Vaissnavi Shukl
Located in the southernmost part of Bangladesh in Cox’s Bazar, the Kutupalong refugee camp is the world’s largest refugee camp, with a population of around 600,000, mostly comprising of the Rohingya refugees who migrated from mine Mark towards religious persecution. Today we speak to John Wagner and Nadyeli Quiroz. Recent Graduates of the Harvard Graduate School of Design, who first became involved in Kutupalong refugee camp as a part of an options studio led by prominent architect Anna Herringer.  They continue their engagement in the camp even after their studio and marking the beginning of a research project that critically looks at spaces of migration, as well as a practice that promotes a new kind of design advocacy.

My name is Vaissnavi Shukl and this is Architecture Off- Centre, a podcast where we highlight unconventional design practices and research projects that reflect the emerging discourses within the design discipline and beyond. Architecture of Center features conversations with exceptionally creative individuals who have extrapolated the traditional fields of Art, Architecture, Planning, landscape, and urban design.

John and Nadyeli, I’m so excited to have you both here on the inaugural episode of Architecture Off-Centre. So thank you so much for being here. I wanted to get us started with literally asking the most basic question. How did the two of you end up in the Rohingya refugee camp in Bangladesh?

Nadyeli Quiroz
Wow. Yeah. Okay, so thank you, Vaissnavi. So much for having us here. We are… we are very honoured to be here with you in this first episode. So I can get us started with this question. And we… we met while we met in grad school, in the hallways of… of school, and then we ended up in the same optional studio, which was a studio led by Anna Heringer. And the studio was exploring how architecture and particularly modern architecture could be integrated into the design of community facilities in… in the Rohingya refugee camp. And it was by introduction… by Anna’s introduction that we travel to the refugee camp the first time. And then there’s just created much more inquiries and questions on us. And we start talking a lot about the problem and how actually design could be of use in this type of crisis. And that’s how we continue further with this research. 

Vaissnavi Shukl
So, so for anybody who…who’s not from the streets of the refugee camp, what was it like going from this extremely clean and sanitise place that is Cambridge, and just being in the middle of have What started as a temporary settlement and now it’s on its way to becoming a permanent city of swords. Walk us through what it was like when you… when you showed up in Bangladesh, what… what was it like?

John Wagner
Also, when we first arrived in Bangladesh, I think our best introduction to that experience was driving about two kilometres the wrong way on the interstate, or the highway from the airport to our hotel, which gave all of our jet lagged exhausted, exhausted hearts an enormous shock. The kind of the transition from GSD to visit a country like Bangladesh was absolutely extraordinary. It was extraordinary, I think, particularly  for me and some of my colleagues who had not yet been to a developing country. Because it was truly an immersive exposure to the kind of reality of the world that you may have had before only had seen in photographs, or documentaries. And I think that that reality was compounded by when we first stepped foot out of the van, and the Rohingya refugee camp. And after driving for about an hour on bumpy, windy roads through the hinterlands of the Chittagong foothills, we came into the refugee camp, after seeing like this, this vast horizon of deforestation and kind of descending into this valley and in this dusted plane, you could just see, and like the sun beaten ground, you could just see the absolute baked landscape of where there used to be a forest, this very verdant, very moist forest. It was now like this dry and desolate place, at the time we visited the camp. Even though it’s since regenerated and become like kind of…like much more forested and much more reflecting what was what the natural condition of the site was before the influx. What was so shocking to see as we walked through the camp was how unforeign and unexotic and how real it all was. From the white paint of the UN vehicles like barreling down the brick road to the dusty chalk on the children’s hands that were playing in the gutter, to the texture of the tarpey liens that are the very same that you know, a million miles away in my youth in the United States would be what we would tie around, about after storing it for the season like the very same materials, it’s very same substance and it was so real. And for me, particularly, it just really evaporated the distance between a clean… clean sterile place like GSD and something foreign and supposedly exotic like the Rohingya  camp, it suddenly became as immediate and as a present it as real as any of the things that were at our fingertips within…within the clean halls of Gund Hall.

