Reclaiming False Paradise
January - April 2022 | Individual Work | Professor: Ian Donaldson
Reclaiming False Paradise critiques society’s view of Hawaii as a fantasy paradise by confronting unsheltered reality. The growing number of Hawaii’s unsheltered homeless is multi-faceted with no one clear solution. This project assembles a critical narrative, which examines Hawaii’s political history and selective erasure of native Hawaiian culture. A speculative reality is proposed – a building technology to empower the unsheltered to reclaim the land.
A satirical video highlights critical points in Hawaiian history around the commodification of Hawaii’s land and culture, framing the current tension around housing. Using the critical narrative, a building technology is formulated to empower the unsheltered to occupy space in an effort to be recognized and respected.
The individual unit serves as a place to safely sleep, store belongings, and provide privacy from the public eye. The tectonics are interlaced with historic Hawaiian language. Nā ana refers to the individual’s body as a scalar reference for building prior to the Western influence of the metric or empirical system. The unit is constructed with prefabricated modular panels to shift in size dependent on the needs of the inhabitant. Malama ko aloha is a historic term derived from the 1819 Battle of Kuamo’o. The term translates to “keep your love”, which encompasses taking care of one another and of the land that nourishes the living. Therefore the unit seeks to provide the bare necessities while limiting the disruption to the land.
Kauhale refers to an aggregation of native hale buildings, where each building serves a different program and collectively provides the needs of the village. Each building serves a bare necessity for survival: the individual unit; hygienic facilities; and communal kitchen. High-set windows make use of Hawaii’s tropical climate to take advantage of cross-ventilation and the release of warm air to the exterior. These high-set apertures also turn the interior gaze to the landscape while creating privacy from the ground level public.
Three sites are synthetically merged into one drawing to explore urban thresholds and liminal delineations of Honolulu. First, the image of beach life paradise with clear waters and untouched sand, but serves as a public safe haven for the unsheltered to relax and rest. Yet, the beaches stay under strict surveillance with regular beach sweepings and seizures of belongings. Second, out of sight next to a major thoroughfare. The reality of pushing the unsheltered out of view: large encampments away from the public but parallel to everyday life. Third, cracks and gaps in large urban density. Urban spaces where the unsheltered are rejected, where laws such as Waikiki’s No Sit, No Lie ban punishes the unsheltered for their circumstances with fines, tickets, and aggression.
The harsh contrast of a shelter barely big enough for its inhabitant versus the lavish grandiose resorts forces the public to question “when is a public structure for the unhoused accepted?” When the shelter is temporary? When it is pleasing to the eye?
What is at risk? The current prioritization of tourism and selective display of Hawaiian culture for pleasure and profit over the needs of the vulnerable and unsheltered brings forth ethical concerns. How do we as a society resist the current parameters of pushing the unsheltered out? Maybe first, society must address the spatial prioritization of the lavish, exuberant tourist landscape over the space and volume barely big enough for living. Maybe then we can move past paradise.