The architect's library: books, shelves, cases, collections, displays, exhibitions and READING.
on site $12 display until april 2010 on war
culture urbanism architecture landscape photography research
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FROM BATTLEFIELD TO CATWALK
Presented by the Canadian War Museum in partnership with the Imperial War Museum
CAMOUFLAGE
The first major exhibition to explore the impact of camouflage on modern warfare and its adoption into popular culture
5 JUNE 2009 - 3 JANUARY 2010 THE CANADIAN WAR MUSEUM www.warmuseum.ca
from Sternberg Press
www.sternberg-press.com
Sabine Bitter & Helmut Weber Autogestion, or Henri Lefebvre in New Belgrade
The artist book by Sabine Bitter and Helmut Weber is based on an unpublished text by French philosopher and urbanist Henri Lefebvre which is printed as a facsimile and accompanied by essays from Ljiljana Blagojevic, Zoran Eric, Klaus Ronnberger, and Neil Smith. Co-published with Fillip, Vancouver July 2009, English/French 18 x 25.5 cm, 160 pages, 9 b/w ill., softcover ISBN 978-1-933128-77-1 $27.00 | €19.00 “Crimes against humanity,” especially genocide, have been excluded from amnesty since the Nuremburg Trials. On a cultural level, oblivion by decree becomes an obligation to remember. This reversal is well-intended, but it opens up critical questions: Can memory be permanently established? Is it possible to maintain it in a monument? September 2009, English/German 17 x 24 cm, 216 pages, 10 color and numerous b/w ill., softcover ISBN 978-1-933128-60-3 $24.95 | €19.00 Markus Miessen (Ed.) The Violence of Participation Nikolaus Hirsch, Wolfgang Lorch, Andrea Wandel (Eds.) Gleis 17/Track 17 Europe , as a political space, is as conflictual as its constitution. It needs to be designed and negotiated. It is longing for an architecture of strategic encounters. Based on the curation of a space at the 2007 Lyon Biennial, London-based architect and writer Markus Miessen has drawn together a group of people to lead conversations around alternative notions of participation, the clash of democratic heterogeneities, and what it means to live in Europe today. December 2007, English 15.4 x 21 cm, 255 pages, 154 color ill., softcover with dustjacket ISBN 978-1-933128-34-4 $29.95 | €24.00
War. It is almost chic: a new car ad shows one model exploding as if it had been shelled, a new model shoots out of the cloud of debris, it is shot, a new model speeds away and explodes as if it has driven over an IED, another model drives out of the storm. What were they thinking? When war becomes merely a metaphor for change, awareness of the extreme cessation of civility that is war recedes. WWI soldiers are gone, Spanish Civil War and WWII volunteers are almost gone. All we have now are the PPCLI, the 22 e and our refugees from war with the visceral understanding that war is ignoble, vicious and bloody; that it leaves families blind with grief, it means hundreds of thousands of young lives never continue and for the survivors, they are forever marked. We must never forget this.
10 Course RCAF July 7th 1944. Nicosia, Cyprus Vic Seaton Frank Buck X Alex MacDonald Tut White Bill Wilkes X Don Downing Shearer Eric Von Bock X Less Corney X Jack Fitzpatrick X Monty M Brown Bill Wilson Eric Watts Robert Thomas Neil Moss Vic Treasure Frank Purnell X
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contents
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Rufina Wu Erica Bright
Beijing Underground: domestic interiors of air raid shelters Water as Agent: restoring communities displaced by war Anticipatory Redress: down and dirty practice Narchitecture and Favelas: a preponderance of informality Mending the War-torn: Viet Nam Military Estates: exact edges Highway of Heroes: 65 overpasses on Highway 401 Basic Gestures: tortured positions War and its Inherent (Un)Certainties warpoet Storage Sites: towards a morphology of US ordnance magazines
12 14 16 20 22 24 25 26 27 30 33 34 37 38 40 41 45 48 50 52 56 57 58 59 60 64 66 68 70 71 72
Stanley Britton Kenan Handzic Gerald Forseth
Nick Sowers Christine Leu Shawn Michelle Smith Reza Aliabadi smsteele Adam Bobbette + Alexis Bhagat Aisling O’Connor Deryk Houston Markus Meissen S White Taïka Ballargeon Erin Koenig Lejla Odobasic Calvin Chiu Açalya Allmer + Jens Allmer Sara Loureiro Mireya Folch-Serra Vivian Manasc Gaston Soucy Ruth Alejandra Mora Izturriaga Julian Haladyn Tanya Southcott Dick Averns Jafar Tukan
Deception: in the art of camouflage Ties That Bind : (en)countering war The (Im)Possible Border: where is ‘east’ east from?
