PROJECT DESCRIPTION:
In addition to the stated objectives within the briefing document and based upon this teams’ experience we have added the following important objectives of the design and project.
1. The manufacture and fabrication of the system must provide investment, stimulate enjoyment, give economic regeneration and income for Kosovo or other devastated countries, and not influence the affluent economies of the East or the West. (We have demonstrated here how the system developed can regenerate the economy of Mostar in Bosnia Herzegovina.)
2. The system must be structurally and constructionally flexible to allow distribution and construction in the varying conditions, ie remote mountains, open plains, deserts, as well as towns destroyed by war or natural disaster.
3. The housing should be located on the site or vicinity of the home of the displaced people. This enables them to maintain ownership, ensuing that the region has a more stable population rather than the situation of moving displaced people , too frightened and unable to return to their own homes. In situations of ethnic cleansing the refugees may need to be settled in the communities in which they feel safe. This will again require instant ownership of the occupied but derelict building or site. However, when one looks at it from our ideal stance in our settled communities, displaced and ethnically cleansed people do not want to return to ethnic minority and threatened situations.
4. The structure must be transported by a single person on foot through terrain that is inaccessible to vehicles or helicopters. It should also be able to be erected by a single person in difficult climatic conditions.
DESIGN PHILOSOPHY:
Given the objectives set out above and again, based upon our experience of traumatized areas, we believe that the appropriate solution is a simple flat pack, lightweight system of elements. It cannot be a prefabricated building.
There are to be as few elements as possible, for as many different locations and situations as possible. It must be flexible.
The proposed solution does not require any specialist tools except for possibly a shovel.
The erection of the elements will not require any specialist skills for erection and can be quickly undertaken by one person.
The solution proposed here is light and can be transported through inhospitable terrain without need for mechanized transport.
We have through the choice of material suggested a route as explained in “the System” whereby the fabrication of the elements can stimulate investment in a previously war torn and devastated region. If this does not happen there will be continued situation of social unrest.
Architecture is supposed to provide shelter. In early 1999, nowhere was the need for shelter more critical than in the war-torn region of Kosovo. Hundreds of thousands were without a place to live. Their homes in ruins and the infrastructure of the region collapsed, the returning population needed immediate and highly-dispersed temporary housing.
Architecture for Humanity hosted an open competition to design five-year transitional housing for the returning people of Kosovo. The competition's goal was to foster the development of housing methods that would relieve suffering and speed the transition back to a normal way of life. Architects and designers from 30 different countries responded. We received more than 200 designs. From these, a jury selected 10 finalists and 20 notable entries. This proposal from LDA Architects with Whitney Bird & Partners was one of those ten finalists. This was the first finalist to be transformed into a full-sized prototype.
