The Summerisation of Jordanian Shelters

THE SUMMERISATION OF JORDANIAN SHELTERS Permanent impermanence in the design of refugee camps

The Summerisation of Jordanian Shelters Permanent impermanence in the design of refugee camps

Academic Year 2013/14

Abstract

Quality of life depends largely on the ability to plan (choose) and thus self-determination; since refugees live basically without these opportunities, their condition is one of extreme suffering. Depriving them of this right to choose is forcefully manifest in the built environment in which they normally live: a planned refugee camp.

This dissertation reflects on the direct link between refugees’ loss of citizenship rights and the protocols for the design and management of refugee camps.

A comparative analysis examines this link between current camp design, its application in the Zaatari camp in Jordan, and the summerisation project for this camp.

The universal design type, defined by operational guidelines and applied in Zaatari, is a short-term solution based on a rigid, modular spatial hierarchy. The average lifespan of camps around the globe contradicts this alleged impermanence; likewise, the size and population living in Zaatari make it comparable to a city.

Failure by the Zaatari design to meet not-vital needs was tackled by refugees through reappropriation of the social and physical spaces in the camp. By modifying the predetermined military-style layout of the shelters in which they live, refugees modified the relationship between private and public space based on community dynamics.

Observing this behaviour was the basis of the summerisation project analysed in this dissertation and jointly designed by FAREstudio (Rome) and the author. In the request for consultancy by the UNHCR’s implementing partner, the term summerisation meant measures to improve the summer performance of prefabricated shelters inhabited by Syrian refugees in Zaatari. The project designed a kit for a flexible, self-built veranda rationalising the self-managed layout of the shelters and facilitating spontaneous reconstruction of community relations. The project tried to solve non-specific problems (providing shade from the sun, and encouraging self-design) using specific tools (design project) in the hope it would spark an albeit minimum process of redemption for a large group of individuals. In short, this analysis supports the idea that the final goal of architecture is to redistribute resources and rights in a dire emergency situation.

Contents

Abstract Introduction

5 8

I. System

I

1. Humanitarian aid. A summary The first humanitarian organization How war has changed. New wars and old wars The political dimension of humanitarianism Who’s who in humanitarian response?

Who are the real beneficiaries of the system?

13 16 19 21 22

2. Living in emergencies. Planned camps Refugees. Who are they and who protects them Overview of the protection of the right to housing Refugee camps. Space, time and citizenship

27 30 33

3. Camps and shelters. Design models and practices Camp design. Guidelines 1906-1981 Camp design. Guidelines 1981-1995 Camp design. Guidelines 1995-2013 Summary. Development of current camp design Shelter design. From emergency to durable solutions Interview. Shelters according to James Kennedy Interview. Shelters according to André Ullal

II. Context

37 43 45 52 56 59 64

I

4. The Zaatari refugee camp in Jordan The Syrian Civil War. Refugees living in neighbouring countries The Syrian Civil War. Refugees living in regions of Jordan The housing conditions of Syrian refugees in Jordan The Syrian Civil War. Refugees living in the Zaatari camp Considerations on the Zaatari camp. Inside vs outside Who’s Doing What Where?

69 70 71 73 76 81

5. The Zaatari design. Theory, project, implementation Camp design. Theoretical model vs the project Camp design. Project vs dynamic vision Morphological and demographic evolution of the Zaatari camp Shelter design. Project vs dynamic vision Winterisation by the NRC. A case of shelter improvement

83 90 95 100 106

III. Design

I

6. Overview of the project Summerisation. The stakeholders Summerisation. Context, scope, conditions and outcomes Trends in climate and temperature in Mafraq Trends in winds in Amman Summary. Chronology of conditions and outcomes

111 114 116 117 118

7. Shelter summerisation. The Canopy Input. Existing solutions The concept, requirements and performance of the kit Project development Summary. Canopy summerisation kit Kit assembly instructions Prototype. Canopy with tires and agricultural fabric Prototype. Canopy with blocks and tarpaulin

121 123 126 130 132 134 138

8. Shelter summerisation. The Veranda Review of existing solutions The concept, requirements and performance of the kit Project development Bill of quantities. Five options Summary. Veranda summerisation kit Kit assembly instructions Prototype. Veranda for residential shelters Prototype. Veranda for base camp shelters Prototype. Canopy + Veranda

143 145 148 152 154 156 159 161 163

Conclusions Acronyms References Websites

164 168 170 176

Introduction Subject, tools and the rationale behind the dissertation.

There are many ways to understand the reasons for a project, and learnt from it. The Summerisation of Jordanian Shelters is just one way; the name in itself contains basic information about the experience that inspired it and how it developed.

The almost cryptic lexical technicality in the title refers to an extremely hierarchical and structured intervention scenario: the refugee camps run by the international emergency cooperation system. And yet there are just three items of information in the title. First of all, the place for which the project was developed, Jordan, and in particular the Zaatari refugee camp where since 2012 thousands of refugees have arrived from nearby Syria to escape the civil war. Secondly, the scope of the intervention, shelter, i.e. the temporary housing solution usually provided to refugees in camps. Thirdly, the goal of the project, summerisation, i.e., trying to a way to improve the microclimatic conditions of shelters during the summer months.

Research for the project was based on two different perspectives: that of the participant and that of the observer. Practical participation in the project by the author began in April 2013 during an internship at FAREstudio (Rome), an architectural company frequently involved in international cooperation projects. The company’s task is to observe the world from places where architecture has no apparent role; this approach is considered a hands-on way to reflect on the meaning and future of architecture (its shortcomings and failings). The work of the FAREstudio is based on a series of ethical assumptions rather than neutral humanitarian activism. These assumptions influence the design process which in practice involves developing innovative housing types using local, consolidated and robust technologies in order to tailor the projects for the truly needy end-users living in places where shortage is systematic, substantial and endemic, rather than circumstantial (Vannucci, 2013).

During the internship the company had just begun to design summerisation solutions together with an NGO 8

active in the Zaatari refugee camp. The internship was a golden opportunity to learn and apply a work method and unfamiliar design tools – almost like walking into a completely unknown and remote environment.

