Comparison

Nomadism has many likenesses with architecture and architecture theory including field conditions, Phenomenology, and Urbanism. The nomadic cultures can be seen as a Field Condition because they travel from community to community, occasionally stopping to occupy the “in-between spaces,” the voids that normally go unused or are under-utilized. These are the spaces that get activated, if only temporarily, when nomadic people inhabit an area. It is also a point of erection of nomadic cities when they stop for a period of time in a particular place, as is seen in the history leading up to the idea for New Babylon. When gypsies would stop and inhabit a little town called Alba, they would camp beneath a roof that accommodated a livestock market once a week while the rest of the time it was left vacant and unused. It is this activation of an under-utilized space that exhibits the field condition of nomadic cultures.

Nomadism also parallels with Phenomenology because it is the process of moving from place to place that is the crucial experience. According to Francesco Careri in Walkscapes, “The points of departure and arrival are less important, while the space between is the space of going, the very essence of Nomadism, the place in which to celebrate the every day ritual of eternal wandering.” The idea of this nomadic celebration of perpetual traveling and all the experiences gained is where Phenomenology relates with nomadic culture.

Nomadic cultures could also be paralleled with Urbanism, but with a unique twist. Nomadic cultures create virtual cities that are constructed and inhabited for a period of time before they collapse or deconstruct, move across a landscape, and eventually stop to reconstruct in the next temporal location.

Relationship

One of the reasons for the continued existence of Nomadism is culture. There are many societies, including Irish Travelers and Tibetan Nomads, who have practiced this lifestyle for thousands of years and still do. The fact is that most contemporary societies have nomadic origins dating back to the pre-agricultural era.

Another cause for a nomadic lifestyle is economic need. One example is from the Great Depression of the 1930’s in the United States. During this time, work was often temporary and in short supply which created a condition in which thousands of people were traveling the countryside searching for any available work. As they traveled, they lived in temporary cities known as Hoovervilles. As the economy recovered, due to onset of World War II, work became more available in support of the war and the need to travel for opportunities became less.

One other thing that stimulates nomadic behavior is music. “The ancients sang their way all over the world. They sang the rivers and ranges, salt-pans and sand dunes. Wherever their tracks led, they left a trail of music” (Chatwin, Bruce. The Songlines). In modern times, this phenomenon is evident as well.

Some bands, such as Phish and The Grateful Dead, develop a following of fans that travel around from city to city to see them play. It is the musical experience, but more importantly, it is the diversity found in each experience that they are pursuing. Not only that, but part of the experience of following a band, is the traversal of the landscape, which is the very essence of Nomadism.

Models

The Transient Phish City

An example of a modern nomadic culture is the hundreds of thousands of fans who followed the rock -n- roll jam band, Phish all over the United States and Canada. The nomadic condition is the city that the fans create hours before every show in the parking lots of the venue. People come from all over the United States and Canada and erect a collapsible city in the parking lot in between the cars where a variety of exchanges are made over a period of just four or five hours. Cars literally disappear behind this temporarily built city on what is called “Shakedown Street” or just The Shakedown.

When they move on to the next location, many of the parts of the last city don’t make it for various reasons, yet there many new parts, which cause the temporal city following Phish to mutate. “In the maps of Debord the compact city was exploded into pieces, in those of Constant the pieces are put back together to form a new city (Careri, Francesco. Walkscapes, pp. 116-117).”

The travel in between also adds richness to each setting not only from the experiences encountered along the way, but also the actual experience of traveling and the anticipation of getting to the next location.

Within this city exists a community that goes far beyond the music in which an unspoken understanding exists among the travelers who are vending food, drinks, clothing and other commodities to earn money to be able to rejoin this mobile city at the next site. It is that transversatility of the culture that is so captivating about this mobile city.

New Babylon

One model of nomadic culture is New Babylon, which was conceived by Constant. As I briefly explained, a group of gypsies, known as the Zingari, repeatedly visited a town called Alba where they would activate a space normally used only once a week for part of a day.

