Housing Plans For The Future

Housing Plans For The Future (Steidl International 2018), researches the impact of the complex and ambiguous use of architecture as a means of containment and control within social housing in Belfast. The defensive structures built between 1970’s and 80’s are experienced via a series of walls through the neighbourhoods of the inner city. While Wylie’s earlier publications including British Watchtowers and Maze (on Belfast’s Maze prison) document disappearing military structures, Housing Plans for the Future focuses on a largely unrecognised facet of conflict era architecture, this seemingly benign environment functions as a legacy of the Northern Ireland conflict.

In order to reconcile the over laps between social housing policy and security policy emerging during the Troubles, the Northern Ireland office established the Standing Committee on the Security Implications of Housing Problems in Belfast. This unclosed government body created a forum where civil and military authorities could make confidential “security assessments” of the redevelopment proposals at recognised “flash point” areas between Catholic and Protestant communities.

Funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC), Wylie’s research reveals a range of distinct and divisive architectures within individual communities in Belfast. The architecture in question is the unassuming built environment of the inner-city community. This is its housing, its roads, its footpaths and its built landscaping: everyday architectural elements that have been considered and placed during the Troubles conflict to control the movement of people and their placement of vision.

The text is provided by Coyles whose research investigates the political use of architecture especially military and paramilitary contexts.