Return to the Common - extracts by Patrícia Capanema A. Fernandes

return to the common SECOND YEAR STUDIO

Studio Professors: DAAR: Sandi Hilal, Alessandro Petti, Eyal Weizman with Lieven De Cauter Studio Participants: Sanne van den Breemer, Gabriel A. Cuéllar, Patrícia Fernandes, Zhongqi Ren, Sai Shu, Rizki M. Supratman

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Patrícia Capanema Álvares Fernandes

Foreword This studio started from an interest in the relation between space and politics. For the second year research program at Berlage, we were eager to investigate the ways that politics translates into architectural form and the role of architects in this process of translation. Inspired and motivated by the work of DA AR , this studio was initiated by our group of six participants with the support of Lieven De Cauter. Closely observing DA AR ’s previous research, the studio’s site of investigation and field of action was the conflictual geography of Israel/Palestine. The studio focused on a theme that is central to the conflict, the Right of Return. DA AR ’s work on the role that architecture and urbanism play within the colonization—and decolonization—of Palestine was the starting point to develop this project. We believed that proposals for intervention there must be informed by a specific understanding of the context and were fortunate to spend a month and a half working there. Furthermore, it was crucial that research and application together form a integrated, not sequential, mode of projection. The brief and aim of the studio, kept open from the start, were created along the way, shaped by the many discussions and collaborations that unfolded during the process. The experience of this studio has been more than we could imagine. It has been rewarding to be involved in this project, Return to the Common, and a pleasure to enjoy the insight and company of our tutors and collaborators. Return to the Common studio participants June, 2012 Sanne van den Breemer Gabriel Cuéllar Patrícia Fernandes Zhongqi Ren Sai Shu Rizki Supratman

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Patrícia Capanema Álvares Fernandes

Introduction I. Defining the Common, Imagining the Return The Return to the Common Studio speculates the notion of the common in contraposition to the dominant categories of public and private. Both private and public lands embody a relation between people and things, that is regulated by the state. The state guarantees private property and maintains the public one. In Palestine, the idea of the public is particularly toxic. Although prior to Israel’s colonization there existed a wide multiplicity of collective lands and collective uses of land—agricultural, religious, nomadic, etc.—upon occupying the land and excluding its people, the state flattened them all into one category; “state land”, and seized control over it as the sovereign. In this way, it transformed what was common into public, which in this specific context of colonial occupation, meant for the use of Jewish Israelis only. The contours of public land became the blueprint for colonization and Palestinian rights were reduced to individual rights on private land. However, in many cases, Israel also took this land and exiled its inhabitants. The consequences of this expropriation has not only affected property rights but also forms of collective life that were practiced on collective land, relegating the Palestinians to either isolated private parcels or exile, suppressed from any idea of a public or collective domain. The fundamental question of the studio is whether it is possible to think and practice a political collectively beyond the frame of state and consequently, from a spatial perspective, in which way this collective might be different. The idea of the common in our context is a set of relations between people and things—organized by the principle of equality—that is not mediated by the state. In our investigations in this studio, we start exploring the common from the conditions that exist today in the extraterritorial spaces of Palestinian refugee camps and its mirror image in the destroyed Palestinian villages of 1948 . On the one hand, the camps are UN -administered areas carved out from State sovereignty. On the other hand, the villages demolished in 1948 are suspended spaces, “absentee properties” managed temporarily by the State. After 60 years the memory of a single house from the village is now equally shared by hundreds of families. In the camp, the common is the absence of private property, but also the shared history of displacement and imagined future of a return. The notion of ‘return’ has defined the life in the camp, but also the diasporic and extraterritorial nature of Palestinian politics and cultural life as a whole. While often trapped in political negotiations and long term abstraction, return also has a present dimension. A future ideal can be grounded in today’s practices and material reality. These present practices of return might include elements of daily life in refugee camps and the interaction of the idea of return with the built reality of the camp – often a form of architecture that seeks to communicate temporariness – practices through which the camps become spheres of action. They might also include the material practices of

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memory, archaeology being one of them, or other cultural and artistic practices that operate within an extraterritorial space but always in relation to an imagined one. Thinking the return from the conditions that exist in both the villages of origin and places of refuge, it cannot only be considered in its private dimension. In this respect, thinking the revolution that return is, is fundamentally thinking a revolution in relation to property. From these premises the studio explores the Palestinian Territories: the refugee camps, but also the larger area of the West Bank. On the other side it looks into the former Palestinian territory: the villages and neighbourhoods that where lost after the Nakba. As heart of the Palestinian urbanity, Jaffa here plays an important role. The findings on site form the starting point for a discussion on the return in its common dimension, both in its current practices and in a visionary future. The studio investigates the role of architecture in a context of conflict, a context mainly approached from a political point of view, that nevertheless in reality has very concrete spatial implications.

