Min Bʻīd la-Bʻīd (from Far to Far): On Homemaking under Diasporic Conditions

In the villages of Mount-Lebanon, homes are realized through years of immigrants’ exchanged remittances, messages, objects, and visits. This thesis offers an expanded understanding of the homes and homemaking of diasporic families, through which they manage separation and fragmentation and adapt to...

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Main Author: BuGhanem, Luna
Other Authors: Miljački, Ana
Format: Thesis
Published: Massachusetts Institute of Technology 2023
Online Access:https://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/151704
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author BuGhanem, Luna
author2 Miljački, Ana
author_facet Miljački, Ana
BuGhanem, Luna
author_sort BuGhanem, Luna
collection MIT
description In the villages of Mount-Lebanon, homes are realized through years of immigrants’ exchanged remittances, messages, objects, and visits. This thesis offers an expanded understanding of the homes and homemaking of diasporic families, through which they manage separation and fragmentation and adapt to personal and regional political change. To reveal how diasporic subjects build and make their homes while and from abroad or back and forth between locales, I extract from my conversations with owners of remittance-funded houses in ’Aley and Shūf. In reconstructed videos of the in-progress homes, first-hand accounts, concurrent global events, and the material traces of migration are juxtaposed, making the relationships between distance, its mediations, and the built form apparent. As a result, several signature architectural concepts are re-imagined. In the first chapter, “site” is no longer understood to simply be location, where the building is bound by coordinates or where owners have to be physically present; site, as captured through WhatsApp images, is dispersed, thus becoming the captured change that occurs throughout the conception and construction of their homes. Each following chapter similarly re-imagines and expands our use of architectural concepts such as “budget,” “program,” “phases,” “finishes,” “furniture, fixtures,” and “contracts” to suggest how we may appropriate this new understanding as a design tool. Ultimately, this thesis establishes the human experience of immigrant-builders as not ancillary but central to the discipline of architecture.
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spelling mit-1721.1/1517042023-08-17T04:11:41Z Min Bʻīd la-Bʻīd (from Far to Far): On Homemaking under Diasporic Conditions BuGhanem, Luna Miljački, Ana Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Department of Architecture In the villages of Mount-Lebanon, homes are realized through years of immigrants’ exchanged remittances, messages, objects, and visits. This thesis offers an expanded understanding of the homes and homemaking of diasporic families, through which they manage separation and fragmentation and adapt to personal and regional political change. To reveal how diasporic subjects build and make their homes while and from abroad or back and forth between locales, I extract from my conversations with owners of remittance-funded houses in ’Aley and Shūf. In reconstructed videos of the in-progress homes, first-hand accounts, concurrent global events, and the material traces of migration are juxtaposed, making the relationships between distance, its mediations, and the built form apparent. As a result, several signature architectural concepts are re-imagined. In the first chapter, “site” is no longer understood to simply be location, where the building is bound by coordinates or where owners have to be physically present; site, as captured through WhatsApp images, is dispersed, thus becoming the captured change that occurs throughout the conception and construction of their homes. Each following chapter similarly re-imagines and expands our use of architectural concepts such as “budget,” “program,” “phases,” “finishes,” “furniture, fixtures,” and “contracts” to suggest how we may appropriate this new understanding as a design tool. Ultimately, this thesis establishes the human experience of immigrant-builders as not ancillary but central to the discipline of architecture. S.M. 2023-07-31T20:00:33Z 2023-07-31T20:00:33Z 2023-06 2023-07-13T21:34:52.612Z Thesis https://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/151704 In Copyright - Educational Use Permitted Copyright retained by author(s) https://rightsstatements.org/page/InC-EDU/1.0/ application/pdf Massachusetts Institute of Technology
spellingShingle BuGhanem, Luna
Min Bʻīd la-Bʻīd (from Far to Far): On Homemaking under Diasporic Conditions
title Min Bʻīd la-Bʻīd (from Far to Far): On Homemaking under Diasporic Conditions
title_full Min Bʻīd la-Bʻīd (from Far to Far): On Homemaking under Diasporic Conditions
title_fullStr Min Bʻīd la-Bʻīd (from Far to Far): On Homemaking under Diasporic Conditions
title_full_unstemmed Min Bʻīd la-Bʻīd (from Far to Far): On Homemaking under Diasporic Conditions
title_short Min Bʻīd la-Bʻīd (from Far to Far): On Homemaking under Diasporic Conditions
title_sort min b id la b id from far to far on homemaking under diasporic conditions
url https://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/151704
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