Transition to what?

Abstract

“Homes are places which change all the time; we grow up in them, we leave them, create new ones, and sometimes lose and recreate them,” People have always been fleeing, escaping, or leaving their homes to re-establish themselves in new settlements. In the most recent years however due to factors like conflicts, climate change, natural disaster the number of people that have been re-settling has drastically increased. UNHCR over the years has developed a standard emergency shelter kit that is easy to build but doesn’t prove durable on the long run. A shelter made for displaced people usually go through various stages.

This research aims to focus on the evolution from emergency shelter to transitional shelter as most of the camps that are aimed to be temporary can span decades. Such camps have the most influx of design interventions by architects who aim at making the shelters more efficient, durable, and comfortable. The importance of creating places for refugees to live in that are more than simply shelters against the weather has increasingly become a topic for designers and architects, and for humanitarian organizations like UNHCR and the UN migration agency. Although they must tackle the same problem of temporary housing there are various approaches taken based on the location, climate, materials, construction techniques, economy.

Some focus more on vernacular design that includes building with the community itself and learning their techniques (e.g. Sand Shelter, Iraq funded by UNHCR) where as some focus more on the cost and the materials that are easily available (e.g.: RE:Built by Pilosio Building Peace org. in Jordan) and a few aim for a modular design that can be prefabricated (e.g.: HEX Housing model prototype). And most projects are developed because of support from various transnational organisations either in the form of