Translation of Civic Pedagogical Tactics to Critically Produce Public Spaces in Amman

Abstract

This paper asks how can we re-think and critically produce alternative ‘public’ spaces through translating forms of civic pedagogical tactics in Amman? Our neoliberal contemporary cities and political agendas, with its Arabic versions, have produced socially, spatially polarised and de-politized spaces. In fact, what we inhabit today are spaces that are pseudo public. Those spaces prompt critiquing the role of the architects, practitioners and architecture educators to intervene, mediate and response collectively. Trying to form a resistance to this problem, the responding approach is informed by reviewing and critiquing how architectural pedagogies are performed in Jordan, focusing on evaluating their civic engagement and the political and neoliberal influence. The paper then moves to focus on key relevant pedagogical models with envisioning the action plan that are adopted and tailored to the specific cultural, political and social context of Amman. This paper framework will start reflections from some critical pedagogical theories to evaluate and critique the current architectural pedagogical approaches in Amman-Jordan contexts and analysing the various actants such as political policies, civic interventions and processes that affect architecture education. Furthermore, it generates some important lessons and reflections from practices, such as the interventions used by Romanian architects in the 1980s, Pseudo Public Space Studio-UK, live projects-UK, triggering and resisting the challenges on civic practices. The study will conclude by proposing methodological framework for translating civic pedagogical tactics that prompt to provoke and draw the public attention towards the right to the city and its space, while resisting the challenges that are facing the context of Amman- Jordan. The process of translation is adopted and tailored to Amman-Jordan context, rather than imported and colonised. These tactics opened up possibilities and generated a new and alternative form of publicness, as well as a resilient and resistant community.