BRINGING IT ALL BACK HOME

BRINGING IT ALL BACK HOME

 

Migration is a defining challenge for architects and designers today. But migration has always been at the heart of urban change. Cities are fundamentally places of opportunity – urban migrants continue to be drawn in their millions by the promise of security as well as upward mobility. As Doug Saunders has suggested, the unprecedented urbanization patterns to which we bear witness are, at their core, an epic story of human movement, set in motion by the common search for a better life. The ‘migration crisis’ that burned so brightly in the collective European consciousness for months before being overtaken by fears of violence and ‘homegrown’ terrorism represents just one chapter in this story. But far from a simple narrative of unanticipated arrivals exposing chinks in the armor of Europe’s fortress. As architects we must understand our role in the refugee ‘crisis’ in broader terms. It is a role that spans countries and continents.

 

A HOUSE IS NOT A HOME

 

In the last year, European architectural discourse and activism has been dominated by a simple humanitarian impulse – the need for fast and effective emergency shelter in cities and towns struggling to cope with an influx of newcomers. Exhibitions like Making Heimat, however, allude to more intangible questions that resist a design quick fix. What exactly makes a built environment feel like home? What material deprivation and sense of danger must be experienced to push someone to flee that home? How can a person continue to retain a sense of identity and connection to a wider community as they move in fits and starts through unfamiliar landscapes and territories? Does the process of settling in a new city – however long – necessarily lead to the establishment of a new home? And after years of conflict, destruction, and absence, is it possible to return ‘home’ and rediscover what was lost in a place that has been rendered unrecognizable?

For those engaged with the full reality of the refugee issue these are challenging questions and impossible to ignore. Rather than a linear journey from A to B, ending with successful long-term integration into a welcoming ‘host’ society, forced migration is often a circular phenomenon. Architects and designers have crucial roles to play in the places that migrants leave, the spaces through which they travel, the urban environments where they will attempt to build new homes, and the transformed places to which they may eventually return. Our forthcoming edition of SLUM Lab magazine is dedicated to this theme, and explores the way in which conflict urbanism, internal displacement camps, border fortifications, liminal settlements, informal transit camps, planned camps, detention centers, reception centers, first step housing, social housing, and various phases of post-conflict reconstruction each reveal the way built space shapes, and is reshaped by, the refugee experience.

 

IDENTITY AND ARCHITECTURE

 

At Urban-Think Tank, we have also engaged with some of these questions in our design projects. On a conceptual level, our involvement in Hello Wood’s annual design-build workshop ‘Project Village’ has explored ideas of temporariness and collectivity. Most recently, the ‘Migrant Hous(ing)’ project grew from the desire to devise a structure that was itself migrant in nature. Each individual arrived to the site with an individual unit – a series of rotating frames that could configure into a multitude of spaces based on personal need. These units had material limitations that prevented the individual from building complete solitary housing. However, as individuals began to form relationships the units transformed. Only through a collective force could they fulfill their structural potential and exert their limitless combinatorial possibilities, testing the true nature of community building. The project questioned how displaced individuals begin to establish relationships with other traveling migrants.

More concretely, our Empower Shack housing project in Cape Town is, on a basic level, a response to the long-term struggle of migrants to establish a foothold in a new city. In this case, however, the pattern in question is rural to urban, rather than the fraught cross-border route traced by refugees. In many ways, Khayelitsha is a classic ‘arrival city’. But the particularities of post-apartheid urbanism, combined with persistent barriers to effective informal settlement upgrading, mean even after 20 years most residents of our pilot site in BT-Section live in a perpetual state of tenure insecurity and spatially entrenched poverty. Pulled by family networks and pushed by the promise of a better life, the community – transplanted largely from the Eastern Cape – has found themselves disconnected from public services and employment opportunities. The ‘home’ they have forged is fragile, marginal, and rife with personal dangers and environmental risks.

The aim of Empower Shack is to develop a scalable settlement upgrading methodology that offers immediate access to dignified shelter and basic services while establishing a clear pathway to incremental formalization. The project integrates community participation, a new housing prototype, spatial planning, and urban systems that contribute to a sustainable economic model and new livelihood opportunities. Beyond meeting immediate needs, the project also has symbolic value. The post-apartheid South African constitution enshrined a ‘right of access to adequate housing’. But this bureaucratic language masks the deeper promise – an end to deliberate structural inequality and exclusion, where the idea of ‘home’ was contingent on the whims of government planners and strictly circumscribed. For refugees and internal migrants alike, the ability to integrate goes hand in hand with the ability to imagine and build a brighter future. In its fullest sense, this means the ability to participate in a city’s political, economic, and social life.

 

THE SPACES IN BETWEEN

 

As Europeans decamp en masse for beaches in Greece, Italy, France, and Spain to escape the summer heat, more migrants than ever before are dying attempting to cross the Mediterranean. In the meantime, the March resettlement deal agreed between Turkey and the European Union has seen land borders across the continent slam shut. The conflicts in Syria, Afghanistan, and elsewhere fuelling a persistent wave of refugees continue, but Europe is closed for business. At the opening of the Biennale in May, the world of architecture descended upon Venice under the guise of ‘reporting from the front’ – to fight ‘the battles that need to be fought’. If urbanization is ultimately a story of migration, then the frontlines of architecture have always been located along the shifting routes and in the liminal zones traversed by people seeking a new home. Whether in Central Europe or sub-Saharan Africa, architects and designers have much to offer.