Overview

For the first phase of Hello Wood’s design-build ‘Project Village’ in July 2015, Urban-Think Tank devised the ‘Migrant House’, a simple structure that provided the initial point of orientation for a community of travelers. Its towering form created a sense of identity for this disparate group of individuals, while its open frames were slowly filled in with the remnants of past lives. The resulting bricolage represented the collective embodied spirit of those that temporarily chose to inhabit its spaces, at the same time planting foundations within the broader Project Village.

Now that the initial seeds have been sown, it is time to grow a community.

Our proposal for Project Village II seeks to transform the idea of the Migrant House into a dynamic concept of ‘Migrant Hous(ing)’. Each individual will arrive to the site with his or her individual unit – a series of rotating frames that can configure into a multitude of spaces based on personal need. These units have material limitations that prevent the individual from building complete solitary housing. However, as the individuals begin to form relationships – friendships, groups, romantic entanglements – the units can transform. Only through a collective force can the units fulfill their structural potential and exert their limitless combinatorial possibilities, testing the true nature of community building.

Urban-Think Tank is currently developing practical housing strategies embedded within community driven processes. The Migrant Hous(ing) project builds upon ideas of modular construction, community capacity building, rapid and incremental upgrading, and quick, prefabricated assembly and disassembly methods. The structures themselves are migrant in nature. Their ability to be transported and rapidly installed, transformed, and dismantled is key, and a major performative element. The project questions how displaced individuals begin to establish relationships with other traveling migrants. What are the spatial structures that allow assemblage, growth, reconfiguration, and transformation? Can architecture preserve individual identity while contributing to integration?