35matcult

T his is a project that illustrates the potential of using material artefacts, the material culture of war in this case, as the literal foundations for an emergency shelter architecture. T-walls are the concrete units devised for the West Bank barrier wall in Israel. Different versions are used throughout Iraq and Afghanistan by the US Army: the 1.1m Texas , the 3.7m Bremer , the 6m Alaska . The 1m traffic barrier, Jersey , has sloped edges at the base and is used on highways seemingly everywhere. In 2012, New World Design, Jeffrey Olinger, Heather Boesch, Darby Foreman and Cliona McKenna (the strategic consultancy group that was reformed in 2016 as Olinger Architects), developed a housing project based on T-walls for Al Querna, Iraq. The Arab Land Group, established in 2003 and headquartered in the UAE to work with the US Army, manufactures the barriers used in Iraq and Afghanistan. The T-wall unit is both concrete wall and foundation: in this project the units are deployed in parallel in a punctuated grid aligned with wind and against heat gain. Houses are developed between them. A basic L-shaped house unit multiplies to make alleys and courtyards in a number of configurations. postscript s white Olinger Architects, Cambridge MA T-Wall Housing Proposal​, Al Querna, Iraq

all images of T-Wall housing, Iraq: www.olinger.io

The project is simple and subversive. It is useful and uses the defences of war. It is culturally cognisant and based on imperialist debris. What Olinger has done is to appropriate a form that divides and obstructs, and to de-nature its malevolence as a form by embedding it in the construction of housing. n

On Site review 35 : the material culture of architecture

54

Made with FlippingBook interactive PDF creator