Proctor from boundaries & Matthews to belvederes: Architects framing the edge
From Boundaries to Belvederes
An analysis of boundaries is central to the study and understanding of rural landscapes and urban form. Whether it is the distinctive vernacular enclosures and field boundaries which subdivide the countryside, the transitional territory between city quarters, or the controlled public-to-private realm doorstep thresholds which articulate our streetscapes, all are significant in defining local identity and creating a sense of place. Historically boundaries were often configured in response to the basic need for shelter and protection – the ancient sheep and crop enclosures of the Scottish Highlands or the defensive walls of Italian hill towns – but as society has become more open and dynamic the nature of settlement boundaries has been transformed.
While retaining the physical definition of the edge, the expression of political power and influence has been replaced with a desire to look beyond, to interact with neighbours, while still nurturing a sense of identity and belonging. “I suddenly felt I understood, and could see from Siena’s point of view, that infinity is a claustrophobic prospect, that it is perfectly appropriate, given the chaotic nature of life, to cordon off an area in which to interpret ourselves, where one can decide what is important, what is to be privileged and what to be left out, determine the axes of the main thoroughfares and the arrangement of streets between them.” Hisham Matar, A Month in Siena, 2019 As architects and urban designers, we are drawn to settlement boundaries and the defined transitions between city neighbourhoods. In our search for the moments along the edge where framed views of a world beyond become places to pause, reflect and interact, we have become fascinated by the urban set-piece structures - promenades and loggias - which often define the urban threshold: where boundaries become belvederes. This edition of & explores these moments and the nature and importance of boundaries in buildings and settlement design through the study of five of our recent studio projects and framed by two short inspirational essays by Professor Alison Wright and Dr Husam AlWaer. Alison explores the manipulation of ‘perspective’ in renaissance pictorial composition through an examination of framed narrative moments and the important relationship between subject and viewer. Husam examines the rapid evolution of urban form through a study of the Zaatari refugee camp in Jordan and the enduring importance of Syrian culture in the humanisation of a place within enforced boundaries.
Boundaries & thresholds of Renaissance Painting
In a house in his native Venice Marcantonio Michiel (1529) was shown a small picture and, wondering who painted it, he pondered that ‘the buildings are in the Northern style. The little landscape is lifelike, minute and highly finished, and one sees it outside a window and beyond the study door and then it disappears [from view] and the whole work is perfect for its subtlety...’
The same painting, of St. Jerome in his Study, is now in the National Gallery in London (fig. 1) and continues to invite an imaginative step into its measured, cloistered space, to cross the arched stone threshold and look beyond, through the distant windows. In Antonello da Messina’s painting, the monumental but intimate enclosure offers something of the pocket-size pleasure of a doll’s house. It also insists that perspectival painting depends on the notion of a framed opening, a bounded field, which produces both ‘views’ and the viewer. As a system for projecting the appearance of three dimensions onto a flat plane, early Renaissance perspective developed from the experience of urban squares and its effects depend on regular coordinates expressed in stone, marble, brick or wood. Some view ‘Albertian perspective’ as a system that enables a masterly control over that which is viewed. Others see it as putting the viewer in her place (move too far away from the ideal viewing point and the illusion is compromised). But in pictorial practice the balance of power can be manipulated.
