UNHCR Photo Above _ Panorama: Za’atari Refugee Camp, Jordan 21 November, 2012. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by BY-NC-ND 2.0

STUDIO OVERVIEW 2022

Forcibly displaced people may be unexpectedly fleeing danger, caught out in the open with few possessions,  traumatized, disoriented, ill, and seeking food, sanitation and water. Their survival may at first depend upon speed and initiative in setting up shelter, where an improvised, if imperfect solution will stop illness and potentially loss of life.  Cases of forcible displacement have been rising to numbers of people unprecedented in history (see figure 1 below) and that may call for more efficient methods of construction with lightweight high strength materials that can be more quickly delivered and setup.   Yet, these shelters may not necessarily meet the longer term spatial requirements or adjustments necessary to fully serve the cultural and social practices of the community that occupies them.

Taking a longer view the studio will explore an increasingly detailed series of design exercises to create adaptive rapidly deployable light-weight shelters with a small environmental footprint. The shelters will be designed for subsequent modifications, partial reuse, expansion, and possible conversion to local resources. That is, the goal is to prioritize a community’s own agency in making its built structures and maximize its use of local expertise, labor and resources. The literature in the studio bibliography suggests that such a longer term scenario of community engagement gives an important boost to their sense of well being as they grow in confidence to regain control over their lives. 

Looking at a refugee settlement over a three part timeframe,  the studio will focus on the first stage and the beginning part of the second stage of the three stages below:   

• Stage 1. Rapidly deployed and flexibly configured shelters at the outset of a forcible displacement.  
• Stage 2. Transitional ad hoc adjustments and expansions of the initial shelter units by residents.
• Stage 3. Longer term semi-permanent or permanent housing that maximizes local materials and labor, and community agency.  

The studio brief will be based upon the option to select one of two State Park sites as the hypothetical context for the design exercises. It will take into account settlement guidelines provided by the United Nations High Commissioner For Refugees (UNHCR).  The guidelines are advisory but are not meant to be uniformly adapted. Accordingly,  the studio will test a framework for innovation that is informed by but not completely limited to the guidelines. 

RESEARCH GRANT LINK

The studio is the final stage of a Savage Endowment for International Peace and Justice Grant distributed through the University of Oregon Global Justice Program. The co-PIs (principal investigators) of the research team will meet in Eugene during the first week of the spring term and help to facilitate a field sketching exercise on the Oregon Coast. The co-PIs bring perspectives from being located in the US, Europe and The Middle East. They reflect varying geographical perspectives with respect to forcible displacement. Their collaboration over the past few years has helped to inform the studio.

SIGNIFICANCE

According to the United National High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), at the end of 2021 there were over 84 million forcibly displaced people in the world. The number of refugees has been increasing annually above historical levels for some time.  When this studio was previously offered during the spring quarter of 2019, the UNHCR estimated that there were 68.5 forcibly displaced people in the world. The roughly 19.5% population increase of 16.5 million has occurred in just 3 years. It’s a number of people greater than that of 163 or nearly 69% of the countries in the world. And the total number of forcibly displaced people today is greater every state in the US, and nearly every country in Europe (Russia and Turkey populations are higher, and Germany is very close in population), or about 93% of all the countries in the world.

Figure 1: There were 84 million forcibly displaced people worldwide in mid-2021. Graph is derived from UNHCR statistics reported at https://www.unhcr.org/refugee-statistics.

Such numbers are overwhelming the capacities of the UNHCR and other humanitarian aid organization to keep pace, the circumstances are widely varied, and resources are typically limited. In an ideal world, the supply chain of building materials, design professionals and  construction personnel would be plentiful and the time for each project would allow for fine tuning and careful reflection. Yet, under the harsh pace of forcible displacement today,  designers need to be prepared to work with nimbleness, speed, improvisation,  imperfect resources, limited information, labor and supplies. They may need to follow an approach that at present falls behind the growing needs.

