At this year's reSITE conference in Prague, speakers attended from around the globe to present differing perspectives on the challenges of migration, with topics of interest ranging from economics, to city planning to architecture. But as revealed by the following presentations, migration is a topic that requires interrogation on a number of different scales and in a number of different contexts: from the global economic focus offered by Saskia Sassen in her opening keynote lecture, to the focused challenges of designing micro-apartments shown by Mimi Hoang of nArchitects; and even to the unusual case presented by Krister Lindstedt of White Arkitekter, when a migration is undertaken not by individual people but by a whole town at once.
Saskia Sassen
In her keynote speech, sociologist Saskia Sassen summarizes the forces that lead to migration and the ways that cities, globally, are failing to structure their economies and their design to take advantage of the opportunities presented by migrants.
Krister Lindstedt
In his lecture, Krister Lindstedt presents White Arkitekter's masterplan for the city of Kiruna, which due to the needs of a nearby coal mine is currently in the process of relocating two miles eastward.
Mimi Hoang
In her presentation, Mimi Hoang of nArchitects presents the firm's design for Carmel Place, a residential building in Manhattan which New York City proposed as a pilot project to test out the effectiveness of micro-apartments in taming the city's unaffordable rental market.
How Migration Will Define the Future of Urbanism and Architecture
Read more about the reSITE 2016 conference here.