Engaging with scholarship on vertical urbanism, this paper advances an understanding of architectural disavowal to account for the ways that vertical architectures deny their responsibility in causing harm to residential populations. The paper draws on Dionne Brand’s notion of disavowal in the vertical city to examine residents’ experience of and resistant responses to the harmful effects that vertical developments impose on their daily and nightly lives. In Aldgate, east London, the 13-storey high-rise development, Buckle Street Studio, has caused noise levels to rise, light pollution to intensify, the sky to vanish from sight and daylight to disappear from the flats in the neighbouring block Goldpence Apartments. Drawing on interviews with residents in Goldpence Apartments, the paper documents the extent of these changes and brings attention to the mundane strategies that residents deploy in their attempts to resist the overwhelming sensory invasions and affective intrusions of their homes. By showcasing how residents overturn the affective charge of their new high-rise neighbour/s and refuse – disavow – its force, the paper considers how mundane survival strategies might challenge architectural disavowal in the vertical city and beyond.
BurteH (2024)
Mumbai’s differential verticalisation: The dialectic of sovereign and technical planning rationalities. Urban Studies61(4): 706–725.
9.
ButcherM (2010)
From “fish out of water” to “fitting in”: The challenge of re-placing home in a mobile world. Population, Space and Place16(1): 23–36.
10.
ButcherMDickensL (2016)
Spatial dislocation and affective displacement: Youth perspectives on gentrification in London. International Journal of Urban and Regional Research40(4): 800–816.
11.
ChenHY (2020)
Cashing in on the sky: financialization and urban air rights in the Taipei Metropolitan Area. Regional Studies54(2): 198–208. https://doi.org/10.1080/00343404.2019.1599104
12.
DavidsonMLeesL (2005)
New-build “gentrification” and London’s riverside renaissance. Environment and Planning A37(7): 1165–1190.
13.
Douglas P and Parkes J (2016) ‘Regeneration’ and ‘consultation’ at a Lambeth council estate. City 20(2): 287–291. https://doi.org/10.1080/13604813.2016.1143683
14.
EasterlingK (2014) Extrastatecraft: The Power of Infrastructure Space. London:
Verso.
15.
EbbensgaardCL (2020)
Light infrastructures and intimate publics in the vertical city. Urban Geography43(5): 735–754.
16.
EbbensgaardCL (2022) Towers for the night. In: SumartojoS (ed.) Lighting Design in Shared Public Spaces. Routledge: New York and London, pp.173–194.
17.
EbbensgaardCL (2024)
Light violence at the threshold of acceptability. Urban Studies61(4): 669–686.
18.
EbbensgaardCLEdensorT (2020)
Walking with light and the discontinuous experience of urban change. Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers46: 378–391.
Jones P (2009) Putting architecture in its social place: A cultural political economy of architecture. Urban Studies, 46(12): 2519–2536. https://doi.org/10.1177/0042098009344230
34.
KaikaM (2011)
Autistic architecture: the fall of the icon and the rise of the serial object of architecture. Environment and Planning D: Society and Space29(6): 968–992.
35.
Koch, N (2018) The Geopolitics of Spectacle: Space, Synecdoche, and the New Capitals of Asia. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press.
36.
LeesLFerreriM (2016)
Resisting gentrification on its final frontiers: Learning from the Heygate Estate in London (1974–2013). Cities57: 14–24.
37.
LewisC (2016)
‘Regenerating community’? Urban change and narratives of the past. The Sociological Review64(4): 912–928.
38.
LewisC (2017)
Turning houses into homes: Living through urban regeneration in East Manchester. Environment and Planning A: Economy and Space49(6): 1324–1340.
39.
London Borough of Tower Hamlets (2015) Decision Notice: Refusal of Planning Permission. PA/15/01141. 11 December 2015. London.
40.
London Borough of Tower Hamlets (2017) Decision Notice: Refusal of Planning Permission. PA/16/03552. 15 November 2017. London.
41.
McNeillD (2020)
The volumetric city. Progress in Human Geography44(5): 815–831.
42.
MurawskiM (2019) The Palace Complex: A Stalinist Skyscraper, Capitalist Warsaw, and a City Transfixed. Indiana: Indiana University Press.
43.
NethercoteM (2019)
Melbourne’s vertical expansion and the political economies of high-rise residential development. Urban Studies56: 3394–3414. https://doi.org/10.1177/0042098018817225
44.
New London Architecture (2023) Sustainable Skylines: London Tall Building Survey 2023.
45.
Nitrato IzzoV (2022)
Law and hostile design in the city: Imposing decorum and visibility regimes in the urban environment. Oñati Socio-Legal Series12(3): 522–539.
46.
OhayonMMMilesiC (2016)
Artificial outdoor nighttime lights associate with altered sleep behavior in the American general population. Sleep39(6): 1311–1320.
PettyJ (2016)
The London Spikes controversy: Homelessness, urban securitisation and the question of ‘hostile architecture. International Journal for Crime, Justice and Social Democracy5(1): 67.
49.
PonziniP (2020) Transnational Architecture and Urbanism Rethinking How Cities Plan Transform and Learn. Abingdon: Routledge.
50.
PovinelliEA (2016) Geontologies: A Requiem to Late Liberalism. Durham: Duke University Press.
51.
RamkissoonL (2019) Which floor? In: de WaalK (ed.) Common People: An Anthology of Working-Class Writers. London: Unbound, pp.55–64.
52.
RosenbergerR (2020) Hostile design and the materiality of surveillance. Relating to Things56: 3394–3414.
53.
SheehanM (2024)
Everyday verticality: Migrant experiences of high-rise living in Santiago, Chile. Urban Studies61(4): 726–742.
54.
SheringhamOEbbensgaardCLBluntA (2021)
‘Tales from other people’s houses’: Home and dis/connection in an East London neighbourhood. Social & Cultural Geography24(5): 719–737.
55.
SimoneA (2014) Jakarta: Drawing the City Nearer. Minneapolis and London: Minnesota University Press.
56.
SimoneA (2023) The Surrounds: Urban Life within and beyond Capture. Durham: Duke University Press.
57.
SmithC (2020)
Collapse fake buildings and gray development in Nairobi. Focaal2020(86): 11–23.
58.
SoulesM (2021) Icebergs, Zombies, and the Ultra Thin: Architecture and Capitalism in the Twenty-First Century. New York: Princeton Architectural Press.
59.
VanniniPTaggartJ (2013)
Domestic lighting and the off-grid quest for visual comfort. Environment and Planning D: Society and Space31(6): 1076–1090.
60.
VanniniPTaggartJ (2015)
Solar energy, bad weather days, and the temporalities of slower homes. Cultural Geographies22(4): 637–657.
61.
WalkerM (2017) Why We Sleep: The New Science of Sleep and Dreams. London: Allen Lane.
62.
WattP (2023)
Fear and loathing in north London: Experiencing estate regeneration as psychosocial degeneration. The Sociological Review71(2): 351–369.
