HANNEKE VAN DEURSEN
Portrait courtesy of Hanneke van Deursen.
B.Arch from Syracuse University School of Architecture.
Hanneke is a recent graduate from Syracuse University’s School of Architecture. As a first generation American, she grew up split between small-town Minnesota and the Netherlands. Her interest in the bizarre environments produced by Neoliberalism started with an unwitting journey to Canary Wharf during her 2018 London semester. Haunted by that Sunday morning, she sustained and fed this obsession with the spaces of Neoliberalism through her subsequent travels in Asia, her professional with a Dutch Architecture/Development company, and her research grant in the Philippines. Most recently, that obsession drove her Dean’s Award-winning thesis, Truth Games: Naturalizing the Neoliberal Subject.
Disillusion—Ultimately in the Best Way
What inspired you to pursue architecture?
I am a bit disappointed to report that my decision to study architecture began in quite a predictable manner. Like most future-architects, I was a smart kid, but always creative. I loved math and puzzles, yet couldn’t see a future solely devoted to crunching numbers. I took a career test in my seventh grade class, which after 100+ questions was going to tell me which field would be right for me. I do not remember the result—only that I dismissed it immediately. What I do remember is scrolling through the list of careers desperately looking for a better option. Capital-A-Architecture was right up top. Now, I grew up in a small town in Minnesota, so my understanding of an architect’s job was limited to the HGTV and Home Depot, but it sounded just right. As I have a tendency to do, I latched onto the idea of Architect, and never really looked back. I was lucky in that the more I ~really~ learned about architecture the more I realized it complimented my personality. Observant, obsessive, and bossy—nay—brimming with leadership potential, architecture grew to be a perfect match. I remain convinced that I really could not have done anything else.
Looking out, as usual, Tokyo, 2019. Photo courtesy of Hanneke van Deursen.
What is the most important thing that you learned in the past year?
2020 has been a year of disillusion—ultimately in the best way. It began with my thesis which dealt with Neoliberalism, Architecture, and the City. I was interested in how our environments (and the structures which produce those environments) shape us. I focused on particular islands within the city that I called ‘Capital Imaginaries’. These areas (Hudson Yards, Canary Wharf, and Kop van Zuid), are the manifestations of Neoliberal policies from the 1980s onward, and take on the utopian imaginary of the ideal city according to the market. Through various methods of observation, documentation, and mapping the work sought to peel back the layers of ideology embedded in the city and lay bare a more simple ‘truth”.
As one can imagine, a thesis like this requires a robust understanding of the mechanisms of capitalism, the history of contemporary politics, and the structural issues underpinning our discipline. It was a disheartening understanding to develop, at least at first. One encounters problems that seem consistently beyond hope of remedy. However, through this project I came to see the contemporary reality of architecture in a much blunter light. And I think this was necessary.
The difficulty has become how to do anything in such a landscape, since any attempt to design one’s way out becomes part of the problem itself. This, coupled with the free-falling economy, has completely unraveled my expectations for what I would be doing post-graduation (and in my career in general). I have regained faith in architecture as many times as I have lost it, although every time in more niche corners. I can not say I have figured it out yet, but what I do know is that I feel incredibly lucky to have been granted the gift of time to actually sit with this disillusion.
What are some architectural organizations (or specific person/role model) that helped you learn to overcome an obstacle? How did they?
You may not like my answer to this question much, I am warning you (and apologizing) in advance. To be honest I have never really participated in architectural organizations, and definitely do not feel supported by any. More honestly, I feel dropped, senseless, into a job market that no one seems to have much hope for. I feel ill-prepared, insignificant, and lost in a field of disciplinary noise. Again, sorry, it is probably not what a fine organization like yours wants to hear, but it is, I promise you, an honest response.
What I can say is that I have found hope in the support of individuals. The perks of the pandemic definitely include unusually low barriers to talking people you admire into quick zoom calls. Though no one quite knows what to do (or say), they are able to offer encouraging words that lead away from the doom and gloom of archinect’s job page. Sometimes it’s as simple as commiseration in the difficulty of this moment, other times it’s a swift kick in the behind that reminds you that there is plenty you can still be doing, and still other times it’s a more finely tuned statement about the relevance and necessity of continuing what you have started. Is it cheesy to say that sometimes you just need someone to believe in you? I have found it to be the case, especially now when it seems that the world does not (believe).
