Abstract
M.Tech. (Architecture)
In Latin, the term terra nullius means ‘land belonging to nobody, a term that, in itself,
is derived from Roman law, where res nullius means ‘nobody’s property.’ It is at once
a legal term and a legal fiction (i.e. something which may not be true but is assumed
to be so in order to facilitate legal findings). In the colonial or imperial context, terra
nullius is an important concept since it sets up the expectation that ‘empty land’ is
both appropriate and legally justifiably ready for appropriation or conquest. In this
framework, ‘discovered’ lands (generally by European explorers) were, or are, ‘empty’.
Réunion Island, an ‘overseas’ department (region) of France, is an island of
contradictions. It lays waste to the notion or idea of a national singular identity.
Ethnic groups on the island include people of African, Indian, European, Malagasy,
and Chinese origin. There are no indigenous people, since the island was originally
uninhabited. All Réunionese, therefore, come from ‘somewhere else’. Since France
does not include questions of ethnicity or race on its national census, it is not possible
to determine the exact degree and percentage of créolisation on the island, although
it is estimated that créoles (people of mixed racial and ethnic ancestry) make up
approximately 60% of the population.
My Major Design Project will attempt to explore the idea of a terra nullius (a land
belonging to no one, an empty land) through the design of a ‘free trade’ zone, also
known as a hetrarchy, a space in which all elements share the same horizontal positions
of power and authority. Drawing on Eyal Weizman’s reading of ‘smooth space’, a space
in which borders have no effect (Weizman 2007), the Free Trade Ministry will attempt
to explore questions of identity, belonging, hierarchy and hetrarchy, institutionalised
power and anarchy in spatial and material terms. According to Lebbeus Woods, whilst
a ‘smooth space’ may be referred to as a ‘zone of crisis’, it is also true that ‘zones of
crises are the only places where actualities of the dominant culture are confronted,
and from which new ideas essential to the growth of new culture, can emerge.’ (Woods
1997:14).
The project is located along a 3.2km stretch of the island’s outermost edge, beginning
with the existing Port Authority and ‘spilling out’ into both the sea and the public
land surrounding it. It will take the form of both a landscape and a formal building,
although split into several discrete elements or interventions. Following Woods, the
Free Trade Zone is intentionally uncomfortable, aimed at disrupting our comfortable,
bourgeois and essentially Western ideas of space, form, and programme. ‘You can’t
bring your old habits here. If you want to participate, you will have to reinvent
yourself.’ (qtd in Ouroussoff, Nicolai. New York Times, August 2th, 2008). Using terms
such as ‘guise’, ‘cognitive dissonance’, ‘subversion’ and ‘terra nullius’, the project aims to
design the impossible, a place in crisis, a ‘smooth space’ in which all are equal, neutral
before the law.