Grounding Diaspora: Negotiating Between Home and Host

TitleGrounding Diaspora: Negotiating Between Home and Host
Publication TypeJournal Article
Year of Publication2016
AuthorsAlison B.1 Hirsch, Aroussiak1 Gabrielian
JournalJournal of Architectural Education
Volume70
Issue1
Pagination116-131
ISSN10464883
Abstract

The term “diaspora” connotes a dynamic social formation—a process of settlement and a tenuous sense of belonging based on the negotiation between the collective memory of home and responsive adaptations to host locales. While a global phenomenon, the local impact of shifting patterns of settlement in the multicultural city transforms urban spaces through the varied and overlapping inscriptions of new and adapted rituals. Using a Landscape Architecture studio conducted at the University of Toronto as the experimental means through which to investigate diasporic and transnational urban settlement and its implications for design, this paper focuses on final proposals for the case study site—a particular area of contestation in Queens, New York—as well as the pedagogical methodology used to generate them.

DOI10.1080/10464883.2016.1122468
Short TitleGrounding Diaspora