Archinect - News

A legal future for climate refugees begins to take shape

2020-01-20T18:30:00-05:00

It is unlawful for governments to return people to countries where their lives might be threatened by the climate crisis, a landmark ruling by the United Nations human rights committee has found. The judgment – which is the first of its kind – represents a legal “tipping point” and a moment that “opens the doorway” to future protection claims for people whose lives and wellbeing have been threatened due to global heating, experts say.

The Guardian reports that the United Nations human rights committee has issued a landmark ruling that could establish a precedent for granting asylum rights to people displaced by climate change. The non legally-binding ruling is poised to inform how the global community handles up what could become one of the defining human rights struggles of the 21st century.

Estimates vary widely, but a recent study from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change posits that between 25 million and 1 billion people could be displaced due to climate change globally by 2050. Other estimates put the figure at 2 billion or more by 2100.

Nader Khalili's CalEarth research institute reopens its doors

2019-06-03T14:13:00-04:00

Founded in 1991 by Nader Khalili, the California Institute of Earth Art and Architecture has researched and developed solutions, including the SuperAdobe, a structure made with patented, long plastic bags filled with dirt from the building site and held in place with barbed wire. Khalili’s ultimate aim was to empower refugees and the poor to build homes using minimal materials and without the need for highly skilled practitioners such as architects, engineers and contractors.

Marissa Gluck of the LA Times writes a thoughtful piece remembering the late Kahili and the influence he's made in the architecture community. Read more about Gluck's coverage of CalEarth and its revival here.

Correction 6/13/19: The original article unintentionally used similar language to the article published on the LA Times. We deeply regret this unfortunate and unusual mistake, so we have replaced it with a direct link to the Marissa Gluck’s article at the LA Times.

Explore mitigating human suffering via design in this New School symposium

2017-02-23T13:41:00-05:00

As cities densify and the global population increases, much has been made of reclaiming physical spaces: but how does one reclaim a place that is bound up in tragedy, whether that tragedy was natural or man-made? On March 3rd and 4th, Parsons the New School for Design will host a symposium featuring Lina Sergie Attar, a Syrian-American architect, writer, and activist who hails from Aleppo.

In addition to Attar's keynote address, the symposium, entitled “Making Home in Wounded Places: Memory, Design, and the Spatial," will explore several dozen case studies dealing with refugee shelters, the repurposing of Latin American prisons into shopping malls, and how painful memories of the past have been represented and memorialized in places including a Warsaw ghetto. Those interested in registering to attend can do so on the website.

Refugee shelter takes top prize for the Beazley Designs of 2016

2017-01-26T20:13:00-05:00

Designed by Johan Karlsson, Dennis Kanter, Christian Gustafsson, John van Leer, Tim de Haas, Nicolò Barlera, the IKEA Foundation and UNHCR, the photovoltaic panel-powered refugee shelter "Better Shelter" has been named the Beazley Design of the Year, beating out the five other category winners to take the top spot.

According to a press release, 30,000 of the shelters, which only take a few hours to assemble from their two-box, fully equipped kit, are currently being used globally.

Calais refugee architecture to be recognized at London Festival of Architecture

2016-06-09T13:37:00-04:00

The festival has been curated by Robert Mull, former dean of the Cass School of Art... His journey then took him to the Calais camp, where he, too, was struck by how “vibrant” the makeshift town was. “Obviously that has to be caveated: it’s a hell of a place and utterly distressing in so many ways, but it was fascinating to see how different groups were establishing a kind of urbanism which felt very authentic, very deeply rooted in their cultures.”

At his pithy yet nuanced best, the Guardian's Olivier Wainwright documents the formation of a makeshift town by refugees in Calais, and the subsequent decision to display some of their works in the London Festival of Architecture.

For more on the architecture of transience and nomadism:

Kenya moves to shut down Dadaab, the world's biggest refugee camp

2016-05-11T18:25:00-04:00

Kenya has vowed to close the world’s biggest refugee camp within a year and send hundreds of thousands of Somalis back to their war-torn homeland or on to other countries, a plan decried by aid and human rights groups as dangerous, illegal and impractical. Kenya says it needs to close the sprawling Dadaab camp, home to 330,000 mostly Somali refugees, to protect the country’s security after a string of terror attacks by al-Shabaab.

With most of Europe and the Middle East grappling with an unprecedented refugee crisis, it's easy to lose sight of the millions of other displaced peoples around the world. But the largest population of refugees isn't in Germany, Sweden, or France.

Rather, with a population of 329,811 refugees, primarily Somali, the refugee camp complex in Dadaab, Kenya is the largest in the world. Now, the Kenyan government is moving to shut it down.

In related news:

This month Archinect is focusing on socially-aware projects as part of our special theme for May, Help. Have projects of your own that are oriented towards creating a more equitable and livable society? Submit to our open call before Sunday, May 22.

