Architectures of disavowal and enduring acts of refusal

Abstract

Engaging with scholarship on vertical urbanism, this paper advances an understanding of architectural disavowal to account for the ways that vertical architectures deny their responsibility in causing harm to residential populations. The paper draws on Dionne Brand’s notion of disavowal in the vertical city to examine residents’ experience of and resistant responses to the harmful effects that vertical developments impose on their daily and nightly lives. In Aldgate, east London, the 13-storey high-rise development, Buckle Street Studio, has caused noise levels to rise, light pollution to intensify, the sky to vanish from sight and daylight to disappear from the flats in the neighbouring block Goldpence Apartments. Drawing on interviews with residents in Goldpence Apartments, the paper documents the extent of these changes and brings attention to the mundane strategies that residents deploy in their attempts to resist the overwhelming sensory invasions and affective intrusions of their homes. By showcasing how residents overturn the affective charge of their new high-rise neighbour/s and refuse – disavow – its force, the paper considers how mundane survival strategies might challenge architectural disavowal in the vertical city and beyond.