Why a refugee camp

Jun 13, 2014
FAREstudio

FAREstudio_insights20140613_Mbera-camp

Architects/engineers are trying to extend their range of action so to include situation such as development cooperation and also emergency situations, a fact that is gaining public attention in the press and educational system and deserves consideration.

The refugee camp might be regarded as the extreme edge where technical skill can be required and used in order to alleviate conditions for those in desperate need. The issue is that, beyond humanitarian rhetoric, the reality of refugee camps is inadequately documented. For this very reason direct experience of such a situation is inevitable and this is what is currently taking place.

Emergency and crisis are the extremes of a large area where design and social action interplay.

The fact that trained architects/engineers are searched for is a [tautological] demonstration that such competence is deemed as necessary.

What have we learnt so far?

A few basic things, highly influenced by circumstances, not eligible as absolute principles, but sufficiently clear to be shared and discussed, findings that unfortunately support, and are supported by, similar information widely available:

  • scale and magnitude of problems are not comparable with resources availability
  • the logic of ‘free-market’ seems quite paradoxical in such situation: when oil price rises up to $5,00 per litre there is no room left for ‘competition’
  • NGOs and other institutions cooperate but quite often they also compete to gain room and occasions
  • the system is inherently conservative and innovation is regarded as a risk more than as opportunity
  • transfer of practical knowledge from specialized figures to untrained occasional workers is a very demanding activity, no matter how effective the medium might be
  • there is abundance of literature but is usually too abstract and generic
  • the location of a camp is usually the result of negotiation  and consequently is not necessarily the most logic
  • building technology relies on locally available components, with the effect to produce a bad copy of conventional construction, itself often a rundown version of alien traditions
  • the ratio of skilled builder over the population is very low: for this reason the only viable approach seems to be the prototype to be repeated, with a proper combination of self-construction and minimal training
  • energy is a further concern: to be dependent on fossil fuel is quite inevitable but expose the settlement to power shortage is very dangerous; alternative energy production could appear as the option to be practiced but there are no traces of such a choice

RV

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