The Architecture of Displacement Archive - Burning Man Festival & The Kitchen Monument

CASE STUDIES: BURNING MAN FESTIVAL The Architecture of Displacement Archive

How could the Burning Man Festival be a source of inspiration for Camp Management in contexts with mass displacement?

by Emilie Mendiboure student In Transit Elective 2017 The Oslo School of Architecture & Design

Laying out the site : strong commonalities between the festival and the refugee camp

The Burning Man Festival settles every year in the Black Rock Desert, in Nevada (USA) for one week. This event aims to create a temporary city where creativity is enhanced, by building experimental structures, mobile elements and shelters. It gathers 70 000 participants in a 6km2 area. Thus, it’s comparable to the Za´atari refugee camp in Jordan, which has a population of 79 900 refugees in 5,3 km21. Although the time frame is extremely different, roughly 17 years for the refugees camps2 and one week for this festival, the settlements are comparable. I will discuss to what extent the spatial principles of the Burning Man could be applicable to refugee settlements.

point of meeting where the wood sculpture is placed. Both are very flexible in terms of capacity since they can evolve and grow without disturbing the layout. But the Burning Man’s shape creates and reinforces the identity of the city and highlight the constitution of one community.

In both situations, regulations in terms of security and dimensions are prioritized. Thus, main roads are created to orientate, guide in the site but also to divide it. Again, symbolic significations are added in the Burning Man context: the main roads correspond to the different hours of the day and they are concentric. In the Za’atari case, they are parallel or perpendicular to the border of the site and this reinforce the efficiency of this refugee camp layout. Both systems enable the participant or refugee to clearly understand the layout of the site and to be able to orientate themselves in case of emergency for instance.

Second streets are introduced to divide the areas and create districts or villages. As it is for the Za’atari refugee camp, in the Burning Man festival, equipment for sanitation, medical centres, water suppliance and informations are centralized (sanitation equipment are spread along radical streets)3 and activities, shares spaces and organization in districts/villages.

Both settlements are located in a desert, an empty area without any physical, geographical or urban constraints. The soil is only made of sand and there are few or none vegetation.

However, both shapes are radically different and results in very different approaches. The layout of the site is in both cases decided by the camp planners and not by the participants.

The creator and organizer of the event decides the layout. In a humanitarian context, it’s the humanitarian organisation that comes to manage the camp and it’s decided by determined by international minimum standards found in the Camp Managment Toolkit. The Burning Man Festival is designed for social interactions whereas the Za’atari camp is founded on logistical needs and spatial efficiency. The shape of the Burning Man festival has evolved over the time and results in the willingness of having a generous common space whereas the shape of the Za’atari refugee camp is based on a more rational simple way of thinking the settlement of the camp (the rectangular shape). The first one enables the participants to show off, share their creation and overall that gathers all participants in one common symbolic place.

This circular shape, inspired by the situation around a fire place, creates a symbolic central

Despite all these commonalities, main major differences, that are the duration of the use, the symbolic image that rules the design and the organization within the district, make the two organizations totally different in terms of participation, settlement and way of living.

1

UNHCR, UNHCR data website, survey, http://data.unhcr. org/syrianrefugees/settlement.php?id=176, latest update 05 December 2017 2

Kilian Kleinschmidt, Dezeen, Interview, https://www.dezeen. com/2015/11/23/refugee-camps-cities-of-tomorrow-killiankleinschmidt-interview-humanitarian-aid-expert/, 3 November 2015, accessed 4.12.2017 3

Burning Man Festival official Website, https://burningman.org/ event/black-rock-city-guide/infrastructure/sanitation/

