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In the era of migrations, cities constantly experience an oscillation between cultures, space, and power. A change in social and cultural patterns between the precedented societies and newcomers has become highly controversial in the political climate.1 On the one hand, the pivotal concept of integration as a homogenizing practice seems no longer to function, as the host/guest dichotomy has failed to realize the racial structures of power and the inequalities in society. On the other hand, the rise of right-wing populism is increasingly framing migration as a threat to dominant cultures, leading to policies that racialize human rights values such as freedom of movement. Here, the question is no longer about who is accepting who, but about where control has stabilized certain regimes of visibility. When different regimes of control tend to exclude some identities while including others through ‘structures of sensibilities’, possible modes of perception become limited through a codified society.

Given the transformative nature of the digital realm, new domains for interaction with societies have allowed new visibilities to emerge. If demonstration through streets was one day the most provocative act of gaining visibility, nowadays appearance on social media and open-source apps come with a much stronger influence on societies which indeed, is a profound shift in power structures mediated by the digital realm. In this context, the role of architecture as an agent that is controlled by and at the same time controls the different regimes of visibility in urban space, is a question of the tools and the mediums that architects work with.

Defining my role as a design activist, I attempt to challenge the conventional tools of architecture through different visual and digital disruptive interventions in the digital sphere to investigate the domains of influence of an architect in socio-political space. Through different visual techniques, I investigate the concept of defamiliarization to invent a new aesthetic regime that challenges territorialization by redistributing fragments of reality and ultimately, questioning the presence of diversity in the artefacts of today’s urban imaginaries.