Patrícia Capanema Álvares Fernandes

II. On the Collective Process Presented in this report is a work that has been produced in dialogue and interaction with various actors. Structurally the work is based on DA AR ’s methodology of investigation and action, approaching architecture not only as built form, but also as narration and collective learning. Within the specific yet paradigmatic context of extreme dualization, which exists in Palestine but as well in many other areas in the world, the project of decolonizing architecture opens new ways of thinking, designing and acting against the logic of colonialism: decolonization of architecture, practices of return and reinventing of the commons. After working on diverse research and design projects during their first year at the Berlage Institute, the six participants of the Return to the Common studio, initiated this second year research project, focusing on the relation of space and politics. Instead of proposing a design approach based on a predefined concept or ideology, the studio’s interest lay in the possibility of design emerging from reality. For an initial theoretical exploration of the concept of the common, but also for critical reflection throughout the entire studio, Lieven de Cauter played an important. An essential and fundamental part of this studio was represented by fieldwork. A close understanding of such a complex and extreme situation was crucial for preparing any idea of intervention. In November 2011, during the first visit, the participants had the opportunity to explore potential project sites, participate in meetings, engage in informal conversations and combine theory with first-hand experience. For this occasion, DA AR extended an invitation to the studio made by two local non-governmental organizations: Badil, a Palestinian NGO based in Bethlehem and Zochrot, an Israeli NGO based in Tel Aviv, to contribute architectural scenarios for the return of Palestinian refugees to the Jaffa-Tel Aviv metropolitan area. Initial materials produced by the studio have been presented to representatives of the two groups, opening up for further collaborations and beyond the academic dimension, using architecture to shape a new discourse around the right of return of Palestinian refugees. During the year, other occasions to present the work to a larger audience arose. In January 2012 , on occasion of DA AR ’s exhibition at Nottingham Contemporary, the studio participants presented their project as part of the opening seminar. Experts such as Sari Hanafi, professor of sociology at the American University of Beirut and Rasha Salti, independent curator contributed to the event and engaged in a discussion on the right of return. In the light of the revolutionary protests from Cairo’s Tahrir Square to the stairs of St. Paul’s cathedral, we expanded our reflection on the common. The second fieldwork, which took place in March 2012 , initiated new collaborations. Organized in conjunction with Al Quds Bard University in Jerusalem and supported by the GIZ Social and Cultural

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Fund for Palestinian Refugees and Gaza Population, during this period the participants were engaged in the Campus in Camps project, an experimental educational program for refugees from various camps in the West Bank. Moreover, working within the context of two refugee camps, Deheishe and Al Arrub, the participants had the opportunity to apply their previous research to real architectural interventions on site. In collaboration with the Local Committee of Arrub and the director of Al Feneiq, the studio worked on a landscape intervention, that provides the basic infrastructure for the refugees to expand their activities in nearby green areas. Under the patronage of UNRWA Camp Improvement Program, the studio contributed to the design and realization of the “Deheishe Center”. This architectural project is the culmination of a year-long work that combined research, education, activism and theoretical speculation as a form tactical intervention in a political process. The three phases of the work: theoretical work, research on site and architectural projects developed together with the refugees, have resulted in the following five projects. These projects originated in collaboration and together represent a collective project. Here presented in the form of an “instant picture,” the work forms part of an ongoing process . Within the Palestinian condition of constant transformation, this work plays a role in diverse contexts, from forums of discussion to constructions on the ground.