With the help of marked boundaries, including that most crucial one between the place of the viewer and the projected ‘space’ of the image, fifteenth-century artists put that dynamic relation into play. Andrea Mantegna and the Bellini family belonged to the first generation outside Florence to become excited by, and experiment with, the new pictorial possibilities. At the same time they absorbed the control of scale and painted tone of the Netherlanders, or ‘Northern style’ as noted by Michiel. In the 2019 exhibition devoted to Mantegna and his brother-inlaw Giovanni Bellini at the National Gallery, we were able to compare rival approaches at work. 1
2
1: Antonello da Messina, St. Jerome in his Study, c. 1474-5, oil on lime wood, 45.7 x 36.2 cm, © National Gallery, London 2: Andrea Mantegna, detail of the Virgin and Child and Saints, high altarpiece of San Zeno, Verona, 1457-1460, tempera on panel, area shown c. 250 x 450 cm
Mantegna loved the dramatic martialling of stone, and crafting outdoor enclosures. The conceit of the viewer becoming the ‘viewed’ famously extended to his ceiling painting for the Mantuan court (fig. 2). In his devotional works, we often feel the pressure of proximity (fig. 4). The Presentation in the Temple, squeezes the protagonists, and us, up against the rich marble framewithin-the-frame. Even the pictorial lighting is imaginatively shared with that in front of the picture. Giovanni Bellini, in his tribute to Mantegna (fig. 5) adopts a similar marble parapet, across which Christ’s body is passed, but he gives his subjects - and our attention - room for lateral spread. The low and diffused evening light is contained in the black box of the painting. Back in the National Gallery collection (fig. 8), dawn breaks over the other end of Christ’s life and, as we are shown the back of Christ praying for release from his sacrifice, Bellini allows the viewer to wander away from the Agony. The painting’s expanded field (its rigorous perspective registered in the steps of a bridge) leads, to the right, around the little fences that mark out the ‘garden’ and, to the left, to over the river, only to be met on the meandering path by a winter tree and the advancing straggle of soldiers led by Judas. Bellini was a master of such death - and resurrection - infused into the countryside. The rustic poise of the Madonna of the Meadow (fig. 7, a Virgin of Humility, seated just beyond the frame) is marked in the middle distance by signs of orderly husbandry: an airy fence of pollarded wood recedes towards an enclosure into which a woman herds sleepy cattle. Only on longer contemplation could a devout viewer see emerge, from these overlapping uprights and crossbars, the wood of the Cross. Bellini’s boundaries can always be taken for what they are, and for something else.
For less poetic painters, perspective could become a more urgent, energetic protagonist in the painting and this is especially the case in works that make the threshold between heaven and earth, the human and the divine, their subject. Carlo Crivelli, an admirer of Mantegna, makes his Annunciation altarpiece a thoroughly urban affair (fig. 6). The aim was undoubtedly to celebrate and consecrate the city of Ascoli Piceno, which is figured in the lap of its patron as he pushily interrupts the archangel Gabriel. The civic staging also allows the diving orthogonals of paved streets, barred windows, friezes and string courses - as well as permeable loggias or doorways opening towards the viewer - to figure the dramatic access of God into the world. The spirit descends on the Virgin as a golden ray laid thickly on the picture surface, defying the logic of perspective even as it penetrates into her house through an impossible hole. Framed openings become places of symbolic revelation (the Virgin’s womb as holy house and dwelling place, Mary as ‘door’ or ‘window’ of heaven) but also of earthly - and painterly - limitation. Like Antonello’s St. Jerome, with its landscape that ‘disappears’ towards the horizon, Crivelli sets the boundary of vision deep beyond a distant, barred window. Like him, the forward limit of the picture is marked with a highly charged, uncanny still life. In an era in which space was not understood as stretching forever in all directions, perspective could nonetheless invite projections of the infinite. Yet the great built environment of the Ascoli Annunciation is an exercise in the construction of place as much as space. The boundaries of painting produce a locus, a pregnant locality in which, with our active participation, transformative events can take place.
Alison Wright, Professor in Italian Art c. 1300-1550, Department of History of Art, UCL
3
4
5
6
7
8
3: Andrea Mantegna, detail of the Virgin and Child and Saints, high altarpiece of San Zeno, Verona, 1457-1460, tempera on panel, area shown c. 250 x 450 cm 4: Andrea Mantegna, Presentation in the Temple, c. 1455, tempera on canvas, 68.9 × 86.3 cm, Gemäldegalerie, Berlin 5: Giovanni Bellini, Presentation in the Temple, early 1460s, oil and tempera on panel, 80 x 105 cm, Fondazione Querini Stampaglia, Venice 6: Carlo Crivelli, Annunciation, 1486, tempera and oil on canvas, 207 x 146.7 cm, National Gallery, London
7: Giovanni Bellini, Madonna of the Meadow,c. 1500-1505, oil on synthetic panel (transferred), 66.5 x 85.1 cm, © National Gallery, London 8: Giovanni Bellini, Agony in the Garden, c. 1458-1460, tempera on panel, 80.4 x 127 cm, © National Gallery, London
Boundaries
In the search for regional identity, the configuration and materiality of ancient boundary enclosures and their relationship to the geology and topography of specific landscapes, help to define character and place. Whether it is the dry-stone walls of the White and Black Peaks of Derbyshire and the rocky, red southern Italian landscapes of Puglia, or the hazel, willow and chestnut hurdle fences of the southern counties of Britain, they all provide the colour and texture which help to define a region. Traditional boundary enclosures have become a source of inspiration for our work and inform the organisational armatures in the designs of the two cottages in Benbecular and Steepleton in Tetbury, Gloucestershire.
