Camp Condition(s): Suspended Existence of Refugees
The essay addresses the issue of refugees through a reading of the evolution and subsequent spatial permanence of the camp entity, investigating its potential development as a city.
The “camp condition” faces indeed the question of the role of the space about a period marked by an expanding tendency to populations’ nomadism.
Through a study of the camp-space establishment, it is possible to understand how the shape of the camp is subordinate to its role as space of emergency, that exists to handle a temporary situation of crisis by controlling “the excess”. The spatial and political isolation of the camp entity is accepted under the claimed protection assurance and the temporary dimension in which each action inside the camp-space is inserted.
However, when refugees’ aspired destination remains unreachable, the camp’s temporary dimension evolves into a “permanent transience” where the refugees live a suspended existence of waiting.
With the reading and comparison of two case studies, Zaatari (Jordan) and La Linière (France), geographically and culturally distant from each other, it is noticeable how the architectural form acts as a manifestation of this identity evolution of the space.
The camp, initially established to manage emergency, evolves into a place of immobility, where a blurred temporal definition and a needless spatial confinement, drive the refugees to rewrite their relationship with the surrounding environment.
The research, then, aims to recognise the differentiation of the “camp condition”, accordingly to the context in which it is inserted, and its possible evolution as “urban environment”, where the shape of the city is the expression and pronouncement of a community that, in its relationship with the space, is no more a “refugee”
Politecnico di Milano
Scuola di Architettura Urbanistica Ingegneria delle Costruzioni
Bachelor Degree in Architectural Design
Relator: prof. Giulia Setti
A.A. 2017-2018
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