Towards Projection as a Tool for Thick Description

Centre HABITER, Faculté d’Architecture La Cambre Horta, Université libre de Bruxelles, Belgique

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Abstract

From William James’s distinction between abstractions that thin and those that thicken, this paper interrogates how architectural projection can be mobilized without reproducing the colonial thinning of Congolese vernacular architectures. It analyses colonial ethnographic descriptions and photographic practices around Joseph Maes’s 1913–1914 expedition as operations that destroyed attachments, produced epistemicide, and devalued vernacular constructions. It then examines projection as a modern device, arguing that it likewise tends to separate architecture from bodies, places and lived experience. Against this background, the article proposes an ethical framework for a thick use of projection, informed by decolonial critique and science studies. Following Françoise Vergès’ proposal for a critical cumulative palimpsest, it suggests that projective drawing can become a tool for thick description when it is situated within plural, situated frameworks that re‑activate gestures, memories and relations, rather than merely restituting forms.