Muawiyah Amar, UNRWA Sanne van den Breemer Umar al-Ghubari, Zochrot Ruins Under Construction Muhammed Jabali, Jaffa Project

Gabriel Cuéllar Fact No. 23

Naser Maraqa, engineer Patrícia Fernandes Reclaiming the Landscape

Livia Minoja, UNRWA

Zhongqi Ren Naji Owdeh, Al Feneiq Reactivating the Network Sai Shu

Sharon Rotbard, architect Constructing the Common George Sabat, engineer

Rizki Supratman Basem Sbaih, Badil

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Entering the Camps: A Firsthand Account of the Refugee Condition As our first visits to the camps, we went to see the amphitheater in Aida Camp, constructed and maintained by the refugees themselves. The structure is situated on a piece of land along the partition wall, on the side of the camp. The occupation was negotiated with the owners, a church institution that having its lands fragmented by the wall, ended up on the other side. The amphitheater supports of refugees for meetings, gatherings and wedding parties, as the open space that serves the community of the camp. We visited the Al Arrub refugee camp to see the stadium that Sandi suggested we see. The density of Arrub camp has increased significantly in recent years, leaving hardly any space for people in or around the camp to gather. As a response to this, the refugees decided to create the stadium by flattening a section of the hill nearby the camp. That particular part of the hill is actually located in Area C, a legal category of land in the West Bank that basically prohibits any construction by Palestinians. Nevertheless, the border is elastic and both Palestinians and Israelis push and pull at the border of Area C in order to claim more land. For this reason, the exact path of the Area C border cannot be pinpointed. In this site, we were confronted with three possible versions of the Area C border: one from the B’tselem map, one from the builders of stadium, and one from the refugees themselves. The entire construction of the stadium was perhaps only possible because, at the time of its undertaking, the Israeli army was preoccupied with their bombing of Gaza. The stadium works like an extraterritorial space for the refugees, giving them claim for a piece of land cut out of Area C. On the occasion of the railway tour, we visited the camp in Jenin, which suffered many IDF attacks in 2002 , leaving the central area of the camp in ruins. In addition to the ruins of the former train station which have been reused and absorbed in the fabric of the camp, another important stop of the visit was the Freedom Theater. It is the development of the initiative taken by Arna Mer Khamis during the First Intifada to address children’s trauma under the occupation through the therapy of theater and arts. After the violent events of 2002 , the population of Jenin tried to overcome the trauma with the rebirth of the theater, which is today assisting and educating a large number of children and young adults. The institution was reestablished and had been directed by Arna’s son, Juliano, who was recently assassinated. In Balata camp, the densest (around 25,000 in one sq. km.) and most distressed camp of the West Bank, a tour was followed by interviews with local leaders on life in the camp and their thoughts on the Return. What was mostly striking was the disparity of the discourses between Balata refugees and Arrub ones. While the latter constantly positioned their ideals, daily moves and constant negotiations in relation to returning, even affirming to be able to foresee the return happening

Amphitheater in Aida Camp

This amphitheater was built several years ago to welcome the Pope, who ultimately declined due to the proximity of the Israeli turret seen behind.

view of the stadium in Arrub

The view of the stadium built on the hill as soon from the camp.

Meeting with stadium engineer

Naser Maraqa is the engineer who works on the Arrub stadium

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in the next ten years, the leaders in Balata were almost completely distrustful of any future expectations and intensively concerned with the present social and economical crisis of inhabitants of the camp. It is important to stress here that the camp, along with the city of Nablus, was under complete military curfew for seven years and was just recently reopened. On top of that, the camp has been under large influence of the strict Muslim party Hamas. While visiting the Deheishe camp, on November 25th, the studio participants were taken on a tour guided by a local important actor, social worker and activist, Murad Owdeh. Guiding us through the narrow streets of the camp, he highlighted the street art spread throughout the camp walls. The struggle in exile and constant fight for the Return are truly impressive. We heard stories about martyrs, destruction by the IDF, social work, and humanitarian aid. We also passed by two local community centers: Ibdaa, focused on sports activities for the youth and craft activity for empowering woman and family economy, and Al Feneiq Cultural Center, a large community center, hosting activities such as women’s gym, children’s garden, salon for weddings, etc. The several NGO s of Deheishe camp operate in all different fields receiving, apart from UN assistance, voluntary work from all over the world. Next to the entrance of the camp, a mundane-looking bridge connects Deheishe to the new refugee city Doha, the camps spillover. The painted white concrete building blends into the surroundings, except for the two murals of martyrs on side. The bridge carries extraordinary political and symbolic significance for several reasons. It is completely financed and self-constructed by the refugees and it is the only pedestrian bridge in the West Bank. It also violates the Oslo Accords that stipulate that no bridges should be constructed over roads. The bridge also crosses UNRWA’s administrative area, infringing on the jurisdiction of the Bethlehem municipality. Eperhaps practically not needed, is a portrait of the remarkable achievements of Deheishans: it demonstrates of appropriation and transformation of space not only in the confines of the camp, but also beyond it. In March 2012 the studio participants were invited by Al Quds University to participate as project activators in the Campus in Camps project, raising the opportunity for a second field trip. The experience gained during this period played fundamental role on the ongoing studio projects, since we worked daily in a facility at the Al Feneiq Center in Deheishe, having close contact with the refugee- students, camp leaders, and other program activators and volunteers. We were also able to follow of the partial demolition of the Deheishe Center and participated in several meetings with the local engineer, the center’s board of directors, and construction workers. Our participation in the Campus in Camps program included a hike in the desert with the students and most importantly, a seminar in the Al Feneiq with the participation of the Jaffa-based Palestinian activist Muhammed Jabali. On this occasion, we presented our proposals for building in the camp, as well as our recent speculations on the Return for Palestinian refugees and engaged in the ensuing discussion.

