Amplifying trajectories

in the marginal settlements of Mashhad

Master thesis (2021)

Authors

A.D.N. Meijer Architecture and the Built Environment

Contributors

M.G.H. Schoonderbeek Theory, Territories & Transitions - Architecture and the Built Environment (supervisor 1)
F. Geerts Theory, Territories & Transitions - Architecture and the Built Environment (supervisor 1)
G. Koskamp Design of Constrution - Architecture and the Built Environment (supervisor 1)
N. Sanaan Bensi Teachers of Practice / A - Architecture and the Built Environment (supervisor 1)
Faculty
Architecture and the Built Environment
Copyright: © 2021 Allard Meijer
Recycling Trajectories Marginal settlements Mashhad Social facilities
More Info
expand_more

Published Date

07-07-2021

Language

English

Reuse Rights

Other than for strictly personal use, it is not permitted to download, forward or distribute the text or part of it, without the consent of the author(s) and/or copyright holder(s), unless the work is under an open content license such as Creative Commons.

Faculty

Architecture and the Built Environment

Abstract

In Mashhad, one million - a third of the people - live in marginal settlements also known as slums. Migrations from the countryside and Afghanistan to Mashhad, and housing crisis have pushed many to settle in the literal margins of the city. However, their life is everything but settled: their existence can instead be characterized as a nomadic condition in which they are always on the go. Flexibility, informality and trajectories are essential to their survival within the precarious and marginal settlements. The marginal settlers have to manoeuvre between scarcities such as employment, food, water and sanitation. Those scarcities are constantly changing and thus the daily trajectories of the marginal settlers do so too. Moreover, marginal settlers live this way in areas that are marginalized in a multitude of senses: geographically, economically, politically, socially, architecturally and environmentally. Natural hazards, low employment, administrative borders, little education, poor quality housing, and an environment of waste and lack of waste management all contribute to the daily conditions of the marginal settler.

Very often, when similar poor conditions are faced by design, attention goes to the betterment of housing or creation of community centers. They are however striated or approaches, thinking from a city-point of view: to try to fit the
marginal settlements within the organizations of the city. This project seeks for the opposite approach:

The project intents to improve the marginal state of Mashhad's marginal settlements whilst being focused on life in transit. The project addresses trajectories and intersections and intents to embrace, amplify and take inspiration from the nomadic lifestyle. Its use is intended to be of democratic and public nature, ready to be taken over and adapted by the marginal settlers themselves.

This approach can be more feasible than changing the lifestyle of a third of the city’s people. The design task is first to create social facilities that provide basic needs that are absent in the marginal settlements along the daily trajectories of marginal settlers and secondly an integration of those social facilities in a new waste management network, which creates employment and cleans the environment from waste upon which trajectories move. This integration draws people towards the site where they are made aware of the importance and benefits of waste recycling, and in return for waste receive services along their daily trajectories.