Kirrin Cottages Benbecula, Outer Hebrides Set on a rocky outcrop in the wild landscape of Benbecula on the Outer Hebrides, two holiday cabins are bound together by a stone gabion wall, a boundary, that gives shelter and contextual presence to their otherwise contemporary appearance. The design of these modest buildings makes reference to historic Scottish kale yards, sheep stells and Crannogs. The new cabins also reflect an evolving island aesthetic, one of light weight corrugated sheet cladding and timber. In 2010 Proctor and Matthews were commissioned by the Scottish Government to design a new ‘kit house’ for the Outer Hebrides. Kirrin Cottages develops the simplicity of the kit house approach to assist with tourism in this remote location. Vibrant window hoods provide coloured accents within the grassland setting and frame views to the distant Cuillin Mountains. Client:
Project team:
Kirrin Ventures Ltd
Proctor and Matthews Architects, Total Design, Scotframe Construction
Boundary Reference The dry-stone walled croft enclosures - a distinctive vernacular typology within the exposed landscapes of Benbecula and North Uist - provide inspiration for the Kirrin Cottage ensemble. In this instance, a contemporary expression utilises galvanised steel gabion cages filled with local stone.
1
2
3
4
5
6 7 8
9
1: Drystone walled field enclosures, Ostuni, Puglia, Italy 2-4: Coloured accents within the wild sombre landscape of Benbecula and North Uist 5: Aerial view of the Benbecula site at Griminish, Outer Hebrides 6: Croft with walled enclosure, Berneray, North Uist 7: Profiled metal clad croft, North Uist 8: Concept sketches for homes within a walled contemporary stell 9: Ground floor plan with flexible layout opportunities
1
3
5
2
6
7
4
1: View from Island Road, Griminish 2: Kirrin Cottages within Benbecula landscape 3: View from south east 4: Window hood studies with framed views 5: Window hood with gabion wall plinth 6: Window hood with tapered reveals and profiled metal cladding 7: Kirrin Cottages gable with distant Cuillin Mountains
A central swimming pond is the focus to the new development with indoor spa and therapy rooms close by. The ‘village hall’ - a tall barn-like structure- located at the heart of the site includes a restaurant and communal lounge. Together with the communal snug, library and street front cafe, this is accessible to all Steepleton residents and the wider Tetbuy community.
Steepleton Tetbury, Gloucestershire Steepleton is located within an Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty on the eastern edge of the Cotswold market town of Tetbury. It comprises of 113 one and two-bedroom apartments and maisonettes for later living and is designed to help older people live independently for longer in their own homes. The design aims to foster a strong sense of neighbourliness and support, and to integrate residents into their wider community. The layout is conceived as a contemporary interpretation of historic Gloucestershire farmsteads and almshouses with buildings clustered around a series of open cloistered courtyards, each with a garden and productive landscape. This encourages a sense of community, avoiding long internal corridors and creating dual aspect living spaces to all homes. The two storey cloister to each court provides a promenade for social interaction.
7 1
9
2. 3 6
4
8
5
10
1: Cotswold stone walls and integrated farm buildings 2: Lychgate to entrance court 3: Cirencester Road frontage with retained Chestnut trees 4: Textured drystone and mortared walls 5: Fist floor linear cloister 6: Design section through ‘village hall’ and naturally filtered swimming pond 7: ‘Village hall’ 8: Central street with sundial marker 9: Courtyard garden and productive landscape 10: Garden of Paradise, Unknown, ca.1410-20
No. of homes:
113
Client:
Lifestory (PegasusLife)
Density:
Design team:
56 dph
Proctor and Matthews Architects, Camlins Landscape Architects, Peter Brett Associates, Hydrock Engineering, Max Fordham, Barton Willmore, Speller Metcalfe
Key narrative Neighbourly interaction is a key design objective, helping to avoid loneliness - an acute problem among older people. Framed bays are located at intervals along the length of each loggia forming places to rest and chat with other residents and providing a belvedere from which to view each communal court. The homes offer generous space standards, exceeding the recommendations set out in the 2009 HAPPI report. Each self-contained apartment contains living space, a private kitchen and bathroom, alongside generous private outdoor space and storage. Sliding walls offer greater spatial flexibility. Distinctive Cotswold stone is deployed using both drystone and mortared wall construction on all low-level walls and prominent gable facades. These textured enclosures help to nurture a sense of protection while providing a visual expression of local craftsmanship.
