Paper short abstract:

This discussion examines two cases of people's displacement in damaged cities after the earthquake in 2011. It shows how current model relocation program is problematic, and it is essential to sustain the sense of locality, community, and habitual dwelling in housing designs through their recovery.

Paper long abstract:

The migration of people due to the change in the industrial structure, wars and colonization, lead the development of hygiene science, the idea of economic function and mass housing technology as the priority in modern architecture. However, the meaning of house as the locus of social ethos and nature was relegated to social studies, and such ideal inconsistencies seriously affect the meaning and design of disaster refugees' housing. This discussion examines two recent cases of people's displacement in Kesennuma and Rikuzen Takada cities in Japan after the earthquake in 2011 in order to inquire about the meaning of a house and sense of dwelling in disaster.

The earthquake and tsunami in 2011 destroyed more than ten thousand houses in Kesennuma and four thousand in Rikuzen Takada. The Ministry of National Land and Infrastructure and the local municipalities decided a model recovery process of housing as follow: relocate those who lost houses to refugee shelters, then to temporary prefabricated houses, and finally prepare two types of housing support; one is developing hinterland area for their reconstruction of houses, and another is constructing mass concrete public housing. Among diverse relocation processes, the case in Kesennuma clearly shows that the ignorance of local community in peoples' relocation to temporary houses and public housing, and the differences between these buildings and local traditional ones affected seriously on their sense of dwelling. Another case in Rikuzen Takada shows opposite; the strong community bond between people from the refugee shelters to the temporary houses, and the temporary houses' similarities with traditional house helped their settling significantly.

By comparing these cases, I will explain how people keep striving to maintain their normal lifestyle and connections to the home land, and how it is essential to sustain the sense of community through their disaster recovery. In the era of displacement due to disasters, we need to consider the idea of house as to be the locus for people's identity and to redesign the process of their replacement and transitional housings in the comprehensive relationship between historical habit, social system and everyday life.