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Bodies and Buildings: Biopolitical [in]sensitivities within three urban jurisdictions of Algiers

Part 1 Dissertation 2019
Zain Al Sharaf Wahbeh
Edinburgh School of Architecture and Landscape Architecture | UK
This dissertation examines three urban jurisdictions of sixteenth to twentieth century colonial Algiers: the Casbah of the Ottoman Empire, Climat de France by Fernand Pouillon, and Plan Obus A by Le Corbusier. Each is interrogated for their respective biopolitical [in]sensitivities. This study observes how the Foucauldian model of biopolitics is transplanted into the domestic and civic dimensions of spaces, to legitimise authority and regulate the behaviours of individual and social bodies. This dissertation argues that biopolitical agency can pronounce itself beyond the scope of juridical power, using autocratic and latent architectural endeavours.

In order to address the implications on the individual, social, and architectural object, this study closely scrutinises ethnographic data and graphic documentations of urban socio-spatial amendments and housing schemes in Algiers. The core discussion extends on the scholarship of urban theorists including Michel Foucault and Thomas Markus, whose written works assess the implications of biopolitical philosophies in architecture. Ultimately, this dissertation unfolds how architecture, particular to that of Algiers, is instrumentalised as a bodily reforming apparatus that is entangled within overlapping layers of colonial politics and biological criteria. By framing biopolitical modalities in their discursive and intimate dimensions, this dissertation substantiates an undisputed dialogue between bodies and buildings.

Zain Al Sharaf Wahbeh

Tutor(s)
Dr. Dorian Wiszniewski
2019
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