Supervised by Riccardo Vannucci, it was possible to collect huge amounts of unstructured data and study several important management and implementation issues relating not only to the summerisation project, but also to the international political, bureaucratic and economic system of refugee camps. Even to the untrained eye, the data painted a seriously questionable picture of the spatial and temporal management of refugee camps.

Since refugee camps are by nature temporary, their design is influenced by a vision of architecture (and therefore of the built environment) comparable to a commodity which has to be provided regardless of its quality. The institutional and pragmatic constraints that influence the design of refugee camps do not require the morphology, building materials, and layout of the camp to form a permanent settlement. In actual fact, it’s impossible to predict how long a camp will function, but it will always be longer than originally expected. This has important consequences on the lives of refugees forced to live in a state of liminal drift (Bauman, 2004, p. 95).

Unable to know whether the situation is temporary or permanent, refugees live in places where they are denied housing and the right to citizenship, or are provided with surrogate assistance in the form of humanitarian aid. The deprivation in which refugees are forced to live materializes in this closed settlement - the camp - where it appears that all and every measure is taken to deny their right to citizenship and self-determination.

Based on the above considerations, the observer’s perspective was developed shortly after April 2013 and is the basis of this dissertation. The objective was to organise and structure the data acquired during internship at the company in order to verify the reasons and nature of critical contingent issues (the unique conditions in the Zaatari camp) or critical structural issues (arising from international design protocols,

and the use and management of the space assigned to refugees). This research will be used as a more informed interpretation tool to establish how summerisation affects life in the camps. It will be performed by comparing theoretical and ideological assumptions, their use in camp design, and how they can be applied specifically to the Zaatari camp. The three parts of the dissertation - system, context and design – gradually shift from general issues (humanitarianism), to the details (the summerisation project).

The system was analysed using general considerations focusing on the vocabulary, operation modes and contradictions of humanitarianism and on the analyses provided by social sciences which frequently focus on refugees and their extreme human and legal conditions.

Then the text becomes more specific in an attempt to understand what it means to be a refugee and why a planned camp is the most practiced way to ‘house’ them.

The current refugee camp design will be illustrated by providing a history of technical and managerial literature, i.e. the most important guidelines and reference books for camp design since the early 1970s.

The purpose of this short review will be to establish a theoretical camp design model and compare it against that of the Zaatari camp. The same method will be used for shelters, but in a more circumstantial manner; this will focus on the choices made for the Zaatari camp and include interviews and the opinions of experts in emergency shelters management and design.

Part two of the dissertation will analyse the project scenario, i.e., the Zaatari camp and how it matches up to the previously analysed theories. Specifications and quantifications regarding the morphology and nature of the camp will be followed by an urban-scale comparison between the theoretical model of current camp design, the Zaatari masterplan, and its implementation vis-à-vis the behaviour and needs of its main users - the refugees - also in relation to its lifespan. The same comparison was also performed on an urban micro-scale for the shelters and their use. The aim here is to provide data

to understand and assess the possible shortcomings of a space management model and to what degree it satisfies the needs of refugees.

The shortcomings depend on the vision that the IGOs and NGOs (responsible for caring for refugees) promote and implement as part of the complex process of returning refugees to a state of law.

Finally, part three will provide a short critical report of summerisation, once again outlining the issues studied during internship and reviewing the design process based on the two other issues: the system and the context.

Several extremely important issues were the basis for this dissertation, but in short they can be summarised in the phrase: the end of a project is never final. If we consider the project as an answer to as many questions as possible, then it becomes a process with a potentially endless number of questions and answers, of breakdown and synthesis, using familiar procedures or procedures yet to be discovered. A dissertation is a tool which at the end of a study makes it possible to experiment a viewpoint that goes beyond the essential economics of a project towards the diseconomy of research. The aim of this study is to move towards a comprehensive dimension of design in terms of knowledge and application. It is not in contrast to any particular viewpoint typical of a technical answer to a problem, on the contrary it is an attempt to broaden the horizon of a problem and steer it toward humanistic and therefore tendentially global responses.

Due to the extreme conditions and needs illustrated here, the project is an appropriate tool to develop arguments in support of the need for a vision of design tailor-made for all the great many individuals involved and enhanced by an ethical focus which can ultimately assess whether or not it is possible to use architecture to redistribute resources and rights, and how this can be done within a rigid and hierarchical system.

9

I

System

Humanitarian aid.

A summary

1

The first humanitarian organization Two contrasting perspectives can be identified at the origins of humanitarianism: the Red Cross founded by Henri Dunant and the critical activism of Florence Nightingale.

Humanitarian aid commonly refers to the emergency response to populations whose lives are in danger and who are suffering severe deprivation due to catastrophic events. It emerged in the second half of the nineteenth century, primarily in relation to wars.

One of the first humanitarian actors of the history was Swiss banker and businessman Henri Dunant.1 He was a descendant of an influential Calvinist family of Geneva and he accumulated a significant fortune in a short time.

In 1859 Dunant witnessed the massacre of the Battle of Solferino. Forty thousand Italian, French and Austrian soldiers fell in battle and another forty thousand were injured (Polman, 2009). The healthcare conditions were disastrous and failed to prevent the death of nearly all of the wounded on the battlefield. Dunant returned to Switzerland in 1862 and described this terrible experience in his book Un souvenir de Solférino.

Thousands of bodies of men and horses were abandoned along the twenty-five kilometres Italian frontline without qualified personnel to treat the wounded. The local

Signorini, T., 1860.

L’artiglieria toscana a Montechiaro salutata dai francesi feriti a Solferino. Available at: <http:// www.indire.it> [Accessed 8 October 2013].

population strove to treat the wounded but could not make up for the shortage of military doctors. Dunant tried to organize aid by providing dressings, food and goods, but the number of wounded was unmanageable given the human and material resources available.

Every house within miles around the battlefield turned into a small clinic, where wounded bodies were continuously transported. Despite the volunteers’ good intentions, since they lacked medical expertise, they were described by Dunant as ‘isolated enthusiasts’ that made ‘uncoordinated efforts’. After a few days their numbers declined, due to fatigue.