War Memorial Exhibition: proposal Dark Tourism: spectacle vs barbarism Urbicide: a crime against urbanity Sarajevo: crossing a divide Persistant Crossing:
Walls of the Cold War: Berlin souvenirs War Murals: painting the revolution Spaces of Death: Spain’s geography of war and remembrance Cuban Modernism: the benefits of peace and prosperity Unstable Creations: violence begets art Palimpsest: the scars of war The Missing House : insubstantial encounters Japantown: the consequences of internment War + Peace: monument and counter-monument Visions of Jerusalem Unconscious City: Fort Yor k Animal, Vegetable, Mineral: after Kosuth Subscriptions and the Call For Articles, issue 23: Small Things Contributor’s biographical notes Front Cover: Israeli “Security Fence” Ramallah, IDF Access Gate Back Cover: Duff. MFO, Sinai
Justin Perdue Heidi Shaefer
Canada Council Grant for Literary and Arts Magazines Government of Canada Canadian Heritage program for Postal Assistance to Publications
Masthead Dick Averns
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beijing underground domestic interiors of air raid shelters Mao Zedong prepared the nation for nuclear war as Sino-Soviet relations continued to worsen in the 1960s. His instructions for the Chinese people were encapsulated in a nine- word slogan: dig deep tunnels, store food, prepare for war ( 深挖洞，廣積糧，不稱霸 shenwadong, guangjiliang, buchengba ). Mao’s words led to the construction of an enormous number of underground air raid shelters. Underground shelters continue to be an integral part of today’s national defence programme. The following is a series of interior photographs of an underground air raid shelter, one of 80 such hostels in a close area, taken in Beijing from 2005-2006.
housing | hostels by rufina wu
migrants subalternity informal housing neglect state power
Water Room Located at the very centre of the complex, the Water Room is where you have the chance to meet and interact with everyone. The Water Room bustles with activities during meal times, when residents come to wash and prepare food, early mornings when people come to perform their morning rituals be- fore heading off to work, and on the weekends when people do their laundry by hand. Over menial tasks like scrubbing dishes or clean- ing fruits and vegetables, residents chat casually with their neighbours.
Women’s Washroom There are two toilet stalls and one shower in the Women’s Washroom. The enclosure to the shower consists of a 2x4 board, a swinging toilet partition,and a plastic shopping bag to tie the previous two items to- gether.The shower faucet is locked. The superintendent unlocks it after the ¥1 RMB fee is paid.
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my bed
Room 31 This photo was taken on the first day I moved into Room 31. My bed is the one on the right. My roommate is a mother of two from Shanxi province. She left her children and her husband behind in hope to earn more money for her family in Beijing.
laundry line bed storage cabinet
Room 4 This image shows the basic provisions of an underground hostel: a bed and a small storage cabinet.The superintend- ent installs additional laundry lines at your request. Room 4 remains empty most of the time. I initially attributed its lack of occupants to the unlucky number four ( 四, si), the Chinese pro- nunciation of which is similar to ‘death’ ( 死, si). I later learned from my neigh- bours that this room is rented out on an hourly basis. Exhausted workers come stumbling in for an afternoon nap. At times this room functions as an affordable love hotel. Room 4 becomes a VIP room for the superintendent’s family during their visit to Beijing dur- ing national holidays.
Room 10 Three construction workers from Hen- an province share this room.They carry almost no luggage, perhaps just one change of clothing. Everything they own is on their bodies, allowing them to be hyper-mobile: they can go anywhere at a moment’s notice. The most valuable item they own is their cellular phones, and the most valuable asset they have to offer is their able bodies.
mouldy walls are covered with newspapers and fabrics
since open-flame cooking is prohibited in basement migrant hostels, residents use electrical hot plates as alternatives.
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TV cable from above
plastic basins are multi- purpose necessities. They are used for washing, storage, bathing, laundry, keeping fish alive, etc.
Room 1 (above) Room 1 is the closest room to the entrance, making it the only room with cellular phone re- ception. One of the girls also managed to pull a television line through the ductwork from above. ‘Connected’ rooms like this one are the most sought after.
Room 2 (below) Room 2 is shared between three girls who became very concerned about my well-being after learning I was new to Beijing. They of- fered to help with my job search, shared information on the cheap- est markets for groceries, and listed fun places to tour and advised on how to travel there cheaply – these gestures convey a definite sense of camaraderie amongst the residents of the hostel.
due to the lack of space, laundry
lines, ducts and bed frames are important devices for maximis- ing storage capacity
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water damage is common to underground spaces, especially in older buildings
door leading to the next room
Corridor 3a (above) Any usable space is filled with beds to maximize oc- cupancy. Corridor 3a, accommodating three men, is an example of such practice.You must walk past the three beds to the doorway at the back to access the next room. Corridor beds are slightly cheaper in rent than others due to their lack of privacy.
Corridor 3b (below) Walking past Corridor 3a leads you to this room.There was a va- cant bed at the time this photo was taken, so for the time being, the sole resident of Corridor 3b enjoys having the room to himself. Covering the mouldy walls with old newspaper is common practice in basement hostels. In this case, he covered the ceilings with a spe- cial selection of images: sports cars and half-naked women.
special selection of images from newspapers and magazines
bedhold vacancy
fan to improve ventilation
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wall hooks are used as ceiling anchors to hang mosquito netting the window of Room 6 remains permanently closed since the area directly above is a garbage collection point
Room 6 (above) A nearby restaurant owner rents Room 6 as accommodations for his employees.The three girls are from the same township in Shanxi province. Waitressing is a demanding job characterised by long shifts and low pay. In fact, migrants are known to take on what are popularly described as ‘3-D’ jobs: dirty, demanding, and dangerous. The girls are nonetheless grateful: long work hours mean they are less likely to waste money (they simply have no spare time for anything else), and the provision of housing by their employer also helps them save up as much money as they can to bring back home. Shanxi province, the coal-mining central of China, is one of the poorest regions in the country. With the coal-mining industry as the prime economic driver, Shanxi offers little to young girls. Many of them decide to migrate as a result in search of better opportunities.
