Bremner, Lindsay

Abstract
This paper presents experimental research on the Indian Ocean being undertaken within the context of what has been termed architecture’s contemporary geographic turn. It investigates how oceanic practices and protocols fold into spatial and architectural products on land, figuring both sea- and land-based logics. It frames this ocean through three tropes: as contact zone, with which are associated ideas of creolisation, transnationalism, entanglement, compaction and multi-polarity; as circulator with which are associated ideas of connectivity, passage, lane, route, choke point, network, port, dock and deposit; and as ecology, with which are associated ideas of liquidity, cycle, rhythm and climate change. The paper introduces these tropes and investigates sites brought into focus through them, highlighting the wider global dynamics or processes they reveal. It concludes with provisional thoughts about what these amphibious sites offer for understandings of architecture and urbanism in today’s hyper-articulated, globalised world.
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