Torture or Liberation?

Recently there has been some concern over weather a project set to the Kent School of Architectures 5th year students has pushed the 'world of project setting' too far!

The task was to design and construct a fully operable torture device, yes I'll repeat that 'torture' device. Oh what a taboo, rearely talked about and rarely written about. Well I thought it was about time I wrote something of value so I wrote a letter to AJ (Architects Journal).

I noticed soon after I read the article concerning the Kent School’s torture device project that many readers had a very negative response to the idea as a whole. Did they really mean to have this view or did they just hastily jump to the decision that it was not a reasonable task because it contained that dreaded word, ‘torture’? At first glance it does appear to be a very extremist idea, and one certainly modern society tries it’s best to ignore. Torture is a not very often talked about topic in this era that we live in and rightly so, it is a nasty practice which is unacceptable. However when I take a step back and look at the task from a distance I see that the device, not the practice, is focused solely on the human body. Architecture also is always trying to better itself at meeting human demands, and as we use and inhabit a building we must feel connected to it as well. This then brings me to my point, I’m not saying that torture is right, just that perhaps sometimes these sorts of ‘radical’ projects is what’s needed to get ones mind working at a level you can not usually reach with a project with no real morale ground – perhaps if we just renamed it a ‘liberation device’ everyone would be a lot happier?

So there we have it, liberation device, yeah that'll please the old yanks and hell maybe they could go ahead and occupy something at the same time.

-tomi