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Snøhetta's design for a new French asylum court seeks to offer ‘a place of calm during a time of intense turmoil’

2023-02-17T11:52:00-05:00

Snøhetta has been chosen to design a new National Court of Asylum and Administrative Court in Montreuil, France. The proposed scheme sees the two courts arranged on one site around large green areas, offering what the team calls “a place of calm during what can be a time of intense turmoil.”

Image credit: Aesthetica.Studio for Snøhetta

The court will function as a place where judges hear the cases of individuals who appeal against decisions made by the wing of the French government overseeing refugees and asylum seekers. Hearing thousands of annual cases of people from over 160 countries, the court is considered the final jurisdiction for deciding the future of asylum seekers in France, overseeing residence permit disputes, refusals, and orders to leave the country.

Image credit: Aesthetica.Studio for Snøhetta

Recognizing the positive impact of natural environments on mental and physical health, the scheme seeks to use the natural landscape as an extension of the court, including a 75...

Archinect's Virtual Event Guide for the week of June 16-20th

2020-06-16T12:01:00-04:00

This week's featured virtual event happenings, from Archinect's Virtual Event Guide, address collaboration, manifestos, architectural media, Adolf Loos, games, female architects of color, public space post-pandemic, bamboo architecture, Syria, and more...

Are you hosting a virtual lecture? Presentation? Tour? Interview? Happy Hour? Submit it for consideration by clicking here.

Are you an expert in an arena that's especially important right now? Let us know if you would like to work with Archinect to host an online event.

Knowledge is Power
Tuesday, June 16, 2020 | 5:30 PM – 6:30 PM BST
New London Architecture's Curator-in-Chief Peter Murray interviews architect Clare Wright on the power of archives and special collections in illustrating the enduring Church-State relationship against the backdrop of Lambeth Palace Library.
Click here to attend and/or register

With Power comes great Responsibility
Tuesday, June 16, 2020 | 6:30 PM – 8:00 PM BST
There has never been a more important time to...

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.

When a refugee camp becomes a semi-permanent settlement

2019-10-01T14:30:00-04:00

With the prospect of the Rohingya not being able to return to Myanmar for years to come, the prototypes in Camp 4 Extension reflect how aid and relief organizations are finding new ways to manage the long-term needs of the most populous refugee camp in the world.

CityLab reports on the latest efforts to drastically improve living conditions inside Kutupalong Refugee Camp, the world's largest camp of its kind and currently home to more than 600,000 Rohingya Muslim refugees that fled from ethnic and religious persecution in Myanmar to neighboring Bangladesh.

"Designers in the U.S. are helping to facilitate these dreams for more stable refugee camps," write Victoria Milko and Clare Hammond in their CityLab article about recent design and infrastructure improvements.

"Nadyeli Quiroz and John David Wagner at Harvard’s Graduate School of Design are embarking on a year-long collaboration with OBAT Helpers, an Indianapolis-based community nonprofit, to explore how to create varied functional spaces within the camps, such as outdoor courtyards or provisional pop-up designs."

But making lasting progress is tricky. The Bangladeshi government insists on the temporary status of the camp — emphasizing that its Rohingya population would be returning to My...

Trump considers tent cities to house unaccompanied migrant children

2018-06-13T19:29:00-04:00

The Trump administration is looking to build tent cities at military posts around Texas to shelter the increasing number of unaccompanied migrant children being held in detention. The Department of Health and Human Services will visit Fort Bliss, a sprawling Army base near El Paso in the coming weeks to look at a parcel of land where the administration is considering building a tent city to hold between 1,000 and 5,000 children...

Over 11,200 migrant children are held without a parent or guardian by The Office of Refugee Resettlement at HHS who oversees around 100 shelters. As these shelters fill up with children separated from their parents, the Trump administration considers building tent cities to accommodate this rapidly increasing population who await processing.

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.

"Nobody thinks about the safety of these women": the harrowing experiences of female refugees

2016-02-16T17:42:00-05:00

Amnesty International and the UN refugee agency, UNHCR, recently presented reports on the vulnerable position of women refugees and the dangers they face. Europe is failing to provide basic protection for them, the Amnesty report stated. This problem is now all the more critical because the percentage of women among the refugees who travel through Europe has risen dramatically.

"All the women interviewed for the Amnesty report said that they felt unsafe and threatened during the various stages of their journey. Women are at greater risk of becoming victims of violence, robbery and extortion... There is also the threat of rape and sexual assault by smugglers, security guards, policemen and fellow refugees. Some smugglers try to coerce the women into having sex with them in exchange for a shorter waiting time or a lower price for the crossing."

Alongside first-hand accounts by female refugees, the article describes some of the particular struggles women face, in addition to those experienced by their male counterparts. Women are expected to care for their children along the difficult sea and land routes from Syria to Europe.

Many refugee facilities don't have separate bathroom facilities for each gender, and the risk of sexual assault runs high. Some women have taken to sleeping outside of the camps, without any shelter, if its seems safer than risking sleepin...

The vast majority of Syrian refugees are seeking refuge in cities, not camps

2015-10-30T13:08:00-04:00

Rows of white tents in an otherwise sparse landscape are often featured in the media, but the reality is that 80% of Syrian refugees have sought refuge outside of camps, and the majority of these are living in urban areas – whether in “informal tented settlements”, rented rooms, or half-finished buildings. [...] While the majority of Syrian refugees are not in camps, the bulk of humanitarian resources are channelled towards maintaining camps.