Oblique City
2018
Movement Sketches ( Sectional, Planar, and Worldwide Nomadic Movement)
Marfa Grid
Oblique City
With the 65.6 million displaced people leaving their homes for a better future just in 2018, it is our task as designers to create innovative ways to accommodate incoming refugees into existing or new cities. That being said, this design proposal incorporates the use of Claude Parent’s theory of Oblique Architecture in order create new inhabitable spaces within a city, in this case Marfa, Texas, that is abundant with unused land — making way for incoming refugees and adapting them with current residents of the host city.
Marfa is an isolated city in West Texas that has gained recognition over the years for its trendy art scene started by Minimalist artist Donald Judd. This small city caught our attention as a site due to its spacial potential in regards to flexibility, growth, and the fact that residents of Marfa can benefit by accommodating incoming refugees through shared spaces formed by oblique architecture. Furthermore, incorporating this theory of architecture within the city can benefit both Marfa residents and refugees by activating the city as a whole and allowing more inclusion within newcomers and residents.
Oblique architecture is a tool that can be utilized as a way to create new inhabitable spaces throughout Marfa’s unused land, and thus maximize its programmatic opportunities. Also, oblique architecture allows for the refugees to engage with the new spaces created throughout the city and to use the spaces as they see fit. This tool consequently transforms the city into an urban artwork that is perceived as a world vastly different from the world refugees are escaping from.
With this proposed urban plan, we provide an opportunity to maximize unused spaces not only in Marfa, but in other cities around the world — rethinking the way the world is currently approaching the growing refugee crisis and re-introducing a way of urban transformation.
Project was a collaboration between Claudia Morles and Vilma Umanzor.