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ASCF 10: Displacement and Architecture

May 23–25, 2018

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General Information

The Architecture, Culture and Spirituality Forum will host its 2018 international symposium from May 23-25, 2018 in Coral Gables, Florida. This conference will be held in partnership with the School of Architecture at the University of Miami; the Coral Gables Museum; and AIA Miami, the Miami Center for Architecture and Design, and the Aga Khan Award for Architecture. The conference aims to open a broad discussion among practitioners and scholars on the theme of Displacement in architecture today.

We are interested in opening a fresh discussion on a timeless yet urgent topic: the intersection of human displacement and architecture. These challenges especially include the tangible impacts of climate change, sea level rise, natural disasters, refugee communities, and the economic-political displacement of masses of peoples across the globe. In addition, they also include the more intangible and accompanying challenges of psychological and spiritual displacement. Recent events such as Hurricanes Irma, Harvey and Maria, the debate over the future of DACA, and the Mexico earthquake—all underscore the importance of this topic.

Topics may include a focus on places and cities which are impacted by migration including the spatial dimensions of the shelter, camp, or religious building. The conference will highlight both the tangible and intangible dimensions of displacement, addressing both the physical as well as spiritual ramifications of ontological natural disaster, forced migration, or deportation. The symposium will focus on displacement and design mitigation strategies addressing our inner sense of spiritual and cultural permanence within the temporal realities that we now occupy and will occupy into the future..

As in the past, the symposium will be structured as a balance between invited guest speakers, conference sessions, site visits and tours, and time for retreat and meals together. Featured spakears include Karsten Harries (Department of Philosophy, Yale University); Elizabeth Plater-Zyberk (University of Miami School of Architecture); Ronald Rael (College of Environmental Design, University of California at Berkeley, presenting his new book, Borderwall as Architecture: A Manifesto for the U.S. – Mexico Boundary); and Elke Roswag (Technical University Berlin and Eike, Roswag, Roswag, Architekten).

Please follow this link to register for the symposium online.

The Architecture, Culture and Spirituality Forum (ACSF) is an international scholarly group established in 2007 to advance the development and dissemination of architectural and interdisciplinary scholarship, research, practice, and education on the significance, experience, and meaning of the built environment.

Theme

Symposium Theme: DISPLACEMENT and ARCHITECTURE

The theme of displacement has drawn increasing attention in recent years from architects, historians, designers, urban planners, and artists seeking to meet the now growing range of challenges related to human settlement. These challenges especially include the tangible impacts of climate change, refugee communities, and the displacement of masses of peoples across the Middle East, Northern Africa and Europe. In addition they also include the more intangible and accompanying challenges of psychological and spiritual displacement. These crises have moved the theme of displacement to the center of education, research, and practice in a wide ranging field of architectural design and urbanism and its related fields, including philosophy and theology. The global refugee crisis has been the focus, for example, of exhibitions such as that of the Biennale in Venice, “Reporting from the Front,” or “Insecurities: Tracing Displacement and Shelter” at the MoMA in the fall of 2016. Of particular interest and value is “Shelter Design” exhibition planned by the Coral Gables Museum November 3 to May 27, 2018 that will partner with the Symposium to explore the various ways in which innovative design can be used for humanitarian purposes and how it can help those affected by the current refugee crisis, mass migration and natural disasters.

Government organizations such as the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and the US Global Change Research Program are pursuing design research into resilience and mitigations of the physical impacts of sea level rise and its social and cultural impacts. Urban history, too, as a field has reflected in recent years an intent to examine the ways natural disasters and patterns of forced immigration have shaped the history of our cities around the globe and have defined understandings of national boundaries and a global increase in a sense of uncertainty and fear. By way of example, one can point to the prominent role the theme of displacement has played in American History, such as the Cherokee Trail of Tears; the internment of Japanese during World War II; or in the American literary tradition through such classics as John Steinbeck’s The Grapes of Wrath.

What is perhaps less acknowledged in these recent discussions regarding displacement are the cultural and spiritual concerns related to the experience of human communities. As the dictionary describes, to be displaced is “to move or to shift from the ordinary or proper place. As a ship at sea displaces water, so we are displaced when something greater than ourselves moves us in a new direction or state of being.” More than a metaphor, displacement has been at the core of Abrahamic religious traditions: from the story of the fall of Adam and Eve from Paradise; to Noah and the flood; to the exile of Hagar and Ishmael; to the traveling Ark of the Covenant that transported the sacred in the wilderness. Indeed, contemporary pilgrimages are rooted in the very idea of displacement, as one separates oneself from the familiar and journeys to a sacred site. This far more profound sense of human displacement is captured in the Persian poet Rumi’s Song of the Reed:

’Hearken to the Reed forlorn,
Breathing, even since ‘twas torn
From its rushy bed, a strain
Of impassioned love and pain’

This symposium will address the meanings and effects of specific examples of displacement through a variety of periods and regions on the spiritual lives of individuals and its impact on the built environment—from the Native experience in North America, to contemporary narratives of Syrian refugees. The University of Miami is an especially appropriate venue for such a symposium, for not only is Miami Beach at risk to surging oceans and the School of Architecture have one of the most diverse student bodies in the nation, but the city of Miami itself, has served for decades as the principal port of entry for thousands of Cuban refugees seeking political asylum in the U.S.

