- Sofia Karim
I’m not sure I can design buildings in the language I was taught anymore.
Updated: Jun 23, 2019
The Amdani holding cell packs hundreds of prisoners in. They lie in patterns such as “ilish fish file”, knotting their bodies in ordered fashion.
I modelled the ilish file as architectural space.
I’m not sure I can design buildings in the language I was taught anymore. After everything that happened I find a different language emerging.
So many have disappeared and may never come out alive. They are in there. Others never made it to prison and have already died - extra judicial killings through 'crossfire'.
Form doesn’t interest me so much as matter and the spaces between matter.
I spoke to Shahidul about architecture, prison and light.
I showed him this photo of a patch of light on my wall that I track every day. He told me about a patch of light he still remembers from 60 years ago.
Shahidul tells his students: “in martial arts when you punch a wall, you imagine you are punching beyond the wall. Find a colour you’ve never seen before by burying into your oldest memory.”
My earliest recollection of architecture is emotion and light. Nothing more.
