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DESIGN STATEMENT

SYMBIOTIC HEALING Emergency Housing | Disaster Resilience

At the point when it has just been two decades of venturing into the 21st century, the world has already confronted countless environmental, financial, health, and wellbeing crisis. Homelessness is one of the effects. This COVID-pandemic has influenced the very-nature of architectural spaces and life we used to perceive has proven inconsistent and unreliable. Nevertheless, taking coherence of unpredictable disasters, things in mass demand different Archi-socio structures. While it’s a human right for the people to have proper shelter to live in, they are obliged to end up in roads or poor congested areas for the living. Temporary shelters when built for emergencies, usually have problems of longer installation time, heaviness, congestion, unhygienic space causing the overhaul of future diseases.

SYMBIOTIC HEALING’ is designed to uplift, sublimate and restore the social stability of the homeless victims and to build a disaster-resilient community on its own that can degenerate at the time of redundancy. The philosophy argues to minimize the discrepancy among neighborhood which can be overcome if only the new settlement contributes the surrounding; some sort of spatial strategy.

The idea is to accommodate different socio-institutional background followed by philosophy of low-cost, participatory layman carpentry-skills, stackable modules, passive design, self-sustainability and metamorphosis. Materials follow the philosophy of regionalism. Since the pandemic has a global influence, the context demands the main-stream practice. Tropical urban land is taken for the reference and materials are presented accordingly. Since the context is not concretized, this project can adapt the idea globally. Example, bamboo as skeleton and thatched roof “Gundri” for tropical climate and woolen products for cold region as outer skin. This led us to think to practice the same industry of products from the grass, bamboo and vernacular materials. In this way, the architecture appears as a fashion-delivery of marketing strategy that attracts the eyes of entrepreneurs, donors, sponsors and tourists.

One module accommodates six people. Rest modules follows multiplication. Keeping the UNDP standards of sanitation and services, this community targets to accommodate 50 individuals sharing the pre-requisites of emergency, health and sanitation, which is Phase-I. First phase is experimented on one cluster optimizing time and money. Every records of performance of first phase encourages to add next cluster in better manner.

If the planning progresses, the cluster can habituate mitosis-like division to incorporate other people, which is defined as Phase-II. If philosophy seems progressive, the cluster can prolong until the stabilization of the user’s group. This sequence needs a year-time which is Phase-III. This expansion idea creates the fifty-multiplication of habitants/contributors.

Henceforth, the concept not only encourages architectural identity but also suggests Participatory-tactic that involves the attachment of users provoking to conserve. In case the settlement is degenerated for many socio-political reasons, the modules can be adapted for commercial and expo-like space; a resilience performance we claim. This new prototype for emergency architecture could be flexible enough to please victim’s “wants”, standardize their “needs” and simultaneously be liable for all social, political, and prudent "limits".