M. Arch. Dissertation Award

Abstract

Is not the architectural culture we inherit, a symptom of the circumstances it was born, and
allowed to grow, in?

The interest of this dissertation will be to understand the numbness to the real that dominates contemporary aesthetics and environments. This, in an effort to draw parallels between architectural realities and critical theory – using literature, illustrated by architectural case studies and artefacts of popular culture. It focuses on the built, the planned, the proposed, and the promoted.

Numbness to the real is being defined within this dissertation as an inertia of truth. It stems from a conscious awareness of a trauma, that therefore has ruptured the symbolic that was being experienced before the event, however culminating in a refusal to witness the real that it has been brought to. We live at a time where ‘the Heart of Europe’ is a current development
marketed in Dubai, at the heart of ‘The World’ island, promoted as ‘the impossible made reality’. Simultaneously, a new hotel in the St George’s Bay area within Paceville is compared to the French Riviera and Christian von Borries illustrates magnificently how there is a “Dubai plugin in all of us”, via his digital work. With politicians like Malta’s Muscat admitting
their aspirations for intense, and rather rapid, ‘dubaification’, such statements read as very important expressions of the generation that is creating these environments. These aspirations and dreams are common and real, and the aesthetics and architecture they imply are violent in their numbness to the real.

The dissertation is an investigation of crises of truth within the postmodern condition, and simultaneously an exploration of trauma. Within the current local context, traumatic events are unfolding as this dissertation is progressing, and reference is being made to them to understand the implications this could be having. The research is directly interested in the
idea that the personal is political, and investigates the overlap between socio-economic and political realities.

Keywords: real, trauma, numbness, socio-political, popular culture.