View West From Schoodic Point Across Frenchman Bay Towards Cadillac Mountain on MDI, E. Mark Photo, March 27, 2015

Adaptive Shelter Healing Landscape

ALAR 8020 ARCH 4020 Design Studio __ Spring 2026
Instructor: Earl Mark, PhD, Associate Professor of Architecture

Note: This web site is currently under construction and revised from 2025. It's viewable but not fully implemented especially for small smart phone screens.

A SANCTUARY FOR FORCIBLY DISPLACED PEOPLE

The Adaptive Shelter Healing Landscape studio explores two interconnected themes: shelters for forcibly displaced people and the stewardship of displaced plants and animals within coastal ecosystems. The studio envisions healing through reciprocity: people caring for coastal lands and littoral (nearshore) environments while receiving therapeutic benefit from the living systems they help sustain.

The urgency is clear. In 2024, the UNHCR reported an unprecedented 123 million forcibly displaced people worldwide, nearly double the number in 2016, while over 3,500 invasive species relocations accelerated biodiversity loss. Within this context, each student will focus on either a displaced human community or a non-human species, bridging the two through programmatic, spatial, and material strategies.

The studio will center on Schoodic Peninsula at Acadia National Park (ANP), our spring travel destination, where glacially carved granite shores extend into the Gulf of Maine, surrounded by abundant wildlife, maritime traditions, and the ancestral home of the Wabanaki Nations. Residents’ participation in constructing shelters and caring for this coastal setting fosters a two-way process of healing: their stewardship of the land and marine ecology becomes integral to their recovery from displacement. The site’s Downeast Maine context, with its deep traditions of wooden boatbuilding and sailmaking, informs both local knowledge and regional identity today.

Workshops in Maine will explore these maritime crafts as precedents for lightweight, tension-membrane fabric shelters, enabling local builders to shape designs according to community needs and construction knowledge, a recognized best practice in humanitarian design. At the same time, the studio will apply emerging non-human–centered approaches, drawing on Adrian Parr Zaretsky’s Transpecies Design: Design for a Posthumanist World (Routledge, 2024) [1]. Zaretsky describes transpecies design principles as “a non-anthropocentric approach to regenerating, restoring, reinvigorating, and replenishing the natural environment." Students may choose to focus on adaptive shelter for people or on the migration and survival of habitats for non-human species facing dislocation or extinction.

INTRODUCTION

When people are forcibly displaced, traumatized, separated from loved ones, and in urgent need of food, medical care, sanitation, and shelter. Time is critical. Rapidly deployed shelters within a secure perimeter are often the first step toward survival. Thoughtful site designs that engage with the natural environment can also support physical and psychological recovery.

Refugee settlements, initially temporary, often expand and endure far longer than intended. Original layouts may fail to meet residents’ health, self-determination, cultural practices, or sense of hope. Meanwhile, resettlement areas may host other displaced species, adapting to continuous ecological change.

W.H. Drury Professor of Ecology and Natural History Pofessor John Anderson (College of the Atlantic) challenges the use of sustainability for such systems, calling it an “oxymoron” in the face of extinctions and ongoing adaptation [2].

The studio will examine best practices in shelter and settlement design while students pursue independent research on a displaced human community or non-human species. Each participant will develop a thesis, propose innovative design responses, and explore how architecture and landscape design can address resource constraints, risks, and uncertainties.

Temporary settlements face cultural, political, and social tensions, as well as limited resources, climate change, disease, and spatial constraints. Pre-designed shelters or interventions often fail without close collaboration and local agency. Similarly, habitat modifications for other species must remain adaptive over time.

The studio will explore flexible frameworks for evolving settlements—designed not as permanent solutions but as adaptable systems. Students will create lightweight, rigid, and tension-membrane structures that can be rapidly deployed and customized. Projects will investigate the healing potential of natural and built environments, focusing on small-footprint sites for displaced people or vulnerable species, including nesting seabirds [2].

The project site is on Maine’s Downeast Coast at Acadia National Park’s Schoodic Peninsula, where the studio will spend several days in late February or early March (avoiding spring break). Fieldwork includes meetings with fabricators, sailmakers, and wooden boatbuilders experienced in tension-membrane and lightweight structures. Travel and program expenses are supported through a foundation grant.

STUDIO PROGRAM FOR A UNHCR DEFINED COMMUNITY

Figure 1: Za'atari refugee camp, a few months after the initial settlement, entering an adjustment phase in anticipation of winter. Photo _ Panorama: Za'atari Refugee Camp, Jordan 21 November 2012. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by  BY-NC-ND 2.

The studio begins with the design of a single household unit. By midterm, students expand to a cluster of 16 units for 80 residents, recognized by the UNHCR as a "community." Common-use structures will also be integrated. By the second half of the term, participants may consider up to two communities, investigating materials, structural principles, site use, environmental footprint, and climate conditions.