Nadyeli Quiroz
Yes. I will also add that what was really interesting, I think it’s disputations you have beforehand going to a refugee camp. Right. And I think…  that was my first time in one and is the only one I’ve visited so far. I didn’t know is such a normalised thing and it has been such a normalised thing in, in, in humanity since World War Two, I had no idea about that. But when I visited, I was expecting it to be completely bounded and isolated from the actual fabric of Bangladesh. And we came to realise it’s not like the site is so big that it cannot be contained, fenced.  It cannot be fenced. So there are some doors and controls, but then there are… parts are completely open, and the show Bangladeshis have grown around… also around the camp. And they are served by… by many of the facilities or services that are… that are given at the camp. And this, this, for me was a big shock to see that it’s not not an isolated settlement. But it…it sort of becomes to be it starts to be integrated into… into the country, and also is just readily I’ve heard like the first time we visited with the GSD, we were staying at a hotel. And it was just a touristic hotel, right in front of the bridge, like for Europeans and Americans. And then just like to our right, we were in a refugee camp is just like, it was right there. It’s these two realities so close to each other and ignoring each other.

Vaissnavi Shukl
What…What was it that you were designing? What was the project brief for the studio? Like?

John Wagner
Yeah, that’s a great question. So what we were tasked to design was a daycare for Rohingya refugee children. Got it. And the scope was to make this out of Earth. So each of our studio projects explore different ways of applying Earth and mud to design buildings.

Vaissnavi Shukl
It’s interesting, because we’re getting to this juice of what today’s conversation is about. And John, you mentioned, seeing these white UN went around the settlement when you…when you got… when you got there. So this is particularly interesting case, because you guys worked on this project, as a…as a part of the options to do and it evolved into a much larger, longer project where you…were you took the initiative to stay engaged with the community, with the organisations, working on ground and continue your research. I assume that’s a lot of the work you did initially just focus on building trust and building coalitions. And so what was it like being on ground working with working with all these different agencies? So what was your process like? So once the studio ended, what began?

John Wagner
Yeah. So I think that, you know, the proximity with which Nadyeli describes, you know, this juxtaposition between like the touristic hotel and, and the refugee crisis just over the bridge is, it’s very interesting, the distance between or the proximity between the reality and then the distance between us and getting back to that place. And I think what we undertook after the studio was what turned into a multi year process to try to find meaningful re engagement with the situation in a way that our skill sets as designers so we thought could be contributive in the spirit of what the studio was, but also more broadly and kind of the vain of the kind of practice that we wish to engage in which is consequential meaningful kind of design activism. So after the studio, what… what we… what we undertook was a variety of different to both create a meeting to go back to and that was in partnership with a nonprofit organisation that had hosted our first trip as the options studio and meeting with their directors and and some of their staff agents, they, they, they kind of, they kind of created the pathway for us to then have purposefulness in finding grant funding and finding scholastic support and finding a kind of a pathway for us to return. All of that took quite… quite a lot, quite a while. And along the way, we… we found other avenues to explore the project and develop the project. They gave us kind of a product of our effort before we… before we went there, one of which is the installation that you might describe, ideally that we made the spring after the option studio in Harvard Yard.

Nadyeli Quiroz
Yes, I mean, that installation is one of the works with it, which was creating, creating, just like a…an art installation in the Harvard Yard space, out of bamboo. And we prepared a short exhibition, just describing what the situation is like and using the basic materials that were used for creating the refugee camp with its bamboo and tarpaulin and rope, also. So that is one of the first videos that helped us, like raise the awareness and also have people engaging in the process. We were like we were pursuing because I think like when we were working on the studio, and as John just mentioned, like the studio had a very architectural prompt. And I mean, we were in an architecture studio. So but as we were designing our projects for the studio, John and I were also all the time having like conversations to late night in studio asking like, is this really it? Like? Is this really what a humanitarian crisis of such a scale needs? Is it just simply form, capital A ‘Architecture’ or materials? Like, what is it that design can bring to the conversation, and we started like researching and also from other professors in school, being interested in our processes and community engagement to address these problems, and, and to think of a different way of practice, that is just not about form. And I think the installation was a pretty important way for us to bring… to bring attention to other ways of doing things and other ways of engaging, and that probably we were onto something and it was worth it, helping us go back there. 

