Architect and author, Nick Newman, explains the connection between the built environment and activism in his new title. Plus, design writer Katie Treggiden discusses the makers that are paving the way when it comes to crafting consciously. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
This is Monocle on Design, a show where we discuss everything from architecture and craft to furniture and fashion.
I'm Nick Monies.
On today's program, we ask how the built environment can be used in protest movements and design.
Writer Katie Dragiddon joins us in the studio to discuss the brands and makers who are putting the environment at the centre of their practice.
All that coming up on Monocle On Design.
Now.
From beacons to barricades, architecture has always had a connection to activism.
It has been used deliberately and inadvertently to facilitate protest, civil rights and non violent direct action.
A new book called Protest Structures of Civil Resistance has been published by the Royal Institute of British Architects, or reba, and it explores this meeting point between architecture and activism.
The book's author is Nick Newman, an architect and founder of design practice Studio Bach.
He joined this show's producer, Mae Lee Evans, in the studio.
Nick began by sharing what protest architecture actually is.
Protest architecture can mean a few things, but in the context of the book, it's a retelling of the history of protest through the eyes of an architect.
You're looking at how buildings and protest are related all throughout history.
I think when a lot of people think about protest, the thing they're thinking least about is structure.
But then when you look at an example like the barricade, the kind of French Revolution, that's probably quite an obvious image that sticks in people's heads.
A barricade is a way of pulling down buildings, overturning cars, buses, whatever it happens to be, to block roads.
So that's a very kind of simple idea of how you can use a structure of some form.
Whether you can call that architecture is more of a debate, but it is nonetheless a use of structure.
On the other end, you might have something which has been designed specifically for protest.