The gypsies were eventually banned from using this space by the town because they always left a mess when they left that had to be taken care of by the township. They were then relocated to a piece of grassland on the Tamaro River where they erected an enclosure.

The idea of New Babylon is to provide places where nomadic people could occupy and alter the space for their own needs at the time of inhabitation. “The entire city is imagined as a single space for continuous drifting. Each place is accessible to one and all. Life is an infinite voyage and all. Life is an infinite voyage through a world that is changing so rapidly that it always seems like another” (Careri, Francesco. Walkscapes, p. 117).

Mobile Dwelling Unit

LOT-EK has also played an important role in how I approach this idea of nomadic architecture. The idea of the Mobile Dwelling Unit (MDU) has inspired me to seek out other forms of mobile, portable, and collapsible architecture. In my analysis of the program, the one criticism I have for the MDU is the disconnection it seems to have from a sense of community.

With the idea of temporality and the fact that MDU owners wouldn’t necessarily be at the same location at the same time again, one may not go out of his/her way to get to know their neighbors. However, it takes a certain type of person to live that lifestyle, and perhaps that is the bond the transient neighbors could have to get to know each other and perhaps plan to meet up in other locations.

The other issue with the MDU is the lost experience of traversing the landscape to the next location. Because the MDU is shipped internationally to locations worldwide, the owner most likely flies on an airplane missing out on the richness of crossing the land to the next temporal location. Without experiencing the space of going, the essence of Nomadism can be seen as absent. However, my next case study of the Aboriginal Tent Embassy in Australia is a perfect model of nomadic architecture not being mobile.

Aboriginal Tent Embassy

Another model of Nomadism is the Aboriginal Tent Embassy at Victoria Park in Canberra, Australia. It began as an umbrella erected in 1972 in protest of the National Parliament House’s holding of the central seat in government and the policies it has over land rights and ownership.

The Aborigines are an indigenous, nomadic people who grew tired of having no say in policy that affected them as well. Because the embassy is a collapsible shelter, it has been easily taken down by police many times since its inception, but easily put back up.

“The Aboriginal Tent Embassy building nevertheless represents a subversive architecture of protest which has a deep-rooted significance for architecture in Australia… the camp is more than shelter, it embodies culturally significant desires. More than rudimentary primitive shelter, the Embassy is a collapsible symbolic monument” (Cowan, Greg. Nomadic Resistance: Tent Embassies and Collapsible Architecture; Illegal Architecture and Protest).

Though the Tent Embassy has no mobile quality, which I previously outlined as being the most meaningful part of the nomadic experience, the fact that it is a collapsible architecture created by nomads out of protest allows it to have its own unique meaning.

Korean Street Vendors

Korean vendors are another form of nomadic architecture with a few similarities to the Aboriginal Tent Embassy. One similarity is that they are always set similarity is that they are always set up in the same location and due to the legality of setting up shop in the streets, they have met with unsympathetic law enforcement officials who frequently try to suppress this way of life.

In response to this friction with the establishment, the National Federation of Street Vendors of Korea (NFSVK), a union to represent the interests of the vendors. One difference between the Korean street vendors and the Tent Embassy is that the street vendors set up and take down their stands everyday. Because of this daily construction and deconstruction, and the portable nature of the vendors shops, it is an excellent case study of nomadic architecture.

The street vendors organized the NFSVK after the Olympic Games were hosted in Seoul when they were forced off the streets in an effort to make the city more “presentable” for international visitors. This is a common practice of cities hosting international events, so before the FIFA World Cup began making plans to have the event in Korea, street vendors began to coordinate efforts with an international street vendors union called StreetNet to keep from being pushed out. In doing so, they were able to reach a compromise that allowed them to earn a living and avoid the hardships of the lost business.

It is interesting the way the street vendors of Korea and the Aborigines of Australia created their architecture for different reasons, yet both have become structures of protest against established values of architecture.

