Recreating
Community in Cancer Support Centers, Foster Homes and Developing
Colonias Through the Hands-on Participation of a Design/build Teaching
Model |
| The devastating effects of war and poverty drive many to risk their lives to find more stable environments and global migration is at a scale not seen since early part of this century. Displaced individuals are challenged to find their bearings in an unfamiliar environment, adapt to a new culture, and reestablish their community. Many struggle with feelings of isolation and loneliness, a lack of self-efficacy and identity, and a sense of hopelessness and alienation. Poverty in the United States drives displacement and is particularly devastating to families. Both the growing rate of incarceration and the AIDS crisis leave children without parents or care providers. Many young women are in the penal system for what are often long, mandatory sentences and are separated from their children. Likewise young children and adolescents, the innocent victims of the AIDS crisis, are left without family and sent to foster homes becoming permanent residents as hope for adoption fades. In both of these scenarios the loss of community, family and familiar environments create elevated levels of stress, feelings of abandonment and lack of continuity. How then can a sense of community be reestablished? How can individuals from differing backgrounds and cultures find a common value that unites them? For the past ten years, these and other questions have been explored through the Department of Landscape Architecture’s Design/Build Program. Using a participatory design process developed in the studio, students and clients engage in discussions, design exercises and critiques to jointly determine how their civic spaces can be redefined and become focal points for socializing, celebration and play. Through this transformation a sense of community is created where common goals, activities and shared endeavors can take place. |