Room 12 (below) Mei and two other girls share this room. Mei is one of the longest standing residents in this hostel. She has been living here for almost two years, since completing her undergraduate degree at a Beijing university. She now works as a translator. Mei translates English text in user manuals to Chinese for ten to twelve hours a day. She feels that her current living conditions are unde- sirable, but she chooses to remain in the hostel because it is affordable, and its location is within walking distance to her office. Mei was in the process of preparing her dinner. She bought five live fish at the nearby morning market and attempted to keep them alive in a basin of water under her bed.Three of the fish committed suicide by jumping out of the water. The ventilation shaft serves as a fridge for food storage during winter months. Dried foods are kept in sealed containers under the bed or on the storage cabinets. Food storage is kept at a minimum to prevent insects.
the ventilation shaft is used as food storage during winter months. To send or receive mobile messages residents put their phones in this space hoping for reception dining table (not in use)
only electric cooking appliances are permitted inside the hostel Mei’s bed plastic basins used as fish tanks
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plastic wall sheathing (gift wrap) collection of pirated DVDs on top of self-built shelving mirror to create an illusion of a larger space
Room 17 This has been Ling’s home for the past two years. Ling spends most of his time in his room working as a freelance graphic designer. A firm believer in the negative health effects of living below grade, he devised his own method for com- bating humidity: he wrapped his entire room in plastic gift-wrap. Perhaps because of the lack of distinction between day and night in the basement, Ling has six cal- endars to help him keep track of the passing of days.
a very popular Chinese actress – Fan Bing Bing colour copies of US$100 banknotes
Room 29 Qing is another long-term resi- dent of this hostel. The aroma of his cooking entices many of his neighbours to visit during meal times. He claims to have the best room in the complex, because on a sunny day a small stream of sun- light penetrates into his basement home. Qing manages to arrange for a high-speed internet con- nection and ensures clutter does not obstruct his morning sun by maintaining a close relationship with his above ground neighbour.
Qing’s primary connection to the outside world: his computer, internet connection and web camera
dining table for entertaining guests
Political and economic reforms since the late 1970s initiated the formation of a new subaltern class in contemporary Chinese cities known as the floating population . Millions of rural migrants moved to urban centres in pursuit of the Chinese Dream. There is an estimated 4 million migrants actively contributing to the construction of the new capital. Without proper household registration ( hukou ) status, rural migrants have little to no access to social welfare including subsidised housing. This investigation began with a simple question: where do migrants live in the city? This series of interior photographs documents a unique type of migrant housing in Beijing: migrant hostels retrofitted from underground air raid shelters. Portraits from below reveal furtive portions of Beijing: marginal, banal and hidden stages upon which life unfolds. C
Beijing Underground is an excerpt from Rufina Wu’s MArch thesis for the University of Waterloo School of Architecture. Rufina Wu currently lives in Vancouver.
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Water as Agent restoring communities displaced by war
infrastructure | gulu , uganda by erica bright
water displacement community structure sustainability
The impact of war on cities conjures up images of smouldering city fabric and buildings in ruins. A longer- lasting impact is the temporary settlements that emerge to provide shelter for those displaced by the war. Dis- placement disorients and uproots people, plunging them into chaos without familiar support systems. In Africa last year, ongoing conflict continued to internally dis- place 11.6 million people. 1 Two decades of rebel warfare uprooted almost two million people in northern Uganda. Gulu, its second largest city, more than tripled in size as 100,000 displaced people flooded urban displacement camps. For many of these people, the war has irreversibly severed their relationships to their land and community. Because of this it is estimated that over half the displaced people will remain permanently in the squalid camps, in an unsustainable relationship with their surroundings, placing considerable stress on urban systems and infra- structure. There is a crucial need to integrate these dis- placed people into the social and economic fabric of the city through permanent settlement.
above: a congested internally displaced persons camp in Northern Uganda below: ‘Industrial Area’ (enclosed by a dotted line ) on the map of Gulu is a displaced persons camp, the site for this incremental design strategy proposal
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‘Industrial Area’ is a main displacement camp in Gulu. At the height of conflict in 2005, over 25,000 people lived in half a square kilometre. 2 A study of this camp reveals inadequate systems and networks — common issues of informal settlements. Few roads exist to link the camp to the city or to facilitate circulation. Family huts are clus- tered in congested patterns with sanitation issues and lit- tle privacy. Water is not available in the camp and people, typically women, spend a daily average of 1.3 hours col- lecting water from vendors elsewhere in town; time that could be spent doing other household tasks or income- generating activities. 3 To add to the disparity, vendor wa- ter costs as much as ten times the price of water from a piped connection. 4 Water is a key source of contention and disparity in urban camps. It has significant social and economic value which the displaced people cannot readily access. Water is, however, present in the form of wetlands. ‘Industrial Area’ camp, not unlike other camps in Gulu, sits on the ridge of a hill. Rainwater drains into adjacent wetlands, depositing sediment and contaminants from the camp. Displaced people cultivate and alter the wetlands illegally, endangering the balance of this key ecosystem. left : site research, from the top: a. road networks: few roads exist on the site to link the camp to the city or to facilitate access or hierarchical circulation. b. buildings: located in an industrial zone, most buildings are mud huts with 6-8 people per hut. c. water infrastructure: infrastructure passes by, but is not avail- able in the camp. d. wetlands: the camp is a catchment area for two wetlands, on the slopes of a low-rising hill. e. agriculture: the displaced people cultivate the wetland illegally as it is the only option for many. below: urban metabolism: cycle of wetland inputs and outputs - an overview of the many programs that use the wetland as a resource and link into the constructed water channel. These programs often have harmful by-products that contaminate the wetland ecology and are hazardous for other wetland users.
