Design for Hope: Community Center for Refugees

Description:
When dwellers control the major decisions and are free to make their own contributions in the design, construction or management of their housing, both this process and the environment produced stimulate individual and social well-being. When people have no control over nor responsibility for key decisions in the housing process, on the other hand, dwelling environments may instead become a barrier to personal fulfilment and a burden on the economy.
(John F. C. Turner, “Una visión del déficit de vivienda, El crecimiento de las ciudades”,Barcelona, Editorial Gustavo Gili., 1972; p.241).

This proposal is based on the following three processes.
(1)Anthropological views through participatory fieldwork
(2)Understanding Refugees’ views
(3)Our Design

We are designing the following three in cooperation.

1: Environmental Design
Environmental design means a wide area design with a city planning viewpoint. In this case, it is necessary to cover the entire environmental area in which many people act. Particularly in setting up large-scale refugee camps, it is important to consider the problems of multi-ethnic living, mixed religion, and multinational political interference. Then, it is necessary to decide the division of the residential area, order of construction of the facilities and so forth. (Public sphere design)

2: Life Design
Life Design means a design relating to a place of practical life practice. We must design not only individual building design but also human action space accompanying concrete behavior. Construction is always in a unified relationship with the external environment, but how to construct a private sphere (countercurrent of the public sphere) where the individual spends the longest time is an important subject.

3: Experiential Design
What we have been thinking about in Environmental Design and Life Design is a process of thinking about how to support people’s lives and help restructure their lives in the future. The future story (software contents) that we thought will build a sustainable architecture with the construction of the
community facilities (hard contents) created by collaboration with the residents.