Archinect - Features

It’s Time To Consider the Refugee Camp as a City — And Here’s Why

2022-12-09T09:00:00-05:00

With the horizon of increased global instability closer than ever, whereby the scales of political balance can be so quickly tipped and toppled, questions relating to the rights of displaced peoples in refugee camps are both pertinent and vital. Yet, since refugee camps are becoming increasingly ‘urban’ in terms of scale, population density, social processes, and physical manifestation through schools, clinics, roads, and infrastructure, the questions surrounding refugee camp design and camp dwellers’ rights inherently become architectural and urban matters.

Emergency Shelter: Housing for the Age of Mass Displacement

2017-07-20T11:30:00-04:00

Today, forced displacement affects more people than any crisis or conflict. According to the UN, 65.3 million people, or one person in every 113, is now internally or externally displaced. The average time families remain in emergency accommodation is now 17 years, longer than the average US house buyer will stay in their home. No longer temporary but not yet a city, these ‘camps’ are where millions of children will grow up. In this month’s feature we speak to architects working with the concept of emergency shelter to find out how they are approaching the issue. An overview will be provided by former UNHCR official Kilian Kleinschmidt, now director of Switxboard, who will discuss where and how input from the design disciplines would be most welcomed.

The Short Life and Bitter End to Munich's 'Yellow Submarine'

2016-11-26T12:26:00-05:00

Made of 16 bathtubs with specially installed portholes, 'Yellow Submarine' was a hotel room/political housing statement, and one of the 24-winning designs in the 2015 Shabbyshabby Apartments competition. Created by the Glasgow-based and Lithuanian-staffed collective Urban Restart along with Kurt Cleary, the design is purposefully referred to in the past tense: only two days after it was erected in Munich, it was destroyed. This prompted speculation that vandals, or right-wing extremists opposed to refugees, were responsible.

One student's solution to the permanent limbo of refugee camps

2016-06-08T08:37:00-04:00

As conflicts continue to rage in the Middle East, North Africa, and elsewhere, millions of people have found themselves without papers, a state, or a home. Architecture is directly implicated in this humanitarian crisis—providing shelter is, after all, a primary onus of the disciple—and it’s taken notice, as the projects rolling out of Venice make clear.

paraSITE: the bandage over the nomadic wound

2016-05-27T11:04:00-04:00

Using the air discharged from publicly accessible HVAC units, artist Michael Rakowitz has created a series of inflatable temporary plastic shelters for the homeless he calls “paraSITE.” The work, which began in 1998 and was later added to the MoMA’s Architecture and Design online collection, is both a form of social protest and an ingenious, budget-conscious design (most units cost around $5 to construct).

Photographing the 'Jungle' of Calais' refugee camp

2016-05-20T10:20:00-04:00

The northernmost vertex in the hexagon of Metropolitan France, the port city of Calais is nearly 100 kilometers closer to Brussels than to Paris. On a clear day, you can see the White Cliffs of Dover, one of the most iconic of England’s natural wonders, from its shores. Several centuries ago, Calais belonged to the English crown—its “greatest jewel.” More recently, the Germans seized it and then razed it. Calais is, in a way, the quintessential European border town. Here, Europe’s incessant identity crises and territorial struggles surface in physical form.

Rendered reality: the VR journalism of Emblematic Group

2016-01-25T11:15:00-05:00

“We took all the 911 phone calls – because this is all we know, I mean everyone is conjecturing and everything, but this is all we know – and we animated them,” explained Michael Licht, co-founder and executive producer for the Emblematic Group, sitting in his Santa Monica laboratory. Helmed by Licht and the journalist Nonny de la Peña, the Group has pioneered the use of virtual reality technologies for journalism, using original audio and other information from real events as the source material for virtual reconstructions.

Architectures of the Disaster

2014-07-30T17:55:00-04:00

45.2 million people are currently displaced by conflict and persecution, according to the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR). The number accords with the 1951 Convention relating to the Status of Refugees articulation of a refugee as: an individual who has fled their country “owing to well-founded fear of being persecuted for reasons of race, religion, nationality, membership of a particular social group or political opinion.” But, as their website admits, in the 63 years since the convention, the dynamics of displacement have radically changed. This definition of a refugee does not account for the millions of people currently displaced by natural disasters, droughts, desertification, sea level rise, population growth, or resource scarcity. Of course such ecological crises are also intricately enmeshed in sociopolitical conflicts, complicating attempts to redefine the refugee or to classify a new category of “climate refugees” or “environmental migrants.”

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