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Common solutions for permanently settling com- munities after war often address only housing or infrastructure, but ‘rarely address the social, [eco- nomic or environmental] dimensions’ 5 A perma- nent settlement that enables displaced people to co-exist with delicate wetlands while increasing their social and economic opportunities is desper- ately needed. An incremental design strategy that uses wa- ter infrastructure as the key social catalyst has the potential to develop an existing camp into a per- manent settlement, without displacing people yet again. Water infrastructure can generate impor- tant spatial relationships that are currently lacking – spaces for social gathering, commerce, produc- tion and permanent dwelling.(top) The first inter- vention in a camp is to bring water infrastructure to the site. The design has two systems: delivering potable water, and harvesting and collecting rain- water. Water delivery infrastructure is a linear system that uses the main access road as a social spine along which water distribution nodes, commercial buildings and social institutions aggregate. The water distribution nodes are points of social inter- action within the community, places of impromptu gathering and discussion. The water tower along
the spine is the signifier of the settlement’s market below, and a source of orientation in the landscape. Water harvesting infrastructure harnesses water by work- ing with the site topography. This system is a neighbour- hood water network, a catalyst for organising housing and agriculture at the block scale.(right) Instead of drain- ing rainwater into the wetland, a series of berms and ba- sins linked horizontally, harvest and infiltrate the water periodically. 6 The road network therefore also follows the contours of the land instead of the old colonial grid. Agriculture aligns along each berm, run-off is infiltrated in a basin, while stone or block retaining walls keep the berms from eroding. The berm infrastructure is a cor- ridor, a pedestrian pathway, connecting clusters of new permanent housing across each block.(below right) At the centre of each cluster is a stone-lined water collection courtyard. Troughs and cisterns harvest courtyard surface water during the rainy season, storing it for irrigation dur- ing the dry season. This system alleviates pressure on the wetlands by providing an alternative water source. Imple- mented together, these systems and networks support co- dependent programs.(below)
above right: incremental design strategy, site composite above: the basic block. These layers describe the integrated site system at the block scale. A (top layer) – water collection from roof B: housing clusters around courtyards paved with local stone. C: courtyards are catchment areas for storing rainwater in underground cisterns. D: agriculture aggregates next to basins for infiltrating cistern overflow and agriculture run-off. below: typical site section. These systems and networks support co- dependent programs.This segmented site section depicts conditions in the rainy season when water harvesting infrastructure is at work.
opposite :The berm infrastructure connects housing clusters and water collection courtyards. The basin, a resource with fruit trees and construction materials such as thatch grasses, also supports wildlife.
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Implementation scenario. This scenario follows one set of families as their cluster of huts transitions into a new settlement
The key to designing in such socially charged situations is sensitive implementation. This requires both a top- down and bottom-up approach. The government is a sig- nificant actor bringing the main water infrastructure to the site first. A new water tower is then a gathering place where displaced people meet to discuss the planning of each unique block. Designers help them determine the placement of water collection courtyards around which families will cluster. Because the design of the new set- tlement is carried out on the same existing site, the con- struction of berms, basins, troughs and garden plots is broken down into increments to minimise the impact. (scenario, right) As each block’s framework of water in- frastructure is fully realised the displaced people can be- gin to construct permanent dwellings. There is a crucial need to develop strategies for perma- nent settlement that restore displaced people’s relation- ships to land and community. Water infrastructure is well suited to the sensitive process of incremental implemen- tation necessary for repairing severed connections. This design strategy allows for a variation in landscape con- ditions and scales, therefore possible to employ in other countries and situations. This strategy could be also be adopted for newly displaced people, to create a community as an alternative to the camp . An organising system based on water continues to generate social and economic gains well past the completion of the last phase – which is, in fact, when the project really begins. C
the displacement camp (pre-phase 1)
the establishment of water channels and troughs
housing connected to the berm infrastructure
Erica Bright, a recent graduate of the University of Waterloo’s MArch program, has spent almost a year in East Africa designing schools and training centres for local communities in need. The Prospects for Reconstruction in Angola from the Community Perspective . Guelph: Development Workshop, 2001. p15 6 Lancaster, Brad and Joe Marshall. Rainwater Harvesting for Drylands , 1st edition. Tucson: Rainsource Press, 2006. p24 The Gulu berm and basin infiltration system is adapted from this document which highlights a water harvesting project, the Zvishavane Water Resources Project, in Zimbabwe. 3 Franceys, Richard and Esther Gerlach, editors. Regulating Water and Sanitation for the Poor: Economic Regulation for Public and Private Partnerships. London & Sterling, Virginia: Earthscan, 2008. p74 4 The Republic of Uganda Ministry of Health. ‘Health’ p 26 5 Paul Robson, editor. Communities and Reconstruction in Angola: 1 Internal Displacement Monitoring Centre. ‘Internal Displacement in Africa’ http://www.internal-displacement. org/8025708F004CE90B/(httpRegionPages)/B3BA6119B705C145802570A 600546F85?OpenDocument 2 The Republic of Uganda Ministry of Health. ‘Health and mortality survey among internally displaced persons in Gulu, Kitgum and Pader districts, northern Uganda’. World Health Organisation (July 2005), http:// www.who.int/hac/crises/uga/sitreps/ Ugandamortsurvey.pdf: 46
housing clustered into blocks
a completed housing cluster with berms, basins, gardens, housing and community
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anticipatory redress
reconstruction | strategic education by stanley c britton
shelter planning
vernacular profession hinterlands
Architects are often missing in action during tumultuous times. Building local architectural capacity is both an obligation and an opportunity for the profession from afar. down and dirty architectural practice
The aftermath of war , as with natural disaster, can be a time of great excitement. Battalions of aide workers hit the beaches. Swarms of parachute relief pallets speckle the sky. Richard Wagner’s Ride of the Valkyries pumps adrenalin. The gods of goodness champion grand and glorious interventions. Meanwhile, hinterlands cope alone.