2

BURNING MAN FESTIVAL

ZA’ATARI REFUGEE CAMP

SHAPE

ENTRANCE AXIS

MAIN ROADS

SECOND STREETS

DISTRICT

SETTLEMENT OF EQUIPEMENTS

0

5000 feet

3

0

5000 feet

Principles and guidelines reaching a same point

Many rules or principles of the Burning Man Festival are similar to the refugee camp rules extracted in the Camp Management Toolkit. Basically, rules of living based on tolerance, neutrality and respect are shared by both organizing principles. The festival is mainly based on principles that emphasize participation, decommodification, communal effort, immediate experience, self-experience, tolerance and gifting. These rules in the Burning Man contribute to create a cohesion as a whole community that isn’t observed in the refugee camp. People are gathering in the festival because they want to experience a new way of being part of a community whereas the refugees come because they are forced to.

They are gathered in one place and are often traumatized. In the refugee camps, people “have lost everything that have to with their identity”4. Thus improving the participation of the refugee in the daily life community and in the design of the camp as it is in the Burning Man festival could contribute to help them in the research of well-being and expression of their cultural identity. Therefor, this has to be balanced by the need of remaining the camp temporary.

and security, but also for respecting the environment. Providing plan for setting up and closing the camp which correspond to a desire to keep this kind of installation temporary is also required in the settlement of the Burning Man Festival and of a refugee camp. However, in the Burning Man case, regulations for construction are recommendations for daily life allow a lot of freedom. That’s why lots of accidents were observed during the festival like severe injuries and death. The most recent accident happened in 2014 when a woman was hit by a car.7 Thus a lot of freedom, despite the regulations is allowed in the festival, at high risks and this constitutes an important limit to these principles that are guidelines and not rules.

Even though people in both cases experience a new way of living in a community with imposed rules, they experience it totally differently. What could be a lack in the refugee camp is the participatory to the community life. People lost their identity when they enter the camp and aren’t encourage to express themself in the settlement of their new temporary homes. Nonetheless, signs of settling and expression of identity are remarquable. People build their environment and new life in an alternative way.

The question of belonging is also significant in both case but in a very different way. In the festival, people are likely to express themselves by creating shelters and villages that reflects their personality, creativity or conception of community, architecture and living space.

In the refugee case, people are attributed the same type of shelter. They have been stripped naked and have lost everything. Nonetheless, refugees cope with it by appropriating their home. For example, in the Za’atari refugee camp, people covered their shelters with fabric, they painted their prefabs5, planted gardens and started negociating with neighbours, to customize or expand them.6

4

Kilian Kleinschmidt, Dezeen, Interview, https://www.dezeen. com/2015/11/23/refugee-camps-cities-of-tomorrow-killiankleinschmidt-interview-humanitarian-aid-expert/, 3 November 2015, accessed 4.12.2017 5

Mohammad Ersan , AL-Monitor Article, https://www.almonitor.com/pulse/ru/contents/articles/originals/2017/04/ jordan-syrian-refugee-camp-art-painting-colors.html, 25 January 2017 6

Samar Sabie, Jay Chen, Azza Abouzied, Fatma Hashim, Harleen Kahlon, Steve Easterbrook, ACM Limits, http://acmlimits. org/2017/papers/limits17-sabie.pdf, June 2017

Concerning constructions, we also find in both case, recommendations for safety

7

RT Question More, https://www.rt.com/usa/401479-burningman-deaths-gathering/, 30 August 2017

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THE 10 PRINCIPLES OF THE BURNING MAN

THE CAMP MANAGEMENT TOOLKIT

«Radical Inclusion Anyone may be a part of Burning Man. We welcome and respect the stranger. No prerequisites exist for participation in our community.»

«The humanitarian principles of humanity, neutrality, impartiality and operational independence represent the ethical foundation for the work of the Camp Management Agency, as for all the other stakeholders carrying out humanitarian work in emergencies.»

«Communal Effort Our community values creative cooperation and collaboration. We strive to produce, promote and protect social networks, public spaces, works of art, and methods of communication that support such interaction.»

