Re-thinking the Buffer Zone as a Network of Exceptions

The aim of this study is, to enrich and revise the role of architecture and architect in designing in controversial spaces. This Diploma Thesis, investigates spatial practices that erode the exceptional status-quo of the Buffer Zone of Cyprus. In other words it explores and analyses a daily routine that evolves into an exception to the state exclusion.

Referring to the project’s title [ RE-thinking the Buffer Zone as a network of Exceptions], the thesis has as starting point two main notions. The notion of the BUFFER ZONE and the notion of the EXCEPTION. Following a reading of the existing exceptional spatial practices of the buffer zone’s status, as these were separated and analyzed under the following conditions: 01. CHECKPOINTS, 02. CIVIL USE AREAS, 03. AGRICULTURAL AREAS, 04. INFRASTRUCTURES and 05. WILDLIFE, the buffer zone ceases to be considered a solid strip of land but as an exceptional condition. This study proposes a list of infrastructures and spatial tactics that implement informally to claim territories within the already existing formal and informal system of the buffer zone (buffer state), changing the accessibility, porosity and at the same time the status of a territory. The main prepossession is to support the main private erosion practices by changing their character and encouraging sharing and collective practices. The Proposed List of Infrastructures, it aims to support mainly the act of production, economies, the everydayness and the exceptional uses, inside the proposed territories of the revised condition of the Buffer Zone. The project is trying to introduce a new spatial practice, which can change significantly the range and scale of actors, and the impact on them and on the area of interest. This is achieved through the adoption of protocols of managing the various conditions, the creation of new trafficking networks and the revision of existing ones, through supporting infrastructures and border management. This creates different scales and types of thresholds. Sometimes they are related to place and sometimes to time. Sometimes with the experience of transition, and sometimes it is an element of organizing the space between different conditions. In order to upscale the range of actors , we create a guide of the PROPOSED revised NETWORK, free and accessible to everyone, so that we can change the image of the area and question the role of architecture and the architect in the design inside contested spaces .