Vaissnavi Shukl
When I look at that installation that you guys did, it was also just… just a way it was located almost on this very pious Cardinal axis of the Harvard Yard between…between the church and the library. And putting this, there’s creating this walkway, creating this space in between that almost talks about the politics of visibility and the fact that architecture at some times, doesn’t always need to build in order to achieve the goal. But a role of an architect and us as designers can also do make visible something that’s not as visible in our day to day life, right? So you’re trying to highlight something or put across a situation that exists in another part of the world. But that is so important, and so knowing the different ways in which we can drive a change, and there’s two things I want to get into based on what Nadyeli is talking about. But I’ve been thinking about the…the agency offers designers and you know, as in my own immediate surroundings, and more so in the context that you guys are working with. And you’ve been highlighting the importance of collective designing and a participatory design process insights like the refugee camp. You briefly mentioned in our previous meeting about collaborating with other architects. So you’re talking about Co-create. And you’re talking about Can super interesting how that… that coalition was built and how you ended up kind of creating a whole different mode of practice. So to say in the refugee camp, very interesting. Can you… can you talk about both the participatory design process and the participatory architectural practice that emerged in this site?

John Wagner
Yeah, yeah, absolutely. And I think one of the themes that under that kind of underscores what Nadyeli is describing, and this installation we made at Harvard yard and the coalition that we necessarily had to begin to form to have an effective or useful contribution back in the camp has to do with the role of communication and design. And so, before I… before I speak specifically to the coalition of Can and of Co-create architects and of, you know, Raja and rescue Hassan and Assad, Mr. Baba, to name a few. I think that the role of communication takes many forms in this work, that it’s really important, I think, for how we’ve begun to understand the broader implications of this work in our own collaboration and ongoing practice. And that is how could design communicate between worlds to use your phrase. And in Harvard Yard, specifically, you know, the axis and the positioning of the… of the installation was so, so, so intentional, right, because what we were trying to communicate was that the occupation of spaces is the first act. It’s maybe the most dramatic act of politics is it’s the most dramatic act of speech is because before you even say something, you have to be there. And so by putting this installation in Harvard Yard, we we’re trying to share with the community that like there was this ongoing crisis, this genocide occurring on the other side of the world, but that the the ability to intervene or the ability to make positive intervention need not be so complicated, need not be so technological need not be so high intense high resource capital, that the simple act of creating space through a sunshade is maybe one of the first steps of solidarity and one of the first steps of resistance to to an impossible situation. And so it was through that communication, that we were able to even be funded and get the momentum to be able to return to Bangladesh to to follow through on the communications that we had made with these Coalition’s that you’ve enumerated. So this is to describe that aspect of the work once once we had received an opportunity to return to Bangladesh, in part through both Nadyeli thesis and my fellowship, the Irving Innovation Fellowship at Harvard Graduate School of Design, as well as underwriting, underwriting from the laboratory for design research, urban stack, we were able to, through those grants, returned to Bangladesh, a year after our first visit, to meet face to face and to actually be introduced to new activists and architects and planners who are working in that context. And so I guess the next set quite a bit. The next kind of chapter here is it’s really all… all of those engagements that we made and what they meant and, and the kind of work that we learned of and… and… and were inspired by, in Bangladesh.

Nadyeli Quiroz
Yeah, it was, it was really interesting how those relationships got shaped because we had different introductions, some from faculty or visiting scholars that were giving lectures at the GSD. We talked to them, they gave us names. And we just wrote to everyone. We also saw some of the work of the architects that they were doing on… on the campus, we reached out to their LinkedIn. But what was really, I think what was really special is that all of these connections we’ve made with there are many architects in Bangladesh, everyone was pointing us to talk to Cocreate says we arrived in Bangladesh every Monday, “Yeah, you should, you should really meet the two architects in the office of Cocreate.” But they were not really in our itinerary because they were living, not in not close to the refugee camp, not close to that. They were like, in a completely different region that we never planned to visit. But then we went to the camp. And there we were hosted by BRAC NGO. And we were directly working with the architects that work for BRAC. Which was also an initiative which was very innovative from BRAC to hire architects. Because usually the construction is solved by engineers. And in this case, BRAC introduced the work of architects. And these were very young architects that John just mentioned brisby. Sad… sad to me. They were very young architects, we became very good friends. And, and… they were all they have been a students of Cocreate architects before. Right. So they were, they were really carrying this idea of… of collaborating with the craftsmen collaborating with the people engaged in the local knowledge of construction. And they were really caring there was carrying this agenda into the refugee camp. And they did this through the space that BRAC opened for them to explore, and, and to work in this direction.

