Remy Mcleod

Viewing Cumbernauld through a Situationist lens, it is a ruin of the modern spectacle; a town centre consumed by parasitic commodity sheds under the neoliberal state. It is the ideal testing ground for constructed situations which can provide the consciousness needed for us to act against this phenomenon. Without changing the site conditions, any intervention of the megastructure would again be consumed by sheds. To transform the town centre back into a public space which subverts the ideologies of capitalism it must be situated within, but act against the neoliberal state.

To distinguish market space from public [or dérive] space a threshold must be created between them. Taking the form of an inhabited wall, it designates a market-free zone where conditions will allow ambience to grow again. The wall is a perfect geometry that thus encompasses the megastructure, forcing the sheds to detach and establishes a new urban condition which transforms the megastructure into a monument of democracy, securing its survival and reinvigorating collective life. The wall, in turn, becomes the town centre and is inhabited with existing and new programmes which ensure the sustenance of the square as a dérive space.

Through an architecture of resistance, two polarising conditions are created: a highly frenetic commercial one and a dérive space. By framing the conflict between them, we can expose the reality of the spectacle to awaken societal consciousness and lay the groundwork for action.