Dark Days

Due to our potential site in Winnipeg, which has a lot of homeless people in it, I decided that one of the things I'd like to tackle is homelessness in Winnipeg. In order to do that, I needed to do a little research, and fortunately for me, I remembered a movie that we had to watch way back in the old days of ED1. The movie is called Dark Days, and it's about a group of homeless people in New York who took shelter underneath the tunnels of the Amtrak Subway system.

The film takes place in the year 2000, and follows the lives of people who actually lived there . It's really an amazing documentary, and I remember being really moved by it when we watched it before, and I was again when I re-watched it tonight.


The situation is incredibly sad. The conditions are filthy, the people are plunged in darkness all day long, and many of the people who live there are battling drug addictions along with their other obvious predicaments.

I think the most striking thing about it when I first watched it was that the people in the film are so normal. It seems odd, but the people who live in this awful place are really just average people in an incredible situation. Throughout the movie, you see people cleaning their homes, painting walls, taking care of pets, and even going to work.

Even in this picture you can see that the person who lives here has cobbled together a home out of found materials and is actually hanging laundry outside to dry. It's surreal when you hear these supposedly homeless people talking about their balconies, their living rooms, and their various home renovations that they've made while they've been living there.

It's also strange because they also go to work like regular people. One man goes up every weekday to collect cans and bottles, while another rummages through garbage to find electronics and CD's and other things that he can pawn to make a few dollars. On the weekends, they rest and relax, so that they can go out and do it again next week.

The movie is incredible, and I think if you're going to work on any kind of homeless project, this is a great place to start, because it gives incredible insight into the lives of the people who live in these conditions.

I plan on taking some cues from this movie as well. Tomorrow, I'd like to go through one of the first shots in the movie and study the structures that the people have built underground, making not of what materials and methods of connections are used to build these "houses". It's all found material, but what works for them? I think it would be an incredibly informative case study to look at, but I have to take it all with a grain of salt, as homeless people in Winnipeg face much different problems than homeless people in New York subways.

I plan on exploring how I can take these building typologies and adapt them to a much harsher climate, as well as to the outdoors. It's going to be challenging, but I think it will help define my project that much more and give me a solid base to make some good decisions.