Uganda In the lush savannah of northern Uganda a 20-year insurgency appears to be petering out. The terror of child soldiers of the Lord’s Resistance Army is on the wane. Hundreds of thousands of hesitant Acholi and Langi families are slowly leaving the refuge of internally displaced person camps. ‘Home’ awaits their return. For many second and third generation campers home is a fuzzy notion for which they are unprepared. Does resettlement imply land tenure, governance, income generation, medical services, nutrition, education and shelter? Recently NUeLINK, the Northern Uganda e-Link telecommunication initiative, was shelved when it became evident that the people with technical expertise had long ago sought their future in the safety of the cities. Who, then, would provide informed leadership in the rebuilding of bush communities? This is the problem: absence of local experts in reconstruction and re-building of shelter, infrastructure and community almost automatically means application to the outside world for help. Yet, ubiquitous clusters of round mud-block huts are unlikely to receive architectural, engineering and urbanism benefits, programmed and financed as international aide, unless they are in the more populous locations. In hinterland locations, entrepreneurial incentives may be required. Catalyst projects are a possibility: this is a capacity building lesson from NUeLINK. Ugandan-Canadian Florence Ocen is backing Chicks4Grannies, a new regional egg marketing business. The hope is that healthy chicken coops beget healthy hens and profits. Profits finance better shelter for grandmother-headed families. Profits also contribute to expanding the business, spinning off opportunities for shelter improvements throughout the neighbourhood and beyond. Needed : a little vocational training for a selected few in design and construction techniques. Outcome : a small sustainable design-and-build business.
Burma There is nastiness afoot in the thick vegetation that blankets the rugged highlands of east Burma – fifty years of civil war and a totalitarian government faces off against its ethnic nationalities. The Karen, Mon and Karenni are three. The Thailand frontier is a clutter of refugee camps. For the majority still living on ancestral lands life and livelihoods are stressed; sometimes entire thatch roofed villages must quite literally pull pole and relocate. Meandering cross-border Back Pack Health Worker Teams offer respite. Well-trained and well-educated, they are often called upon to advise on matters of environmental well being such as potable water and safe sanitation, in addition to health. Periodic workshops provide the teams with a forum for continuous learning. Not long ago I was invited to add the basics of village infrastructure and habitation to the workshop curriculum. Useful lessons, I thought, would include locating on high ‘strategic’ ground, ensuring more than one egress route for safety, directing sewage down to crops below, separating combustible buildings, building robustly, bracing buildings against winds, and so on. A well-illustrated pocket size aide-memoire was an envisioned pack- away. The absence of cash-in-hand kept me in Canada. In the meantime, I thought more about this project. Perhaps better value would be achieved by mentoring a couple of refugee technicians. Would it not be they who could best workshop the Back Pack Teams in language, culture and shared experience? Unlike costly fly-in expatriates like me, they would always be available to advise. The war drags on.
The clients, the architects and the builders: a child-headed family in a Ugandan Internally Displaced Persons camp. Shelter is but one component of an extensive strategy that includes business, local profits, micro-credit and sustainable construction techniques employing further members of the community.
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The Nepal Loft House exemplifies architecture influenced by architects.Architects are knowledge experts condi- tioned to see through the eyes of others. Collaborating with local practitioners, they can often adapt new tech- nologies to best practice ideas from the local vernacular. So it is with the suggested rehabilitation of this 28m 2 mud plaster-on-bamboo weave house in the Himalaya southeast.
