• About
    • Info & Team
    • Support
    • Storefront
  • Work
    • Undergraduate Work
    • Graduate Work
    • Alumni Work
    • Faculty Work
    • Co-op
  • Articles
  • Community
    • Exhibition
    • Event
    • Initiatives
bridge@waterlooarchitecture.com
BridgeBridge
  • About
    • Info & Team
    • Support
    • Storefront
  • Work
    • Undergraduate Work
    • Graduate Work
    • Alumni Work
    • Faculty Work
    • Co-op
  • Articles
  • Community
    • Exhibition
    • Event
    • Initiatives

THESIS: The River is for Washing Carpets

July 4, 2017 Posted by Sean Defense, Event, Graduate Work, Thesis, Uncategorized

River Stairs_1-100

The River is for Washing Carpets

Safira Lakhani

Contemporary peacebuilding, notably as it is practiced in Afghanistan, consistently fails to address local needs in favour of international priorities for global security.  Despite the significant presence of foreign agencies and aid mechanisms in the country, peace in Afghanistan remains elusive.  Any semblance of peace achieved is neither durable, nor sustainable, particularly because of international ignorance of on-the-ground environmental and social realities, with specific reference to natural resource management and gender dynamics.  These failures are localised in Bamyan, a small valley in Afghanistan’s Central Highlands, most well known for its historic Buddhist complex, circa 6th century.  An anomaly, Bamyan is a pocket of peace in an otherwise turbulent country, a direct result of global interest (and therein foreign engagement) in the preservation of eight archaeological sites in the valley.  Yet the valley’s ‘World Heritage’ designation (2003) has ultimately prescribed a development policy that emphasises heritage conservation over local socio-economic livelihoods.  In so doing, the people of Bamyan are still today incredibly vulnerable, subject to insecurity in their water resource base, which is further aggravated by a changing climate and transition to urbanity.

Critiquing present models of peacebuilding, this thesis is an advocate for the agency of design in fragile states.  Specifically, the thesis suggests that the intersection of architecture, infrastructure, and ecology creates a framework for sustainable development that is grounded in local conditions and livelihoods.  Herein, peacebuilding becomes a bottom-up, pro-active process, engaging with, and responding to, the needs of local people as a means of building a paradigm of self-sufficiency.  That is, the thesis strives for ‘positive’ peace,[1] with the intention of cultivating relationships of solidarity between and among communities.  In Bamyan, opportunity for this is found through shared spaces for water.  Water has important ecological and cultural implications.  Rehabilitation of water infrastructure is necessary to restore the valley’s denuded landscape.  Ritual importance of water additionally provides occasion for community gathering and social encounter, both for men and for women.  Women especially, are integral to the peace process as their presence, in Afghan society, enables the ‘family space,’ a safe, gender-neutral, and culturally appropriate space for informal, public community gathering.

Accordingly, the thesis proposes a network of decentralised physical, ecological, and social infrastructures throughout the local watershed of Bamyan that seek to build enduring social and environmental resilience.  Integration of vernacular and modern technologies capitalises on local knowledge and historical models of behaviour.  Participation of the community in the building process moreover strengthens social relations, producing a shared sense of ownership in the peace process.  This is explored through detailed design of one node in the network, a washing house along Bamyan River, which connects water and women as mechanisms for enduring peace, uncovering the potential of shared spaces for water to mobilise community solidarity, empower cultural identity, and build human dignity.  Coupling ecological and cultural systems draws on the existing and the essential, and the thesis thus conceives a practice of design that can appropriately engage in, and foster, sustainable peace in fragile states.

Co-Supervisor
Anne Bordeleau, University of Waterloo
Mona El Khafif, University of Waterloo

Committee Members
Tammy Gaber, Laurientian University

External Reader
Hadi Husani, Aga Khan Agency for Habitat

The Defence Examination will take place
Friday July 7, 2017
at
11:00 AM in ARC Loft

2_BMYN_PLN_urban

3_BMYN_PLN_Water

4_BMYN_PLN_heritage

Sean
+ postsBio

Sean Maciel is a graduate of UWSA.

  • Sean
    http://waterlooarchitecture.com/bridge/blog/author/smaciel/
    HOW TO VOTE: A Guide for Students
  • Sean
    http://waterlooarchitecture.com/bridge/blog/author/smaciel/
    THESIS: Declamation: Embracing the Arid State in the Hetch Hetchy Water System
  • Sean
    http://waterlooarchitecture.com/bridge/blog/author/smaciel/
    Neighbourhood Soup – Design at Riverside
  • Sean
    http://waterlooarchitecture.com/bridge/blog/author/smaciel/
    NOTED: Phidon Pens
Tags: defenseGraduate WorkRevitalizing Bamyanthesis

About Sean

Sean Maciel is a graduate of UWSA.

You also might be interested in

Meet the Masters | Mx

Meet the Masters | Mx

Jan 28, 2014

The uniquely independent masters program here at the Waterloo School of Architecture[...]

THESIS: Three Minutes to Midnight
“By its very efficiency, the high-rise took over the task of maintaining the social structure that supported them all. For the first time it removed the need to repress every kind of anti-social behaviour, and left them free to explore any deviant or wayward impulses. It was precisely in these areas that the most important and most interesting aspects of their lives would take place. Secure within the shell of the high-rise like passengers on board an automatically piloted air-liner, they were free to behave in any way they wished, explore the darkest corners they could find. In many ways, the high-rise was a model of all that technology had done to make possible the expression of a truly ‘free’ psychopathology.” (p. 43) -J.G. Ballard, High-Rise (1975)

THESIS: Three Minutes to Midnight

Sep 6, 2016

Amanda Ghantous will be defending her thesis titled "Three Minutes to Midnight" on Wednesday September 7th at 12:30pm at the BRIDGE Centre for Architecture+Design. Her thesis is an exploration of the disconnection between the idealistic presentation of the world as depicted by utopian-fueled architecture and the everyday reality of human behaviour.

THESIS:  Living beyond Subsistence

THESIS: Living beyond Subsistence

Mar 24, 2015

Paula Lee defends her thesis entitled Living beyond Subsistence on Tuesday, March 24th at 5PM in the ARC Loft. Her work re-imagines the singular idea of home as functional space in the low-income tower context of 200 Wellesley Street East, Toronto through the design of a mediating social space.

Leave a Reply Cancel Reply

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.

Search

BRIDGE

Center for Architecture + Design

7 Melville St. S, Cambridge, ON

  • bridge@waterlooarchitecture.com

© 2025 — BRIDGE.