Boundary Reference It is not surprising that distinctive boundary forms have become culturally important, finding symbolic expression in notable examples throughout late medieval and renaissance art. In the depiction of the Virgin Mary within a walled garden (Hortus Conclusus) of around 1410, entitled Garden of Paradise, the boundary becomes the expression of purity.
1
1: Belvedere frame 2: Concept diagram: boundaries, loggias and belvederes 3: ‘Entrance barn’ exterior 4: ‘Entrance barn‘ interior
2
3
4
Loggias
The ‘set-piece’, open-sided structures of the Italian Renaissance provided a stage for civic ceremony and a place to display power and wealth within the city realm. Strategically positioned, they command the boundaries of urban space and often celebrate transitions between distinct areas of city life. We are drawn to two Loggias designed by Georgio Vasari at Arezzo and Castiglion Fiorentino, Tuscany. Vasari successfully turned this typology from an expression of power and governance to become a place of social interaction: a permeable boundary threshold between city space and the landscape beyond.
50 North Thirteenth Street Milton Keynes A new loggia becomes the principal focus of the major reorganisation of David Lock Associates’ design studio. As with grander civic Italian precedents this loggia provides a stage in miniature for the social interaction of DLA’s design team - a recognised essential component of the 21st Century studio environment. In both form and plan this crafted timber structure becomes the principal circulation space creating a transition between the new open-plan meeting, presentation and refectory area and the adjacent external courtyard. Client:
Project team:
David Lock Associates
Proctor and Matthews Architects, Engineers HRW, KUT Partnership
Loggia Reference At Arezzo the Logge Vasari (1570-96) is located on the northern boundary of the steeply pitching Piazze Grande and forms a transition, a threshold from the higher landscape and gardens of the medieval fortress to the north via a series of steps located centrally within the arcade. The loggia’s arcaded facade provides a defined edge to Arezzo’s main civic square. Built to house governmental offices, houses shops, and a Grand Salone complete with theatre, the loggia delivers a successful armature for city life. At Castiglion Fiorentino the loggia (restored by Vasari 1570-73) is similarly located to define the edge of the Piazze del Commune - the principal town square. Here, three arched openings within the rear wall - a belvedere - provide dramatic panoramic views across the surrounding city and Tuscan landscape beyond. 1
2 3 4
FF
F
5
1: Loggia Vasari (1570-96), Arezzo, © Fondazione Arezzo Intour 2: DLA Design Studio - transition between openplan meeting, presentation and refectory space and the courtyard garden 3: DLA Design Studio - loggia and courtyard 4: Loggia at Piazze del Commune, Castiglion Fiorentino 5: DLA Design Studio - ground floor plan
Above: Axonometric view of outside/inside spaces, DLA Studio
1
2
3
1: Elevation, Loggia Vasari, Piazza Grande, Arezzo with proportional study of DLA loggia 2: Section through Logge Vasari, Piazza, Grande, Arezzo - a transition from northern landscape to city square 3: Study model - DLA Design Studio loggia
Heritage Centre Northstowe, Cambridgeshire Located on the former RAF Oakington Barracks site, the Heritage Centre represents a unique partnership project between Highways England, Homes England and Cambridgeshire County Council, with support from the Longstanton & District Heritage Society. It will feature archaeological discoveries from the Northstowe and A14 excavations, ranging from prehistoric megafauna to the lost mediaeval villages of Huntingdonshire, and the Roman and Saxon settlements across the area. Finds going on display include objects of everyday life from The Neolithic onwards, together with objects from RAF Oakington and the surrounding area currently stored locally. Designed as a venue for school visits, on-site archaeological activities, and major heritage presentations, the Heritage Centre will have a distinct identity, influenced by local architecture and heritage, as well as the history of Northstowe and the surrounding area.
