P 2
Carlotta Conte Oliver Hester Oleg Sevelkov THE EXCHANGING ROOM
Competition: Outline Brief With more displaced people than ever since World War II, it is clear that we need bold and inspiring solutions to the issues involving the reception and integration of so many refugees. Everybody who flees from war, violence or human rights infringe-ments deserves shelter and solidarity. Yet the receiving communi-ties are ill-prepared for the sudden arrival of so many people who are often distressed, traumatized, and bereft of all possessions. The What Design Can Do Refugee Challenge is a global design competition that calls on the creative community to come up with game-changing ideas for accommodating, connecting, integrating and helping the personal development of refugees. The challenge specifically focuses on refugees in urban areas, as nearly 60 per cent of the world’s 20 million refugees now live in urban areas.
http://www.whatdesigncando.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/10/WDCDChallenge-Briefing.pdf
What Design Can do Detailed Brief 1 To Improve shelters and Reception Centres in Society http://www.whatdesigncando.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/10/WDCDChallenge-Briefing.pdf
The Challenge
Large shelter areas are opening to accommodate all the refugees arriving in Europe today. Old schools, offices and even prisons are being transformed into temporary housing units. Refugees live in crowded conditions and face a lack of privacy, often for months, if not more than a year. Also, though more than one in three of the refugees seeking asylum are children, current facilities are rarely child-friendly. At the same time, local communities are overwhelmed by the many refugees in their neighborhood. Often, the little interaction between the two groups is a missed opportunity for quick integration. The upshot is that integration has yet to start once asylum is granted, which results in additional frustration and costs for everybody involved.
The Opportunity
Experts argue for the creation of decentralized and smaller shelters that facilitate better integration within society from the start. Designers are capable of envisioning solutions that take various and sometimes conflicting interests into account. The multiple stakeholders affected by this problem can benefit from the co-creation skills of designers. Can we imagine a shelter that is an asset for both refugees and the local population? And how could such a shelter facilitate interaction between the two? Think, for instance, of possible interventions within the realms of architecture, interior design, service design or even public space design.
http://www.whatdesigncando.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/10/WDCDChallenge-Briefing.pdf
#RefugeeChallenge
Architecture Diploma CASS school of Architecture
London Metropolitan University. Unit 4
Project Introduction We are producing a framework that uses existing neglected spaces in the UK and temporarily adapts them to cater for refugees who are in the process of claiming asylum, and are at the initial stages of integrating into the local host community. The UK government has spent £100m in 2015 on providing care and support for asylum seekers, which so far proved inadequate in supplying accommodation and aid. We are proposing a new spatial, social and logistic intervention, which addresses the needs of both the refugees and the host community. Our design aim is to inhabit vacant buildings that are currently under the ‘property guardianship’ system. Our proposal aims to freely occupy these spaces and protect and maintain them while doing so. The construction system is rapidly deployable and has little to no impact on the site that it is being placed in. This is achieved by adapting traditional pallet racking as a structural system. Palette racking is a cheap, standardized system usually used for large scale storage. It has excellent structural properties and, being the industry standard, benefits from an existing well-developed logistical framework. Using this system as a basis for our proposal allowed us to design temporary dwellings in a sensitive manner utilizing the inherent adaptability and durability of pallet racking to its full extent. Alongside the pallet racking based dwelling system, we are proposing to set up a short-life co-operative. This co-operative enables us to make an authorisation agreement with vacant buildings or landowners, offering financial incentives whilst
maintaining and securing the owned land or building. This approach frees the vacant land up for our proposal; within 1 year we are able to assemble our proposed reception centre and several other independent units. The new communal spaces cater for both the host and the guest community. These spaces do not segregate minorities but encourage them to interact via a range of non-violent conflicts, clashes and exchanges, in doing so improving the host communities awareness of the global situation, whilst initiating a dialogue between the host and guest community. Finally, we believe that work and independence are everybody’s rights and are essential for the transition and integration of refugees into host communities. Through the co-operative format, refugees are able to ‘volunteer’, gaining new skills and understanding of the UK labor system. Our case study is proposed in one reception center, The Exchanging Room, located in a derelict warehouse on the edge of the River Lea, which aggregates working programs alongside 62 living units for 310 guests. The other proposed case studies relocate independent units to buildings ‘in-limbo’ in the neighboring area. These are either inside insulated spaces with working facilities or above derelict spaces, noninsulated and with no facilities. The proposals challenge current perceptions of the ‘refugee’ and suggest a more integrated inclusive society.
Project video
Video screen shots
Introduction
In 2015, 25,700 refugees applied for asylum in the UK. 41% were rejected
The government spent 100 m pound on poor housing and aid. How can we change the situation.
By inhabiting vacant land,
that you can find in london,
as in tower hamlets,
nursery and office block and a warehouse
like this warehouse that has been vacant for 20 years.
That through property guardianship
people guard without paying
a Cheap off the shelf pallet racking system makes a shelter rather then renting a space, without impacting the interiors
one centre houses 300 people, saving ÂŁ 300.000
rather than scattered organizations,
we propose to create a cooperative
where refugees will collaborate
and uk citizens will be involved, through interactive learning expeirence
External fly through view of warehouse
Museum Internal shot
Meet / Canteen interaction point
Consultation rooms and lectures are held between the host community and refugees
A workshop initiates the process of fabrication of external and internal units into the surrounding area
Accommodation units provide temporary dwellings for refugees and asylum seekers
Internal view
Video screen shots
that can be Used for Secondary aid as learning and psychological aid
Carlotta Conte Oliver Hester Oleg Sevelkov THE EXCHANGING ROOM