POSITION STATEMENT

The Hub
Who should our client be? Should they always be the select few who can afford the service? Should access to great design for those who have nothing to spend be limited to the inhabitation of the public realm of architecture? Or in the case of the homeless, sheltered under the wings of the built environment designed by those who ‘have’ with no space of warmth for those who ‘have not’?

Can the client become the homeless, the lady who just last night had the last dollar fifty of her welfare cheque stolen from her as she slept under someone else’s awning? Her friend, who slept 50 metres away, the next closest shelter? The man who pushes his life’s possessions down the back alleys in a shopping trolley?

In this we form a new type of architecture. It becomes a cross between pro-bono architecture and welfare architecture, something specific to the individual needs and inhabitable by the corporate whole. A place of warmth and comfort, hope and restoration, peace and dignity; a ‘family home’.

LeCorbusier writes, ‘the home = the hearth = the flame that heats their food and warms their bodies. The hearth has become, by extension, the symbol of an almost inevitable social group: the family ‘[1] Design now becomes that of the hearth or ‘focus’ [2] which can then draw together those who are without house or family. This hearth becomes a place of healing and warmth to those abandoned on the street. A place where people are drawn to, given to, listened to, taught and above all, valued.

To abstract the four realms of value and empowerment [3] you find, ‘dignity surrounded by empowerment, restoration, fun and connection'.

People become dislocated through many circumstances where a disjuncture appears between abilities and circumstances [4]. Empowerment locates itself around the hearth, becoming a place of story, of discussion; through community people can empower each other as they find their place again. Restoration allows for the reconnection into community and part revolves around health and hygiene. Fun strengthens confidence and allows for people to realise value as team and individual [5] and connection is the hub, the centre, the focus on the site. The hub locates the homeless in the same place as the help.

This is not a health institution per-se, rather it is a place of connection, the place of value and the place of resource. Our people become more than ‘them’, ‘they’, ‘the marginalised’ or any other lable, they have a face, they have a name now they have a home.

[1] LeCorbusier, The Nursery Schools, trans. By Eleanor Levieux (New York: Orion, (1968), p. 9. Quoted from Todd Wilmert, The ‘ancient fire, the hearth of tradition’: combustion and creation in Le Corbusier’s studio residences, ARQ, (2006) Vol 10, issue 1, p58
[2] Online Encyclopedia, http://encyclopedia.jrank.org/FLA_FRA/FOCUS_Latin_for_hearth_or_firep.html [Accessed: June 2008]
[3] http://n05ey.blogspot.com/2008/06/digging-deeper-on-each.html, lists 4 critical realms of empowerment in the creation of dignity and describes some of their fundamental underpinning.
[ 4] Flatau, Martin, Zaretzky, Haigh, Brady, Cooper, Edwards and Goulding, The effectiveness and cost-effectiveness of homelessness prevention and assistance programs,(2006) AHURI, p24 “homelessness in later life was the result of subjects’ lack of skills and resources to cope with changes and stresses in later life.”
[5] Recreation as Empowerment for Homeless People Living in Shelters Maureen Harrington and Don Dawson, http://adp.lin.ca/resource//html/Vol24/v24n1a4.htm [Accessed: May 2008]