The Wall after the War Empathy and improvisation for early design students.
This research project is an investigation of how empathy could be used as a tool to facilitate spatial understanding and generation in early design pedagogy. Through a process of continuous iteration and improvisation, students evaluate the impact of the designs in a post-war context. To encourage divergent thinking students were encouraged to practice flexibility towards the design by keeping an open-ended outcome throughout the process. We live in an era where social media is a main source of information and data is widely available from questionable sources often normalizing hatred, fear, and dehumanization. Through empathy students were able to place themselves into the project not only as the designers but as users in the space. The methodologies used will be presented through a process of playfulness, mindfulness and improvisation over a 4-week design project. This project challenges students to design three spaces of healing nested into a wall volume. The wall serves as the host and site to the healing journey, it is their own definition of complex masses of destruction and occupation left behind after the War. Each space is required to offer a unique light quality, diffused/direct/chromatic, reflecting on their understandings of emotions through light and shadow in a journey through a wall. Removing all preassigned notions of what the spaces are anticipated end result, proving that good design decisions do not always require preparation. The project prompts students to deal with interstitial spaces of healing nested into the wall while generating a matrix of hidden chronicles. The trauma towards the citizens and culture becomes a series of voids in the volume and opportunities for healing spaces. This project is a contribution to all citizens of the world living under occupation and healing from the trauma of destruction. “I cannot know your name, Nor can you know mine. Tomorrow, we begin together the construction of a city.” Woods, L. (1997).
Space of Acknowledgment
The project focused on researching and discovering hidden narratives in history, practicing sensitivity in decision-making guided by the research and statements of the tribe, and acknowledging faults and injustices inflicted on the tribe. Through transparency in research and design, the student projects aimed to highlight the extent of loss suffered by the Nez Percé tribe. The process throughout the project involved intensive layering, where thoughts, emotions, stories, and maps provided organization to the students' understanding of land usage. Against this backdrop, students engaged in a 4-week beginning design studio project that sought to acknowledge the injustices faced by the Nez Percé, Nimiipuu Tribe in North Central Idaho. The project encouraged students to experiment with methods of designing that could serve as actions of acknowledgment. The studio project's aim was to sensitize the students to the loss of land and resources experienced by the tribe, as well as to foster empathy and grace in approaching the design process. (Lee, Robert, 2020) Quinn Anderson focuses on creating an environment that encourages learning, instills a feeling of peace, and promotes personal reflection. The design magnifies the division of land, prompting a direct confrontation with past wrongdoings. Anderson uses fire as the main element of the boundary engraved into the landscape. This project reflects upon the design thinking process of a student. Anderson mentions that a line drawn by an architect possesses the power to violently interrupt what is, to force the imaginative concoction of what could be, upon the unknowing. Rather than continuing the personification of an architect’s line, the amphitheater proposes to expand the conversation to consider the underlying egotistic nature of humans that shaped the Nez Percé’s destiny today.
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