«The capacity to participate in decision-making processes increases if community representatives and members acquire the necessary knowledge to contribute to the governance of the camp. This is a fundamental method of reinforcing a sense of dignity, reducing vulnerability and helping build local capacity while reinforcing coping strategies in times of crisis.»

«Leaving No Trace Our community respects the environment. We are committed to leaving no physical trace of our activities wherever we gather. We clean up after ourselves and endeavor, whenever possible, to leave such places in a better state than when we found them.»

«The Camp Management Agency should ensure that not only visible impacts on the environment, such as the restoration or rehabilitation of vegetation cover, are addressed. It should also note such issues as overuse of groundwater resources or of surface or groundwater. This is also important towards the closure of a camp.»

«Participation Our community is committed to a radically particIpatory ethic. We believe that transformative change, whether in the individual or in society, can occur only through the medium of deeply personal particIpation. We achieve being through doing.

Everyone is invited to work. Everyone is invited to play. We make the world real through actions that open the heart.»

«Special attention should be given to ensuring that all groups are able to participate, including those with spe- cific needs, those who are marginalised or who lack a voice in decision-making processes.

While participatory approaches should respect local culture, they should also mitigate, where possible, culturally-embedded power relationships which may be exploitative or oppressive.»

«Civic Responsibility We value civil society. Community members who organize events should assume responsibility for public welfare and endeavor to communicate civic responsibilities to participants. They must also assume responsibility for conducting events in accordance with local, state and federal laws.»

«The Camp Management Agency has responsibility for the safety and security of its staff and acts as the facilitator for the coordination of security in the camp (meetings and focal point). However, other agencies operating in the camp must remain security aware and take personal responsibility for their safety as situations can change quickly.»

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The settlement: self-expression versus rationality

Within the districts, the settlements and rules are significantly different from the Burning Man Festival to the Za’atari refugee camp. First of all, the size of the districts are different, the districts of the refugee camp are much bigger.

Thus, the vocabulary expresses this difference.

In one hand, the word village, in the festival, evocates the small scale of organization and the a sense of community and identity.

On the other hand, the term district for the refugees camp, results in a neutral expression of subdivision. Settlements of the refugees within the districts are organized and decided by organizations whereas the participants of the festival have the freedom to design and arrange their piece of land as they wish and to form villages by gathering several piece of land. In this case, the settlement is the result of self-expression and identity and enables the constituted community to participate actively in the layout of the city. However, still in the limits of the “master plan”.

Finally, huge differences are noticeable between the festival and the refugee camp when it comes to the shelter. In both cases, shelters design is ruled by regulations and guides to ensure safety and security for the inhabitants. However, in the refugee camp, the shelter is predefined and the same for all the families. The inhabitants cannot influence the placement and orientation of the shelter.

In the festival, people are likely to design their own shelter. The architecture of it results in a personal choice. Self expression is lacking and alternative intiatives, as described previously are growing within the refugee camps. People build their new life by personalizing their home, expression of their identity.

Public spaces play a fundamental role in the social life of communities. They are space for leisure but also education and widely contribute to gather the community. The introduction of the village scale could be a good source of inspiration for the refugee camps. It would enable to have settlements that fit more to the cultural habits and customs of families. In the refugees camps an important lack of shared public space with more intimacy is remarquable. They are usually designed for the district scale.

However, people are more likely to gather in small comitees and thus, provinding public spaces in the neighbourhood scale could upgrade the living conditions within the camps without making it permanent.

The public equipment settlement is radically different. The Burning Man festival really settles three scales of public space: the whole site, in-between the districts and within the district. Public open spaces are extremely encouraged8 to create pleasant places where people can gather and meet. When it comes to the refugee camps, these types of space are mandatory. However, in terms of design, they may challenge the community customs and habits. In the Burning Man festival, the design and location of public spaces are the results of the community needs and vision of the life within a city or a village whereas in the Za’atari refugees camp, the settlement of public equipment and spaces is the result of a rational vision of need with the participation of the refugees more or less important. Good living conditions with meeting, resting and sitting areas are highlighted in the festival context, whereas functionality is prioritized in the refugees context.

