Resettlement: Asylum Seekers and a new Global Community

UPENN Fall 2009
Design Studio III

According to the Geneva Convention, a refugee is anyone who has a ‘well-founded fear of being persecuted for reasons of race, religion, nationality, membership in a particular social group, or political opinion’ and countries, which have signed it, have an obligation to take in refugees.

In the US, any ‘alien’ seeking asylum is subjected to multiple background checks. In the interim, they are often detained in cell like conditions, psychologically stripping them of their privacy and in some cases, their humanity. Incredibly, since 1975, the United States has resettled approximately 2.6 million refugees within its borders.

Resettlement is a primary strategy towards the protection of asylum seekers; it additionally creates a burden that no one entity claims responsibility. Integration itself is a long arduous process that has integral legal, economic and socio-cultural dimensions.

Urban centers have always been a ‘melting pot’ of cultures and hence had sharp cultural and economic divides. Historically, few public programs existed which allowed diversity without question — at least in inception — with exception of the Public Baths. Predominantly a source of good health and hygiene, the vast majority of urban dwellers used the public baths as a quasi-social space.

The objectives of this studio are to investigate, analyze, and produce new relationships emergent from and within contending programs; a multi-cultural dwelling complex and the inherent diversity of the public pool. Additionally, we will investigate and understand economies of the urban context and the potential merge between those existing communities that can develop and provide for the new resettlement.

Student: Alexandria Mathieu

Student: Federica Von Euw

Student: Riggs Skepnek

Urban Cultivations + Global Movements

UPENN Fall 2008
Design Studio III

We are in possibly one of the most extravagant moments of experiencing the ‘global lifestyle’. Across the world, the words, luxury, service and lifestyle, have become synonymous with global living. This ‘lifestyle’ can travel with any individual from place to place across the globe via an emergent programmatic identity: The ‘Lifestyle Hotel’. This ‘Lifestyle Hotel’ provides long and short stay occupations as well as permanent residences combined with luxury programs of different grades depending on your status such as infinity pools, concierge, conference /meeting facilities, basketball courts, party lounges and media screening halls as well as private sky gardens and dog runs. Admittedly a venue of ‘excess’, the program is slowly becoming a generic footprint around the globe as it enjoys immense popularity.

Conversely, we are in a time of gastronomic crisis; many heritage foods that are coveted are being lost, food seed banks are being built as future resources, and distribution of ‘exotic’ foods is becoming more and more expensive as fuel costs rise. Across the globe growing food crisis spreads without solution. On average, food travels 1500 miles from field to fork in the US.

The objectives of this studio are to investigate, analyze, and produce new relationships emergent from and within two currently contending programs; a global generic program of a luxury service hotel with a specifically local urban agricultural slow food movement.

We will seek to identify these relationships early in the semester within the contexts of the programs which emanate in the combined efforts and specific venues such as market place, restaurant or individual ‘victory gardens’.

Student: Kristen Smith

Propaganda/Negotiation: Multiple Exposure Architecure

UPENN Fall 2006
Design Studio V

News dissemination worldwide is facing a crisis – a crisis which echoes political conflict across the spectrum of left and right. Journalistic neutrality has eroded and increasingly, media outlets are blurring the distinction between reporting and editorializing, presenting viewpoint as truth, erasing the traditional separation of fact and opinion.

The techniques of propaganda are both overt and covert and involve not solely the message content but its physical presentation as well. Through systematic techniques propaganda eradicates the presentation of opposing or contradictory view. The exchange of facts between media and receiver is no longer equal but is imbalanced to the brink of unbalanced. Currently, controversial networks such as Fox and Al Jazeera have been accused of presenting the agenda of controlling parties as factual certainty.

Conversely, the United Nations, by its very nature, is a ‘neutral’ agency. Its authority is derived from the willingness of each individual member nation to defer their power to the collective to achieve the aims expressed in the U.N.’s charter – the propagation of peace, the resolution of conflict and the affirmation of human equality. By recognizing the U.N., the members agree to set aside their authority for that of the U.N. as one negotiating body. Equilibrium is ensured by the cooperation of all; each member benefits from equal exchange as defined in the U.N. charter. The goal of the U.N. therefore, is to be balanced in all issues and agendas it negotiates.

In actuality, negotiation is an asymmetrical relationship in which there is not an absolute equality among the agents involved at any one moment. The process of negotiation is a constant shifting of reciprocity between agents.

The studio will critique the methods of propaganda and the process of negotiation. The experiment of the studio will be to create an open-ended dialogue between propaganda and negotiation, using architecture as a medium. Students will develop independent programs with propositions on one of three sites in New York City.