The ACS 10 symposium seeks to call attention to the ways in which the theme of displacement addresses architectural and urban practice, education, and research. It will be exploring salient examples of outstanding works by leading world designers and papers that exhibit both theoretical and historical clarity. Possible themes for the Symposium rubric might be organized by a set of binary oppositions, such as: Shelter/Dwelling; Transitory/Permanence; Intangible/Tangible; Border/Center; Silence/Light; Materiality/Emptiness; Time/Timeless; Intellectual/Emotional; and Local/Global.

Questions that might be addressed include: How is displacement at the heart of an understanding of urban space today? How does an emphasis on displacement reorient, and on what philosophical grounds may a phenomenological emphasis in architecture on the role of dwelling and sense of place be defined? How does displacement create new opportunities for a specific site, and serve to construct it as a place of identity? To what ends does displacement give form to one history of a people and eliminate alternative histories? Does the idea of the sacred remain fixed in time and place? How do religious practices and customs engage a culturally and spiritual alien built environment? How in a world shattered by so much displacement can reaffirmations of an inner constancy persist or be given metaphoric form? We look forward to a symposium and exhibition that will manifest the importance of displacement not only in the design of cities and buildings today, but also in the making and transformation of our understanding of the relationship of spirituality, culture, and landscapes that we now occupy and will occupy into the future.

Location

The 10th Annual Symposium of ACSF will be held at Glasgow Hall designed by Leon Krier at the University of Miami’s School of Architecture and the historic Coral Gables Museum – the site for the forthcoming exhibition “Sheltering Survivors” and ACSF Paper Presentations.

The city of Coral Gables and the University of Miami is in keeping with ACSF’s tradition of meeting in historic contexts. Attendees will tour Coral Gables, recognized for George Merrick’s 1920s vision of the city as an elegant planned community. Designed according to the principles of the City Beautiful movement, the city combines tree-lined streets, tropical gardens, and Merrick’s appreciation for Italian, Moorish, and Spanish architecture. The centerpiece for Merrick’s Coral Gables is the palatial Biltmore Hotel, now a National Historic Landmark, famous for its grand Venetian pool and tropical gardens. The hotel was a Jazz Age icon, a symbol of the “American Riviera,” and once one of the most fashionable resorts in the country

Affordable lodging will be available for the duration of the symposium at the Morningstar Renewal Center, a Catholic non-profit retreat center located in Pinecrest, Florida. Information about alternative lodging at other close-by hotels will be made available later.

Cost

Cost for ACSF members is estimated at $425, which includes a 3-night stay and breakfasts at Morningstar, lunches at symposium sites, dinners at local cultural restaurants, receptions, local transport, and symposium fee. Authors (people whose work has been accepted for presentation) will have priority in getting accommodations at the Morningstar. Please register online using this Registration page.

Papers and Works

To view this year’s papers and works, please click here.

Collected Abstracts of the Tenth ACSF Symposium (May 23-25, 2018)

Edited by Nader Ardalan and Karla Britton (Symposium Chairs)

Note: all submissions to the symposium underwent peer review by at least 3 readers. Archived 05/14/2018

Symposium Topic: DISPLACEMENT and ARCHITECTURE

Session One: Sacred Spaces, Faith, and Cities of Immigration

Michael Crosbie Displacement as a Condition of Faith: Four Perspectives
Ben Jacks Catastrophic Displacements • Numentectonic Photographs
Robert Hermanson Displacement: Exile or Tourism?
Theodore Sawruk L’Extrême Frontière: Life on the Edge of Reality
Miriam Gusevich Landscapes of Displacement: a memorial landscape for the historic Jewish Cemetery in Sambir, Ukraine
Tammy Gaber Hubs of Mediation: Canadian Mosques supporting the Engagement of Refugees
Safira Lakhani and Sneha Sumanth

City as Opportunity: Refugee Integration in Toronto, Canada

Session Two: Ritual, Memory, and the Natural World

Session Three: Open Session & Displacement in the Arts: Music, Painting, Cinema

Participants

To download a copy of our 2018 Symposium participants, click here.

Photos

All the participants of ACSF 10 at Coral Gables, in one wonderful picture! View larger image here.

Organizing Committee

Nader Ardalan (co-chair) | Ardalan Associates | email: nader.ardalan@gmail.com

Karla Britton (co-chair) | Yale University | email: karla.britton@yale.edu

Thomas Barrie | North Carolina State University | email:tmbarrie@ncsu.edu

Abid Cure | University of Miami | email: acure@miami.edu

Kathrine Wheeler | University of Miami | email: kjwheeler@miami.edu

Caroline Parker | Coral Gables Museum | email: Caroline@coralgablesmuseum.org

Cheryl Jacobs | AIA Miami | email: cheryl@aiamiami.org

Julio Bermudez (webmaster) | Catholic University of America | email: bermudez@cua.edu