Lecture for ETH
Location: Tarifa, Cádiz, Spain
Status: Accomplished.
Year: 2017
Download PDF of the presentation.
Baum has been invited to contribute with a lecture at the WORKSHOP INCLUSIVE URBANISM II: MIGRATION Produced by MAS Urban Design ETH Zürich & Think Tangier and directed by Charlotte Malterre-Barthes. Reflecting on the idea of limit and the social implications of human movements was the main aim for the lecture. Fourteen point four kilometers is the distance that separates Europe from Africa at the strait of Gibraltar.
In the presentation of the workshop it was said:
This town is made of many things/Just look at what the current brings
So high, it’s only promising/This place was made on you
Tell me, baby, what’s your story/Where you come from
And where you wanna go this time?
Red Hot Chili Peppers, ‘Tell me Baby’. (2006). [CD] MoeBeToBlame.
Migration is not a new phenomenon. While our era is based on a mythology of geographical mobility and global migratory circulations, history reveals that migration is not a modern condition. Presented in current narratives as a movement of people from one continent to another, in reality, migration happens at many scales, from the urban to the continental. In the quest for a better and safer life, people have always moved, relocating, changing districts, cities, regions, countries, and continents. These movements are unlikely to slow down in the near future, with enduring armed conflicts, economic hardships, and predicted climate change-induced mass migration. Crises have shed a dramatic light on movement of people as a rapid, ubiquitous, complex, and eminently spatial phenomenon. Circulations of people, goods, and capital, as much as their resettlement, have a visible, transformative impact upon space, at various scales. Within the framework of Inclusive Urbanism, the MAS program is tackling urgent questions of migration in relation to architecture and urban space with a focus on the spatial notion of ‘staying’ somewhere. Tangier offers a particularly rich urban environment at the threshold of inclusiveness and migration.
During the workshop, we will explore two central aspects to the topic. On the one hand, we will investigate spatial aspects of migration present at various scales, from the urban response of local, rural populations to urban settings, the presence of Sub-Saharans travelers in the urban space, Ceuta’s architecture of containment, to the physical distance between Africa and Europe. This contextual exploration will serve as the backdrop for investigating ways of living together that can teach us to design inclusive neighborhoods, from the hyper-dense residential fabric of the Kasbah to the mixed functional typologies in informal areas and elsewhere in Tangier.