Judit Ferencz
The Bartlett
Demolition or refurbishment? The role of illustration research in the future of social housing.
Panel: Architecture
This paper addresses the key role of illustration research in developing a critique of temporality in heritage listing processes with regard to the debate over the demolition and redevelopment or refurbishment of social housing. I argue through my illustration practice that both a building and its relevance for listing or conservation changes over time and that the values of a building regarding its potential listing should be assessed with these historical changes in mind. In my illustration practice I used a specific set of techniques and processes, in particular reportage drawing, montage technique and book making. By engaging with specific agencies and audiences – governmental bodies, architects, residents – often disregarded processes such as time spent waiting for demolition or recalling the entire lifecycle of the estate are brought to life.
My architectural case-study is the East London housing estate Robin Hood Gardens (1972), which was refused heritage listing in 2009 and 2015 and is currently being demolished as part of a regeneration scheme. Reportage drawing started as a communication tool, bridging linguistic and cultural gaps between myself and the resident community of Bangladeshi social tenants, the subjects of my drawings.
Later the drawings acted as relics of the events I had witnessed.
Reportage drawing allowed me an intimate understanding of the architects, the Smithsons’ ethical concept of the ‘as found’ that had been central to their designs for the estate. My experiences of the lived time of the estate informed and inspired my archival, historical research on the remembered past and imagined future of the estate which in turn reflected back on my continuing on site illustration research and linked those to events in my own life too. The resulting book-objects allow the reader to experience the complexities of the temporal, spatial and visual relation between the different sites of my research.
Judit Ferencz is an illustrator and architectural researcher. She completed a PhD in Architectural Design at The Bartlett in 2023 where her research was funded by the RIBA LKE Ozolins studentship. Judit’s doctoral thesis, the case study of which was Robin Hood Gardens, developed a critical and creative methodology for the conservation of architectural heritage via her practice of reportage drawing. Judit’s illustrations had been published by Granta and Random House. Judit has taught illustration at City Lit, The Cass and the University of Nottingham. The book Practicing Ethics with Judit’s illustrations and her chapter on reportage drawing is forthcoming from UCL Press.