Re-SETTLEMENT COLLABORATIONS

This is the second studio course in the Master of Architecture Program Foundation and ARST (Architecture Minor} options. It examines contextual and social aspects of urban dwelling through the design of a small-scale shelter and a medium-sized multi-use urban residential building (20 units). The larger narrative of the studio explored the potential role of shaping a physical environment in aiding resilience and adaptation in the experience of forced displacement and re-settlement.  The United Nations stated 70.8,8 million forcibly displaced people in 2019 worldwide due to conflict, violence, climate, and natural disasters.

The agency of design is rooted in the environmental, social and economic transformations that affect the negotiations between the various scales of architecture and its impact as a discipline.  Change in process allows for renewed interrogation of the potential role of the architect. The focus of this section is framed by exploring the claims staked by the discipline and the spaces of transformation that arise as opportunity. If architecture is not considered as a set of stable and unquestionable assumptions, it can be taken askew and many of the usual distinctions of its purpose, production and use explored. A good part of the success or failure of integration for the second generation has to do with physical form. How we collect and translate the information into these transitional urban spaces can offer results towards diverse, equitable, and inclusive cities.  The difference depends on our ability to notice, and our willingness to engage and address to create a world where everyone lives with dignity and opportunity.

Students attended The Immigrant Education Society’s Conference: Refugee & Newcomer Women’s Emotional Wellness. C. Hamel presented Fieldnotes: Tracing Shifting Thresholds presenting the initial settlement collaboration from fieldnotes between architecture students and those remapping their borderland towards grafting habitation into a new city.

Students also attended and showcased their work at UCalgary's Sustainability Speaker Series on Sustainable Communities: Migrant and Refugee Health: From the local to global.

The site of the project was an extension to the CCSI (Calgary Catholic Immigrant Society) Margaret Chisholm Resettlement Centre.

Projects included:

1. INTEGRATION HUTS – LANDING IN THE REGIONAL.
2. CONTESTED TERRAIN - REMAPPING THE BORDERLANDS.
3. HOUSINGS INTERACTION – URBAN RESETTLEMENTS

Instructor:

Catherine Hamel