Sixth In 2013 alone some
1 million people have poured out of Syria to escape a civil conflict that has been raging for over two years. The total number of Syrian refugees is well over 2 million, an unprecedented number and a disturbing reality that has put the host countries under immense infrastructural strain.
“Temporary”
settlement design is not a typology so off-the-wall that it requires a new way of thinking – it simply calls for the aggregation of established knowledge. Indeed, if there’s anyone qualified to consider the longterm when rebuilding in post-disaster situations, it’s architects. And if there’s anyone with a moral obligation to provide safe, affordable, and sustainable shelter, it’s most definitely architects.
‘I am coming from where you are going,’ and it’s not worth going there’. That’s the one cent of advice of world architecture would pass on to its Indian counterpart. Our conception of what Architecture is too far away from the fundamentals. Architects are creating buildings that are pretentious, standing apart from the others. Insular within their own compound walls, they are indifferent to the neighbours adjoining or the society adjunct. Variety has been misinterpreted as nonconformity or as looking different.
Today. Thousands of thousands are leaving the schools only to enter a professional “minefield.” Classroom based theories and drawing board based designs have further alienated the architect from the subtleties of culture and the realities of society.
‘I will leave this city more beautiful than I entered it’. An oath that, all professionals are required to make.” What India requires on an emergency mode is the Rural Studio philosophy that suggests that everyone, both rich and poor, deserves the benefit of good design. Collective conformity has To fulfill this ethic, the Studios been sacrificed in the wake of in- should be fine-tuned towards more dividual identity or so to say the community-oriented projects. personal egos. The resultant architecture naturally therefore fails to evoke any sense of harmony or unity in the streetscape. Islanded within their own compounds such architecture collectively fail to give city an image or an identity imperative to generate in local citizens the sense of belonging and pride for the place. Equally true is of our development controls they remain prescriptive rather than performance related.
“ PHASE IN FLUX, BEING OPTIMISTIC IN THE INEVITABLE.
“ 48