Pop-up Earthquake Architecture for Integrating Practical Experience and Social Responsibility into Architectural Education

Abstract

The last major earthquakes that struck extended urban and rural areas in Southeast Türkiye left thousands of buildings demolished or uninhabitable. After the urgent demand for temporary housing is resolved, there will be a need to provide quick solutions for adequate social spaces for the affected communities. Additionally, considering the large number of collapsed or heavily damaged buildings in past earthquakes in Türkiye, schools of architecture should prepare architects capable of understanding and applying the basic principles of seismic design for buildings. Moreover, given the social responsibilities that the profession entails, future architects should also be able to engage with the communities they serve, thus providing spaces that are not only safe but also suitable for their needs. This paper describes an architectural studio with a twofold aim: firstly, making a meaningful contribution to a small community living in the earthquake zone by identifying their post-disaster needs for spaces of social interaction; and secondly, providing undergraduate students with applied knowledge and skills in conceiving, designing, planning, producing, assembling, disassembling, transporting, and installing a pop-up structure. The design-build studio was organized through a reductive selection of design proposals, where ultimately one project was selected for actual construction and another for further construction detailing. The proposed approach of using a hands-on and embedded teaching format to explore pop-up architectural design responses, following design-for- disassembly principles, ensured students' in-depth learning of construction techniques and the associated important roles of detailing and drawings for materializing a project. Due to time and material limitations, however, not all students benefited from the possibility of building their own designs, leading to a sometimes-estranged studio environment.