Dunant’s book about Solferino circulated, and he began to envisage a private, voluntary movement 13

for humanitarian aid to the wounded in war. He appealed to potential donors not only on the grounds of humanitarianism, but also on the possible benefits for the state coffers, as military pensions for disabled war veterans would decrease. In 1863 the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) was established by Dunant and others Swiss notables. The core principles were set out in the first international convention on humanitarian law, signed in Geneva in 1864 by sixteen states. This was followed by other conventions, now the basis of all humanitarian aid agencies.

These conventions express a set of principles that aim to alleviate the suffering of the population, providing humanitarian aid to anyone, in any place and at any time.

The basic principles, proclaimed in Vienna in 1965, are humanity (aid without discrimination), neutrality (the Red Cross may not take sides in hostilities), impartiality (aid provided solely on need), independence (from geopolitical, military or other interests), voluntary service (organization not prompted in any manner by desire for gain), unity (only one Red Cross Society in any one country), universality (all Societies have equal rights and duties).

These principles very soon clashed with operating conditions and were difficult to observe. Different perspectives and disapproval arose immediately.

The founder of modern nursing Florence Nightingale considered Dunantâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s plan not only unnecessary, but also counter-productive.2 She argued strongly that aid would not achieve its objectives if the warring parties could obtain even the slightest advantage. She contended that the possible link between the supply of goods and the continuation of the conflict could compromise the principles of neutrality, impartiality and independence of the Geneva Conventions. She did not share Dunantâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s view of savings to the state coffers.

Nightingale observed that higher costs of war implied longer wars. Her experience of care in the Crimean War, led her to believe that the war would have ended sooner without her nursing work. Without health care, the number of soldiers ready for battle would have declined more quickly, and it would have been more difficult to recruit new forces. With these arguments, the esteemed British nurse refused to join Dunantâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Swiss committee.

Nightingale declared that such an association could only conceived in a small country like Switzerland, which is neutral and not accustomed to handling relief during a war. The evolution of this critical position over time has generated a current of thought that continues today to raise doubts about humanitarian aid.

Opposite, above left.

1863. Henri Dunant, founder of the Red Cross in (Polman, 2009, p. 46).

Opposite, above right.

1895. Portrait of Henri Dunant.

Available at: <http://www.icrc.org> [Accessed 20 September 2013].

Opposite, below left.

1863. Florence Nigthtingale, founder of modern nursing (Polman, 2009, p. 6).

Opposite, below right.

1860. Portrait of Florence Nigthtingale. Available at: <http:// www.florence-nightingale.co.uk> [Accessed 20 September 2013].

1 Henri Dunant: (Geneva, 1828 - Heiden, 1910); Swiss businessman and philanthropist. He summoned the Geneva Conference (1863), where the Red Cross born. He won with F. Passy the first Nobel Prize for Peace (1901). Source: <http://www.treccani.it/enciclopedia/jean-henri-dunant/> 2 Florence Nightingale (Florence, 1823 - London, 1910); She was an English nurse and she founded the modern care of sick. She organized the British health services in the Crimean War and on his return to England (1856) a school for nurses was founded, according to the rules dictated in her Notes on Hospitals (1859) and Notes on Nursing (1860). Source: <http://www.treccani.it/enciclopedia/florence-nightingale/>.

14

“Alleviating the suffering of as many people as possible is a deeply human desire.”

“It’s illogical.

Only in a small country such as Switzerland, which will never see a war, such an initiative could be born.”

15

How war has changed. New wars and old wars From the Battle of Solferino in 1863 to the Syrian Civil War in 2012. How has war changed during the last 150 years.

The need for humanitarian aid is mainly linked to wars. In this section, wars will be analysed to obtain an overview of humanitarian aid. The first ever humanitarian response, organized by Dunant during the Battle of Solferino, was related to a typical war scenario of the nineteenth century and of a part of the twentieth century. These wars were very different from wars today. The evolution of the global socio-political and geo-political situation has radically transformed the factors of war: objectives, actors, forms of funding, duration, victims and relief. The most visible change is the sad trend of the number of civilian and military casualties. Danger to the physical safety of civilians has increased greatly during the last 150 years. For instance, in the battle of Solferino 90% of the dead were represented by soldiers, compared to 10% of civilian casualties (Polman, 2009, p. 7). This scenario, in which the casualties were mainly among the armed forces, changed with the Second World War. For the first time, the death toll for 1939-1945 recorded almost equal numbers of civilians and soldiers who lost their lives. At the beginning of the present century, and after the end of the East-West confrontation, there was a clear predominance of civilian deaths, with a ratio of 8:1 between civilian and military (Kaldor, 1999). The deaths in the most recent Syrian Civil War, tragically still in progress, have been evaluated as 70% civilian and 30% military.3 These data, although significant and historically valid to assess the extent of wars, are not by themselves sufficient to describe the complexity of war today. This inadequacy depends on issues related to the concept of new wars (Kaldor, 1999), which may be very different from one another but can be assimilated from many viewpoints.

New wars are no longer a direct conflict between nations, but the result of the processes of post-modern fragmentation of states and warring parties with identity origins. These are chronic wars for political control, marginalization and access to resources. The goal of peace is usually remote in these wars. The armies of 16

the states involved are no longer the only forces that take part in the conflict. A plurality of actors may play a part, such as mercenaries, militia, police, armed movements, paramilitary organizations and criminals from different backgrounds, making the distinction between civilians and soldiers unclear. The death toll is therefore frequently uncertain and highly variable.

For example, deaths caused indirectly by events related to the conflict, such as epidemics or conditions of extreme poverty and deprivation, may change the balance significantly.

New wars occur in areas ruled by repressive governments, in socio-politically fragmented and unstable conditions. The contamination, sometimes abrupt, between local and global dynamics tends to weaken and disrupt undemocratic government. Wars in the past were fought between states for territorial reasons. Today, besides economic issues, wars are mainly due to the dismantling of forms of power led by state authority or by groups of antagonists. At the root of these conflicts there are identity, religious, ethnic or tribal disputes. The explosion of violence seems to be at the same time both cause and consequence of the radicalization of opposing positions, such as between the authoritarian state and rebel groups.

The methods of warfare include the phenomena of terrorism and guerrilla tactics, mainly directed against civilians as a form of territorial and social control, rather than against the enemy forces.

Furthermore, ICTs (Information and Communication Technologies) play an ever-increasing role. The immediate broadcasting of information, amplifying the panic of terrorist acts, raising awareness about humanitarian causes and connecting criminal networks, are just a few of the common uses of technologies in modern conflict.