1
5 6
2
7 3 4
8 9
10
1: Heritage Centre entrance 2: Loggia elevation 3: Short Stirling aircraft wing cut-away drawing 4: Roman jet amulet with snake-haired Medusa, late 2nd -4th centruy 5: Ground floor plan with Heritage Centre and Northstowe House 6: Belvedere window to fenland landscape 7: Entrance loggia 8: Loggia provides interface between exhibition and courtyard garden 9: The Annunciation, Fra Angelico, ca 1450 10: Winston Churchill watches a Short Stirling of RAF 7 Squadron taking off on 6 June 1941 at Oakington, Cambridgeshire
Client: Project team:
Cambridgeshire County Council, Highways England, Homes England
Proctor and Matthews Architects, Attol Blue, Tibbalds, Chris Blandford Associates (CBA), Engineers HRW, Ritchie+Daffin, Keegans
Key narrative The new Heritage Centre at Northstowe will house a curios mix of archaeological artefacts that include reminders of its Iron Age, Roman, Saxon and Medieval past as well as the site’s significance as a 20th Century RAF base. The building will form an enclosed garden with one boundary creating a Belvedere onto the surrounding edge-of-fenland landscape. A timber loggia provides the interface between exhibition spaces and the new courtyard garden. Referencing the neighbouring Northstowe House and the vernacular of Cambridgeshire black barns, the outer elevations will be clad in black corrugated metal, while the courtyard elevations will be lined in timber to provide a soft and natural finish. An external covered corridor, or loggia, will feature a distinctive contemporary timber trussed façade, loosely referencing both the crosssection of the Short Stirling aircraft wing – an aircraft once stationed at RAF Oakington, and the roof structure of airfield hangars. The loggia will also provide an area for education visits, while offering solar protection and climate control of exhibition space within. The Heritage Centre will feature a large sliding hangar door providing a portal to both the central courtyard, and the principal entrance to the exhibition area. The adaptable internal display area runs the length of the building, to create a flexible and changing exhibition space that allows visitors to move sequentially through the space.
Loggia Reference The ‘loggia’ as boundary threshold is explored in Fra Angelico’s Annunciation - a fresco on the walls of the convent of San Marco in Florence (1437-46). The Angel Gabriel and the Virgin Mary are framed beneath a loggia which forms the edge of the hortus conclusus and reveals a small view of the wild wooded Tuscan landscape beyond.
Belvederes
Over time the walled boundaries of many European hill towns and villages have become linear promenades punctuated with strategic vantage points for distant panoramas. If we are to respect boundary definition in contemporary neighbourhood design - the thresholds between urban form and surrounding landscape - maybe belvederes should become the important places of social interaction and relaxation. In order to define these spaces as significant townscape moments, ‘framing the gaze’ becomes an important component of urban furniture: a threshold that captures a world beyond, from a place of sanctuary.
Edge House, Inholm Northstowe, Cambridgeshire Inholm is a design proposal for the first neighbourhood to be designed as part of Phase 2 at Northstowe. This will comprise a mix of 406 dwellings, with accommodation for a range of tenures. The proposal received detailed planning permission in 2021. A central square supports social and community facilities and will become the heart of the neighbourhood. One of the most distinctive house typologies will be the Edge House which forms a continuous contemporary inhabited wall - the boundary to this 21st Century ‘Inholm’ settlement. The edge house studies propose a staggered silhouette of inner and outer homes which define the neighbourhood boundary and create a belvedere edge of upper floor terraces and viewing decks. No. of homes:
406
Project team:
Proctor and Matthews Architects, Grant Associates, Ramboll, Broadfield Project Management, Bidwells
Client:
Urban Splash / Homes England
Belvedere Reference Diego Velázquez’ ‘View of the Villa Medici in Rome with a statue of Ariadne’ c.1630, depicts a standing figure with focussed gaze on the landscape beyond, sheltering beneath a belvedere at the boundary of the gardens to the renaissance villa. These moments of repose from which to capture views of the surrounding landscape mark important interventions in the evolution of settlement boundaries. The defined edges of medieval towns and villages and their cartographic representation through historic engravings, continue to provide us with rewarding precedents in the design of new neighbourhoods. In Seggiano ,a small rural hill town in rural Tuscany, the inhabited settlement walls rise with the steep topography , punctuated on the ascent by understated moments : public and private spaces of quiet contemplation and social interaction . At the summit ,the loggia and adjacent linear square of San Bernardino church form a belvedere edge, capturing framed and panoramic views of a quilted landscape of vineyards ,olive and chestnut groves. 1
2 3
4
5 6 7 8
1: View of the Villa Medici in Rome with statue of Ariadne, Velázquez c.1630 2: Articulated layered silhouette of Sienna extract from Lorenzetti’s The Allegory of Good and Bad Government, 1338-39 3: Historic plan, Leyden by Braun and Hogenberg, 1576 4: Layered street profiles - An architectural game by Ted Naos 5: Inholm, Northstowe, projection with townscape markers 6: Inholm, aerial CGI 7: Belvedere edge, Seggiano, Tuscany, Italy 8: Part elevation showing Inholm articulated neighbourhood edge, gateways and belvedere terraces
Above: Concept cartoon for inner/outer home edge profile
Ground
First
Second
Northstowe House Cambridgeshire Located within phase 2 of the new town of Northstowe to the north of Cambridge on the site of a previous WWII RAF base. Northstowe House is a flagship office and exhibition space providing a new south eastern base for the UK Government’s housing agency - Homes England. Our design explores ideas for structured and informal work environments in response to the evolving itinerant working patterns of Homes England employees across the region. Two modular wings of office accommodation with a central breakout space are configured around an ancillary/circulation core. Reception, exhibition and meeting room spaces are located at ground level with office accommodation above. Ground level exhibition and meeting spaces are used for Homes England meetings, presentations, public consultations and engagement with the wider Northstowe Community. Direct access is provided to the outdoor working deck - a belvedere from which to view the emerging new town and created in response to the wider Healthy New Town agenda at Northstowe.