A great number of first stage solutions are based upon tent-like structures assembled with simple rigging methods.  Accordingly, the first hands on workshops in the studio will be based on the traditions wooden boatbuilding and sailmaking where there is an extraordinary wealth of knowledge about tensioning fabric with operable joints. Studio techniques will subsequently engage physical modeling methods to investigate high strength contemporary building tension membrane fabric materials. We will also examine more contemporary connection joints that permit the unfolding and retraction of the tension membrane fabric structures, similar to raising and lowering sails on a boat, and that are also designed to transform the shape of the structures for more flexible use. In addition, we will introduce selective methods of geometrical modeling, CNC Fabrication, sewing and digital terrain modeling when on a case by case basis with hands-on tutorials that assume studio participants have no prior knowledge.

SITES

Studio participants will have the option to make a case study of one of two state parks on the Oregon Coast,  Sunset Bay State Park , where an adjacent campsite presently exists, or the nearby Shore Acres State Park, where one does not presently exist. They both have expansive views of the Pacific Ocean. They both are highly vulnerable to natural and human caused disturbances such as a tsunami wave, earth quake or forrest fire. On the one hand these parks are prized for their natural beauty and sweeping ocean views. On the other hand, they face a number of environmental challenges that can easily render them vulnerable to loss of land and marine habitats and  to erosion.   While our primary emphasis will be on design methods, we will examine these environmental risks that may be similar to conditions that impact refugee settlements.

Figure 2. State Park Ranger Frey leads a walk and talks about the ecosystem at Shore Acres State Park, Rapid Shelter Displace People Studio, E. Mark photo, 2019.

Studies of the environmental footprint, the ecology of animal and plant habitats and general site conditions will be made by direct field observation methods and sketching.  The current plan is to also gain an understanding of the coastline provided by Oregon Institute of Marine Biology (OIMB) located adjacent to the parks on the coast.

Each person in the studio will be asked to consider the distinct narrative of forcibly displaced community. This narrative can be based on a tsunami wave, earthquake, forrest or some other disaster on Oregon Coast. Or, it can be based on a hypothetical scenario of forcibly displaced people from some other part of the world needing to be housed at one of the state park sites.

By the midterm, our scope of interest will expand to 16 family units for 80 occupants as a whole: a particular number units and size population group identified as a “Community” by the UNHCR that share common facilities, resources and open space. During the second half of the spring quarter we will incrementally expand our scope to consider the needs of two Communities”.

UNHCR RAPID SETTLEMENT STANDARDS

The UNHCR settlement layout standards are based on the base group of a “Community” site plan consisting of 16 household units. Sixteen “Communities” are in turn aggregated into a single “Block”.   Four “Blocks” are aggregated into a “Sector”.  Finally, four “Sectors” are in turn aggregated into a “Settlement” for roughly 20,000 people. While the studio will be focused on the “Community” scale, it will more abstractly consider implications at the “Settlement” scale.

PICKING A NARRATIVE

Readings and topics within the studio include profiles of forcibly displaced peoples, their varied circumstances, cultures, and particular needs as described by humanitarian aid organizations and health care providers. Each design studio participant will independently select, research and respond to the discrete narrative of a particular group of forcibly displaced people. For case studies in the field, see also the bibliography, a working document on this blog that will be continually updated.

FABRICATORS

The Eugene area is home to some exceptionally innovative and knowledgeable fabricators of tension membrane fabric structures and sailmakers. It’s anticipated that studio will gain a direct understand of production and structural solving problem and systems through shop tours and demonstrations similar to how this studio was taught in 2019. However, due to Covid, this is subject to circumstances during the spring quarter.

INSTRUCTOR BACKGROUND  / QUESTIONS

Earl Mark has been teaching collapsible tension membrane fabric architecture studios at the University of Virginia since 2007 for sites on the Maine Coast, primarily Acadia National Park at Schoodic Point where he spent a research sabbatical in 2015 testing small scale mockups of research labs and seasonal housing with sensors to automatically retract and unfurl fabric solar shading. This design research transitioned to the current rapid shelter for forcibly displaced people program in 2016. He taught a similarly themed studio at the University of Oregon in 2019. Questions may be addressed to emark@uoregon.edu.

Copyright © 2022 . Earl Mark . emark@uoregon.edu . University of Virginia & University of Oregon . All Rights Reserved.