New forms of funding are another characteristic feature.

In the past, funding was mainly provided by state initiative, through levies or forced external sponsorship.

Various forms of forced collection of goods by different

10%

90%

Civilians

Soldiers

50%

50%

Civilians

Soldiers

70%

30%

Civilians

Soldiers

1863 Battle of Solferino*

1939/1945 World War II*

2012/present Syrian Civil War**

War casualties during the last 150 years **(Polman, 2009) **Violations Documentation Center in Syria. <http://www.vdc-sy.info/> [Accessed 8 October 2013].

17

groups take place today in the states affected by new wars. Humanitarian aid may be diverted to support the war, while money may also be derived from kidnapping or the smuggling of oil, weapons and diamonds. It is difficult to distinguish between those groups which use the cover of political violence for economic interests and those who engage in predatory economic activities to finance their political cause. The humanitarian consequences are devastating for the population.

There are profound social imbalances such as famines, considerable displacement of population and destruction of basic facilities and infrastructures. New wars also imply complex, long-term negotiations with chronic situations that often become permanent. The practice of humanitarian aid has changed in response to these conditions since the nineties. The redefinition of this practice is linked to a concept that still forms the basis of the debate on humanitarian aid, Complex Political Emergencies (CPEs) (Ercolessi, 2004, p. 7).

These are situations of humanitarian disaster produced by new wars. The cynical but realistic opinion of some observers is that Complex Political Emergencies only represents a label for emergency situations that humanitarian aid agencies attach to hide the fact that they do not know exactly what these are (Polman, 2009, p. 178).

This multi-dimensional crisis which erupted at the

end of the last century has been accompanied by the development of new forms of humanitarian aid. The search for political solutions to CPEs is intertwined with these activities and an analysis of the legal framework and the political aspects of humanitarianism will be proposed in the next section in order to understand its dynamics.

3 Source: Violations Documentation Center in Syria <http://www.vdc-sy.info/> [Accessed 18 September 2013].

18

Above. Beals, G., 2013.

Syrian refugees crossing the border controlled by Jordanian soldiers. Available at: <http:// www.foreignpolicy.com/ articles/2013/10/30/postcard_ from_camp_zaatari_syrian_ refugee#12> [Accessed 18 November 2013].

The political dimension of humanitarianism Hybridizations and overlays that make the mandates and objectives of humanitarian interventions complex and controversial.

International Humanitarian Law (IHL), has been based on the Geneva Conventions since 1864. Since 2006, all states in the world have recognized the principles of the Conventions. The first Convention, strongly supported by Dunant, was followed by other Conventions held as a result of changes in sociopolitical factors in wars. In 1949 four new Conventions replaced the previous Conventions. These are still in force today, with additional protocols of 1977 and 2005. The most important changes after 1949 were the introduction of protection of civilians, and the right of wounded soldiers to be treated as non-combatants.4 The aim was to establish the practice of war within the limits of public acceptance, in response to the radical changes that occurred in the post-colonial and postCold War eras. The principles have been expanded and elaborated over the past two decades to make them more pragmatic. Codes of conduct, principles to provide aid, professional standards and guidelines are contained in the many texts that govern humanitarianism, such as the Sphere Project.5 The institutional framework of humanitarian aid consists of three main components: intergovernmental organizations, donor states and non-governmental organizations. Relations between them are determined by socio-economic issues, such as neoliberal globalization. In this historical phase the role of the state has decreased significantly, with the privatization of many essential aspects, including welfare states and armies. Humanitarian aid has increasingly become the prerogative of non-state actors, such as the UN agencies, the EU, the NGOs, etc. (Ercolessi, 2004, p. 4). This has caused a significant reallocation of aid funds. For instance, between 1986 and 1995, the funds of the European Community Humanitarian Aid Office, passed from 80 to 1117 million ECU; an increase from 3.1% to 15.2% in total value of aid programs (Ercolessi, 2004, p. 5). These were the years in which the UN opened the Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA). The European

Union started the Humanitarian Aid Office (Echo), distinct from other institutions for the management of development cooperation.

The role and the growing number of international NGOs is also central. Reasons for this significant increase in interest in humanitarian aid can be found in the media visibility of these operations, resulting in ease of access to forms of public and private funding.

In recent decades the collaboration between humanitarian aid workers and military forces has created a new humanitarian paradigm. Different types of coercion, including military coercion, have become a new instrument used by the international community for the security and protection of civilians. This method of intervention is, in fact, entirely managed by the UN Security Council. Humanitarian aid is more and more often provided in response to military interventions conducted by other nations. The definition of roles has become uncertain, as well as the legitimacy of the coordination of actions between military and civilian actors. Therefore, the risk that military and political goals overlap with humanitarian goals has become increasingly common. Humanitarian aid agencies have been invested with political functions that transcend their powers and mandates. The functions of human rights protection, promotion of peace, forms of political negotiation are actions that go well beyond the aim of humanitarianism. These actions have produced a shift from assistance to humanitarian intervention which has caused some human and political paradoxes.

This shift has resulted in a merging of the concepts of security (emergency response) and those of relief and development, intended as a process of democratization.

Many recent conflicts are examples of this trend, such as Afghanistan and Iraq in the early 2000s.

The debate on the political merger of concepts has assumed two contrasting positions since the nineties.

On the one hand, there is the relief-development continuum, i.e. the connection of relief operations to the long-term view for the strengthening of local 19

capacity development. On the other hand, there is minimalism, i.e. the minimization of the operations for the distribution of goods and humanitarian resources, to avoid forms of manipulation, political compromise and aid dependency.

This debate is the evolution of the currents of thought which originated from the conflicting visions of Dunant and Nightingale in the period of the establishment of the Red Cross. The first of these currents of thought, in support of the relief-development continuum, is the most followed in humanitarian practice. Intergovernmental agencies, such as the UNDP, adopted it and disseminated it in their official documents on development (Ercolessi, 2004, p. 14).

