{"id":774904,"date":"2025-03-04T08:00:40","date_gmt":"2025-03-04T08:00:40","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.architectsjournal.co.uk\/?p=774904"},"modified":"2025-03-04T12:42:03","modified_gmt":"2025-03-04T12:42:03","slug":"book-review-protest-architecture-by-nick-newman","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.architectsjournal.co.uk\/practice\/culture\/book-review-protest-architecture-by-nick-newman","title":{"rendered":"Book review: Protest Architecture, by Nick Newman"},"content":{"rendered":"

In 1975, artist Gordon Matta-Clark cut a conical hole through two adjacent derelict buildings in Paris, critiquing destruction in the name of urban renewal. Eleven years later, a 7.6m fibreglass shark sculpture was installed head-first into the roof of a house in Headington, Oxford, by owner Bill Heine, an anti-war metaphor for falling bombs. In 2007, scarlet red dye was poured into the Trevi Fountain in Rome by artist Graziano Cecchini in protest at the corrupt funding of fossil fuels. And, on May Day in 2012, the Eclectic Electric Collective threw into Berlin crowds huge inflatable cobblestones, which dwarfed the 7,000 riot police deployed to counter the 15,000 protesters gathered for the annual demonstrations to mark International Workers\u2019 Day. In January 2021, Indian farmers scaled Delhi\u2019s historic Red Fort to oppose new agricultural laws. And, in October 2022, climate activists suspended themselves from the Queen Elizabeth II Bridge at Dartford, unfurling a banner with the words \u2018Just Stop Oil\u2019.<\/p>\n

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Book cover (source: RIBA Publishing)<\/em><\/p>\n\t

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This lineage describes the sophistication with which protest can reshape space. Protesters have long built, occupied, dismantled or disrupted the built environment to challenge power and it is this intersection between activism and architecture that Nick Newman explores in Protest Architecture: Structures of Civil Resistance<\/i>. In it, Newman, an XR activist, architect and co-founder of Studio Bark, traces spatial resistance and illuminates how architecture, which so often can be a tool of control, can also be used in defiance of the status quo.<\/p>\n

Protest Architecture<\/i> is compelling in its exploration of temporality as a powerful tool in protest design. Protests rearrange space to subvert, expose or destabilise power, utilising fleeting structures to challenge the permanence often associated with architecture. Temporary spaces embody an ecological aesthetic of reuse and frugality, moving architects laterally from their traditional roles as builders of permanence to facilitators of resistance.<\/p>\n

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‘Come to the Table’ (photography: Gareth Morris)<\/em><\/p>\n\t

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Protesting itself is inherently spatial: public squares, designed to symbolise power, be it of rulers, states or corporations, become arenas for defiance. In June 2020, Black Lives Matter protesters in Bristol threw a statue of slave trader Edward Colston into the harbour and Newman says the now-empty plinth \u2018provides a permanent record of shifting public attitudes\u2019. Statues may be erected to symbolise permanence but, when they fall, they rewrite this narrative, dismantle authority and reclaim power. Under this expansive definition, architecture becomes both a medium of control and a battleground for resistance.<\/p>\n

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Book illustration showing ‘Tripods’ (illustration: Connie Beauchamp)<\/em><\/p>\n\t

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Protest architecture, as a relatively new term, is described by Newman as \u2018the design and use of built structures to facilitate protest, civil rights and non-violent direct action\u2019. In this definition the author sets clear ethical boundaries around what is and what isn\u2019t protest architecture: that protest must have a common good; that it should not be motivated by greed or profit; and that it is largely non violent \u2013 a simplistic ring drawn around the muddy waters of good and bad.<\/p>\n

The book\u2019s examples are united in the wielding of individual and collective power against the already-powerful. Newman\u2019s is a definition that places the order and structure of protest in opposition to the unruliness and disorganisation of a riot \u2013 a tricky line to draw between a dichotomy that is more threshold than division, where protest escalates to riot and riots often necessarily have protest at their heart.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

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Book illustration showing ‘occupation’ (illustration: Connie Beauchamp)<\/em><\/p>\n\t

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Still, the book gives space to actions across the broad spectrum of protest and describes the hard-won tools and freedoms whereby their proponents were able to have their voices heard. Its release comes at a critical time, as new laws introduced by Priti Patel\u2019s Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Bill in April 2022, and only reinforced by Keir Starmer\u2019s government, have started to erode those freedoms. The civil right to protest has come under severe attack; in January 2025, protesters at a pro-Palestine rally were arrested for remaining in the area of the march \u2013 a public space \u2013 after the dispersal deadline, a draconian use of policing powers that restricts even peaceful assembly. In July 2024, five Just Stop Oil activists were convicted of\u2006 \u2018conspiring intentionally to cause a public nuisance\u2019 for a peaceful protest held in 2022 and sentenced to between four and five years each \u2013 disproportionately harsh punishments, designed to stifle dissent. Although the book only begins to touch on the increasing jeopardy protesters place themselves under, it represents all that has been won through the right to protest, and all that is at stake as those rights are curtailed.<\/p>\n

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‘Barricade’ (photography: Bambi van Balen, Tools for Action)<\/em><\/p>\n\t

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Protest Architecture<\/i> describes a history fraught with complexity and one that is constantly evolving. The systematic bombing of homes in Gaza \u2013 a practice referred to as \u2018domicide\u2019 \u2013 and the protests and marches it has sparked worldwide are not included, perhaps because the researchand writing of this book, which came out last summer, would have predated the most recent actions. Palestinian resistance has employed spatial actions \u2013 encampments, occupations, marches, and more \u2013 to draw attention to the cause. Pro-Palestinian protests have transformed urban spaces worldwide, utilising symbolic structures such as makeshift checkpoints, erecting walls adorned with graffiti art to mirror the separation barrier and organising large-scale demonstrations in public squares. This is arguably one of the most pressing, visible and architecturally relevant cases of resistance today and the lack of space given to the conflict and protests around it feels like an omission.<\/p>\n

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Book illustration showing ‘towers’ (illustration: Connie Beauchamp)<\/em><\/p>\n\t

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Sous le pav\u00e9, la plage!<\/i> \u2013 \u2018Under the cobblestones, the beach!\u2019 \u2013 a slogan born from the 1968 protests in France, encapsulates the spirit of resistance and the continuing need for it. The city is hardened by brutal and cold pavements, but these relent to the freedom, opportunity and joy of the beach beneath.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Protest has always been about reclaiming space \u2013 whether through temporary structures, occupations or symbolic destruction. Protest Architecture<\/i> sits between this paradox: transient and enduring, destructive and constructive, fragile yet powerful. Efforts to conceal or subdue protest often only amplify its necessity and the freedom to protest is not a threat to democracy but its very foundation.<\/p>\n

Ellen Peirson is a writer on architecture and designer at Mike Tuck Studio. Protest Architecture: Structures of civil resistance by Nick Newman, RIBA Publishing, 2024, paperback, pp 224, \u00a334.00<\/i><\/p>\n

Photo, top: Nick Newman<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In 1975, artist Gordon Matta-Clark cut a conical hole through two adjacent derelict buildings in Paris, critiquing destruction in the name of urban renewal. Eleven years later, a 7.6m fibreglass shark sculpture was installed head-first into the roof of a house in Headington, Oxford, by owner Bill Heine, an anti-war metaphor for falling bombs. 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