Vaissnavi Shukl
So we’ve spoken a fair bit about working on grounded about… about practice, I’m gonna, I’m going to step back a little bit and look at it from a more theoretical abstract perspective, and what the essence of both your work and your work together. For us, it focuses on migration and space, right? It’s questions about migration and space spaces, and the one the space that has been occupied and laid claim on by these refugees, but also the space that you’re trying to create through design, well, not necessarily spaces and like the build space, but the space of collaboration and the space of, as John said, solidarity and resistance, right? So in that sense, I…I want to bring into focus, John, you at some point, invoke Art de Manifesto, which advocates that architecture should raise awareness and be useful. And Nadyeli, in your M.Des thesis, you’re talking about the permanence of the temporal and the art, artefacts of freedom and the camp. So from what from a theoretical perspective, when you’re dealing with a site that has so many layers, and that’s emerged out of a certain crisis, and that is not something that you can, what to say homogeneous is, is, is is being stupid, but has so many different facets to it, right, be it economic, political, spatial, environmental. In the beginning, you talked about entering this, this sudden, huge settlement that was a result of immense deforestation. Right? So it’s, it’s environmental as well. And I want to put it in a certain framework or use these… these lenses to look at it from… from a theoretical perspective, I’d love to hear from John you to begin with, about how you think that architecture should advocate and should raise awareness and… and be useful. I mean, are we talking about a new kind of architecture that goes beyond its voice just forms and that has, at its centre, a different kind of intention? Is that… is that what we’re getting at?

John Wagner
Yeah, and I think that intention is… it’s some… I don’t have the exact word articulate, but it’s a bit more subdued. Right? Then an architecture that’s triumphant. It’s… it’s in your face, it’s, you know, very flashy. I think one of the most non theoretical aspects of working as the way these practitioners in the camper are working for BRAC is that they’re resonating on a… on a very human level with the clients that they serve, which are refugees, but specifically the NGOs that are underwriting the construction of these buildings. And the way that they resonate with these communities is it’s gonna sound very almost trite, but like by… by listening to what people need, and not in a superficial way, yeah, in a way that it’s very humble. So for example, a material palette that reflects the environments that people are familiar with, from where they’ve been using bamboo, weaving textiles, arranging, pergolas and outdoor spaces in a meaningful way, so that there’s kind of these these anti chambers to the actual programme of the NGOs, clinic or school or space. These are very, very meaningful design attributes that go a very long way in making the spaces much more humane, much more dignified. For people who have been stripped of all dignity and even relegated to inhumanity. I mean, you can’t solve a geopolitical crisis with architecture. But that’s not to say you can’t give respect to the people who are completely marginalised. By powers beyond their control. And the difference here is between like, you know, the difference between a prefabricated metal imported structure that’s very hot and sweltering and inappropriate for this climate, and breathing, airy, comfortable building it’s…. it’s responsive to the climate and also, aesthetically reflecting the material palette, and also the practical accessibility of the materials that are local to that region. These various different…these very subtle differences are almost maybe like let’s say low threshold differences or begin to, I think, illustrate what what what that collaborative design or that kind of communication of design, these architects are…are exhibiting that they’re they’re resonating with a place they’re resonating with people that resonated with community in a way that I think capital A ‘Architecture’ or proper architecture has so many degrees of separation from right. And so that that juxtaposition that I’ll keep going back to that Nadella mentioned about the luxury Western oriented hotel, you know, just a few kilometres from the refugee camp, that perks up… in that proximity then begins to become completely divergent, right, because the worlds are just so so enormously divergent, that the regulatory procedural kind of professionalisation of, of our own world that we’re trained within all but evaporates on the ground, when you realise that everything is in negotiation in the heat of the moment, you’re talking with the craftsmen, that’s the materials here, this is the site, oh, wait, we don’t have the site today with the move the site over there with the design that’s on the back of a napkin, because we have to build it tomorrow. Like it’s just a totally fluid, kind of, kind of like completely reconfiguring in every single hour situation, right? That makes the paradigm of process and the paradigm of regulation and the paradigm of preferred prefabrication or prototyping in a way that’s more industrialised, poorly, poorly suited, poorly adaptable to such a fluid context. And that communication, I think, is one that recognises and respects those conditions, and helps to design and or apply design as these architects have been doing in a way that’s contributed to the dignity of the people who use the spaces that to use the buildings that are that are provided in the camp of the NGOs.