Tibetan Nomadic Culture

I have previously focused my attention on the study of peoples dubbed as commercial nomads. But one more mkodel I wish to identify are the indigenous Tibetans who are what can be defined as "pastoral nomads." The Tibetan nomads are a group of people who specialize in the raising of livestock, particularly, the yak. Because of the climate and landscape of the Tibetan Plateau, frequent movement to accommodate grazing is necessary to their prosperity and survival.

The indigenous nomadic pastoral system developed by Tibetans is an example of a thriving evolutionary adaptation to life in one of the harshest climates in the world. Over thousands of years, the Tibetan nomads have attained complex knowledge of the environment they inhabit, which has allowed them to advance a unique, effervescent nomadic culture.

Like commercial nomads, the pastorals of Tibet require a level of trade with agricultural communities. This has always been an important aspect of nomadic societies in the Himalayas and the Tibetan Plateau. This trade is an essential element of the pastoral economy since they depend on bartering with their livestock and products from for supplies they are unable to produce themselves. Trade is an important link that connects the wanderer with the settler.

Mobility is the fundamental element of Tibetan nomadic pastoralism. Their movements are usually prearranged by a complex social organization.

Nomads possess considerable indigenous knowledge about the environment in which they live and upon which their lives depend. The existence today of numerous, prosperous nomadic pastoral groups on the Tibetan Plateau, despite living in one of the harshest pastoral areas on earth, is the result of the extra-ordinary knowledge and animal husbandry skills of the Tibetan nomads.

A problem I see in architecture today is the lack of understanding of the environment of which we live. We build with a less than adequate regard for the environment of which we are building. It is my contention that with knowledge of nomadic cultures and their insight to the ecosystem can help create a better and more responsible architecture of our time.

The organizational flexibility of this culture emphasizes the mobility of a multiple species herd. This system has been developed as a rational response to the unpredictable nature of the ecosystem over thousands of years.

Nomadic Architecture Defined

Nomadic architecture is that which is habitable space that is inflatable, collapsible, portable, and/or mobile. It’s an architecture that changes as it is in constant movement. Not only that, but it is also the space that is traveled in between temporarily fixed locations, what Francesco Careri calls, “the space of going.” But more important than all that, nomadic architecture is a space of possibility.

I am studying nomadic cultures because I want to find out how Nomadism affects and/or creates conditions for a specific architecture in order to determine how it can be used to apply to current issues with the impermanence of buildings built to be permanent. Our society is focused on architecture as a symbol of permanence when in fact more and more buildings are built, torn down, and new ones built again over a shorter period of time than had been in the past. In The Third Shadow, Dan Hoffman states, “Architecture, despite its symbolic value as an enduring presence, now appears and disappears with the frequency of consumer objects. Buildings do not last as long as they once did, and architecture can no longer claim to symbolize stable and enduring culture” (p. 6.)

I believe that architecture should move in a more flexible direction so that buildings can be assembled and disassembled easily and that the parts should be designed to be reused. This is important because the constant building, tearing down, and rebuilding uses a lot of energy and produces a lot of waste creating a poor living environment. Using principles of collapsible and portable architecture, I believe we can produce spaces that can be altered easier with parts that are reusable and recyclable. In doing so, less waste is produced and spaces become more flexible to the needs of the user.

Methods

One of the methods I will employ when working with this area of interest is diagramming. The diagram can help me explore ideas deeply and have a visual image to refer to and learn from. Another method is writing. I think it is important to keep a journal of all my thoughts. In doing this, my ideas are recorded to explore at later times after current investigations become exhausted. One more method I plan to utilize is building models. One can do all the drawings and diagrams, all the writing, but a physical model tells a big part of the story. It’s also a good way to figure some things out. A series of models exploring multiple possibilities is an effective way to explore a multiplicity of factors. Using these methods will ensure the fewest missed opportunities in my investigation of nomadic architecture and its possible applications.