Film still from Canary Wharf: the Uncritical Laborer, Truth Games, 2020. Photo courtesy of Hanneke van Deursen.
If you were given the opportunity to repeat the year, what is one thing you’d do differently?
If I could repeat the year, while retaining foresight of the pandemic to come mid-thesis-push, it is very clear to me what I would differently. I would have been WAY pushier about talking to my peers about thesis.
Thesis is a bit of dying tradition in B.Arch programs in the U.S., but for me and my friends at Syracuse it was the Thing We Had Been Waiting For. After four years of build-up, we are gifted an entire year (one semester of thesis prep, and one of thesis) to start our trajectory as thinkers/designers. What I did not consider beforehand was how isolating thesis has the risk of being.
We worked with advisors (either one-on-one or in advisory groups with up to three advisors) and would (depending on the advisor) have some contact with the other projects in our group. These meetings twice per week at most, and points of deadline-stress. Outside of these meetings, however, I was the only one looking at my work. And I looked at it. I taped plot-room scraps all over my bedroom walls and would stare at them, manically scribbling notes onto my diagrams.
When I did drag myself out of the confines of my bedroom/studio, (back in the Good Old Days of distance-free parties), the general rule was: dear god please let’s not talk about thesis. And now, looking back, I wish I had insisted, “but why not?”
I can only imagine how much my work would have benefited from more outside eyes. If there is anything I have learned in the pandemic it is the difficulty of doing anything in a vacuum. I (and I would posit: like most people) thrive off of dialogue, challenge, engagement. For as much as I like spending time alone, the work needs to breathe. The success of my thesis was not going to be related simply to how much time I forced myself to clamp down on it in my insular bedroom/studio. And so, if I could go back and do it again, when at a party someone asked me not to discuss thesis, I would push a little harder, ask questions, and engage with the fantastic work being created around me.
Grand Diagram for Truth Games: Naturalizing the Neoliberal Subject, Truth Games, 2020. Photo courtesy of Hanneke van Deursen.
The immersion boxes. Image from film installation: Capital Imaginaries, Truth Games, 2020, Photo by Aaron Cass. Photo courtesy of Hanneke van Deursen.
Reading the Ground, Projecting the Image. Image from film installation: Capital Imaginaries, Truth Games, 2020, Photo by Aaron Cass. Photo courtesy of Hanneke van Deursen.
As you reflect on the past year, what did you discover as your biggest strengths?
This is actually an interesting question. A good one too, personally, because tend to find faults in myself more naturally than appreciating my strengths. Give me a moment to think… (and please excuse the stream of consciousness to follow)
Maybe my biggest strength has been my persistent belief that what I do does (or will) matter. I sometimes feel like I am diving in and out of varying hoops to generate the outcome I seek. While for most this blind faith in my ability to ‘figure it out’ may come off as delusional, I have learned to trust it. I have much more trouble figuring out what my goals should be than getting there. Maybe it is best described as an insufferable determinacy to Make It Work. My thesis advisor once described my temperament to be like that of a Rottweiler: the more difficult something got, the harder my jaw would clench down on it. Despite the struggle of finding a job right now, I have not managed to turn off my obsessive mind. There was a word I learned while studying for the GRE (a fine post-grad project): ennui. It is defined as the restlessness that comes from being bored, and I do not think I could identify with a word more strongly. In the gap between any trajectory I was planning on and what is to come, I feel a restlessness. I am all but consuming books, I wander around the city taking photos, I am taking time for those things I did not have time for in the last five years. I’m hoping all this “time” and “space,” as uncomfortable as they make me, will help me gain some distance before I continue my education in graduate school next fall. So yes, if I would have to pinpoint a strength I would put it there, I always manage to Make It Work, and to be working towards something (even if only time will tell me what).
A day off during the 3+ Cities Asia traveling studio, Shenzhen, 2019. Photo courtesy of Hanneke van Deursen.
In terms of rising concerns and problems (in the architectural profession) over the past year, what is one change that you wished would happen and it did not? This can be in an educational or work atmosphere.
Architecture remains a profession which consistently undervalues its labor. I would like to see fair compensation for the work of young architects in positions ranging from Undergraduate Teaching Assistants to Internships to Junior architects.
TED talk, (In)dependence and Identity: Exploring the Filipino Dream House, 2020. Photo courtesy of Hanneke van Deursen.