8

Burning Man Festival official website, https://burningman.org/ event/camps/village-planning/

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BURNING MAN FESTIVAL

ZA’ATARI REFUGEE CAMP

DISTRICT DIVIDED IN PIECE OF LAND

COMMUNITY CENTRE

CARS & BIKES SEATS

WATER

SETTLEMENT OF PUBLIC EQUIPMENTS & SPACES

SHADED ZONES

DISTRIBUTION PLAYGROUND RECREATION

SETTLEMENT OF SHELTERS

0

0

10 meters

7

100meters

Shelters in the Burning Man festival : from innovation to disappointment

Many shelter experimentations take place at this event. Two shelter projects: The Decapod by an American designer and musician, Sanford Ponder and The Hexayurt by Vinay Gupta, an American engineer, were first built in the Black Rock Desert and then developed and investigated for a humanitarian purpose.

their availability immediately after a disaster and their transport in the most rural areas.

Indeed, The Decapod for instance is made of fire-retardant, waterproofed, laminatedcardboard and white translucent UV-resistant Chloroplast plastic. The Hexayurt is made of cardboard covered with different layers of materials depending on the climatic conditions to have a pleasant atmosphere inside. So we can hardly consider to use these shelters in very rural areas where the access is difficult if we have to wait for the specific materials to be manufactured.

One of the main advantage of the shelters is the climate adaptation. They don’t require high-tech devices to heat or cool the air inside the shelter. The strength and the flexibility of the structure are also interesting since it can be placed anywhere and different shelter can be assembled together to fit the needs of a family. Few tools are required to assemble the elements so we can easily imagine this building, being built in rural areas. For instance, The Hexayurt required only fiber tape to be assembled9. These light and independently stabilized structures can be placed on any kind of surface. Thus, we can imagine the adaptability if this shelter in different geographic and climatic contexts.

Thus, the festival is the theater of innovation in terms of shelter design. However, The main problem of these shelter is the sustainability.

Indeed, even though the creativity and effectiveness of the shelter are openings to the refugee shelter design, the purpose they are made for originally: a one week festival, make them too weak to be introduced in the refugees camp. Thus, they need to be developed and they most of the time, loose of their advantages. Generally a shelter in a refugee camp last six months but the Better Shelter designed by IKEA last at least three years and that’s why it is used in many refugee camps.12 Nonetheless, they can be an inspiration for the design of emergency shelters since they are flexible and adaptable in terms of size, that could fit to different size of family.

Although, the disadvantages of these shelters are significant and explain why they can’t be used in an emergency purpose. First they require a lot of time and manpower to be built (8 persons and one day per shelter for The Decapod10). Also, when it comes to strength and resistance, they become quite heavy. Indeed, they are designed very light for the festival but since a refugee camp last much longer, 17 years average, they need to be strengthened to resist to very extreme climate conditions. Thus, the structure becomes heavier by adding stronger materials such as wood. For example, designers tried to develop The Decapod for humanitarian purpose, but the shelter weighted 346kg. It couldn’t be move. By developing the shelters for a humanitarian purpose, they have lost a lot of effectiveness and became impractical11.

Finally, we can also discuss the use of such high-tech materials for the walls and question

9

The Hexayurt official website, hexayurt.com

10

Folded Homes, http://foldedhomes.com/PDF_docs/PodGal-

lery.pdf, 2009 11 http://files.howtolivewiki.com/hexayurt_design_like_you_ give_a_damn.pdf 12

Oliver Wainwright, The Guardian, https://www.theguardian. com/artanddesign/2017/jan/27/why-ikea-flatpack-refugeeshelter-won-design-of-the-year, 27 January 2017

8

25,66

THE DECAPOD ASSEMBLY

8” 8

15,69

16” 7,48

9”

24” 25,66

THE HEXAYURT ASSEMBLY 4” 8”

8

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CASE STUDIES: THE KITCHEN MONUMENT The Architecture of Displacement Archive

The Pop-up phenomena: applications for humanitarian purposes? The Kitchen Monument project

by Emilie Mendiboure student In Transit Elective 2017 The Oslo School of Architecture & Design

The Pop-up cities phenomena : application for humanitarian purpose ?

