Reformation theology emphasized the intangible quality of faith and its location within the hearts of believers rather than in the prescribed ritual of an ornate and hierarchical Catholicism. Embedded here, generally, was a rejection of the material. As waves of iconoclasm spread with Protestantism, so did the articulation of a new church architecture – one spare and plain, puritanical, rather than bejeweled or gilded.

This new religion founded itself in reaction, in protest, to the dominant practice thus, forming a network of Protestants in various guises, across Europe. Central to their belief was the philosophical distinction between the visible and invisible churches, between those who participate in religion in a material, empirical way—attending sermons, Sunday school classes—and those who, more significantly, are spiritually bound to Jesus.

The Westminster Standards, composed during the English Reformation, became the basis for, among other movements, Presbyterianism. The Standards articulated this difference between the invisible and visible, while denouncing the Pope of Rome as the head of the church. Instead, this vision of Protestantism imagined a community of individuals bound not by ecclesiastical authority but instead by a persistent and invisible faith. Protest then, unites a group diffuse in location or body under an immaterial priority.

In a staged protest however, it is exactly visibility that is valued. The accumulation of individuals, en masse, gives meaning and weight to an abstract belief or political priority. In the political sphere, to protest in one’s heart is as good as not protesting, and it is presence, attendance, and appearance, that substantiate the cause, no matter how independently noble. If you don’t show up, it doesn’t count.

For the average protest, attracting media attention is as critical as the grievance itself. Although current modes of digital communication can help to spread awareness of a cause, in order to maximize the scope of demands and generate public debate, demonstrators may collectively appropriate the city. Thus, protests typically maintain a spatial dimension.

As societies become increasingly sophisticated, so do their forms of demonstration. Instead of throwing stones at government buildings or staging hunger strikes, there is a new form of ethical violence: wasting food. Physical aggression can be superseded by a provocative attack to a ruler’s conscience. In 2009, dairy farmers in Belgium began spraying milk onto farmland in order to protest the extremely low prices that they were receiving for their product. The entire world was paying attention to the decisions of the policymakers who were responsible for a protest which wasted food (while developing nations lack the most basic necessities). As a result of the protesters actions, feelings of blame were directed at bureaucrats, while the inability of observers to watch such wastage spurred the end of the protest.

Resistance is often a response to acts of political aggression. If a ruling party is seen to be corrupt, protesting can instigate the foundation of a parallel establishment associated with the general public. In May of this year, Spanish citizens criticized what they perceived as the existing corrupt power through the formation of a grassroots democratic movement. What began as an informal protest camp, is developing into a hyper-organized micro-society that aims to show the parties involved in the political system how to reach collective decisions.

Public space can be a space for debate. And… more

Rachel Engler

Daniel Fernàndez Pascual

As a child, I was always astonished with classroom blackboards, which had the incredible capacity of telling hundreds of different stories a day, always on the same surface. Numbers, words and drawings were documented, only to be erased, and then scrawled anew, the process repeating over and over again.

Water calligraphy, an elegant strategy for appropriating public space in Chinese cities, involves a similar process of perpetual editing. By means of a water-soaked paintbrush, ordinary citizens enjoy writing classical poetry on the pavement, using the cement modules as a guiding grid for forming characters. These poems can only be read before the water evaporates and also before a new text is written over the previous one. Through this process, the sidewalk is gradually transformed into a celebration of poetry.

In our current moment, dominated by virtual communication, weblogs have emerged as an electronic, communal, alternative to the traditional blackboard. This format allows one to link, delete, comment upon and expand content. Weblogs also share the immediacy of chalk.

Ink, as opposed to chalk, has always been the essence of printed matter. However, water calligraphy re-invents ink in a delible form… more

When drawn on a body, flat depictions take on spatial characteristics, returning them to the physical reality from which they took their inspiration. They also become capable of movement, contorted by the particular characteristics of the skin, and body, they are inscribed upon.

Jose Arnaud Bello’s work, Koi Convolutions, refers to Darcy Thompson’s Transformations Theory. Using an image of a Koi to illustrate the geometrical adjustments that a tattoo must make once it is applied to a body. Such a drawing has to adapt to the body’s curves, abiding by anatomical rules. This necessity for adaptation intensifies as the size of the tattoo increases. The larger the tattoo, the more it distorts from its original pattern.

Similarly, architects also translate two dimensional representations into a four dimensional world that has very different constraints. Architectural documents, which are not absolute, must deform to adapt to the complexities of spatial reality when translated to a real site. It is the ink that allows this deformation, as it is flexible enough to adapt to the morphology of its new context, maturing with the passage of time alongside the body it is inscribed upon. Ink, that through its transfer from the planar geometry of the printed page, is able to embody new meaning as it adjusts to the world.

Daniel Fernàndez Pascual

Isabel Martínez Abascal

Zeltbahn 31 is a triangular piece of waterproof fabric with thirty buttons, thirty button-holes, nine rivets and an opening the size of a head. Developed in the 1930s for the German army, it was a versatile device, which was to be used as a piece of clothing, dwelling and as an all-purpose survival tool.

It was possible to fashion it in six different ways: as a poncho-style raincoat for marching troops, mounted soldiers and bike riders; as a tent housing four, eight or sixteen men, depending on how many units were fastened together; filled with straw and securely tied, it worked as a flotation device; as a winter blanket; a rain-canopy; and as a hammock or a stretcher to carry wounded soldiers, when fastened to two poles.

The camouflage pattern of the Zeltbahn 31 simulated both weather and landscape… more

Uniformity regularly arises through the embodiment of repetition as evinced by many architects’ preference for monotony where work-wear is concerned. While the overwhelming cliché (uniform) is the architect in black, many others have found a way to set themselves apart by wearing uniquely tailored garments which presents a self-imposed (and often self-designed) mode of standardized dress. Unlike the typical connotation of the uniform, which may be applied to unify a group of wearers, these outfits present an individualized, socially-mediated barrier between the wearer and their context. Here, the integrity of the architect’s personal identity is maintained via the originality of their dress. While uniformity in both the instance of the architect in black and the instance of the architect dressed in a uniquely identifiable fashion, may arise through repeated adornment over time, in the case of the former it is coupled with outfitting multiple wearers whereas in the latter an ensemble is solely worn by an individual.

Daniel Fernàndez Pascual

Erandi de Silva