1
5
3 2
6 4
7
9 8
1: Woven willow canopy from below 2: Northstowe House viewed from across edge-offenland landscape 3: Entrance hall and stair 4: Black stained timber cladding 5: Ground floor plan 6: Entrance facade 7: Framed views from belvedere deck 8: The Luttrell Psalter c. 1320 -1340 9: St Francis and the Poor Knight, Sassetta, c.1437, National Gallery collection
Client: Team:
Homes England
Proctor and Matthews Architects, CBA, Tibbalds, Mott Macdonald, AECOM, EngineersHRW, Novum, Clear Structures, ARUP, McAvoy Group, Foxcotte
Key narrative The external work deck - part of the wider Healthy Living agenda- is framed within an open sided courtyard and covered by a canopy of woven willow hurdles. This provides a textured counterpoint to the dark stained timber clad office and community building and creates a dappled light to courtyard surfaces. Willow hurdle enclosures have historically formed characteristic interventions within the fenland landscape. Recently, 3000 year old hurdles have been discovered at the Must Farm archaeological site near Peterborough and extracts from the Luttrell Psalter (c.1320-1340) show woven livestock enclosures formed of lightweight prefabricated portable, woven panels. The ancient craft is deployed at Northstowe House to create a ‘floating’ canopy framing panoramic views to an edge of fenland landscape. Hurdles historically defining boundaries are assembled here to form a covered belvedere. Belvedere Reference St Francis and the Poor Knight c.1437 by Sassetta depicts a loggia with rooftop belvedere from which St Francis donates his worldly riches. It is located on the edge of his home town, Assisi, yet forms a symbolic safe and comfortable haven from where to view the spiritual rewards of a humble unencumbered life: the heavenly floating palace defies the weight and inertia of every day life and dwells in a transcendental world beyond.
1
2
3
4
1: Southern facade with external work deck belvedere and woven willow canopy 2/4: External social space and external work open courtyard 3: Design section
Al Zaatari Refugee Camp: the reassertion of a cultural identity
The urgency in providing basic shelter for a large, displaced and distressed population, frequently means that the design of refugee camps follow a ‘generic top-down framework’ with basic humanitarian and techno-managerial planning strategies rising to the fore.