The Kitchen Monument project.

This Kitchen Monument was developed by the German architects group, Raumlabor in 2014 in Berlin. This mobile sculpture has two states of being. It’s a zinc sheet clad sculpture that can be extended into public space by a pneumatic spatial mantle that transforms it into a temporary collective space.The inflated structure is 20 meters x 12 meters large and 6 meters high. A translucent reinforced PE laminate plastic is confined in the metal structure and the ventilator under the grading blows the air inside the membrane to inflate it. The project aims to be a space of connection and communication through the cooking activities. It was such a success that the collaborative German group developed, later one, a similar project called “the Space Buster” where the metal structure becomes a small truck which makes it more movable.

The program inside also extended to larger ambitions: a meeting room or a workshop.

if these are cheap, the structure isn’t resilient to strong winds. The accessibility to this kind of technology is also a question to take into account in emergency situations.

Pop-up ventures developed by temporary projects are becoming more and more desired and appreciated in cities around the world.

For example, in Uk the pop-up phenomena is promoted by the communities minister Eric Pickles to reactivate high streets after the 2008 recession.13 It enhances creativity, social skills and bring new vitality to the city, Repurposing vacant sites, old building and more generally forgotten spaces is the goal of these punctual installations. They give a new breath to the city by opening up space, both geographically and culturally, for alternative uses.14 They are also a promising model of participatory and sharing.

In emergency contexts, providing good public spaces is as important as providing shelters.

Socializing and giving a feeling of safety and security are definitely important for people who are going through crisis situations. Simple temporary social infrastructures could be an opening to new types of space in refugee camp. They contribute to “empower” refugees by having access to public equipment like a regular citizen and bring new vitality to the camp.15 By promoting participation, they also contribute to bring identity and gather the community. An like the Fablab in the Za’atari refugee camp, they connect a poor person with something that belongs to the 21th century and thus, help them to be less excluded.

When it comes to emergency contexts, this structure has some interesting potentials. It’s a flexible space that can fit in various contexts.

This low-cost construction provides a space with a pleasant atmosphere where you feel comfortable thanks to the uniform light. The structure can be installed in 20 minutes and deflated in 10 minutes. The space created inside can gather different types of activities to create social interactions and encounters.

Although disadvantages are significant.

The mechanism to inflate the structure and maintain a constant air pressure requires a lot of energy and even more when it comes to heating. Social or cultural questions must be taken into account in a camp settlement and this public space may challenge a lot some cultures. People inside can be seen from the outside, the building become thus an observatory object and one can feel uncomfortable with this situation, especially when it challenges the culture. Finally, when it comes to strength, the structure requires some extra elements to be stabilized, and even

13

David Lepeska, Citylab, https://www.citylab.com/ design/2012/05/rise-temporary-city/1865/, 1 May 2012 14

Ella Harris, Mel Nowocki, The Guardian, https://www. theguardian.com/cities/2015/jul/20/cult-temporary-pop-upphenomenon-cities, 20 July 2015 15

Kilian Kleinschmidt, Dezeen, Interview, https://www.dezeen. com/2015/11/23/refugee-camps-cities-of-tomorrow-killiankleinschmidt-interview-humanitarian-aid-expert/, 3 November 2015, accessed 4.12.2017

12

Translucent reinforced PE laminated plastic Ventilator to inflate and heat

Empty space inside for the kitchen and tables

Entrance and ventilation

13