Nadyeli Quiroz
I think adding to that point that John is making is like all…all the materials and that the tradition that…the building traditions that the people already know and are familiar with. It’s it’s not only on the scale of architecture that is important, but think that million refugees are been housed, “house”, quote, unquote, because they are not actually being given “houses”, there have been given shelters, but a million refugees have been housed on them portal shelters that are made out of materials that are only going to become trash. So yeah, all the money that is poured into the site to… to house this million people with plastic materials that then are just going to stay there. And the fact that they start getting introduced introducing much more like bamboo and the traditional materials. It just… it’s a completely different situation, or you’re putting the money not…not in this plastic, that it’s going to be contrast or putting the money in the labour, which is yes, it’s more labour intensive. It takes longer. It’s a messy process. It’s not as clean as fast as industrialised processes, but the money is not poor, on…on industrialised material into the people that is actually building. Yeah. So yeah, it’s definitely way beyond architecture.

John Wagner
Because, yeah, it goes way beyond architecture. And it’s definitely an architecture of impermanence. That at the forefront of it is like, like hyper disposability. Yeah. One… one thing that we recognise that I think just so perfectly illustrates this, this notion is the characteristic of Anglo men and how they treat litter. You know, when they’re making a cigarette or having a snack, you can watch their fingers as they’re… as they’re manipulating whatever packaging it is, that is going to be their snack, as they’re, as they’re hanging out on…on the tea stalls. And they just fluttering out of their fingers, go there. There’s the wrapper.  So it wasn’t even there. They just simply drop it to the ground and it implies a time and not too recent, distant past when everything was packaged in leaves, something that’s compostable, that would just disappear. There wouldn’t be this accumulation of the…of the traces of occupancy that had been there. So when Nadyeli says it like it becomes trash. What we’re really saying is that when an architecture that tries to engineer a permanent resistance to the condition, you know, like, perfectly weatherproof, perfectly resilient, perfectly durable, ideal solution, it really betrays the reality that that’s only a hopeful expectation. And, and that if you design in a way that anticipates reuse, anticipates recycling, anticipates maintenance. It’s such a more genuine and not an A trite waste of the word genuine. I mean, it’s more real, it’s more practical, it’s more sensible. And also, it’s about a million people who have been curtailed to any economic or any vocational or any sort of meaningful livelihood to design in a way that… that anticipates maintenance. And the application of craft labour, I think is a very reasonable alternative. Because it… it gives people a meaningful output for their time, and for their arrested development. That they’re that they’re contained in. And it literally a camp like it’s a discernible place where they’re confined. So there’s this, there’s this kind of revisioning of architecture at play, I think, and what we’re what we’re trying to describe and what some of these practitioners have really exemplified in their work. That’s an architecture of an architecture that’s like a more of a Ship of Theseus, then then an enduring edifice,

Vaissnavi Shukl
Right.

Nadyeli Quiroz
And what is very interesting about john mentioning that, in base arrested development people is going like you give them the possibility of create and do and craft. But saying, This is not only like our idea, this is already happening. And this is what I was referring to, in my thesis as the artefacts are freedom, they are already doing this, like you. The fact of the refugee camp is basically telling the refugees now you have to wait here, we are going to house you, we’re going to give you basic health care, and you don’t have to do anything. You just wait to deal. We’ll resettle you wherever. Right, until conflict subsides. And I think that could make sense for a couple of weeks. But we are talking about years with no, with still no, no resolution of what is going to happen, you cannot like people is not going to stay there just waiting with these very, very basic services. So actually, people reclaim agency and they and they start rebuilding, and they start creating, and they even decorate, not like, even aesthetics appearance as… as an important part of survival. 

