Community Displacement: How Architectural Adaptations Show Resistance to Assimilation

The Republic of the Philippines and the Republic of the Marshall Islands are two pacific island nations that have been the site of centuries of colonisation, agricultural exploitation, and wartime decimation forcing marginalised populations to repeatedly resettle and concentrate in and around urban centres. We trace two of these resettled communities to investigate the objectives of cultural assimilation in contrasting top-down versus bottom-up resettlement morphologies. We conclude by suggesting that adaptations in the resettlement architecture show resistance to the traditions of assimilation, and they are an important possible resurgence of cultural patterns.