Students may alternatively focus on appropriately scaled landscape interventions to support habitats for non-human species, including plants, animals, and nesting seabirds. These interventions hold equal importance in the studio to human-centered shelter design, emphasizing the reciprocity between human and non-human well-being.

For settlements that outlast their emergency purpose, we will explore structures that adapt daily, allowing spaces to expand or contract to meet evolving needs. Site design will also address healing for forcibly displaced people and other species while fostering stewardship of natural ecosystems [3][4].

Participants will select a site on the grounds of a former U.S. Naval Radio Station, adjacent to Schoodic Point. Temporary Quonset huts historically accommodated station expansion.

Figure 2: 1957 Photo of US Naval Radio Station, Schoodic Peninsula, Collection of Tony Spatafore, NSGA, Winter Harbor, Maine.

The peninsula extends into the Gulf of Maine, with Frenchman Bay to the south and west. The site is prized for its pink granite shoreline and ocean views but is vulnerable to storms, erosion, and infrastructure damage. A January 2024 storm significantly impacted the loop road.

Figure 3: January 2024 Photo of Winter Storm, NPS.

Studio research will examine environmental risks similar to those impacting refugee settlements elsewhere, including effects of climate change, storms and sea level rise. The potential for the oceanfront landscape to serve as a healing environment for humans and non-human species will guide design strategies.

Displacement continues to rise globally due to human conflict, climate change, and natural disasters. In 2016, UNHCR reported 65.6 million displaced people; today, the number exceeds 123 million, surpassing the population of most countries worldwide. Rapid response often requires lightweight, quickly assembled shelters, which residents may modify over time to reflect agency and community engagement.

Case studies, including Za’atari (Jordan) and Kara Tepe (Lesvos, Greece), demonstrate how flexible, human-centered settlements support cultural life, social cohesion, and adaptive landscapes. Overcrowding sites, rigid responses to climate change, and social tension can destabilize settlements, emphasizing the need for resilient, responsive design.

SELECTING A NARRATIVE

Students will research a displaced human community, considering culture, needs, and oceanfront landscape architecture context. Each participant will develop a shelter design response reflecting their interpretation. Alternatively, students may focus on a site and landscape architecture narrative that relates interventions to support habitats and ecological health, holding equal importance in the studio. Case study references will be provided in the continually updated bibliography.

FIELD TRIP TO MAINE

A late February or early March visit to Schoodic Peninsula will be timed to not overlap with spring break. Travel, lodging, and several meals are covered. Fieldwork includes walking tours of ecosystems, habitats, and oceanfront landscapes led by park rangers or environmental scientists, with attention to environmental footprint and potential shelters or habitat interventions. Workshops will be held with Maine based sailmakers, wood boat buildings, and tension membrane fabric building system makers.

UNHCR defines a “Community” as 16 household units. Sixteen communities form a Block, four Blocks a Sector, and four Sectors a Settlement of roughly 20,000 people. The studio focuses on the Community scale, but by the second half of the term, students may consider up to two communities or equivalent-scaled landscape architecture interventions for non-human species.

The studio emphasizes hands-on exploration of materials, lightweight and tension structures, and ecological sensitivity. Students will investigate flexible frameworks for settlements and habitat design, integrating human and non-human agency within resource-constrained contexts.

Earl Mark is Director of Shelter and Settlements at the School of Architecture. He has taught adaptive shelter studios since 2007, focusing on tension-membrane structures along tncludes automated shading shelters and GIS-based studies of human movement in refugee contexts. Mark has collaborated recently with the International Organization for Migration at the UN. His current research with Co-PIs at the National University of Technology in Athens (NTUA) and the Center for Social Research in Athens has been focused on comprehending intricate refugree movements in Greece.

Questions may be directed to ejmark@virginia.edu.

END NOTES

[1]. Parr Zaretsky, A., & Zaretsky, M. (Eds.). (2024). Transpecies Design: Design for a Posthumanist World (1st ed.). This publication is availble as an e-book in the UVA Library: Routledge. https://doi-org.proxy1.library.virginia.edu/10.4324/9781003403494
[2]. The studio will reference Prof John Anderson's teaching and reserach at the College of the Atlantic on Sea Birds, Ecology, and Animal Behavior. Anderson maintains that natural habitats adapt to changing environmental conditions. Inflexible preservation practices can be a threat to their survival.
[3]. We will examine the implicatios of the recently published research in Restorative Cities: Urban Design for Mental Health and Wellbeing by Jenny Roe and Layla McCay that gives evidence of the neurological and mental health benefits.
[4]. Reuben Rainey, Emeritus Professor of Landscape Architecture, asserts that “There is no such thing as a generic healing garden”. Panel Discussion, UVA, 2013. It is to be designed for a specific group’s needs.

Copyright © 2025 . Earl Mark . ejmark@virginia.edu. University of Virginia. All rights reserved.