Nepal In Nepal in April 2006 a republic replaced the monarchy, ending violent civil strife with Maoists. However different provocations followed as ethnic groups pursued democracy in the streets and in the new legislature. Left behind, as always, were the fearfully disadvantaged. In the Himalaya prairie of southeast Nepal, a group of Canadian architects invested a large amount of cash and teamed with the family-strengthening programs of SOS Children’s Villages Nepal. Together, despite a climate of nervous uncertainty, we created a multiple-year revolving fund to micro-finance house loans for replacement and rehabilitated mud-on-bamboo houses, and to help others generate income such they too could one day qualify for houses. It was clearly evident that borrower families needed to access design and construction expertise. But architects, engineers and technologists are not to be found locally – they congregate in urbanised Kathmandu. The Nepal Healthy House Project is a response to this dearth of expertise. Local tradespersons are being workshop-tutored and homeowners are being workshop-educated; a pocket-size house inspector’s checklist has been published; an innovative technologies demonstration house is proposed and an illustrated handbook of design-build best practices will be out in early 2010. In this project, SOS is the social sciences and micro-finance partner, Architects Without Borders Canada is the convener of the workshops, Engineers Without Borders Nepal is the interpreter of indigenous knowledge and I am coordinating from afar. Affordable shelter need not, in so far as micro-finance can succeed, be unattainable. Sustainable designs require imaginative forethought and good craftsmanship. This is a particular challenge given that one is often dependent on locally resourced and recycled materials to be used in ways that can be technically challenging and reliant on semi-skilled trades. SOS and the Canadian architects aim to enable 35 houses a year – sustainable employment that retains and encourages a small cadre of informed builders within their own communities.
Pierre Muanda, in the Democratic Republic of Congo, observes that in war-ravaged places expectations for our profession run awfully high: ‘architects are builders of new vision and hope’. My mentor, the Honorable William Kelly from the Senate of Canada, adds that as professionals we bear ‘obligations of special competency’ to serve those amongst us who are in greatest need. I have in my mind an image from the 1976 movie Apocalypse Now . Robert Duvall’s character Lieutenant Colonel Kilgore’s helicopter gunships assault an idyllic Viet Nam hamlet. Reeled back-to-front, devastation transforms to Shangri-La. Now, imagine an architect from afar with proto-architects from near-at-hand, backpacking instruments, flip-flopping through mud, radiating joie de vivre and laying guiding hands upon local efforts to build anew and to make better. This is our goal, an architecture in marginal and hinterland areas where human and material resources are eager and unorthodox, influenced by architects in eager and unorthodox ways, drawing on extra-architectural resources such as micro- credit, family structure, electronic communications and above all, local knowledge. C
Stanley Britton, FRAIC, is a strategic planning advisor to, and facilitator for, non-profit organisations that seek healthy and sustainable shelter solutions for the disenfranchised overseas. In this regard he is an advocate for archi- tecture influenced by architects. He can be reached at sbritton@3web.com
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Narchitecture and favelas a preponderance of informality
planning | rio de janeiro by kenan handzic
drug wars turf control
informal order unwritten laws slum upgrading
No one could ever claim complete formal control of Rio. This has been true over the centuries and includes autonomous quilombos – escaped-slave communities during times of slavery, unruly 19th century cortiços – tenements, and today’s de facto control in favelas by narcotraffickers and policia mineira or informal militias. Rio’s very organic and unorganised landscape contributes so much to its easy- going and spontaneous character. Even the largest urban tropical forest is geographically smack in the middle of metropolitan Rio. Whether one wanders the concrete jungle that makes up the formal and well-off parts of this city, the favelas or the urban forest, there is a sense that nature and wilderness embrace and engulf this city. It seems too great to succumb to the hand of man. This, and not Oscar Niemeyer’s famous architecture from early on in his career in Rio, nor its endless beaches, made me fall in love with this city. Rio’s chaos has a certain order to it. Cariocas or the locals certainly know the rules. They survive and thrive by them while visitors look on with curiosity and amazement. ‘Don’t enter favelas gringo !’ was repeated over and over with direct evidence of previous horrific experiences. These segregated areas are often compared to failed states and lawless enclaves. A portion of the Red Line Freeway go- ing to the airport from the city is known locally as the Gaza Strip. Many Cariocas spend their entire life living with a view to a favela but never venture up its hills. What a shame! but the reverse is also true. Some people in remote areas of the huge Complexo do Alemao favela have not left it in years. They live in a city within a city. When I commented to a favela community leader how claustrophobic it must feel for gang members to be trapped in their communities due to fear of being arrested in the formal city, he replied, ‘No, they have everything they could ever need or want in their favelas’.
I did venture into the favelas. What I found was the very definition of ‘community’ that we constantly strive to create here in sprawl- ing suburban Edmonton. They were so full of life, vibrant, neigh- bourly and intimate. Because the formal municipality wanted nothing to do with the favelas for a large part of their existence, they became convenient bases for the originally ideologically-left- ist drug dealers or the parallel power that emerged in the 1970s. I felt like a stranger roaming these areas, a feeling heightened by the local rule and parallel power of the narco gangs. Similar to Rio itself, Rio’s favelas are organic communities that contain steep hills, complex vistas, innumerable stairs, winding roads and pedestrian paths or, if located on a flat topography, con- necting pathways akin to mazes and medieval cities. This organic nature allows for easy control, surveillance and guerilla warfare: the perfect turf for both small and large drug gangs. Mature fave- las have little room for expansion due to natural barriers, oppos- ing drug factions and the environmental protection of the Tijuca Forest. When the police and other formal institutions do enter a favela, they rarely come out without a few bullets in their vehicles — that is in the rare occurrence when they enter these areas at all. Despite the arbitrary nature of drug gang control, favela residents appreci- ate it when the police and other drug gangs stay away, minimis- ing confrontation and all its negative consequences such as stray bullets and maimed bystanders. A favela has its own informal protection and rules; low-intensity conflict can be continually felt, seen in the media and heard as one walks through the formal city. There is a sense that the conflict will never end – it has become a part of Rio’s urban character.
