Greenpeace launched an architectural competition to stimulate ideas for ways to fortify the Airplot in case a new government allows BAA’s third runway plans to proceed. Effectively, the brief was to come up with a 21st century fortress – capable of resisting BAA’s bulldozers and stopping construction of the runway. Greenpeace asked for an exemplary piece of sustainable design: a practical solution with cultural and aesthetic power to match the depth and importance of what’s at stake. What better fits the committed Greenpeace spirit than devoting the hereafter to the ideal of a better world? What better way than offering those true partisans the ultimate act of eternal activism by embracing the most courageous gesture and radical devotion- Greenpeace’s first dedicated burial ground. Building upon Britain’s proclaimed ‘best in the world’ graveyard heritage, the project concentrates on the actual social immovability of the undertaking and less on the physical immovability. The proposal aids the resistance of evection predicated on the understanding that by law any graves less than 75 years old cannot be removed. The initiation of the project would secure the parcel from development close the 22nd century. The local borough, which would seize to exist due to the runway extension, had planning powers to grant planning permission. With each landing at Heathrow Airport incoming passengers can witness the effectiveness of a peaceful resistance. The entry was made in collaboration with the befriended office Space and Matter (http://www.spaceandmatter.nl), headed by Tjeerd Haccou, Sascha Glasl, and Marthijn Pool.

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The competition entry combined a number of contemporary and historic methodologies into what we term ‘Direct Architecture’. It argues for a renewed relationship between the architectural and urban space and engages the city on its own terms. The site, August Allebéplein, is notoriously known for what is in essence a cultural phenomenon; a disintegrated sense of community. A series of undertaken direct actions and related articles were presented in an edited format most familiar in the shaping of the site; the cities main newspaper Het Parool. The initiated (spatial) campaign used a public square that has been the focus of several anti-social events to demonstrate the effect of targeted, well-designed event orchestration and branding campaigns on the use of public space. The aim with the series of events was to demolish the idea that physical upgrades are essential in order for people to manifest themselves in a self-confident and respectful way. This is something that is achievable through non-physical means when spatial issues are taken into account and leveraged. We would therefore argue for a design intervention that we would call ‘Direct Architecture’: the alteration of activities and non-physical elements in order to create or augment architectural space. The project therefore embraces an architecture that moves from being reactive towards an architecture that is interactive. In collaboration with Matthew Murphy.

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