jenin refugee camp

The studio visited the camp in order to see the building of the city’s former train station

Narrow streets of Balata camp

This camp is densest in the West Bank and most streets are not even one meter wide

Alle y in Deheishe camp

A typical side street in Deheishe Patrícia Capanema Álvares Fernandes

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The deheishe-doha bridge

Pedestrian bridge connecting Deheishe camp and the municipality of Doha

near the deheishe center

A street that leads to the site of the Deheishe Center

Seminar presentation

e-mail correspondence : Exchanges between the participants and the engineer of the Dheisheh Center

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As part of the Campus in Camps program, the studio presented its project at the Al Feneiq Cultural Center PatrĂcia Capanema Ă lvares Fernandes

view over deheishe : The roof of the Al Feneiq Center, located on a hill, affords one a view of the camp and Doha (on right).

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PatrĂcia Capanema Ă lvares Fernandes

Constructing a Common Space

In the camps, there is no public, as there are no public institutions. Nor is there private property, as the refugees do not own their houses. The common—a means to support refugehood— emerges from an architecture that embodies this condition.

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Patrícia Capanema Álvares Fernandes

The Refugee Camps and Return When thinking about the ‘Right of Return’ one must think not only about the place to return to, hence the villages of origin, but from where to return: the refugee camps. While the demolished villages are extraterritorial and defined as ‘absentee property’, the camps, defined as ‘United Nations run area’, are extraterritorial for being distinctively cut out legally and spatially from its surroundings, where there are no national civil rights, but only humanitarian life. In theory, political life and bare life are separated. The borders of the camp, although no longer physically existent, are very much present in the collective memory of the camp’s inhabitants as they represent the “rights to have rights as refugees.“ (Agamben, G. On Hannah Arendt’s ‘We Refugees’). This extra-territoriality of the camp is what provides the emergence of new forms of production of subjectivity, and new ways in which to re-think the return. It is extraterritorial for being, not where the law is suspended, but a place protected by international law. Paradoxically, camps are spaces of intense urbanity, where life and politics are combined in a very complex way. The Deheishe Case In the aftermath of the 1948 Nakba in Palestine, the new reality lead to the establishment of refugee camps all around the Middle East along with the creation of UNRWA , the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in 1950 ). When the institution was established, it’s only concern was to provide humanitarian aid to palestinian refugees. Humanitarian aid in this case can be defined as ‘politics of life’, as the politics of providing life and avoiding death. In the beginning of the 50’s, together with the establishment of Deheishe camp, the Youth Program Center was created for the relief of young refugees. Over the next two decades, the population of Deheishe managed to completely politicize the Youth Center. For that reason, under the pressure of Israeli government, UNRWA , which obligations were purely humanitarian, had to close it. After 60 years of exile, the situation of the refugees has been deeply aggravated and a condition that was supposed to be temporary became more and more permanent. Not only have the spatial conditions of the camp drastically transformed, but

