A constant in history is the displacement and the movement of populations across the planet. Whether it is because of famine, drought, war, disease, and even environment disasters, humans have been traversing the face of the planet since the beginning. Most recently because of civil warfare in Syria that began in March 2011 the number of refugee has just exceeded 2 million people. However, environmental degradation has become one of the largest causes of refugees in the world. Coupled with poverty, inequity, and war the number of people who have been displaced is immense. The International Organization for Migration has determined in their World Migration Report 2010 that the “number of migrants has grown to 214 million, and the figure could rise to 405 million by 2050.”
“It is apparent that environment degradation and resource depletion may play a contributing role in affecting population movement, often filtered through contexts of poverty and inequity.” – Steve Lonergan
What I find extremely interesting is the immense numbers of people that are being displaced or the ones that already are. The potential for architectural intervention is incredible. Rem Koolhaas has said that “not only has architecture, as we traditionally conceive it, become too slow to keep up with development, in the end, it’s often unnecessary.” However, in the context of refugees, architecture has a much more temporary life span. The ability to innovate and to adapt to new climates and environment stimuli as people get displaced begins to shape and drive design. The constant construction and deconstruction of work allows for architecture and built design to begin evolve at a quicker pace and to begin to generate increasing novel work. However, the speed in which design needs to evolve coupled with the enormous and constantly growing population of the displaced creates incredibly opportunities for architecture.
With the exponentially growing process of technologies it is no longer absurd to say that everyone will have a device in their home that can 3d print. I would go even further and say that 3d printing technologies will become so common that every person on the planet, even the ones that are financially troubled, will have a 3d printer that can process the resources in its vicinity into building blocks for a temporary structure. However, an argument must be made that the technology needed to have such an advanced 3d printing system would also have geo-engineering technologies that can address the problem of environmental degradation as well. Migration is a global constant. People move willingly and unwillingly based on a multitude of reasons. Many are migrant workers that stay temporarily for a job opportunity and for others war and famine may force a population to relocate.
“…environment degradation is likely to produce “waves of environmental refugees that spill across border with destabilizing effects” on domestic order and international relations.” –Steve Lonergan
Lonergan breaks down environmental refugees into categories. There are those who are temporarily displace due to “environmental stresses such as an earthquake, or cyclone” and will eventually move back to their original location and there are those that are forced to relocate because their current environment cannot sustain their way of life or those who wish for an improved lifestyle. The architecture that I am aiming to pursue targets both of these types of refugees. The temporality of these structures lends itself to the question of what happens after they are used. Furthermore, I begin to ask the question of how can the temporalities of the structures address the destabilizing effects of both large scale environmental degradation concerns such as desertification and rising ocean levels as well as the ruins of warfare and natural disasters. The movie Code 46 envisions a future earth that is mostly desert with most life within cities.
To find inspiration on this thesis, I turned to the fashion industry and works of science fiction. The fashion industry deals with incredibly fast changing markets and tastes. The production of clothing, the shipping, the maintenance, the labor and the time spent designing each article creates an extremely wasteful and unsustainable practice. What happens to clothing after it comes out of style? In what ways can clothing be improved to become more sustainable? Timo Rissanen states that the “current disposability of clothing is problematic. While clothes are seemingly durable goods, they are often marketed as fast changing fashions” which in the greater scheme of things go hand in hand with designing for the displaced.
These thoughts can be easily broken down into 3 scales of approach. The largest scale would be migratory patterns of the future. Areas that have a higher risk of environmental degradation or even areas that are high in resources, which will be areas of conflict, will have higher chances of displacement. Locating these areas and using historical evidence to predict and the map out the areas in which the displacement will reach is vital to understanding how to begin to handle the second scale of approach. The second scale deals with the problem at the scale of a human. A structure for the displaced must be easy to deploy, easy to deconstruct and must be able to remediate the land post use. Shigeru Ban’s work with paper tubing is a one example of cost-effective, sustainable building techniques. The final scale is at the scale of building blocks. What tools are needed to embed information into the structures so that when they do decompose or get deconstructed they are able to remediate the land? What information should be embedded? Rogue Farm by Charles Stross hints at certain “hacks” that can begin to change genetic information in soil and the environment around the site in order to suit the demands. After watching Elysium the idea of drones that can be deployed to “print” and build new structures for displaced persons. Even existing technologies will be able to begin to inform me. Building construction methods such as Loam can be embedded with information.
The previous weeks for me have been spent on research into migration and displacement and the existing methods in handling these situations. Moving forward I want to begin to look into what technologies and methods I want to use in order to produce my mid-scale shelters that embody my small scale information. Ideas such as personal 3d printers, nano-machines that can produce building blocks from the environment, and the methods to get these technologies to the people in need are what I want to begin to look into. Most importantly I am researching the end result of the remediation and the process in which is gets there. What materials are easily degradable that can also carry with it certain materials that when in contact with air will change form. I have already begun making diagrams for studies on displacement.