The main issue of this debate is to identify the extent to which the operators of humanitarian space should take charge of the political vacuum of institutions (the

UN, international powers and regional institutions, etc.). Furthermore, the actual capacity of aid operators to initiate development is not so certain (besides the controversial nature of the concept itself, strongly characterized in the ideological sense). Frequently, there is a lack of in-depth knowledge of local situations which stops them from distinguishing the constructive forces from the destructive forces present on site.

Apart from the humanitarian workers, the stakeholders in any project of development and emergency cooperation are numerous and they usually have opposing, conflicting interests. In the next section the analysis aims to identify who, among all the stakeholders, are the real beneficiaries within a very structured and complex system that first and foremost should protect and support people subjected to a humanitarian crisis.

â&#x20AC;&#x153;The separation between humanitarian and political, that we are experiencing today is the extreme phase of the separation between the human rights and the rights of the citizen.â&#x20AC;?

Agamben, G., 2013, p. 147.

4 Source: <http://www.icrc.org/> [Accessed 18 Seotember 2013].

5 The Sphere Project was developed since 1997 to disseminate operational standards for humanitarian response, sponsored by many international NGOs. The results are guidelines published in many editions entitled Humanitarian Charter and Minimum Standards in Disaster Response. Available at: <http://www.sphereproject.org/>. See also chapter 3, Camp design. Guidelines 1995-2013.

20

IFRC

ICRC

NGOs

IFRC International

National societies GOVERNMENTS

Local branches

International National

National Local

Local Peacekeeping

Individuals Corporate donors

International

National

AID RECIPIENT

MILITARY

WFP

Philantropic organizations

UNHCR UNICEF

PRIVATE DONORS

UNRWA Local community Diaspora

WHO FAO OCHA UNITED NATIONS

COMMUNITY

Whoâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s who in humanitarian response?

People and organizations involved in funding, coordination and implementation. Available at: <http://www.globalhumanitarianassistance.org/>.

21

Who are the real beneficiaries of the system?

Aid for people, aid for wars. The tendency of humanitarian aid agencies to make a profit.

Neutrality, impartiality and independence are the most stable and fundamental humanitarian operating principles of the Geneva Conventions. Humanitarian space can be defined as a virtual enclave in war zones in which aid for victims should have priority over any kind of political or military power. Compliance with the operating principles mentioned above has become increasingly difficult in a complex humanitarian space which is changing due to new wars. The structure of this space requires a high degree of politicization of humanitarian aid agencies working there. Both direct and indirect relationships between the supply of aid and the continuation of the conflict have been detected in many cases (Ercolessi, 2004). Aid for victims becomes material resources that fuel the real cause of their suffering, the war itself. As cooperation with local authorities rises, so does the risk of corruption, of deprivation of the population and of diversion of supplied goods. The beneficiaries of aid thus become the governmental and non-governmental belligerent groups. Food is one of the most important necessities, not only for the sustenance of the troops, but also because it is used to trigger mechanisms of control over the population through the distribution methods.

Since refugee camps are strategic enclosures, they facilitate the criminal management of resources. The power groups that are able to control the food supply, can obtain approval within the population. This occurs due to a progressive lack of responsibility of national political authorities. The supply of large amounts of goods for a long time tends to weaken local production, establishing forms of aid dependency. The distortion of resources away from social policy to the concentration of resources on military expenditure is thus facilitated.

Humanitarian aid, as already suggested by Nightingale a century and a half ago, facilitates the generation of additional resources for the continuation of wars.

Another aspect that casts a shadow on humanitarian responses is the tendency to assess interventions in terms of quantity. This is called the â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;trap of numbersâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; 22

(Ercolessi, 2004). Qualitative results fade into the background, the numbers are used to increase public awareness in Western countries and consequently to increase the sources of public and private funding.

This mobility becomes a permanent feature of aid workers chasing crises with greater media visibility and therefore greater ability to solicit donors. Refugee camps provide favourable conditions from this point of view: crowds in confined spaces and great suffering, sadly ensure high visibility. The main issue in such contexts is targeting, defined as the identification and selection of beneficiaries of aid. All the people within a refugee camp have the common condition of refugee, which makes it very difficult to identify different degrees of vulnerability and suffering. The calibration of interventions requires a thorough understanding of the social and political fabric which is often not present. Therefore, the risk of stirring up tensions in the community due to the perception of discrimination is very high. Undifferentiated distribution of goods becomes the solution to this potential problem.

An alternative way, which is certainly more challenging but not always implemented, would be through the definition of purpose and social objectives of the distribution method. This would help to keep the beneficiaries consistently and directly informed.

The involvement of the main stakeholders in the processes of planning and management of humanitarian aid is usually very low. Victims of humanitarian crises are all too frequently considered just bodies to feed.

They simultaneously represent troubles and resources for the global economy. The beneficiaries remain largely passive subjects, with a significant discrepancy between the decision-making organizations carrying out the interventions and local stakeholders. The assessment of the results tends to ignore the criteria of the welfare of the recipients, limiting the analysis to the quantitative aspects of numbers and statistics to ensure media impact. Given that this is the trend, the question of ethics and morality in humanitarianism should be

Expenditure USD 150 to 300 milion 50 to 150 milion 10 to 5 milion 5 to 10 milion Below 5 milion

UNHCR expenditure in 2012 by country Excludes expenditure for regional activities, Headquarters, the Liaison Office in New York and the Global Service Centre in Budapest. (UNHCR, 2012b).

23

in the foreground. Indeed, humanitarian aid is now widely perceived as a large reservoir of contracts for a large number of lay and religious organizations that are aiming to become UNHCRâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s implementing partners on different scales. These are represented mainly by NGOs (as well as by government agencies) that get contracts from intergovernmental organizations to manage crises, for example through the implementation of refugee camps. The NGOs framework of action covers all aspects of humanitarian aid, generating a contract fever and forms of competitiveness comparable to those of the industrial market. Despite humanitarian assistance originating from philanthropic assumptions, avoiding the compromises would mean giving up economic privileges. The relationship between humanitarian work and the goals of justice and protection of human rights is broken by these dynamics and imposes delicate ethical questions about the permanence of NGOs in these places (Ercolessi, 2004). The dilemma, the resolution of which seems impossible, is if it is better to give up the humanitarian task or become part of a system that produces income through these activities, and at the same time bankrolls promoters of war. Statistics show that humanitarian aid agencies are becoming more and more active on several fronts, managing an everincreasing amount of money. In the Rwandan refugee camps in Kivu 150 NGOs operating simultaneously have been detected (Ercolessi, 2004, p. 7).The UNDP has calculated that in the world there are more than fifty thousand international NGOs (Furlanetto, 2013).

