call for papers DAr #7
ISSN 2785-3152
Migrant inhabiting in the city of inclusion
Edited by Federica Visconti
This DAr Call on migrant inhabiting in the city of inclusion aims to reflect on a theme that, even if presented as specific feature of our contemporary in some ‘stories’ and in emergency terms, is on the contrary consubstantial to the history of humanity and our world.
In a book co-written by journalist Valerio Calzolaio and evolutionary philosopher Telmo Pievani, it is possible to read that «Humans have been migrating for at least two million years: they did it first in Africa, then everywhere and the result is that the framework of human populations has been enriched: escapes, waves, cohabitations, natural selection, overlapping between successive flows, perhaps conflicts between different species, up to Homo Sapiens. The brain has grown and the adaptive flexibility and migratory capacity with it.
Agreeing with the thesis of the book, well illustrated in its title Libertà di migrare. Perché ci spostiamo da sempre ed è bene così (Freedom to Migrate. Why We Have Always Moved and That’s Good) (Einaudi, Torino 2006), it will be investigated, within the specificity of Architecture, on one hand the outcome, in terms of form – architectural and urban – that the phenomenon of migration produces when different cultures of dwelling meet and, on the other, the features of that design action that, in particular conditions, has assumed, among its objectives, that of building places of inclusion for citizens, migrants and non. The focus should be especially the Mediterranean that assumes, referred to the theme, an indubitable centrality and its specificity.
The underlying idea of city is political, producible through the project and referring expressly to an idea of civilization such as that described by Andrea Tagliapietra, which does not look at migration as «[...] a wandering nomadic destiny [...] but a need and demand for land to take care of, for a place where to plan and build lives, making the singularity of those who host and welcome flourish, as well as of those who have to rediscover not a natural right to escape, but that freedom and dignity of living that are inscribed in the term “civilization”».
This call for papers will host all those contributions that will be able to address the complex theme of migrant inhabiting in relationship with the construction of the urban form and the architecture(s), avoiding any concessions to a constatative hyper-realism. Contributions on the theme may be developed according to two different tracks:
- “research”: the section may include contributions regarding studies and research that have investigated, the modifications produced in the urban form, in its typological-morphological structure, or in the features of buildings, domestic or collective/public, in relation to migratory phenomena. Contributions should hopefully highlight the transformation processes that have characterized the urban fabric or the ‘types’, also through the instrument of critical-analytical drawings.
- “design”: the section may collect contributions dedicated to those projects that, both at the architectural and urban scale, have addressed the theme of the construction of buildings (or systems of) intended to accommodate migrant dwelling. The contributions may
concern projects produced in different fields: of study and research, in workshops or third mission activities, in professional practice as long as they are analysed by adequately motivating the reasons and design choices.