VIRTUAL Manchester Livable Cities

Abstract

Migrant identity refers to the process by which individuals in situations of exile and uprooting come to understand themselves. The construction of immigrants’ identity is particularly complex: it appears as a fluid process, associated with a temporal dimension, dialogue, deconstruction and reconstruction, memory and forgetting (Carmen Mata Barreiro, 2004). It is also a displaced present, confronted with a place that is always alienating, and sometimes hostile. In Canada, as elsewhere in the world, a significant proportion of refugees arrive in an urban setting – a culturally structured and inhabited environment. How can we bring these two worlds together? Can we conceive of hospitality through space, embody it within the space itself, and thereby foster a social practice of openness towards the Other? Hospitality conceived in this way would be fundamentally architectural and urban, the city being the site of ‘being together’. To welcome is to shift boundaries, to move fixed structures (Thierry Paquot, 2000). To make movement the primary conceptual framework of an urban project is to question the very foundations of architecture in terms of its stability, to challenge the fixed boundaries of places and territories, and to conceive of space in terms of impermanence. Impermanence is a state of space but could also become a way for the discipline of architecture to grasp the complexity of the contemporary world. It could generate new design tools (Irena Latek, 2024). Could such a conception of space accommodate concern for the Other, and stimulate spatial and social openness? We will present the research-creations carried out with students in the Master’s architecture workshops, in which we explore such questions. Their subject is the ‘City of Refuge’ (Jacques Derrida 1997). The neighbourhoods of Montreal are our City of Refuge.