REPETITIVE COLLECTIVE
(Winner of the RIBA West London Student Award 2016)
ADS 7 - Godofredo Pereira, Platon Issaias & David Burns
Repetitive Collective builds upon the explorations of the investigations in Toxic Suburbia by evaluating another domestic scenario at the opposite end of the spectrum. Yet while the form of domesticity is polar opposite, the connection to a larger ‘machine’ that drives America’s grid mentality remains. The project focuses on the Bakken Formation, an oil reserve that spans across North Dakota. The Fracking Industry, searching for oil beneath the state, has in a frenzied expansion of capitalist opportunity, rapidly developed its own subterranean system who’s sole purpose is to extract oil in the most efficient and cost effective manner; it’s grid as relentless as the urban above. This subterranean level follows the infrastructure atop (essentially the lines of the grid) but remains in its own jurisdiction based on corporate ownership. The issue that has arisen from this comes from the work force that is needed to expedite the extraction of oil. They act as commodities that circulate through the existing grid precariously while servicing the new beneath. This precarious nature is due to their dependence on the existing urban set up to dwell. It is not set up to accommodate the domestic strains of the new and so has reached its breaking point.
The project centres upon the town of Williston, who’s own personal history is heavily connected to the boom and bust nature of the oil industry. The town itself is relatively small and it’s population faces extreme strains in the wake of a now booming resource extraction. This has left a shortage of amenities integral to providing an acceptable quality of life for the worker nomads and the families they often bring. The nature of domesticity for these migrating workers is precarious and temporal. The uncertain nature of their existence has led to a taxonomy that provides none of the ‘comforts’ deemed crucial to the structure of the American Dream they chase. Typically they fall into 5 main scenarios - Hotels, Motels, Mobile Home Units, RV Camps and Men Camps. These domestic taxonomies show that the overwhelming majority of workers situated in and around the city are unable to provide a standard of living fitting for their families. As a result, a number of key architectural issues arise. Repetitive Collective seeks looks to the most dire scenarios found within the camps in the buffer-zone around the city. It looks to understand the modes of living present within the camps and provide interventions to help capitalise on the nature of their existence, utilising the grid system it already serves.
The main proposal focused on a site within the buffer zone of Williston, ND. It championed the creation of a series of collective equipments to be utilised by the ever migrating workforce across the state. Initially each site chosen for mobile home units was to be given a permanent ‘core’ from which development could build off of depending on the needs and requirements of the new community. This core is to be constructed in a permanent fashion and act as a spine to the site with stairwells, lifts and car parking spaces provided within its internal strategy. From this core, a number of different scenarios could then begin to manifest that helped provide the amenities needed to create a higher collective living standard.
The expansions to this spine are as limitless as the grid they embody, and are envisioned to be constructed out of the same steel rigging systems that the workers were using on the oil rigs they were employed to manage. In this light, the expertise of construction remained within the community. From this, a series of temporary timber buildings could be erected supplying programmes to help alleviate the strains on domestic life. These include but are not limited to a temporary school, library, leisure centre, mess hall, washing facilities and grocery store. These programmes help to cement the community in a sense of semi-permanent living as the nature of the Architecture mirrors the boom bust nature of the employment of the area.
A ‘Full capacity’ design is provided in the conclusion of the project, but this merely marks a potential outcome from the development of a community. It seeks to create a community centre around the spine through which the entire community could gain enjoyment. Platforms create areas of communal living, providing the potential for schools, libraries and playgrounds to exist in harmony only to be deconstructed and moved elsewhere. The design interventions act as a tool that fits harmoniously into the nature of the American Grid, much like the examples of the Motel or the Diner explored previously, the design’s implementation could occur anywhere from North Dakota to Texas. Indeed, while each site could be bespoke and provide a sense of ownership over the programmes implemented, the system as a whole is regular, controlled and not bound to any scale - a true creation of grid mentality. This Grid Mentality extends beyond the delineation of an orthogonal system or modularity in its purest form and captures the very essence of opportunity within the grid.
Additional References :
White Earth Documentary - Oscar Nominated Documentary on the life through the eyes of the children living on The Bakken Formation.