Landscape of the Exodus
The promise of mythical lands has driven migrants to walk across landscapes from the beginning of human history. Walking has been a universal intuition that has defined the human species since the dawn of bipedal adventure.
Yet, the rise of Trump and identity politics have revealed the opposition of half of our country to a world premised on migration. On October 13th of 2018, a Migrant Caravan was formed in Tegucigalpa, Honduras, a place known for high levels of violence, seeking asylum in Mexico and the United States.
In the migrant caravan, we see a set of complex issues: a real humanitarian crisis, the striving for visibility and the political theater that can come of it. Trump identified this Migrant Caravan as a threat to our country, a hoard, an invasion, and called for a national emergency.
Walking as a political act
The power of the migrant walk spans continents, time, and motivation. This catalog studies the movement of people from one place to another and their relationship to the landscape as a comparative analysis of significant walks migrants have made through history. Migration studies often focus on border crossing and citizenship legal rights, but exclude the experience of the migrant across the landscape. Our understanding of migration is most often framed by a top-down rather than a bottom-up representation of the lived experience. The parameters of this analysis include a timed hourly estimation of the journey in correlation to the distance traveled, a measured cartography of the trajectory, altitude differences shown in sectional representation, and images of the traveled landscapes. This catalog explores the aesthetics of these political walks.
Book designed by Cynthia Escalante, research and curation by Helena Cardona.
If, for the migrant walking is a political act, how can architecture empower by producing visibility or, perhaps more powerfully, invisibility? This thesis questions in what ways a series of Way-Stations might be designed to provide shelter and strategic cover, while also giving the migrant agency over their right to walk and seek out the beautiful. This thesis transgresses existing thresholds, and lays seeds for new forms of civic life. The spread of civilization is at heart the story of the migrant.
The Migrants have identified one main route form Tegucigalpa, Honduras to Mexico City. From Mexico City the migrants have identified 3 main routes that follow existing rail road tracks that take them to the U.S.-Mexico Border. This project explores the Caravan route from a point before Mexico City and ends in Piedras Negras, Coahuila, border with Eagle Pass, Texas.
La Ramada
A hunting blind, a cover device for hunters designed to reduce the chance of detection.
This Station has an information area that provides the migrant with information about the journey ahead since it’s a point before Mexico City where the group separates onto different routes.
The Bridge
A bridge is a structure built to span a physical obstacle, such as a body of water, valley, or road, without closing the way underneath to provide passage detrimental to cross otherwise.
This station is a Communication area that provides the migrants with access to exchange of digital information within the High altitude lomerios, with other migrants in the exodus or back home.
The Ha-Ha
A recessed landscape design element that creates a vertical barrier while preserving an uninterrupted view of the landscape beyond. The Ha-Ha was used in between highly transited road and the Railroad tracks, without obstructing or revealing itself.
This station is programmed with a Bathhouse which is often thought of as a space of leisure and relaxation.
The Watch Towers
A fortification, it differs from a regular tower in that its primary use is military and from a turret in that it is usually a freestanding structure. Its main purpose is to provide a high, safe place from which a sentinel or guard may observe the surrounding area.
This station is programmed with an Eatery, a space that accommodates a food bank and a place for the migrant to rest.
The Cave
The last station before reaching the border is a cave, is a natural void in the ground, specifically a space large enough for a human to enter. Caves often form by the weathering of rock and often extend deep underground.
This station is programed with a medical station that could accommodate services such as emergency management, and social services.
The picturesque
One might not often think about Picturesque Landscape art in relationship to migration, but these paintings offer an alternative mode for representing the aesthetic of the experience of moving across territories from a ‘bottom- up’ point of view.
Landscape art has always had a political agenda, it depicted the American West as an open landscape that promoted nationalism, expansion, and the promise of land ownership, while still focusing on positioning the eye on a path, a walked on experience. The aesthetic of the bottom-up can be found on each person’s right to move, to search out a better place. The aesthetics of this project reclaim the picturesque, celebrating the migrants’ walked on experience.
