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Unbuilding: high-rise landscapes in Nairobi and London
This paper takes up the notion of ‘unbuilding’ as a critical lens for analysing how urban worlds are made and unmade. As a counterpoint to demolition, construction and repair, unbuilding reorients attention to temporal disjunctures, material agency, and contested futures. Here, the intentionality of design is both implicated in, and challenged by, unruly materials, violent unmakings, and subterranean extractions. Grounded in research on the afterlives of high-rise housing in London and Nairobi, and part of an ongoing collaborative conversation, the paper traces some of the material, political, and ecological possibilities of thinking about cities through unbuilding.
Date:
17 October 2025, 15:00
Venue:
St Antony's College, 62 Woodstock Road OX2 6JF
Venue Details:
Nissan Lecture Theatre
Speaker:
Connie Smith (University of Manchester)
Organising department:
School of Anthropology and Museum Ethnography
Part of:
School of Anthropology and Museum Ethnography Departmental Seminar Series
Booking required?:
Not required
Audience:
Public
Editor:
Kate Atherton
