The Covid 19 pandemic saw many of us having to further use digital spaces to convene and socialise, further deepening our dependence on such platforms. In response and with full Covid-compliant protocols, we wanted to take our online presence into the offline world in the form of in-person events we call Situations. With the battlecry “Out of the cloud, into the streets!”, these encounters are platforms in which to situate our critical reflections into our city spaces and engage with real issues on the ground, sparking conversations and forming new connections. 

The cities in which these Situations take place reflected the satellite nature of our editorial teams: from Amsterdam to Bogotá, New York to Istanbul. Through these events, we invited members of the public to view and engage with their cities through alternate lenses and to ask new questions about architecture and their urban environments.

Reflecting on these invigorating interactions, we look back on several of these Situations that left memorable marks on our collective experiences. 

• FA Situation #5 – A Walk Around the A10 (Amsterdam)
  
  This project proposes a collective walk around a part of the A10 ring as a means of understanding and reflecting on this automotive anti-monument. The space around the A10 has often been treated as residual: it is hugged by industrial zones, office parks, business districts, data centres, agriculture, and housing. This walk is a form of counteraction, a claim for the return of the body as a central part of this particular urban experience. 

• FA Situation #8: Fake Tour (Istanbul)
  
  This Fake Tour of the coast of Istanbul aimed to open up new ways of seeing and interacting with developer-led tourist destinations which block locals’ visual and physical access to the Bosphorus. By utilising a cliche tourist platform in Istanbul, the boat tour, the Situation engaged participants with these developments followed by discussions.

• FA Situation #10: Mujeres y Monumentos (Bogotá)Understanding the role of monuments as articulations of dominant notions of identity over a given space, this Situation invited participants to critically engage with female representations in the centre of Bogotá, critically analysing the representation of women and the feminine. Together we questioned the role of the monument to remember women, and shared text fragments to make visible the voices of women who have contributed to dismantling or highlighting patriarchal violence.

• FA Situation #11 Lawful Evil, Architecturally Considered (New York)
  
  Taken place in New York’s Financial District, this Situation invited participants to play the board game New York 1901, in which players casually role-play as real-estate moguls building their “real estate empire.” Participants critically discussed the game’s mechanics, dynamics, aesthetics, and themes in relation to the development of skyscrapers in Lenapehoking (New York City) since the late 19th century, as well as the colonial, capitalist relations both the game and the built environment enforce.

If anything has been made clear through these Situations around the globe, it is that architecture and urban environments are rarely politically neutral. The mere presence of people in city spaces determine its trajectory.

Likewise, it is people that have made these encounters possible through their financial help. We hope to continue holding Situations across different cities and we invite you to support these endeavours by donating to our campaign in order to help keep our presence alive in the real world.