Considering softshelter Slums
The softshelter project is “a system for creating personal space within a larger shelter area in order to provide individuals and families with a sense of privacy and encourage community-building in the days following a disaster.”
Let’s put aside for a moment technical questions like are these kraft paper and felt walls fireproof, can they be adapted to dealing with invasive biology, etc.
The envisioned use case is the Superdome after Katrina. Temporary refugees that need to be organized and stored while the cavalry mobilizes and arrives. But consider the softshelter in a context where help never or is very late in coming.
This is a scenario where soft actually becomes a harm rather than a good. A community whose spatial existence is defined by these over the course of years? I shudder at the thought of the intentional lack of specific, delineated space coupled with fluid and violence/hoarding based social structures.
Further, even in a temporary context (days to months), the softshelter generates privacy. Revisiting the Superdome, is privacy a good to be valued in temporary housing within an autonomous zone (that is, free of any dominant force)? Or does it lend itself to the grotesque – rape rooms, loot storage, armories?
-Shlok
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