Combining all the funds of international NGOs, a total equivalent to the fifth largest economy in the world is estimated (Polman, 2009; Furlanetto, 2013). In this system, where the management depends primarily on the UN agencies, the economic aspects associated with constructive and technical goods and services (related to the construction of infrastructures and buildings) are very important. In most of the UN agencies this sector appears in the top ten, and not infrequently among the top three items of expenditure for contracts relating to the supply of goods and services (UNOPS, 2013, p. 110117). This sector seems to be profitable for technical professions. The UNHCR, the most important agency for the protection of refugees and the international management of emergencies, claims to have spent in 2012 over USD 17 million in procurement in the sector Structures and Building and Construction and Manufacturing Components and Supplies (UNOPS, 2013, p. 114).

The answer to the question this section has posed is uncertain. The system has a very fragmented hierarchy and the reconstruction of cash flows is a complex operation that is not the object of this work. Undoubtedly, the high levels of competition and a perceived tendency to make a profit mean the identification of the real beneficiaries of humanitarianism is becoming more and more controversial.

24

Beals, G., 2013.

A group of Syrian refugees walk across the Syrian border to Jordan. Available at: <http:// www.foreignpolicy.com/ articles/2013/10/30/postcard_from_ camp_zaatari_syrian_refugee#12> [Accessed 18 November 2013].

USA NGOs

The UN calculated that the overall funds of the NGOs would be the fifth largest economy in the list of countries by GDP. (Furlanetto, 2013; Polman, 2009)

The Crisis Caravan Money annually managed by the totality of international NGOs operating in the world, displayed in a list of countries ranked by GDP (Polman, 2009).

25

Living in emergencies.

Planned camps

2

Refugees. Who are they and who protects them The mandate of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees and the process from emergency to durable solutions.

Floods, earthquakes, persecution and conflicts are some of the most frequent causes of forced displacement of population with high levels of suffering. Persons who are forced to leave their homes and countries are generally defined as displaced. If the exodus is politically motivated and includes crossborder crossings, displaced persons are internationally recognized as refugees. The project on which this dissertation is based has been developed for them and in particular the nonstop flow of individuals who since 2013 have been forced to leave Syria due to the civil war, many of which have ended up in the Zaatari refugee camp in neighbouring Jordan. In general, humanitarian aid is directed at refugees. The UNHCR, founded in 1950 to provide international protection and assistance to refugees, is the most important intergovernmental agency in the world responsible for the protection of refugees. The UNHCR uses the 1951 Geneva Refugee Convention known as the Convention relating to the Status of Refugees (not to be confused with the conventions promoted by ICRC) as its core mandate. The Convention is based on the principles of national responsibility and international solidarity and describes the refugee status as: â&#x20AC;&#x153;any person who, owing to well-founded fear of being persecuted for reasons of race, religion, nationality, membership of a particular social group or political opinion, is outside the country of his nationality and is unable or, owing to such fear, is unwilling to avail himself of the protection of that country; or who, not having a nationality and being outside the country of his former habitual residence as a result of such events, is unable or, owing to such fear, is unwilling to return to itâ&#x20AC;?.1 The Convention was created to protect European World War II refugees. Following intensification of forced migration in the world, an ad hoc Protocol in 1967 extended its previously limited scope to include the whole world. As a result the UNHCR mandate has been gradually extended and now includes the protection of any person defined as persons of concern. This status

is marked by fragmented labelling reflecting migration flows which are more complex than in the past. The agencies openly state their commitment to protect the human rights of all persons considered of concern, but also the impact of institutional and bureaucratic powers over the lives of refugees. These are forms of population control in a globalized era in which social transformations are transnational, with continuous large-scale migration flows. The chief accepted definitions of persons of concern are: refugees (1951 Convention), asylum-seekers (whose refugee status has not yet been determined), returnees (former refugees returned to their country who still need protection), stateless persons, internally displaced persons (IDPs, i.e. displaced within their own country of origin and protected by international law) (UNHCR, 2013d, p.

37). The UNHCR estimates that in 2012 there were more than 45 million of persons of concern in the world and provided assistance to more than 35 million of these in 124 countries around the world, at a cost of over two billion dollars (UNHCR, 2013d, p. 2). Global socio-economic trends indicate that these figures are expected to rise in the next decade, exacerbated by population growth, urbanization, climate change and by conflict due to the unfair distribution of resources. The UNHCR mandate primarily concerns the protection and assistance of refugees during an emergency, starting with the design of settlements such as planned camps.

In collaboration with many implementing partners the UNHCR ensures the supply of goods and resources for survival such as sheltering (housing solutions) and non-food items (anything that is not food but essential, such as blankets, mattresses, kitchen items, etc.). After the emergency phase, i.e. after having established a transitional settlement status, protection takes on a long-term perspective. After the emergency phase, in a dwelling condition defined transitional, protection assumes a long-term perspective. As far as possible the UNHCR is committed to implement durable solutions for the lives of refugees. This means helping 27

refugees exit the limbo in which they live, a vacuum of temporary citizenship pending determination of their future. The UNHCR envisages three options: voluntary repatriation; local integration to promote permanent residence in the host state; the right to seek asylum in other countries. The UNHCR works with governments, regional organizations and NGOs to achieve these goals and tries to involve refugees in these choices.

And yet today millions of people are still faced with the unfortunate prospect of not being able to choose permanent solutions. Prolonged armed conflict in the country of origin fossilises transitional solutions. Life in a refugee camp, or situations of marginalisation, can last for decades; in turn this means that the option of inclusion in a community of the host country becomes

impracticable for those living in planned camps and enclosed, isolated spaces physically and conceptually removed from local communities. The UNHCR estimated that some 6.4 million people in the world were refugees living in protracted refugee situations (protracted instability) in 25 host countries, for a total of 30 cases at the end of 2012 (UNHCR, 2013d, p.

