Architectural Response to PTSD

How do we, as individuals and communities, rebuild after traumatic events? Is it possible to design for healing to take place? What role does narrative play in architectural structures meant to house people who have experienced Post Traumatic Stress Disorder?

 

These are just a few of the questions addressed in a 2002 pamphlet entitled "Move: Sites of Trauma" by architect Johanna Salem Dickson. In this small booklet (which I just returned to the RISD library) Dickson and other architecture master students propose designs for the West Philadelphia neighborhood that was destroyed by bombing and fire on May 13, 1985. 

West Philadelphia, May 13, 1985    

11 people dead   

61 homes destroyed  

250 people left homeless

A city scarred

This story of willful destruction by a city government of its own neighborhood is one that is woefully undertold. On May 13, 1985, a bomb was dropped on a rowhouse in west Philadelphia that was the home of a radical organization called MOVE. The bomb, a powerful C-4 explosive illegally obtained by the Philadelphia Police Department from the FBI, ignited a can of gasoline on the roof which continued to burn freely for the next four hours, killing 11 MOVE members, destroying 61 homes and leaving 250 neighbors homeless. 

As horrific as these events were, it was the city's mishandling of the aftermath that has provoked many to view this moment in U.S. history as parallel to our country's handling of Vietnam War veterans.  By destroying the burnt ruins of the neighborhood and immediately replacing the rowhouses with makeshift replacements, Dickson argues that the people in the Cobb Creek neighborhood were never properly allowed to remember and thus heal from this traumatic event. In the pamphlet, she identifies five architectural elements which led to her designation of the Osage Street neighborhood as a "site of trauma": transformation, movement, modification, relation and memory. 

To varying degrees of success, the design proposals at the end of the pamphlet attempt to address these various elements.  What is interesting though is how each proposal includes components that allow for peoples' individual and collective narratives of what happened in the build up and aftermath of May 13th to find breathing space within the neighborhood's redesign. These narratives both acknowledge aspects of the MOVE Group's "back to nature" ideology, while also rebuilding sites for people to convene and retell these narratives in a communal space.  Additionally these proposals offer a fascinating intersection between the disciplines of architecture, psychology, history, and city planning.