From emergency landscapes to ecologies of co-habitation
Agricultural production, the normality in a state of exception
N.M. Terpstra (TU Delft - Architecture and the Built Environment)
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Abstract
The geopolitical instability in Syria has led to an increased disturbance of the environmental, economic and social situation in its adjacent country Lebanon. A comprehensive approach is put forward, for safeguarding the environment and to address the economic and social disruptions the country is facing. This allows the phenomenon and implications of forced displacement to be understood in connection with and as part of the whole. A holistic reading of the landscape resulted in the re-connection of humans to its most basic life-sustaining relationship, namely that of agriculture. Wherein agricultural production is seen as the normality in an exceptional situation, deeply rooted in the culture and knowledge of all the inhabitants of the Bekaa Valley. The ecological design, therefore showcases the implementation of new and the improvement of existing agricultural production systems and their affiliated forms of living. In this way, rural livelihoods in Lebanon are protected or established, with and in respect to the natural landscape. Moreover, the initiated communal enclaves based on agricultural production, can safeguard threatened prime agricultural land by encouraging urban development towards a desired direction.