place, both forese... more Most of an architect's life is concerned with that which has not yet taken place, both foreseeing the near future and expressing an intention of how this future world should be remade. However small the intervention, all design proposals are utopian works. With this in mind, this article is a celebration of the utopian potential of reading science fiction (SF); to make the familiar strange, to reveal fears about the future, to confront us with ourselves, and to shape the world we inhabit. It is an unabashed call from an architect and avid SF reader, for architects to raid the bookshelves for the most lurid cover and glaring font and lose themselves in the exuberant worlds of science fiction.
This article has been peer reviewed through the double-blind process of Open Library of Humanitie... more This article has been peer reviewed through the double-blind process of Open Library of Humanities, which is a journal published by the Open Library of Humanities.
This polyphonic paper draws together methods, content and impressions from a workshop on utopian ... more This polyphonic paper draws together methods, content and impressions from a workshop on utopian spatial practice. It provides a critical reflection on the utopian possibilities inherent in small scale performances of spatial reorganization which restructure existing patterns of behaviour. Over the course of this workshop, held as part of the 'Utopian Acts' conference, the mundane space of a university seminar room was briefly transformed. Participants were asked to read extracts from three works of feminist utopian science fiction (sf):
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