Integrating Initiatives
Asynchronous - Online Only
Designing with Waste: A New Environmental Language View Digital Media
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Filiz Klassen
Permanence is not a matter of the materials you use. Permanence is whether people love your building. (Shigeru Ban) Ecological debates in the 21st century have reached an overarching consensus on humanity’s unprecedented impact on natural resources and the emergence of a new/altered environmental reality. Anthropocene (indicating the new geological epoch we live in) has become a widely used term in all circles from science to art and design, to describe our insurmountable capability to change Earth’s climate and environmental trajectory. One very visible issue coming out of these discussions is the amount of solid waste that we generate around the world, over two billion tones annually. A design culture based on the exhaustion of natural resources and use of virgin materials is threatening the social and environmental ecologies that all human and non-human beings rely on for survival. My goal with the Building with Waste prototypical experiments is to challenge the design practice with a linear production trajectory that favors a take/make/waste attitude while ignoring the design industry’s contribution to environmental degradation and climate change. With the prototypical experiments, I pursue conceptual and practical strategies, materials and product ideas with an intention to rematerialize and up-cycle the use of waste as a renewable resource in design. These explorations, ranging from the scale of ornament, object, surface to 3D spatial form, attempt to integrate local waste issues and seek sustainable solutions to create a new language while addressing the environmental degradation through design practices.
Construction as Subjectivity View Digital Media
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Nancy Bookhart Wellington
It is impossible not to view the architecture of Classical Greece and Bauhaus, and not know that these are not isolated incidences of design, but purposeful constructions crafted to further the agenda of nature or science. Consider the Gardens of Versailles, manicured and designed as a scientific treatise, juxtaposed against its mirror image in the Palace of Versailles, with its elaborate embossed stone, yielding nothing to the pureness and spontaneity of nature. When we consider the canon of Western art, we cannot ignore that these creations are the establishment and concretization of the perpetual war of humankind with itself in the fight against nature, to ever declare dominion over nature, at other times recognition, and finally fear as nature rises and defends itself as is pursued in Romanticism in J.M.W. Turner's bold postulations. From the Doric columns insulated in pristine marble to Frank Lloyd Wright’s symbiosis of nature and science in Fallingwater, we are in the midst of an insistent battle. This paper interrogates how designers, architects, and city planners, understood the division of knowledge that truly intersected and informed form in the communication of science and nature for communities and subjects of subjugation or liberation.
Featured Women as Migration Victims - Human Rights or Environmental Rights: The Case of Rohingyas and Indigenous Communities of Bangladesh View Digital Media
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Fatema Jahan Sharna
The linkages between human and environmental rights have become issues of vigorous debate and become particularly relevant as to issues of migration and gender equality present emergent challenges in the face of climate change. The forced migration of the Rohingyas into Bangladesh following persecution in Myanmar illustrates pressures put upon migrants and the indigenous communities in the areas to which they move. These pressures are especially acute for women, raising important considerations about gender equality. The paper explores these new facets of human and environmental rights, examining the case of the Rohingyas and indigenous communities of Bangladesh, highlighting pathways to gender-sensitive climate justice and equitable Human-Environmental Rights (HER).
A Habitat Adapted to Mountain Environment to Better Respond to Natural Disasters: Ancestral Knowledge and Science View Digital Media
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Jean Fernney Piou
Environmental problems and loss of forest cover resulting from inappropriate land use in Haiti date back to the colonial period. These problems became more pronounced in the 19th century and are even more pronounced today. Haiti, which is a mountainous country of more than 80%, saw its population, descendants of slaves, take refuge in the mountains to protest against the slave system. They remained there after national independence in 1804. This study addresses the problem of human settlements in mountainous environments in Haiti in relation to the vulnerability of the territory to natural disasters. Through a field survey that was conducted with 156 families living in the village of Vallue, a territory where the Association des Planteurs de Vallue (APV) conducts activities to support the population. This association conducts, in parallel with its reforestation activities, activities to improve the habitat of rural families. The analysis of the survey data showed that the majority of the habitats in the area studied were affected by the earthquake of 2010. This disaster resulted in the construction or reconstruction of 39.7% of the village's habitat. To mitigate the loss of habitat during a natural disaster, it is proposed a habitat model that prioritizes the use of local materials, usually used in traditional style habitats, combine them with wood resources offering good resistance to wind and develop a habitat that in addition to meeting social and family needs will meet the requirements of safety and sustainability: the reactive bio-habitat.
