Vulnerable States

The public acts studied as starting points have constituted, in different semesters, either very singular and special moments (rituals), or various ranges of everyday life routines, with particular attention to how these acts can help support different forms of collectivity. In line with the reflection on the importance of cultural visual references, public spaces are not generated only by the rituals and everyday routines rooted in a particular context, but also by the meaningful use of certain features of collective identity, like language, ornamentation, materiality and iconography. One of the core questions raised in the studio asks how the protection of vulnerable realities would require from us a change in our design habits, in order to include vulnerability as a language, as a cultural principle or as a type of sensibility. Students approached fragile urban communities in Bangkok, affected by “slow-violent” phenomena like gentrification, real estate pressure, progressive homogenization, or decrease of visual identities. Understanding the complexity in their social, economic, morphological, and natural structures has been the key to propose new spaces in close dialogic relationship with existing realities.