THE (RE)POSITIONING AND EVOLUTION OF MONUMENTS

Rem Koolhaas describes the paranoid-critical method (PCM) as the conquest of the irrational. This process requires one to “surrender to the subconscious” and to make critical and systematic objectifications of delirious associations and interpretations. This technique aligned with my position as a naive explorer of the site. My ideas about the site were constructed from memories of these subconscious and intuitive walks. This proposal actualizes a community’s conflict in reckoning with a 300 year old, controversial monument. At the height of global Black Lives Matter protests in 2020, a debate about the statue of Robert Geffrye fronting the Museum of the Home emerged. Geffrye was an English merchant and investor in the Royal African Company and the East India Company both of which were heavily involved in the trading and forced labor of enslaved Africans. This project proposes that Geffrye is no longer the surveyor and enshrined in the façade. Instead, the fragmentation of the new facade reflects the complexity of Geffrye’s history, legacy and the fluidity and contradictions of the surrounding context. Through specific manipulations of the existing structure conceived using Rem Koolhaas’ paranoid-critical method (PCM), visitors to the site have an increased understanding of the shifting values and narratives and are free to inject their own interpretations.