After successful completion of the course, students are able to develop a sensitive approach towards disaster architecture, they are familiar with various reconstruction concepts and have developed one themselves. Due to the compressed time frame of the course, which reflects the rapid response to natural disasters, the students get a sense of what "reconstruction architecture" feels like in practice.
The exchange with the University of Lahore (UoL) in Pakistan, where design exercises dealing with the effects of natural disasters have been a fixed part of the curriculum for many years, provides valuable knowledge. In addition, the students will gain an insight into the teaching methods of this South Asian university.
Pakistan is one of those countries most affected by the impacts of global climate change, yet at the same time its inhabitants are responsible for only 0.6 per cent of global greenhouse gas emissions. In the summer of 2022, exceptionally heavy monsoon rains flooded a third of the country, forcing 33 million people to leave their homes. More than ten million families are still struggling to survive day by day, one year after the devastating floods. The relatively heavily populated province of Sindh in the south-east of the country was particularly affected.
Yasmeen Lari, founder of the Heritage Foundation Pakistan and Pakistan's first female architect, has taken on these challenges and developed a system that creates housing for those affected very quickly after a natural disaster. This octagonal building made of a load-bearing bamboo framework, plastered with a mud and lime mixture, can be erected within a few hours and provides shelter for an entire family.
From March to August 2023, the now 82-year-old architect had her own exhibition at the Architekturzentrum Wien, which also focused on these buildings. It was in the context of this exhibition that the cooperation with the Vienna University of Technology came into being. A group of students travelled to Pakistan in November/December 2022 to spend a few days in Pono Village together with architecture students from the University of Lahore (UoL). In this village of 100 inhabitants, several of these bamboo-mud-lime buildings were constructed by Yasmeen Lari after the flood disaster. During their stay, the students studied this construction method and the materials, but in particular they devoted themselves to research by conducting in-depth interviews with the inhabitants, analysing the existing traditional construction methods and surveying the village.
The cooperation with the University of Lahore will be continued within the framework of this interdisciplinary project. The aim is to further develop Yasmeen Lari's concept in theory or to design entirely new approaches that are useful for reconstruction after a natural disaster. The Pakistani Pono Village, located near Mirpur Khas, will be used as an example. The students of the UoL and the students of the TU Vienna are working on this task in parallel and regularly exchange information about their design progress and methods via Zoom Call.
The course is held in blocks and partly in English – a good knowledge of English is a prerequisite for participation.
In the workshops, disaster architecture designs are developed or existing concepts are refined simultaneously at the University of Lahore (UoL) and the TU Wien. The central content of the course is the permanent exchange with the architecture students of the UoL (in English, via Zoom), in which their own design progress and in particular the methods used are shown and discussed. This mutual exchange makes it possible, on the one hand, to get to know new approaches to architectural production and, on the other hand, to reflect on and re-evaluate one's own design approaches through this view of Pakistan.
The course will be held on the following dates:
Tue, 31 Oct, 10am to 1pm: Introduction (Seminarraum, Gußhausstraße 28, 1. Stock)
Mon, 6 Nov, 9am to 2pm: Workshop (Seminarraum, Gußhausstraße 28, 1. Stock)
Tue, 7 Nov, 9am to 2pm: Workshop (Seminarraum, Gußhausstraße 28, 1. Stock)
Wed, 8 Nov, 9am to 2pm: Workshop (Seminarraum AE U1 - 2 -ARCH)
Thu, 9 Nov, 9am to 2pm: Workshop (Seminarraum AE U1 - 2 -ARCH)
Fri, 10 Nov, 10am to 1pm: Final presentation (Seminarraum, Gußhausstraße 28, 1. Stock)Endabgabe: 1. Dezember 2023
· Presence on site + active work in the workshops
· Elaborated project sketches/plans (A3 folder)
· Concept model