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Several environmental factors have been decisive in making Rio’s favelas ideal grounds for the illicit drug trade. Most favelas are located on steep hills with tight entrances controlled by young men with machine guns. Rooftops high up on the hill provide ideal observation points to watch out for the approach of police. The night watchmen, called falcons , are young boys who use drugs to keep awake and alert in order to patrol their areas. The cutters who prepare the drugs are hidden in secluded streets that are as inaccessible as a labyrinth. The affluent drug customer climbs only a short portion of the hill to the boca or the mouth, where the drug gangs establish an informal selling area. The fact that most middle- and upper-class areas in Rio with large houses behind electrified fences have symbiotic favelas as neighbours ensures a captive market. A Rio slum upgrading initiative, the Favela Bairro program was meant to integrate the favelas into the formal city. Streets were paved, infrastructure provided and many favelas were revitalised with the informal cooperation of drug gangs. Despite a general improvement in living standards, gangs still roam and expand their control even in the upgraded favelas. The fact that a favela road is now paved and more accessible does not stop drug gangs from using barricades, such as turning over an old van to block the entrance of the police. This ongoing lack of security presents a major impediment to the formalisation process started with slum upgrading.
The current trend in Latin American slum upgrading is based on the model implemented by Medellin, Colombia. Aside from improving the overall character of Medellin, there was a focus on providing visible and much needed public infrastructure, such as gondola lines connecting remote communities to the metro system and architecturally striking public institutions such as li- braries. Rio is following this strategy with the current regeneration of Complexo do Alemao and other large favelas with the help of state and federal funding. Unlike the challenges of scarce and meagre public places in the North American city, the challenge in Rio is to restore order in these exclusionary areas that constitute islands in the city. Infor- mality, organic geography and favela residents acting as urban designers in constructing their communities have all led to the wonderful vibrancy of the favelas today. It is also high density, powerful unity and neighbourliness and the gradual improvement over decades that have allowed favelas to coexist with and contrib- ute to Rio as a whole. Favelas must be nurtured to improve the for- mal city. By tackling the unsavoury aspects of the drug trade that make life in a favel untenable, the state will make favelas more ac- cessible, safer and even more vibrant than they are today. Despite this being a form of control and an exertion of state power, the whole society, especially the favela poor, will benefit. C
Kenan Handzic is an urban planner with the City of Edmonton. He graduated from University of Calgary’s Faculty of Environmental Design with a Masters in Environmental Design (Planning). His univeristy research focused on various aspects of slum upgrading in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil
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Mending the WAR-TORN
landscape | re - writing viet nam by gerald forseth
repair tourism memory
decolonisation reconfiguration
Can beauty and peace emerge from the horrors of war experienced in Viet Nam from the fifteenth to the twenty-first century?
Images of the Vietnam War, black and white, unremittingly violent, have be- come iconic: the Trang Bang children fleeing after their house had been napalmed, the Saigon Chief of Police shooting a Viet Cong prisoner in the head. Right, is the Ho Chi Minh Trail on February 18, 1971 showing over- turned Viet Cong trucks after a US bombing. Such photographs, which flooded the media and living rooms of North America, have remained as our image of Viet Nam. The war lives in our minds, largely unchanged, simply through the shock carried by these images which, had they hap- pened to us, would have obliterated our future. Or would it have? What is the capacity of human beings to keep surviving war and carrying on?
Overturned Trucks After Bombings. Several trucks, belonging to communist forces, lay overturned on a rural road, part of the Ho Chi Minh Trail, after the US Air Force bombed the road in 1971. Beside the road are many bomb craters. February 18, 1971, Laos
From the end of the Sino-French War in 1887 until 1954 and the battle of Dien Bien Phu, France ruled the vast Indochine française, which included Viet Nam. From 1946 to 1954, Ho Chi Minh’s communist north Viet Nam army fought for and won independence for the region from France. The Geneva Accord of 1954 partitioned Viet Nam, separating the communist north from the southern Republic of Viet Nam until elections could be held to form a government of unification. Because of the fear that the quite popular and still communist Ho Chi Minh would win, the United States began its interventionist support of the south, blocking unification and protecting the abundant and cheap resources that fed the western economy. And so, from 1960-74, parts of this region became the most bombed, shelled, gassed, napalmed, defoliated and devastated area in the history of warfare. Soil and water were polluted by endless military incursions. A generation of Vietnamese lost limbs
or suffered emotionally. The poorly armed, hapless villager- soldiers were up against a superpower with an endless supply of specialty-trained troops and sophisticated arsenals of weaponry. For a while this asymmetry seemed to doom the cause of north Viet Nam for the hoped re-unification of north and south, but as we know the final results turned out poorly for the American forces and the south Viet Nam government. It was the first war in a distant land beamed via satellite into the homes of the developed world which watched, on 30 April 1975, south Viet Nam officially fall to the North Vietnamese. In 1978 Viet Nam invaded Cambodia defeating the Kmer Rouge, and in 1979 China invaded Viet Nam, leading to the Third Indochina War. Viet Nam is now re-unified under a working balance of communist politics and capitalist economics. There are visual and experiential transformations that have taken both the country and its people from war into peace, from ugliness to beauty.