These are usually based on a universal standardisation of ‘the shelter’ and its repetition in a typical settlement layout. Camps are planned with an anticipation of removal and disassembly in the short or medium term. The universal standardisation is based on the understanding that a camp is a short-term solution and typically results in a militarystyle modular spatial hierarchy with formally defined boundaries. These focus on the creation of rigidly imposed barriers instituted by funding organisations promoting regulatory constraints. This deterministic approach attempts a predetermined outcome in camps: rigidity and conformity leave little space for personal or societal expression. The use of rather defensive tactics which are about command and restrictive control negate opportunities for cultural connection and social interaction among inhabitants. Camps are in fact organised by a categorisation of refugees by ‘number ’within allocated groups, resulting in low social engagement within the wider community. This approach with its formal, physical and institutional boundaries is considered fast to masterplan, easy to mark out, while maintaining strict accountability. What this expeditious ‘generic top-down framework’ fails to recognize is that ‘displaced populations’ are not homogenous but are comprised of individuals with differing levels of knowledge, suffering and with disparate emotional and cultural needs. This institutionalised approach has been criticised, with claims that the inherent exploitative power systems of a top-down planning can potentially result in unnecessary and unintentional de-humanisation of an already traumatised society. Despite this, and against all odds, the story on the ground at the Al-Zaatari Syrian refugee camp in Jordan is one of a rapid transformation through collective determination. The strict authoritarian UN orthogonal grid was rapidly overlayed and reconfigured into a place of cultural habitation where
social, economic, and cultural conventions promoted and encouraged a way of collective living. This short essay illustrates the processes of adaptation and transformation of the original imposed layout. It examines the evolving distribution of space between occupants, the expansion of opportunities for income generation, and the introduction of new housing typologies and services in the period from 2012-2020. The initial plan for the camp set out the road infrastructure in an orthogonal grid, with communities, administrative facilities, and communal facilities placed in a principal T shape. Some facilities were provided at a central location (offices, healthcare, warehouses, market, community centres), while others (water, latrines, bathing and refuse compounds) were decentralised and placed throughout the camp. This arrangement minimised the distance each resident had to travel to reach them. When the al-Zaatari camp opened, residents expressed concern, anger and hostility toward the ‘authoritarian nature of the camp’, the internment-like feel of the settlement, and the camp’s poor living conditions. They displayed a deep-seated desire to soften and subvert the authoritarian imposition. 1
2
3 4
5
1: A close-up view of the Zaatri camp, July 2013 2: Sketch of Al-Zaatari’s main commercial street - The initial empty areas between the shelters transform into vibrant markets, and social spaces 3: New prefabricated shelters installed in the Zaatri camp, December 2012 - source UNHCR/ACNUR Américas 4: Zaatari camp evolution, 2013 - source Zaatari: The Instant City, Alison Ledwith, Associated Press 5: Hybrid typology evolution diagram
They sought to return to or overlay an environment which exhibits more stable characteristics of the familiar through an informal bottom-up redefinition of boundaries. This was informed by a common purpose, alleviating the impact of the formal barriers imposed from outside and above. Placemaking as an act of collectivism: ‘Partners in Adversity’ Upon their arrival, each individual or family received a tent. Extreme climatic conditions in winter affected the refugees’ health and well-being and in response the UNHCR incrementally introduced around 24,000 caravans into the camp. Each family received a caravan (in addition to their tent) and sometimes more than one, based on the family size. Over time and beyond the initial emergency phase, camp inhabitants acted collectively and co-operatively during a period in which they saw themselves as ‘partners in adversity’. Seeking to re-instate the previous set of social relations and values, which help to promote that elusive concept of community), refugees began to navigate through the rigid set of regulations to creatively transform their collective life by repurposing, adjusting and dismantling, merging spaces and structures to produce patterns of urban living that resonate with their recent past. The transformation of the camp into a hybrid environment was an act of collectivism, in which daily negotiations between space, materials and social dynamics took place. New informal thresholds and boundaries resulted in promoting a collective spirit of self-organisation, relying on collaboration and trust. Rather than maintaining the rigid rows for example, the refugees have repositioned caravans, allowing them to live together in their extended families or to move closer to those who they have known before their enforced migration. Similarly, the T shape established by UNHCR for the main services was transformed, becoming one of the main active streets and accommodating a variety of refugee-run businesses: bakeries, grocers, shoes shops, restaurants and even a wedding dress shop. The so-called “ChampsÉlysées street (main high street) has not only become the main living room and a vibrant character for the camp as a whole but also it has become a point of attraction and concentration for both the commercial and social/human
PUBLIC
