Open Collections

York, Brant

Nomads have existed forever, but over time the emergence of family structures and the formats of housing, schools and workplaces that surround them have resulted in communities trapped in an endless monotonous loop of common experiences, often becoming ignorant of their global neighbours and humanity’s diversity. In an effort to escape this status quo, contemporary nomadic families work tirelessly to explore new places and cultures across the globe, while constantly faced with the tremendous challenges associated with traveling with children. The most prominent of these challenges are related to obtaining adequate child education, socialization, and building a sense of community while frequently moving from one destination to another for extended periods of time. Ultimately, families that have been able to withstand the challenges of denying the status quo are rewarded with varied educational, developmental, and experiential advantages. Today we can see an increase in nomadic families, as schooling and working online becomes more widely available, and our digital connectivity promotes long distance social connections. While these new communication systems have the potential to allow the nomadic family lifestyle to be more accessible, the issue remains that there are no suitable architectural provisions for long term family travel that directly accommodate the needs of this family-oriented demographic. Nomadic Family Homes proposes a network of exclusive family residences whose intent is to promote a greater sense of community and socialization among the demographic, and to provide the child-specific support currently lacking. Architecturally, the ambition is for these residences to engage the Nomadic Families with the local culture that they are eager to take part in by thoughtfully considering and reflecting the local material fabric, being respectful towards ongoing typological conditions, and refraining from the tendency to provide an inauthentic tourist caricature. Each of the residences is an experiment to prove the capacity of traditional typologies across the globe to accommodate the nomadic families’ unprecedented programme. They individually take into consideration the influences of site, scale, and the ability to retain local influences and culture. While providing Nomadic Families with a supportive housing strategy, collectively this proposal also suggests a broader approach for ongoing architectural intervention that accommodates a mobile and global population.

Graduating Project

eng

2021-05-05

Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International

http://hdl.handle.net/2429/78120

UBCV

Graduate

http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/