also the shape of humanitarianism. Specially in the case of Palestinians, due to the extended period of displacement and the unresolved situation, humanitarianism has shifted from a crisis response to a condition of life. Efforts are no more only in disaster relief but something that is more like a social service works and development projects. According to the anthropologist Ilana Feldman, from the ‘politics of life’ to the ‘politics of living.’ Today UNRWA provides not only food rations but a wide range of education and health services and activities, physical infrastructure and development and micro-finance programs. The Deheishans are today highly engaged in the issues of the camp, where life revolves around the political claim or the right of return. As such, in the camp where the past is frozen, the present can be little more than the anticipation of the idealized but uncertain future. Moreover, the strong presence of both UNRWA , as administrative body, and the Palestinian Authority reinforces this engagement. It is fundamental to understand how the sixty years of exile has shaped the refugee’s identity and influenced their political life. When we speak about being political it does not mean only to fight for their rights or to fight against a common evil enemy. Being politically engaged means forming assemblies and making decisions in the name of the community. (Foucault, 1978 )

a rw

Non-Governmental Organizations One of the most striking aspects of the Deheishe camp is the presence of more than twenty NGO s of all different fields simultaneously operating inside the one kilometer-squared space of the camp. Through direct collaboration and/or financial support, these NGO s are connected with other governments and institutions around the world. In the map, we see that the camp is actually highly connected internationally. The notion of the camp as an isolated space confined in it’s own borders is challenged. In the camp, this multiplicity of organizations creates a sort of “non-governmental-government” an immanent system that runs in correspondence to the reality on the ground.

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internationally connected : Non-governmental organizations in Deheishe refugee camp

Patrícia Capanema Álvares Fernandes

IBDAA Center

Local Committee UNRWA Central Services Office

UNRWA Health Care

AL-Feniq (Phoenix) Center Rehabilitation Center

Woman’s Program Center

Deheishe Kindengarten

Hiwar Centre

Architecture in the Camp When we look into the spatial distribution of the NGO s in the camp, we notice that most of them are concentrated in one area, the UNRWA compound. Often occupying different rooms in the same building, the NGO s, community organizations and UNRWA facilities are creating an interwoven web of government. Looking closer at this complex of UN , we see that the common architecture of NGO s in Deheishe camp is a rather banal one. They are all enclosed and stacked in the same type of boxbuilding regardless of their function. The boxes are then subdivided and filled with various programs: health clinic, offices, kindergarden, guest-houses, cinema, theater, etc.

UNRWA Compound

the architecture of non-governmental organizations in deheishe

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Patrícia Capanema Álvares Fernandes

The Deheishe Center After the Oslo Agreement in 1992 , the population of Deheishe felt free to reconstruct the Youth Program Center. In the presence of more than 20 NGO s in the camp, operating in all fields and fulfilling the needs of the population, the now called Deheishe Center aims to be the political center of the community. Since then, twice the building has been constructed and thereafter demolished in the struggle to find the appropriate spatial form that would represent its essence and be fully committed to its ambition towards the camps and its community. In the end of summer of 2011 a very important political moment took place in Deheishe: the elections for the board of the Deheishe Center, event which, in the camp, was considered of much more importance than national elections. It was promised by the winning party to start the re-construction of the building for the center immediately after the elections. And so it followed. The building—along with its construction—is extremely important because it is the physical manifestation of a political act. It needs to represent the entire community of the camp, and to belong to all. This is why, in this case, another box-shaped building is constructed almost automatically. On the course of the construction is the moment to think of the program, size and shape, or basically, how to subdivide a box.

this carved space becomes the ‘stage’ facing the adjacent plaza, then transformed in the ‘audience’ seating area. The design responds to the desires of the Youth Program Center to be both open to the community and the stage for political discourse, thought in the traditional way to conceive a political space that is constructed around a stage in which politics is performed. But contrary to NGO s with it’s limited publics and accountability, the Center belongs to all refugees of Deheishe and its initiative is a collective attempt to re-establish the political dimension of the camp. Learning from the patterns of politics in such condition, more to the side of a immanent system of multiplicities than to one centralized power, instead of a bipolar relation between stage and audience, the space should embody the multiplicity of actors and relations of the camp.