activities” (Hristova, 2016). By modifying the predetermined military-style layout of the shelters, refugees have modified the relationship between private and public space based on community and cultural dynamics with a strong identity. In this approach, there is no central person or body who understands the whole picture and instead collective action is used by a large number of people working collaboratively to co-produce spaces and subvert the top-down model of control and exclusion. Placemaking as the construction of self-identity Over time the refugees have repositioned, adjusted and dismantled their shelter, merging the caravans with tents and using improvised materials and other temporary structures, to produce patterns of urban living that resonate more closely with their recent past. A different vernacular expression has emerged which has borrowed from traditional practice in the region and reflects a distinctive cultural heritage: courtyard living and a hierarchy of spaces (high streets, communal and private courtyards, and places of worship) with a strong sense of belonging and identity. This is an act of saying ‘that is me/us and this is my/our space’. It started from basic environmental interventions like the installation of canopies using vehicle tyres and agriculture fabric, and the sharing of communal and private courtyards, to the introduction of more complex housing clusters. Fountains for camp inhabitants have a social and emotional meaning and some of them (there are around 65 of them in the camp) were even built before kitchens and toilets were introduced! This vernacular expression tends to be spontaneous and based on simple rules. It continues to adapt, improving solutions within the constraints of place and time. Over time, domestic space and areas between the caravans have become ‘spaces of freedom’ which allow the inhabitants to develop their differences and diversity. This has transformed the standard living conditions into more hybrid environments: one reflecting their own values and beliefs. These are not just filled with individual meaning, this is where collective meaning is made, or emerges, as people interact and inter-relate and as they attempt to lessen
anxieties by reproducing the familiar. Informal boundaries are generally configured for a ‘common purpose’ resulting in emergent adaptive solutions as opposed to fixed end states. This process has enabled camp residents to transform their own environments, with mechanisms that are embedded within their own locality and are not externalised. Placemaking as competition for resources Refugees are often seen as ‘receivers’ of aid with few of their own resources - as being in need of care which necessitates a top-down camp design approach. Resources are seen as flowing only one way, from the government or the UNHCR, in the case of Al-Zaatari, to the refugees. Refugees have succeeded in transforming the standardised humanitarian aid into a more cyclical economy, driving a more holistic, dynamic and multi-dimensional process that has given rise to the camp’s urbanisation. UNHCR have counted around 3000 shops located in the market and around the camp. Most of the shops are located in the main street, but refugees have also established small businesses connected to their households (i.e., linked to their hybrid caravans and tents) in order to generate income. This phenomenon has spread to all 12 districts of the camp, transforming them into mixed-used quarters. Over time the early collectivist ‘bottom-up’ definition of space appears to have been overtaken by appropriation of space as a scarce resource, driven by competition and introduction of more marketbased values. Social and economic barriers have promoted an arena in which competing interests are played out and where market forces (as opposed to UNHCR regulations) are a driving force. As a consequence, societal inequalities have emerged among refugees as ‘social and economic
phenomena’ in which those with more resources acquire better living conditions at the expense of those who lack economic collateral. In conclusion, the rapidity of change within Al- Zaatari camp, instigated and undertaken by the emerging and expanding society of refugees, has demonstrated the importance of collective social structures and the resilience of culture in general in the moulding and evolution of urban form. Sociospatial arrangements inspired by regional vernacular forms and cultural heritage have dramatically transformed the anonymity imposed by the original expediency-driven plan - one born of delivering basic necessities - to create what has become a continually evolving living and breathing urban palimpsest. Dr Husam AlWaer, Reader in Sustainable Urban Design, University of Dundee/ DJCAD Associate, Proctor and Matthews Architects h.alwaer@dundee.ac.uk 7
6
Previous: Sketch of ‘Champs-Élysées’ central street 6: Camp urbanisation - before and after 7: Aerial sketch showing courtyards and hybrid typologies, (redrawn from Margherita Moscardini)
Further Reading Agier, M. (2011). Managing the undesirables: Refugee Camps and Humanitarian Government. Polity Press: Cambridge. Dalal, A., Darweesh, A., Steigemann, A., & Misselwitz, P. (2018). Planning the ideal refugee camp? A critical interrogation of recent planning innovations in Jordan and Germany. Urban Planning, 3(4), 64-78. Hristova, N. (2016). AlZaatari: Fundamentals of the Refugee Camp. Unpublished M.Arch dissertation, the Strathclyde University, Glasgow. Ledwith, A. (2014). Zaatari: The instant city. Affordable Housing Institute Publication. Boston: USA. Scavino, S. (2014). The Summerisation of Jordanian Shelters: Permanent impermanence in the design of refugee camps. VNG International. (2016). Developing Zaatari: Urban Planning in a Syrian Refugee Camp, Jordan. Published by City of Amsterdam and VNG International Campbell, K. (2018). Making Massive Small Change: Building the Urban Society We Want: Ideas, Tools, Tactics. Chelsea Green Publishing.
Proctor & Matthews Architects 7 Blue Lion Place 237 Long Lane London SE1 4PU +44 (0)20 7378 6695 www.proctorandmatthews.com