Vaissnavi Shukl
There’s so many things that I think I could build on Nadyeli, based on what you said. It’s almost like this, this place is not here or there. It’s not temporary, but it’s not permanent. Because it’s… it’s been there. And I think time plays such an important role. The period has been so prolonged that the way again, if you think of the refugee camp as an informal settlement of sorts, you see over time, also a shift in the use of material. So from using the materials that are tarpaulin and their bamboo, it’s, it’s a matter of time before that also starts gaining a certain permanence of sorts in terms of the materials that you start using, as overtime, people find a sense of belonging, maybe not in the most positive way, but simply due to a matter of time that they’ve been there, it’s a certain connection you have with the place and you start laying claim by building more pakka houses. So you start seeing those temporary materials being replaced, and you start maybe over time seeing, you know, brick walls with a tin roof and then maybe that being replaced by a concrete slab. And then this architecture of impermanence also becomes a very permanent thing that because of forces that are beyond the control of architecture, made people call this their home in one way or another. And I mean, globally speaking, we’ve seen refugee camps being abandoned and becoming ghost towns, but you’ve also seen refugee camps become full fledged cities. Right? So yes, it’s, I mean, in my perspective, it’s, it’s, it’s all these factors that are not in our control that and combined with the question of time that keeps adding these layers that make it more complicated then, I mean, of course, family life goes on, you know, people, people procreate, and you have another generation that’s born into the camp and for that generation that has not seen the migration this is this is what home means. And that’s… that’s where people grow up. And that’s… that’s what life is for them. So, on that note, I mean, as a human race, we have witnessed more humanitarian crises and cases of mass migration in the last two decades than we have ever before, be it the Syrian refugee crisis, or the one in Ecuador, or even a climate migration that’s happening around the world. And we as designers have also found opportunities in terms of these crises and used our training to make lives better whether it is for the short term, if not for the long haul. So keeping mind I guess young architects and graduates like you who are interested in pursuing a practice with a certain social agenda. How does one engage with an area of conflict? And I want to push this a little further? And no, I guess I’m interested in also knowing what other forms of design advocacy has it evolved into for… for both of you? I’m opening it up. But what are your thoughts?

John Wagner
Yes, yes, that’s an excellent question. You know, how can you engage in situations with the skill sets of the design? I think what’s been so helpful for us is this philosophy you mentioned, In Tanya burgers, art, you teal, and in her her thesis on art, ETL, it’s this, it’s this provocation that art should be useful, should have social utility should have practical utility, it should be consequential beyond the aesthetic or kind of appreciation of the art as a conceptual work. And I think that that idea of utility is really what’s what’s key. That we’re, we’re a young designer, such as ourselves, you know, compelled to intervene or compelled to find positive contribution to a crisis situation, like the migration, like the migration crisis on the southern border of the United States, for example, right? Or on the southern border of Mexico for that matter. Or, you know, enormous influxes of movements of people in South America because of climate and political instability. I think that what’s most important, and engaging those situations is to find a way to be useful. Without a preconception of what that usefulness may take the form of.

Vaissnavi Shukl
That is so important. Yes. Without that preconception of what that usefulness is. I’m just gonna add one more thing, I think, yeah, I think this, this resonates with me so much. Because by saying that, you’re also saying that if we as architects are engaging with these, with these environments, it should be without the preconception of knowing or without, with that uncertainty of knowing that the way you are offering yourself or the way or being useful is not necessarily by building something. And I think that that is something that we often… take it for granted that we as architects always build something, but it doesn’t always have to deal with the physical act of building like that, that building could take a lot of different forms.

John Wagner
So it’s absolutely spot on that building can…can take the form of advocacy, it can take the form of coalition building, I take the form of public awareness, it could take the form of simply creating the conditions to create. And I think that’s really the key role that designers have an insight into, is that because design as it is trained, and as it is understood, conceives of a world that could be what we what we really need to be focusing on is, well, what preconditions are necessary to engender the momentum of building towards that world? Yeah, it’s not just the render, which is very effective to inspire people’s imagination. And I think a lot of, you know, practices rely on imagery to to, for the brand much more so than written word I mean, in… in contemporary time, written theory is not nearly as important to the forwarding of the discipline of architecture as it had been in previous eras. But the visual image is extremely powerful, but I think we’re at a moment and, you know, recent history, especially the last few months under the pandemic lockdown in not just the United States, but more broadly, social currents have really shown that we’re in a moment where the preconditions for change are as important as the goal or the mission of the change itself, because even with the idea that you can design an alternative future, it’s so important that you have the conditions that enable that momentum to be built in the first place. So to put a really clear point on what I’m saying, designers must design the conditions that enable things to be created. Yeah, that’s what we have to focus our design on creating the conditions where we can create.