Viennese student dorms may Passively House refugees

2015-10-21T17:19:00-04:00

Sustainable, fast, and cheap housing: just what you need when you're escaping oppressive regimes, natural disasters, and other refugee-creating events. Christoph Chorherr, Vienna's Green Party planning spokesperson, has blogged that the mobile Passive House dormitories designed by Günter Lang for students in Vienna's Seestadt Aspern district could easily be adapted to comfortably house refugees.

With a construction cost of 1.140 Euro per square meter, the dorms not only can be erected in a few days, but also meet the "Passive House Standard," meaning that they reduce traditional building energy consumption by up to 90%. Passive House Standard dwellings aren't limited to Vienna: from Canada to Germany to South Korea, the form is proving popular with energy-conscious designers.

UN Refugee Agency Commissions 10k Ikea-designed Better Shelters

2015-03-31T17:23:00-04:00

Ikea's line of flat-pack refugee shelters are going into production, the Swedish furniture maker announced this week, after being tested among refugee families in Ethiopia, Iraq, and Lebanon. The lightweight "Better Shelter" was developed under a partnership between the Ikea Foundation and the ...UNHCR... Each unit takes about four hours to assemble and is designed to last for 3 years — far longer than conventional refugee shelters, which last about 6 months.

As the Verge article notes, the announcement comes at a time when there are nearly 4 million people left without homes from the ongoing wars in Syria alone. Globally, there are 45.2 million people currently displaced by conflict and persecution according to a UNHCR report. And even that number doesn't account for the millions currently being displaced by drought, famine, rising sea levels, resource scarcity or other ecological disasters.

The Ikea Foundation's "Better Shelter" houses comprise three individual parts: the frame, the panels, and the photo voltaic system. They can be assembled on site without any additional tools or equipment. While lightweight and transportable, the units are designed to last three years. The solar panels charge an LED light that can be used at night for four hours or to charge a mobile phone.

In an article posted last year, Architectures of the Disaster, I consider other design projects addressing the global refugee crisis.

Relocation or Adaptation: Earth Home Project Brings Relief to Pakistanis Reeling from Floods

2015-02-14T11:58:00-05:00

In July 2010, heavy monsoon rains flooded nearly 20% of Pakistan, producing a crisis later described by UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon as the worst disaster he had ever seen. The floods affected around 20 million people and claimed the lives of nearly 2,000. Ravaging infrastructure and agriculture, the total economic impact has been estimated to be as much as $43 billion. Pakistan is still far from recovering, in no small part because of a calamitous lack of relief funds and international aid.

In total, the floods left six million people homeless. Already in a precarious state afters decades of conflict and terrorist attacks, Pakistan’s infrastructure crumbled beneath the torrents of water. Then, in the fall of 2014, the strongest post-monsoon ever recorded in the country produced another round of disastrous floods in the Kashmir region of Pakistan and neighboring India. Affecting a total of more than 1.1 million people, the floods devastated an already-desperate population.

And, li...

The Most Relevant News of 2014 (for Architects)

2014-12-30T14:02:00-05:00

Sometimes it's easy to pretend that architecture exists outside of this world, erupting instead in the blank of a 3D space governed only by the laissez-fair laws of software. But sometimes a news headline will penetrate through this fog of imagination, appearing as a blazing light shining forth from an image of some distant row of houses hollowed by mortar fire and colored with the blood of a strangers' body. "This is the real of architecture," the news seems to silently implore.

As gravity serves as the counterweight to the feverish, technofuturism fashionable to today's students, news events seem to ground architecture just at the moment it seems like it may finally escape into the vapors of idealism. While it may seem that architecture is increasingly consigned to the building of institutions or expensive residences, the demand for buildings and dwellings simultaneously grows louder and more desperate with every unfolding disaster.

A year-end round-up is as fraught as a ranking. If...

Libraries Without Borders Creates Kit For Refugee Camps

2014-12-22T15:10:00-05:00

A typical library can take years to build. But a new library kit, designed to travel to remote refugee camps or disaster zones, can come together in less than 20 minutes. The Ideas Box...fits the equivalent of a small-town library on two standard shipping pallets. It comes with books and e-readers, tablets, laptops, cameras and other creative tools... Since camps might not have internet access or power, it comes with its own. The boxes that hold all of the devices convert into tables and chairs.

The "suffocating" life in a Syrian refugee tent

2014-12-02T15:00:00-05:00

In the tents of Syrian refugees, stories abound and tragedies surround them daily... With the passage of time, a tent becomes a home and shelter, their only place in this limited world. When rain exhausts the roof of the tents and wind uproots them, the refugees agonize as much as they did over the destruction of their houses in al-Raqqa or Aleppo. “We may have grown accustomed to our tent. Some of us like it, and others still cannot stand it. Do you know how the world can become a tent?”