Inaugural lecture: Realness - Prof. Matthew Barac

Reality has been in crisis for as long as anyone can remember. The nomination of ‘post-truth’ as word of the year, in the 2016 update of the Oxford English Dictionary, seems to suggest the situation is getting worse. Lack of consensus over reality’s constitution poses critical as well as practical challenges, figuring as an impediment to architects (or anyone else) eager to make the world a better place by design. Debate concerning the real world tends towards controversy, with facts and objects on one side pitted against the case for beliefs, allegiances and feelings on the other. But facts today are increasingly slippery, and the world of belief is no better, having seemingly reached its zenith in the revival of audacious politics and business.

For practice, this problem has implications for how we value development proposals that would construct new realities or adapt what we have in ways that matter. It also challenges theory, posing questions about how we understand claims to authenticity or beauty. Is our habitually argumentative approach to the puzzle of reality useful when it comes to the objective of designing settings for human flourishing in our cosmopolitan cities? Are we getting hung up on assertions and counterclaims that get in the way of our capacity to live in the real world?

To get past what appears to be a fallacy, this lecture embraces ‘realness’ as a strategy for sidestepping reality’s stubborn ontology. Practices historically associated with the defiant performance of hybrid cosmopolitanisms include the Sapeurs of Brazzaville, the dandies of fin-de-siecle Europe, and ‘voguing’, which flourished in 1980s New York and is pivotal to the etymology of realness. Both transgressive and conservative, this disposition styles conformity while speculatively opening the door to a world defined by exclusion. Inspired by traditions of performative resistance to the hard truths reality visits upon those with little, the argument tentatively embraces the ambition of transforming adversity into opportunity. If we highlight the creative capacity of disruptive practices to unlock value, we may open constructive dialogue between reality and its detractors.

Matthew Barac is Professor of Architecture & Urban Culture at London Metropolitan University, where he leads Postgraduate Research at the School of Art, Architecture and Design (AAD), and a UK-registered architect. He is Director of CUBE: the Centre for Urban and Built Ecologies and was Panel Chair for Unit of Assessment (UoA) 32: "Art and Design: History, Theory and Practice" in the university's submission to REF 2021: the Research Excellence Framework.

His core research asks what the contemporary city is, in order to investigate the role of architecture within it. With a focus on contemporary urban Africa, key strands of inquiry consider the challenge of an African urban analytic, cosmopolitan orientation in cities characterised by dispersal, and the role of design in humanitarian and development practice. Completed at the University of Cambridge, Barac's PhD won the RIBA President's Award for Research and the International Bauhaus Prize. Outputs building upon his doctoral research investigate the spatial structure of the lifeworld of home-making in conditions of informality, and include “Changing Places: Navigating Urbanity in the Global South” in Phenomenologies of the City (eds M. Sternberg & H. Steiner, 2015) and “Place Resists: Grounding African Urban Order in an age of Global Change” in scholarly journal Social Dynamics, (2011). Current projects include Afropolitan Architecture, launched at the Venice Biennale 2023 in collaboration with Mokena Makeka (Cooper Union), and interdisciplinary study London Afropolitan which is the cornerstone of our partnership with the Africa Centre.

Alongside academic contributions, Barac enjoys writing for trade and mainstream publications such as Architecture Today, The Conversation, Icon magazine, the RIBA Journal, Building Design, Il Giornale dell’Architettura, House & Leisure magazine, and Elle Decoration. Honorary positions have included editorial board roles for Architecture & Culture and the Architectural Review, jury membership for the GAGA: Global Architectural Graduate Awards and RIBA Research Awards, and membership of the Research Alliance of CHEAD: Council for Higher Education in Art and Design. He chaired the board of British charity Architecture Sans Frontières-UK for eight years, and currently serves on the RIBA’s Research Development Group.

18:00: Registration Opens

18:30: Lecture begins

19:30: Drinks Reception

This event will be taking place in person only, at the , (CCG-02 Main Hall), Aldgate campus.

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Image caption: "Untitled (rear view night traffic)"

Photo: courtesy of Jane the Man (2023)

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