Stephanie Kyuyoung Lee
Thesis projects
2018
The production system of Kenyan floriculture is a complex web of biological, mechanical, and socioeconomic relationships. The former British colony accounts for one third of all flower sales in the European Union. However, as 90 percent of the farm operations are foreign-owned, these flowers represent a capitalist process of neo-colonial exploitation. The sheer scale of mechanized agro-production has shifted the identity of an individual farmer to a 'factory worker.’
As a response to these existing imbalances, this thesis proposes a two-fold management strategy: A series of iconic civic-centers form a 'loose' regional infrastructure for labor unions, while a prototype farm is developed for individual farm cooperatives. Integrated farm networks will work in synthesis to turn closed systems of exploitation into an open-system based on process and access.
RRR's objective is to explore architectural agency in large-scale agricultural sectors of the Global South. It does so by investigating methods of architectural narrative through a set of five scroll drawings that, each depicting a territorial condition, represent the multiple relations between scale, politics, and site.