Negotiations over Construction and Destruction The process that emerged after this, is a process that challenges any conventional linear timeline of design and construction as well as any bilateral relation of architect and client. In a process of multiple actors and constant negotiations, design follows construction, which follows design, which also follows destruction. The refugee’s construction undertaking was frozen by the intervention of UNRWA architects in conjunction with DA AR after a series of discussions on ambitions of the Deheishe Center into being open for all, therefore a plaza, but simultaneously to be the political center of the camp, therefore it had to be a building. As oppose to the box that it would become, the intervening architects proposed what would be the ‘opening of the box.’ The solidity that would remain, contains the offices, library and other rooms while

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Refugees

Refugees UNRWA DA AR

Refugees UNRWA DA AR Berlage studio

design timeline : Over several months, the design of the building was shaped by more and more actors.

Patrícia Capanema Álvares Fernandes

The new proposal is not genuinely new but is in fact a consequence of a transformation process which was initiated by the refugees, challenged by UNRWA and DA AR and has most lately been articulated in conjunction with all the actors here previously mentioned, an others. The concept of having multiple stages was the first principle for the current design proposal. Seats and platforms should be distributed throughout the space, starting from the open area and permeating in a sequence of stages and steps around a central, double-height area. The decision of enclosing the entire space comes from the contradictory relation between public and private. The “publicness” of the program of the Youth Center demands an open area which is accessible, usable and visible by all. Yet, such openness contradicts the fact that for Deheishans, the public refers to those spaces that are left over and neglected. Moreover, walls, a roof and a door are necessary elements to create a sense of enclosure. In the camp, even spaces that are open are not necessarily “public.” In order to be common, it has to be protected. Both physically and programmatically the building is composed by three basic elements: the protecting shell, the closed rooms, placed along the existing structure of the current building, and finally, at the intersection of those, the central void emerges. The shape of the building is determined by the extrusion of the plot and then the same shape is deformed with simple moves of the ridge, shaping the slopes and operating simultaneously on the assemblage of roof and surrounding walls. The envelope is the component that frames the protected common space in the camp. The shell, at the same time that is thin, it has the hardness or a rock. Here, this metaphor is used to constitute a building that is unique and whose volume transmits the strength and resistance which characterizes life in the camp.

The Deheishe Center and its surroundings

e volution of the building’s form : The shell is cut , making a skylight for the central space with additional light and ventilation.

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landscape

theater

platforms

Interior Landscape The central void is for large gatherings. The space is demarcated by the two other elements, the envelope and the rooms, at the same time that it intersects them. With three different entrances— main, side and back—on three different height levels, sloping down from the front towards the back, the space could be interpreted as an enveloped landscape. It is a landscape that is open for the gathering of people, also performs as a realm for multiple and creative interactions. At the same time, there is a the need antd desire of the space to perform like a theater and organize the audience in an arena configuration. This sloped landscape is thereafter organized in the shape of platforms in different heights, sizes and shapes in which diverse activities could take shape. At the same time the larger and lowest platform performs as a main stage, while the other smaller ones offer the possibilities of engaging people as spectators, like in an arena or also as performers, on secondary stages. This field created by the envelope and the landscape is the environment that evokes constant transformations and activation of the space in its collective dimension.

shell , rooms, and landscape

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Envelope The protecting shell is the envelope created by walls and roof. It is the element that materializes the separation between inside and outside demarcating what is private property land, except that in this case it demarcates what is the common, in opposition to the public domain of the camp. Moreover, it represents the frontier, the edge, the enclosure, the border. On crossing this border, the entrance gains extreme importance as being the threshold through which to be transported from the density and roughness of the camp outside to this other space. The volume of the building, from the outside, gives the impression of being a closed box, when in fact itâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s open. In opposition, after crossing the threshold, the space surprises by being open. The double walls and double door give thickness to the barrier while radicalizing the experience of crossing, while the small enclave created between the doors and the walls on the entrance compresses the visitor before leading to the freedom of the open space. The wall is the element that creates the protected open space. But this barrier, which is virtually a line, has to be understood in its three-dimensionality. The same solid that separates carries two different characters in itâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s faces: the external which is the public face and internally, the domestic.

Section

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Demolition : After the excavation, the demolition plans were discussed with the engineers. The precise destruction began the next day.

