Constructing And Dwelling:the Construction Of Post-disaster Dwelling Spaces

Housing serves as a space for dwelling and protection. While in the earthquake means the collapse of usual dwelling function and the destruction of living conditions. Zhang village, located in the disaster-strike area of ’5-12’ Wenchuan earthquake, was severely damaged by this earthquake with93.2%buildings collapsed. Thus house rebuilding becomes the major agenda of post-disaster recovery and reconstruction. Based on field research, this thesis looks into the process of social construction of dwelling space as discourse reality and draws conclusions as follows.Firstly, the reconstruction of housing of Zhang village comes out to be the generation of mixed space. With the aid of Z Foundation, the newly built dwelling space represents to be co-existing of uniform space and differentiated space. Previously private housing now characterizes as both the function of exhibition and dwelling, both acknowledges planning and rejects planning, both continuity and fracture, and both makes the earthquake invisible and visible. The mixed space implies the establishment of new space order of Zhang village.Secondly, the process of housing reconstruction characterizes as a series of peculiarities. In the context of post-disaster reconstruction, house construction is led by Z Foundation and other outside agencies, and aims at achieving the reconstruction of the village instead of the individual dwelling space, and follows the inner logic of outside institutional instead of local everyday logic. That is, post-disaster dwelling space is not built by local villagers who are victims of the disaster, but the outside agencies of the state and other agencies like Z Foundation.Thirdly, dwelling space as discursive reality is constructed by multiple discourses. Dwelling space of Zhang village is not a pure physical space, but a kind of discursive reality which is constructed by multiple discourses of participatory discourse, planning discourse, technique discourse, architecture discourse, institutional discourse, official discourse and disaster discourse. Furthermore, the intervention of outside agencies into the production of space order derives from the mutual construction of discourse and power.The case of Zhang village illustrates that space grabbing lies at the center of post-disaster dwelling space construction, which focus on grabbing space and representing the meanings. This space grabbing implies the twofold of production of specific space and the meaning which represents. The logic of space grabbing also fits into the cases of new-countryside construction, city-villages rebuilt, and city renewal.