Charlotte Malterre-Barthes

Closer to Things: Drawing Practices as Spatial Research examines drawing as a critical research methodology in architecture and the spatial disciplines. Moving beyond drawing’s conventional role as a prescriptive design tool, the publication addresses how drawing can be deployed as an analytical instrument to investigate, or get “closer to,” urgent matters of concern in the existing built environment. Through this lens, drawing becomes a potent tool to reveal and communicate complex and often obscured spatial conditions of social inequality, economic asymmetries, environmental degradation or climatic crisis. This publication comprises an extended text by the authors interrogating different forms of research agency performed through drawing; a curated archive of relevant historical and contemporary drawings paired with theoretical reflections; and a series of new interviews and conversations on drawing’s research agency with practitioners and researchers such as Momoyo Kaijima, Eyal Weizman, Fei Fei Zhou, Laura Kurgan, Huda Tayob and Denise Scott-Brown, amongst others. Relevant reading for researchers, practitioners and students alike, Closer to Things frames drawing not just as a creative act, but as a powerful tool of critical spatial inquiry.

A massive value shift for existing buildings, infrastructure, materials, unbuilt land, earth, and the labor that holds our world together. To build is to destroy, writes Charlotte Malterre-Barthes. From steel bolts to concrete blocks to wood flooring to polyester insulation panels, every single component of the built environment is the product of extractive processes. Driven by greedy economies, the global enterprise of space production expands, impacting climate, earth, water, humans, and non-humans everywhere. However housing is both a human right and the mandate of design disciplines: How to navigate the need for housing versus the destructive practice of construction? To pause new construction--even if momentarily, creates a radical thinking framework for alternatives to the current regime of space production and its suspect growth imperative. Engaging with unsettling questions, A Moratorium on New Construction envisions a massive value shift for our existing stock. From housing redistribution to reinviting value generation, from anti-extractive measures to profound structural changes, from curricula reforms to purging the exploitative culture of the office, an entire rewiring of design processes and construction lays ahead. Somewhere between a thought experiment and a call for action, A Moratorium on New Construction is a leap of faith to envision a less extractive future, made of what we have: Not demolishing, not building new, but building less, building with what exists, inhabiting it differently, and caring for it.

Meet Eileen Gray, the architect behind the monumental E-1027 and pioneer of the Modern Movement in architecture. In 1924, work began in earnest on a small villa by the sea in the south of France. Nearly a century later, this structure has become a monument for modern design. However, like so many gifted female artists, Eileen Gray's story has been eclipsed by the men with whom she collaborated - this story puts the focus back on Gray and her mastery of design. Dzierzawska's exquisite visuals bring to life the tale of a young Irish designer whose dedication and desire to create came to flourish during the 'Annees Folles' of early 20th century Paris.

Some Haunted Spaces in Singapore explores the paradox of modern urban planning and spiritual beliefs in Singapore, proposing a parsing of the island’s town and country planning based on abstract expressions of mysticism. An investigation of the collective imagination, this book examines elements of the built environment believed to be occupied by spirits: haunted spaces. Often dismissed as irrational, this mystical focus digs deeper than religious superstitions or teenage esotericism. In exploring the apparent contradiction between a city-state built up according to a rigid rationale of urban development and robust spiritual practices that endure to this day, this book reveals the resilience of interconnected spaces and memories, as well as forms of social resistance to the changes brought about by fast-paced urban growth and top-down national planning in Singapore. The authors use their own and assembled photographs, technical drawings, models and texts to document, scrutinize and reconstruct allegedly haunted locations in Singapore, drawing on both contextual memory and physical characteristics. Intrigued by Singapore’s omnipresent ghost stories and fitted out with the tools of architecture and scientific investigation, the authors set off on an obsessive expedition across some of the island’s silent hidden areas, along the fine line between scientific rationality and absurdity. This book, the product of years of meticulous research, is a painstaking and yet casual attempt to scratch beneath the city’s surface and its physical realities to uncover occult realms.