This studio will initiate a sequence of Yale Advanced Studios focused on present and past island territories of the United States around the world and the problematic legacy of their long history of colonial occupation, exploitation, underdevelopment, and vulnerability. These islands have all too often been literal laboratories for practices and weapons that have left deep environmental and human scars, exacerbated by their exposure to extreme conditions and relative isolation, and occasional centrality, within shifting networks of global power and trade.
The sequence will begin with the Antillean island of Puerto Rico in relation to the continental nation-state of the U.S., of which it has been a colony since 1898, and the ongoing Puerto Rican diaspora which has shaped the urban culture of the U.S. as much as U.S. hegemony has shaped Puerto Rico. Puerto Rico exhibits the general conditions outlined above in concentrated, not to say extreme, form. A rich, tropical island ecology and landscape inhabited by indigenous Caribbean peoples, brutally colonized by Spain, and then implanted with a slave-based, sugarcane economy. Later becoming both a collateral trophy and a strategic asset of the first flush of U.S. imperialism, as became clear with the onset of WW II when the island was massively militarized with no less than 25 U.S. installations. This occupation took place on land mostly seized from its inhabitants, not to mention the bombing and munitions testing ranges on the small eastern island of Vieques. Post-war brought continuing U.S “investment” in progressively branded infrastructure and development, all of which has shaped and scarred the island without much input from its increasingly restive population. Add to this the vulnerability to extreme storms and earthquakes, now exacerbated by climate change and glaringly revealed by Hurricane Maria in 2017 and the feeble U.S. response. Remarkably, the people of Puerto Rico – those that have not simply abandoned ship – have self-organized around issues of resilience, sustainability, and environmental justice, and we will follow their lead, looking for challenges and opportunities (and architectural programs) in critical topics like public health, energy independence, circular economies of food, water, and waste, infrastructures of mobility, displacement, communication, and culture, housing, education, and of course tourism.
Prior to travel week, the work of the studio will begin with studies of other islands in a comparative context, building an understanding of the island as a geographical, cultural, philosophical phenomenon. This will be in preparation of a Forensic Atlas of Puerto Rico, which will involve careful mapping and analysis of the catalogue of environmental injustices, catastrophic events, and ongoing stressors on the island. Students will also undertake some preliminary conceptual design studies. We will carefully consider cartography as a form of representation with a long history of being instrumentalized for colonial ends, devising ways to rethink the format to resist such tendencies. Studio travel will introduce students to the “enchanted island” of Puerto Rico and then provide as immersive experience as possible, meeting residents and collaborators, listening and observing the island, its landscapes, and cultures. Through this experience, each student should find areas of focus, programs, and sites, that will sustain further research and design back in New Haven. The studio will address the potential of repeating colonial logics in any propositional work and will confront the possible pitfalls of re-designing a place for those that live there. Thus, the programme, form, and process of developing final proposals will be the subject of serious discussion and debate. The studio will be run in collaboration with various interlocutors based in local communities on Puerto Rico.