12). The UNHCR defines a protracted refugee situation as one in which 25,000 or more refugees of the same nationality have been in exile for five years or longer in a given asylum country (UNHCR, 2013d, p. 12). The average period of these situations is close to twenty years and has more than doubled compared to the average of nine years in the early nineties (Loescher and Milner, 2009). This definition based on the figures

Hannon, M., 2013.

Guards at the main entrance of the Mrajeeb Fhood al-Zarqa refugee camp, Jordan. Available at: <http://wodumedia.com/ syrian-refugees-update-2013/> [Accessed 9 November 2013].

1 Article 1A, 1951 Convention relating to the Status of Refugees. Available at: <http://www.unhcr.it/>

28

has some limitations: it does not include situations involving less than 25,000 people, the IDPs in urban areas (difficult to quantify), and the millions of IDPs all around the world. Whatever the case may be, the humanitarian consequences on the lives of refugees are shocking. The longer these conditions persist, the more they exacerbate the problems of marginalisation, segregation and violence, devastating phenomena for refugees, especially the most vulnerable.

Enders, D., 2013.

Tents and prefabricated shelters, Zaatari refugee camp. Available at: <http://maldenblueandgold. com/2013/01/lifescouts-whatbadge-will-you-earn/lack-of-aid-tosyrian-refugees-2/> [Accessed 25 November 2013].

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Overview of the protection of the right to housing Contents of the main international documents and introduction to the vocabulary of the dwelling conditions of refugees. Transitional settlements and shelter.

Depriving a person of the right to housing immediately makes him a refugee. The results of the controversial and inevitable attempts to guarantee this right in the world are firmly fixed in the minds of Western civilization. Images of refugee camps, including photos of the Zaatari camp, convey extremely impoverished housing conditions, albeit at a distance. There is no international legal framework that gives refugees the right to housing; instead, there is a complex series of superimposed hierarchical conventions and policies established during the second half of the twentieth century. In addition, an internationally recognized vocabulary is used to define housing solutions, and more in general humanitarian aid. This vocabulary will be illustrated in this section.

The Universal Declaration of Human Rights signed in Paris in 1948 is the most common and general Convention dealing with the right to housing in an international legal context. Promoted by the UN General Assembly, its clauses on the right of asylum were incorporated three years later in the Convention relating to the Status of Refugees. Article 25 (1) declares that fundamental rights include the right to adequate housing: “Everyone has the right to a standard of living adequate for the health and well-being of himself and of his family, including food, clothing, housing and medical care and necessary social services, and the right to security in the event of unemployment, sickness, disability, widowhood, old age or other lack of livelihood in circumstances beyond his control”.

The right to housing for persons forced to leave their homes and their country is protected by international documents dealing more specifically with transitional settlement. This term was defined by the Shelterproject peer-review process to mean settlement and shelter resulting from conflict and natural disasters, ranging from emergency response to durable solutions (Corsellis & Vitale, 2005, p.10).2 With regard to housing, the concept represents the stabilisation process that 30

the UNHCR promises to implement in its plans for protection and assistance to refugees, from transitional to durable solutions. The context to which it refers is more extensive compared to traditional responses to emergencies. The impact of settlements is considered on a broader scale given how time influences the design and the ensuing environmental and social consequences. A managed/planned camp is one of the transitional settlement options; it is also the main focus of this dissertation. While the most important guidelines and emergency manuals never consider a planned camp as the preferred option for refugees, it is nevertheless still a much practiced solution linked to planning and design issues. The alternatives for finding shelter to displaced individuals have been categorised into four transitional settlement programme options: collective centres (transit facilities located in pre-existing structures, such as town halls, disused or unfinished buildings), reception and transit camps (temporary camps), self-settled camps (a displaced community settles in a camp, independent of assistance from local government or the aid community) (IASC, 2011, p. 5).

There is also another term that broadly identifies the basic right to adequate housing. The term is shelter, appropriately defined in the 1996 Agenda UNHABITAT, section IV B. Although the description is extremely broad it does not contemplate a fundamental individual right to live in a family and community: “Adequate shelter means more than a roof over one’s head. It also means adequate privacy; adequate space; physical accessibility; adequate security; security of tenure; structural stability and durability; adequate lighting, heating and ventilation; adequate basic infrastructure, such as water-supply, sanitation and waste-management facilities; suitable environmental quality and health-related factors; and adequate and accessible location with regard to work and basic facilities: all of which should be available at an affordable cost. Adequacy should be determined

together with the people concerned, bearing in mind the prospect for gradual development [...] [and] depends on specific cultural, social, environmental and economic factorsâ&#x20AC;?.

The minimum criteria on adequate housing are set out in a recent document drafted by the UNHCR and the UN-HABITAT (2009); it reads as follows: security of tenure, availability of services, materials, facilities and infrastructure, affordability, habitability, accessibility, location, cultural adequacy.

The framework of rights described here is international and universally applicable, but there are many other levels of rights and laws with different constraints and specificities depending on the community or nation in question.

A list of nine such possible frameworks, starting with the more general, could be as follows (Kennedy, 2008,

p. 50): international law and regional instruments; country domestic laws and regulations; refugee camp by-laws; customary or traditional rules of refugees; gender rules and expectations; laws and regulations developed by government or political parties in exile; religious laws; internal committee rules; codes of conduct. Another very influential issue is the economic and monetary aspect associated with, but not intrinsic to, settlements.

This complex hierarchy regulates the movement and life of refugees; it not only represents the basic constraints curbing the planning of transitional settlements, but also influences the design and housing performance of planned camps. In other words, it affects three basic elements of life in camps, and more specifically refugee camps: time, space and citizenship.

1948. Mrs. Eleanor Roosevelt presents the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Available at: <http://www.fdrlibrary.marist.edu/ photos.html> [Accessed 5 April 2013].

2 Shelterproject, later known as Shelter Center, is a Swiss NGO that supports humanitarian aid in the practice of temporary settlement and reconstruction for people affected by conflict or natural disasters.

31

â&#x20AC;&#x153;Everyone has the right to a standard of living adequate for the health and well-being of himself and of his family, including food, clothing, housing and medical care and necessary social services, and the right to security in the event of unemployment, sickness, disability, widowhood, old age or other lack of livelihood in circumstances beyond his control.â&#x20AC;?