Nadyeli Quiroz
Yeah. And I would like to follow up on the… the idea of designers are not only designing buildings, and how we approach the refugee camp, and how our relationship to this research has evolved. Because I think we were, we were first approaching it as professional architects that build things, right. And when we were there, the second time, it was more of a learning lesson on the bringing something like we learn from these, these architects, the community architects, network of South Asia, Cocreate architects and our friends in BRAC we learn so much of how to, to actually be architects in a different way to do to approach people and to approach a space, and to be an activist and to make ends meet another type of change that, and I think now we are thinking of this topic of migration. A crisis that is just getting worse. And it’s gonna be even more acute with climate change. And with all the political and economical problems that now are, are just been hiding also by… by the virus. So thinking that there is a much more difficult migration crisis to come and that we have to start engaging, there are very few designers in the… in the humanitarian space working like I mean, it’s not common building. It’s not it’s… it’s taken mostly by engineers. And we do have to engage this and now we see what we learn as something that can help us to thinking of the practice of the people and the problem in Bangladesh, and all the all the positive things that have, like old, all the good work that has been done in that camp, despite also all the problems that every refugee camp has, and all the things that have not been addressed. But there are many good lessons that we want to look at that as things that can be learned for other regions. How can we incorporate this learning into properly which is our region, the Americas and this side of the world? 

Vaissnavi Shukl
Well said Nadyeli, very well said. Now, I know you’ve both been collaborating, researching and working on this project for about two years. And I also know that there’s a book in the pipeline. So how’s that going? And what’s next for both of you?

John Wagner
Yes, so, um, are the book that we’re really excited to put together as an invitation among different scholars, and practitioners and activists on the… on the topic of the spaces of migration. Because what really stems from our work in the Rohingya refugee camp, and expands more broadly into the practice that we might be doing, or are engaging in this hemisphere has to do with these marginal spaces between the host and the refugee community. And so that work… that work began actually as a conference proposal for the design grab at the Graduate School of Design, which because of extenuating circumstances of the pandemic, was the conference that was not to be…

Vaissnavi Shukl
And honestly that…that that brief was super, super interesting. Like, it was super interesting. So I wish you guys would pick it up, and I don’t know, just… just do it, outside of the institution, whatever. But please do it.

John Wagner
Yeah, that’s really encouraging for you to say that because that’s, that’s really like the template or, like, let’s say, the framework of how we’re conceiving of what the book might be, which would be a collection of viewpoints in essays by scholars and practitioners and providers who are already working with these communities, to…to think about the idea or the issue of migration, specifically around space, because it’s about land and territory and space, that one group is, you know, excluded or forced from or pulled out of one place and is introduced into another. And so the implications for this in terms of urban ism and settlement and landscape and territory are multifold. And I think a very important lens that we were really interested to speak of within… within our disciplinary stack of design more, you know, more broadly. So I am, I think that that work is going to be an encouraging kind of project for 2021 as we kind of get our footing in this COVID… now COVID world for the upcoming year, that’ll be the bulk of our…of our project and efforts.

Nadyeli Quiroz
Yeah, and I think that also that you mentioned about the brief of the conference. We’re really thinking of re-engaging with all of the scholars that we were talking to and actually bring in this this back as a conversation now maybe that we are so used to Zoom, maybe it’ll be around some next semester like this is, this is just like, a conversation that we’ve been having backstage and you’re the first person that we mentioned it.

Vaissnavi Shukl
So now… Now, now, the power of the spoken word, this is going to be held in evidence, and maybe this will push you to actually do it, because you said it out loud.

John Wagner
Absolutely, yeah. It’d be so complimentary to our you know, our invitations and correspondences different contributors to the publication. To also have that corollary conversation, I think it’d be really helpful and a great way to get to get to build momentum around…around the topic.

Vaissnavi Shukl
On the note of building scholarship, John and Nadyeli, thank you so much for this very exciting, Enriching conversation. And for being on the first episode. I can’t wait to see what you guys do. And I hope I get a signed copy of the book whenever it comes out.

John Wagner
Oh, thank you so much for having us.

Nadyeli Quiroz
Thank you so much. It’s great to be here. Thanks for being here. 

Vaissnavi Shukl
Special thanks to Ayushi Thakur for the research and design support, and Kahaan Shah for the background score. For guests and topic suggestions, you can get in touch with us through instagram or our website through our website archoffcentre.com, both of which are ‘archoffcentre’. And thank you for listening.