Student: Pete Rae

Student: Brad Leibin

Crossings: States of Transition on the Mexican / American Border

Columbia University Spring 2005
Third Year Design Studio

Following the events of September 11th 2001 our world has changed dramatically with regard to security and freedom; the transportation of individuals, vehicles, and products across international borders, most poignantly in the United States has been altered by numerous safety procedures. The U.S. Government has instituted a number of counter measures to combat the occurrence of potential terrorist acts within and along its borders. Consequently, new concerns have developed in the United States regarding security, boundary, civil liberties, and national identity. New procedures have been instituted across America at a number of scales ranging from the investigation of individuals to the monitoring of subversive organizations penetrating the US border.

The movement of persons and information across borders requires ever-changing systems of surveillance, prevention, oversight, control and command. Physical and political boundaries in the United States occur primarily along our extensive land, air, sea, and data borders; these are now currently patrolled with an increased level of scrutiny. These thresholds (at once vast and expansive, focused and dense) are transgressed daily both physically and technologically.

This studio will investigate the need, placement, identity and subsequent design of Crossings at the Mexican/American border. The site exists as a string of cities and rural outposts along the border in Douglas, Arizona, El Paso and Presidio, Texas; Mexican cities along the same border include Agua Prieta, Ciudad Juarez and Ojinaga, respectively. These areas will be explored as potential sites for multiple or individual program interventions.

These borders are gateways subject to changing speed, time, and density. Along the borders and within these gateways, new strategies are being implemented simultaneously to increase commercial exchange and in some instances restrict communal traffic. Conditions at each point of access vary, depending on community ties, commercial exchange and political climate. Conditions also fluctuate due to the ever-changing spatial requirements of the border program. 

Student: Michael Hanslik

Student: Avis Lai

Homeland Security Regional Headquarters

Columbia University Spring 2003
Third Year Design Studio

In reflection of 9-11, many have analyzed, challenged and mused over issues of public space; in the city, in the neighborhoods and in the roles of daily lives. Each day one faces the impact of those events in the public arena and each day a portion of that realm travels home with us to our domestic spaces of privacy and intimacy. Quietly new architectural projects have begun to alter the public realm often responding to pragmatic functions without contemplation of the underlying issues. Concomitantly, new concerns have developed regarding security, boundary, surveillance and national identity. Since 9-11, these concerns have also become a primary disquiet within the government’s operative dominion and ultimately resulted as the catalyst in developing a new branch of government; The Department of Homeland Security.

It has been 55 years (the inception of the National Security Council, 1947) since the United States has formed a new branch of government. In the most optimistic sense, it is a moment in which to re-evaluate the symbolism of the Federal Government and an opportunity to create a building infrastructure that moves away from nostalgic imagery to define a new future. Initially conceived as an office to advise and assist the President without substantial independent authority, The Department of Homeland Security was ultimately instated in November of 2002. As an agency with statutory authority controlling many areas of government under its own control, it also houses areas of government that have subversive activities that are beyond the knowledge of the Senate. Some of the departments under its authority have celebrated the civic nature of architecture and become symbolic anchors in their communities, while other agencies it will absorb have worked hard to fade into the fabric of the nation, camouflaging their headquarters behind innocuous facades; a structure, which potentially could shift the civil liberties of our citizens and visitors.

Ultimately, whether celebrated or ordinary, obvious or hidden, the combined need for a regional Department of Homeland Security Headquarters and adjacent employee domiciles, is fertile territory in which to explore the two overlapping scales of our new domestic landscape. 

Student: Angel Emilio Suarez

Student: Sangmok Kim

Temporary / Permanent: Public Space in the Aftermath of September 11th

Columbia University Spring 2002
Third Year Design Studio

As the effects of September 11th continue to unfold, architects, planners, landscape architects, policy-makers and civic groups have gathered in attempt to shape the rebuilding process. Largely, these efforts have been focused on the immediate needs of local residents and the victim’s families, ignoring the more seminal questions of the changed role of public space after the attacks. Even within the conventional terms that these groups have functioned, the recommendations at best, are broad guidelines built around a consensus and nominal information in a highly contested site.

Perhaps more troubling is the parallel actions that the political, legal and financial systems have taken. Largely without involvement from the design community or general public, these sectors have moved swiftly predicating their success on the ability to pose tectonic solutions at a time that seems filled with questions and gaps. Already plans have been drawn up for much of the site resulting in an architecture that seeks to blend in rather than to distinguish- largely ignoring the acknowledgment of architecture’s power as an evocative symbol.

This studio proposes to work within the existing geopolitical structure using the “temporary” as a means to an end. Predicated on a belief that the ground swell for civic change must come from public outcry, the studio will focus on the temporary (five year) solution as a tool to both envision the future and evoke debate. Questions that surfaced in the wake of the attacks have subsided in the urgency to move “forward.” On September 11th in four synchronized acts, boundaries irrevocably changed; global commerce took on new meaning, architecture became a target, definition of security was altered, and symbolic ownership became simultaneously local, national and global. These changes captured the imagination of a nation, and the world. In an effort to bring these issues and others forward into the “rebuilding” of this site the studio will focus on the development of both interior and exterior public space inside, and surrounding the World Trade Center. 

Student: Elizabeth Emerson