Architecture of Enclosure

[2019]

︎︎︎ Research and Mapping project - Architecture and Aesthetic Practice (AAP) - Städelschule Architecture Class (SAC)
︎︎︎ Studio Tutors: Studio Leader: Prof. Johan Bettum, Assistant Tutor: Yara Feghali.




The Architecture of Enclosure, be it a wall, a shell, a fence, a frame, a boundary, a periphery or an edge, produces a space of interiority, a microcosm which not only contains something, but protects, sustains and fundamentally defines its contents. The act of enclosing separates creates an idea of inside.

The Palmengarten (a botanical garden in Frankfurt am Main, Germany) was chosen as the site, with emphasis placed upon the huge enclosed climatized greenhouses, which contain numerous tropical and subtropical plants brought to Frankfurt from different parts of the world.The Architecture of the glass and metal grid shell along with heavy equipment for environmental control (light, temperature, humidity, etc) allows in optimizing conditions for plant growth and sustainance.

The European Greenhouse Botanical Gardens with their enormous collection of numerous tropical and subtropical plants brought from different parts of the world, exemplify perfectly the western imperialism and its obsessive compulsion to extend power by means of accumulation. The Enclosure of the Garden with its Architecture of glass and metal grid shell along with its heavy technological equipment for environmental control (light, temperature, humidity, etc) becomes complicit in the colonial project by providing optimized conditions for re-acclimatization, and thus allowing recontextualisation and displacement of biological material. The Architecture of an enclosure not only separates the inside from the outside, but it provides its interior an autonomy from the determination of the outside to redesign itself and create a microcosm to suit the life of what it wishes to contain. The ‘container’ then can be a place to provide protection and shelter against the harsh wilderness that lies outside, but it can also serve as a weapon for appropriation, for snatching that which does not belong to you.