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Ho Chi Minh Trail at the west border, in Laos The Ho Chi Minh Trail, a honeycomb of gravel paths hidden by the jungle, transported military men and supplies directly from the north to the south. It dates from the 1950’s, was used by the Viet Minh against the French and was reinforced in the 1960’s. It contained anti-aircraft emplacements, underground barracks and vehicle repair and fuel depots. In 1969, in an attempt to destroy the trail, American B52 bombers made over 900 sorties each day over the trail dropping more bombs than in all of WWII.
Today, visitors to the trail come across simple and elegant bamboo thatch homes forming pleasant villages. Locals offer healthy and tasty foods made with herbs and spices gathered from the jungle. Villagers act as our guides on the rugged trail for unforgettable trekking and elephant-sighting. They have re-cycled thousands of ejected metal fuel tanks from the B52 bombers and converted them into useful, speedy long boats for personal use along the streams and river.
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Presidential Palace in Saigon In 1966 a modern palace for the president replaced the original built in 1868 for the French Governor-General (and destroyed in 1964 in an internal attempt to assassinate president Ngo Dien Diem). The new palace, designed by Ngô Viêt Thu, an honorary AIA member, contained presidential living quarters, government rooms, an extensive underground network of escape tunnels, bomb shelters and the war rooms of the south Viet Nam government. Today Saigon is called Ho Chi Minh City, and the Presidential Palace it is now the Reunification Palace. Inside are the intact rooms with their original rich finishes and furnishings protected since the day that Saigon fell in 1975. We visit the war rooms showcasing the models and maps of the last troop deployments. On the roof terrace a moribund helicopter rests, an awkward visual memorial to the chaos the week the Americans were evacuated and the south Viet Nam government fell.
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Hoa Lo Prison in central Hanoi A chamber of horrors was constructed by the French in 1896 to imprison and terrify Vietnamese dissidents. Built for 450 prisoners, by 1930 it housed more than 2000. The French overlords were merciless; they conducted unimaginable torture on a frequent basis. The north Vietnamese used Hoa Lo from 1964-73 to imprison a group of American POW’s (including the now Senator John McCain) shot down during the poorly planned air raids over Hanoi. It became known around the world as the ‘Hanoi Hilton’ largely because international observers proclaimed the prisoners to be treated fairly. Today Hoa Lo Prison has been partially replaced by a sleek, contemporary commercial office tower of the reflective glass genre found in every city of the world since 1990, one of the many symbols of the new capitalism sweeping the country. A remaining quadrant is preserved for the curious as a memorial to man’s inhumanity. It provides glimpses into a torture chamber, small cells, the dining room and recreation courtyard. It exhibits guillotines, torture tools and archival photos illustrating the horrors in this prison up to the 1950’s. A visitor here cannot help but conceive an eternal message of hope, human rights, peace, and the need for mankind to end wars and political incarcerations.
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Cu Chi Tunnels near Saigon More than 250 km of tunnels were dug into the red earth, often several stories deep, permitting the Viet Cong to communicate with each other even with the American forces above and in between. These tunnels allowed frequent surprise attacks into the heart of the Mekong delta and were rarely discovered or destroyed. Today visitors navigate through portions of the tunnel under what are now prosperous farms and small factories on land reclaimed from the de- foliated jungle. People arrive out of curiosity to tour the famous tunnels and then hike or bike within a lush natural scenery made surreal by the bomb’s gigantic pock-marks.
Hai Van Pass, 50 km north of Danang (above) In the fifteenth century this mountain pass at 490m separated Viet Nam from the Kingdom of Champas to the south. For over 500 years it has stood guard, with various fortifications, over both the land and bay of Danang. Around 1890 a French fort was built here and further expanded with concrete bunkers as a military outpost by American forces in the 1960s. Today the pass is a tour-bus rest stop with spectacular views through the mist. The mountainside itself is littered with abandoned military structures forming a kind of surreal sculpture garden to the memory of five hundred years of war and insecurity.
From Devastation to Beauty with Peace It is clear that the Vietnamese have experienced grief through military wars instigated by tyrants. In my visits to former prisons, opulent war rooms and escape tunnels, mountainside bunkers, crude tunnel networks and camouflaged jungle supply trails, I was visually humbled by the structures that permitted terrorism against a population whose only choices were to either became conscripted soldiers or bystander victims. However, Viet Nam has much to celebrate today — 1. the government of the day has willingly opened the country to an international audience. The government also seems to have physically disappeared from view; its presence is as an economic manager rather than an authoritative military. 2. the favourable climate for fast growth not only provides agriculture wealth but also conceals or blurs the scars of war. 3. the recent economic growth has not diminished the desire
to preserve the past, including structures that represent the unpleasantness of war. 4. metal war debris is locally recycled. Ironically, the availability of these demonic materials permits a creativity of dramatic objects unique to this country. 5. the Vietnamese have a long-held reputation for hospitality. What we also admire today is a neutrality and forgiveness to past enemies and former dubious allies. It has been reported that many American POW’s have returned to meet the people and roam the stunning country they never really knew. Some say they experience a closure, a healing of scars, because their journey introduces them to the true friendliness and forgiveness of the Vietnamese people. C
Gerald Forseth (BArch. Toronto 1970, MAAA, FRAIC) is a Calgary architect, planner, researcher, traveller, teacher, lecturer, writer, photographer and curator. forsetharchitectsltd@shaw.com
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