Does Permanence Matter? Ephemeral Urbanism

How long-term should urban planning be? Munich’s Oktoberfest, the festival of Kumbh Mela in India (the largest pilgrimage in the world), the Burning Man Festival in Nevada, and scores of other major events demonstrate that flexible architectural structures are perennially deployed around the globe to provide temporary or medium-term shelter and amenities, often to enormous crowds. Such temporary structures fulfil a range of functional tasks and are used in religious and cultural festivals or can take the shape of military camps, refugee camps, or even temporary mining towns. The exhibition has been conceived based on a long-term study by Rahul Mehrotra at Harvard University’s Graduate School of Design and Felipe Vera of the Centro de Ecologia Paisaje y Urbanismo in Santiago. The show traces a global phenomenon that has become increasingly topical given today’s current climate of mass migration streams.