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Description of the Spaces On the ground floor, the wall formerly enclosing the building is demolished in order to make space for the lower, larger arena and also the slab, to give the double height. The greater part of the space remains undivided, with exception of service areas, in an attempt to challenge the politics of closed doors and offices present in the camp. A back entry is included, connecting the block to the inner alley of the quarter, in direct connection with other UN buildings and local committee. The entrances are located in different levels, one in the main street and other in the side alley, both on different heights, configuring two different platforms, articulated with the stairs and access to the first floor. The rooms which needed to be closed and climate isolated, such as offices, library and meeting rooms are located in the ‘L’ shape around the arena, opening themselves to the centre through large windows in order to furnish transparence and visibility. The organization of this multiple types of spaces provides various possibilities of creating spheres for encounter, gathering and discussion. In the three closed rooms, program is defined according to different ways in which to meet, to talk, or to present. In small formal or informal conversations in the office, the place for the director, the meeting room, where medium size public could meet and project images, movies, etc, and the multi-purpose room, which is a even more protected space, yet open, for learning, using computers and socializing in a more informal environment. Both the meeting room and the multi-purpose room have two or three possibilities of access, entrance or exit, through the long balcony connected to one of the entry platforms or through the staircase.

Study / Internet

Meeting Room

Void

+0.35

+0.00

demolition plan

A large section of the upper floor and the entire retaining were demolished (shown in line pattern). This transformation allowed the entirely new orientation, and large central space, in the current design.

+1.40 +0.35 +1.05

Office

+1.05

+3.75

+0.70 +3.75

+1.40

+1.75

22 21 20 19 18 17

-2.53

+2.10

Entry

+2.45

+1.75

+2.80

Side Entry +2.80

PLAN GROUND FLOOR 1:100

-0.73

Upper Floor Plan

Back Entry -3.75

-4.55

+1.05

W.C.

Kitchen

+0.70

Multipurpose +0.00

Void

+0.00

existing wall [to be demolished] +0.35 +0.70

+1.40 +0.35 +1.05 +1.05

Storage

+0.70

+1.40

+1.75 +2.10

Ground Floor Plan

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interior view of the central space

The Berlage Institute Portfolio 2010/2012

PatrĂcia Capanema Ă lvares Fernandes

Materials When the envelope becomes a façade, it is the representational device through which it communicates to the public. Contrary to what is typical in the architecture of public spaces, the outside face of the Youth Center denies itself from any form of monumentality and presents it self to the public of the camp with a raw, rough concrete surface. Using materials and elements which are so common in the camp, the building presents itself externally as common space. The building lacks of luxury in terms of it’s materiality but has it’s spill over when it comes to shape. The stone-looking volume is highlighted from the urban fabric or the camp. The roughness of the concrete on the external wall also relates to the camp mind-set that refuses to be improved and denies any attempt of life normalization as a way in which to claim for The Return. In the extreme condition of the camp, architecture is kept to its essential elements. The very primitive elements from the built environment such as enclosure, flatness and shelter form a grammar that, combined, provide an adequate architecture for the supporting ‘refugeeness’. The simple shifting of those shapes a common protected space, neither private nor public, cut out from the density of the camp in the attempt of ‘domesticating’ the public domain and embody the refugee’s identity and the culture of exile. In the context where there are twenty other NGO s operating in all different fields, fulfilling all the needs of the refugee, the Deheishe center becomes the center for the encounter and political practice, for action or re-action. In this space, that has no definite program, the program becomes architecture in itself. The body created by the envelope and the landscape is the environment that invites for admiration and interaction. It is the common space of the camp that provides the infrastructure around everything else is organized.

The Berlage Institute Portfolio 2010/2012

Patrícia Capanema Álvares Fernandes

Postscript: A Common to Protect For more than sixty years, the camp has been looked at only as site of marginalization and humanitarian interventions. During the last years, new social and spatial practices are emerging from the camp, challenging these ideas. For decades, the effects of the political discourse around the right of return, such as the rise of a resolute position to stagnate living circumstances in refugee camps in order to reaffirm the temporariness of the camps, forced many refugees to live in terrible conditions. What emerges today is a reconsideration of this position where refugees are re-inventing social and political practices that improves their everyday life without normalizing the political exceptional condition of the camp itself. After sixty years of exile, the camps are now viewed as the village of origin: a cultural and social product to preserve and remember. The project of the “Deheishe Center” aims at creating an architectural intervention that produces a common space, which is neither public nor not private.

The Berlage Institute Portfolio 2010/2012

Patrícia Capanema Álvares Fernandes