Rapid Shelter Healing Landscape

Shore Acres State Park, Oregon, E. Mark Photo, April, 2019.

ARCH 484 / 584 Design Studio __ Spring 2023
Instructor: Earl Mark, Visiting Associate Professor

OVERVIEW _ A SANCTUARY FOR FORCIBLY DISPLACED PEOPLE

This website is continuously updated.

When someone is forced from home, traumatized, separated from loved ones, in severe need of food, medical care, sanitation, and protection from the weather, time is critical. The speed of the response may save lives. In many cases it seems self-evident that providing a flexible, rapidly deployed shelter within a secure perimeter may be an essential first step to the survival of forcibly displaced people in danger. Similarly, a site design that therapeutically engages the natural environment can contribute to healing from physical and psychological trauma.

The studio will explore adaptive light-weight rigid and tension membrane fabric collapsible structures that are rapidly deployable, and that can be customized over time to meet the evolving needs of a community at risk, its culture, and pattern of living. Each student will also explore the healing power of the natural and built environment through the design of the site for a specific group of forcibly displaced people.[1] We will work in tandem with a landscape architecture studio taught by Professor of Practice Michael Geffel, exchanging expertise, perspectives, and experiments at the Fuller Land Lab. The studio project hypothetical site will be based on oceanfront state parkland on the Oregon Coast that we will visit with a funded overnight stay at the Oregon Institute of Marine Biology, OIMB. A walking tour will be led by an environmental scientist Start Park Ranger who has led two previous tours with this studio instructor.

STUDIO PROGRAM FOR A UNHCR DEFINED COMMUNITY

The studio program starts with a single household unit. By the mid-term we expand our focus to 16 household units for a total of 80 residents: a particular number of units and size population identified as a “Community” by the United Nations High Commissioner on Refugees (UNHCR) and a few common use structures. By the end of the quarter some students may wish to add a second “community” to their interpretation of the program. However, we will limit the building size so as to investigate more thoroughly the details, such as connection joints, materials, and water drainage.

Settlements that spring up in urgent conditions may last years longer than expected. The initial footprint may become obsolete with respect to supporting the health, agency, food supply, religious practices, cultural activities, and sense of hope needed. We will consider how structures can be setup to retract and unfurl, change spatial enclosure and clustering by a community to better serve its needs. Similarly, we will consider how the therapeutic healing of a forcibly displaced people can be linked to their agency in the responsible stewardship of the natural environment.

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. We will examine these environmental risks that may be similar to conditions that impact refugee settlements especially due to proceeding in tandem to a parallel landscape architecture structure.

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, according to their most recent update. Today, due to the situation in Turkey and Ukraine, this number is significantly higher. The number has been increasing annually above historical levels for some time. When the first similarity themed version of this studio was first 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 than the population of 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 and redrawn after similar UNHCR graphic published in 2018.

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 may selectively introduce methods of geometrical modeling, CNC Fabrication, sewing and digital terrain modeling on a case by case basis with hands-on tutorials that assume students have no prior knowledge.

TRAVEL TO THE OREGON COAST

A field trip to the Oregon Coast is planned for Friday, April 7, which is designated as the Department of Architecture field trip day. The trip includes a walking tour of the ecosystem, habitats, plants and animals and oceanfront setting with emphasis on the environmental footprint of existing and potential built structures. It will be led by State Park Ranger and Environmentalist.

Figure 2 . State Park Ranger Frey leads a walk and talks about the ecosystem at Shore Acres State Park, Rapid Shelter Displaced People Studio, E. Mark photo, 2019. He also met with a similarly theme studio in 2022 and will lead the current studio in 2023.

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.

STUDIO SEQUENCE

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.

Figure 3. Sailmaker Kendall Blake leads a hands-on demonstration in his sailmaking loft, Rapid Shelter Displaced People Studio, E. Mark photo, 2019.

To help explore the forms and structures of tension membrane fabric, Sailmaker Kendall Blake will provide a hands-on demonstration in his sailmaking loft. He will share the knowledge of tensioning fabric structures that he gained from working as a sailmaker and from collaborations with architects. Kendall presently is responsible for the design and implementation of lofting technics for Fred Wahl Marine Construction, a shipbuilder in Reedsport, Oregon near Coos Bay. He will lead a tutorial on lofting techniques appropriate to needs of the studio. Kendall led comparable workshops for similarly themed versions of this studio in 2019 and 2021.

[1] Reuben Rainey, Emeritus Professor of Landscape Architecture, asserts that “There is no such thing as a generic healing garden”. Panel Discussion, UVA, 2013. It is to be designed for a specific group’s needs.

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 similarly themed studios at the University of Oregon in 2019 and 2022. The current studio more directly takes on recuperative power of a healing landscape and reflects more recent field research undertaken in February and March of 2023 . Questions may be addressed to emark@uoregon.edu.