Article 25(1), Universal Declaration of Human Rights. (UN, 1948).

Refugee camps. Space, time and citizenship Forms of politically determined deprivation. The permanent temporary nature of the life of refugees and their systematic segregation in marginal areas.

A planned camp is the most common and immediate solution to save lives in response to forced migration. The term refers to a settlement planned and implemented ad hoc for a certain number of refugee families requiring non-residential buildings. Since the duration of contemporary refugee camps is unpredictable, the concept of space, time and citizenship differs vis-à-vis the outside world. Well-defined boundaries enclose a gray area of antithetical needs, i.e. self-determination for those who live it and control for those who manage it.

Planned camps, usually built quickly as an emergency response, raise several critical issues: identity, cultural habits, housing solutions, security and conflict between mobility and immobility. Boundaries define a refugee camp and sometimes create an unbridgeable distance between the inside and outside of a camp. The inner space is actually an artificial outside. Refugees live in a condition of extraterritoriality determined by political decisions, opposed to the inclusive inside of the society around them. Furthermore, camps are not really part of their surroundings because they are usually built in sparsely populated and semidesert areas. In a very short space of time, premeditated and reasoned administrative measures turn these areas into something very similar to a city. The result is a seemingly urban form, but without its political and economic functions and natural development time.

As a result, the real, invisible but insurmountable boundary lies between citizens and exiles. This is also due to the fact that the UNHCR is committed to minimize the camp’s impact on the host countries so that the ‘outside’ is affected as little as possible by the ‘inside’. Even the definition of non-place (Augé, 1993) seems to converge with that of a refugee camp: a place which cannot be defined as identitarian, relational or historical. The feeling of belonging to a non-place materialises in a project that masses refugees in areas where they live in frozen transience. The camp becomes a tool to control and manage masses in excess, the ones Bauman (2004) called wasted lives. But the

Beals, G., 2013.

Damaged sign near the Syrian border. Available at: <http://www. foreignpolicy.com/> [Accessed 19 November 2013].

implementation and construction of camps is also the main activity of humanitarian agencies, a complex and effective logistic system for aid distribution. The phenomenon is widespread, and despite the fact that the UNHCR defines a planned camp as a last option, (UNHCR, 2007, p. 206), it is actually the first solution to forced migration. Over 35% of the world’s refugees live in planned or planned camps (UNHCR, 2013, p.

35). These huge groups of humanity in excess have very high media visibility. In the minds of westerners, a planned camp is the most vivid image of delocalisation, and images of overcrowded spaces are key tools to encourage the public to donate aid.

It is also worth drawing attention to the temporal duration of planned camps. The term itself – camp evokes impermanence, although in the case of refugee camps it refers primarily to the unpredictable lifespan of the camp itself. A refugee camp gives the impression of ‘shiftiness’, much like a tent that from one day to the next can be removed, leaving no trace in the memory of the place. This impression generates political/strategic misunderstanding. Declaring a refugee camp to be temporary makes it a space in which human dignity is limited to survival strategies. In time this encourages aid dependency by refugees and deprives them of trying to make their own livelihoods. Above-mentioned 33

data shows that the temporary timeframe is disproven by the many protracted refugee situations which exist in the world. However, the longer refugees remain in the camps, the more they have to reinvent everyday life and try to form new urban communities. These situations are comparable to marginalised slums in big cities around the world, places of segregation which produce trade, gatherings, an informal economy and social engagement. But the permanent impermanence of camps has very profound and immediate effects, with irreparable consequences on the lives of refugees.

The philosopher Agamben (1995) defined this condition as bare life. When an emergency becomes permanent, the individual is stripped of everything, beginning with his status as a citizen. All he has left is his biological functions guaranteed by an injection of western aid - the result of the effect of biopolitics on the life of individuals. The social sustainability of this totalising aid system of hospitality is akin to the urban and architectural design of camps. How the

camps are made, where they are placed and how long they last are all issues involving the built environment, an environment that assists, isolates and protects from the contemporary fear of contact with refugees. The need to survive as well as cultural differences and the distribution of goods and resources all coexist in a complex hybrid space, a mix between a military-style camp and the clusters which over the years merge and change, based on the same logic as the slums of big cities.

Itâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s no accident that literature on refugee camps has developed in two directions: a socio-psychological viewpoint focusing on the living conditions of refugees, and a technical, managerial and logistical viewpoint describing the planning and management of camps.

These two ways of interpreting the world probably need to be increasingly merged if they are to have a positive fallout on peopleâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s lives.

Aly, H., 2013.

Fences with barbed wire surround the Zaatari camp. Available at: <http://www.irinnews.org/ report/98383/behind-thescenes-of-the-most-complexrefugee-operation-in-the-world> [Accessed 9 November 2013].

34

“Refugees are human waste, with no useful function to play in the land of their arrival and temporary stay and no realistic prospect of being assimilated and incorporated into the new social body.”

Bauman, Zygmunt, 2004, p. 97.

2012. The UN High Commissioner for Refugees António Guterres visits the refugee camp in Kilis (Turkey) with the special envoy Angelina Jolie. Available at: <http:// fotogaleri.haberler.com/> [Accessed 9 November 2013].

35

Camps and shelters.

Design models and practices

3

Camp design. Guidelines 1906-1981 The development of the first UNHCR Handbook for Emergencies. The â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;community moduleâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; camp design by the Intertect organization and its founder Fred Cuny.

This section will analyse the data collected through the summerisation project, in particular the reasons for the urban-scale design of the layout of refugee camps, in order to study the model currently used in the planning of refugee camps and assess the ideological and technical aspects which have developed over time. This model will be compared against the one used in the Zaatari camp in Jordan. The analysis will also examine the legislative constraints described in previous sections, and provide an analytical chronology of handbooks, guidelines and theories which, although not prescriptive, have gradually influenced camp morphology and performance.

The first, oldest and most important document illustrating a major settlement for forcibly displaced persons is a series of photos taken after one of the most devastating natural disasters in U.S. history: the 1906 earthquake in San Francisco.

Us National Archives and Records Administration, 1906.

Military-style camp set up after the San Francisco earthquake in 1906. Available at: <https:// www.archives.gov> [Accessed 2 October 2013].

37

Although living conditions between political refugees and persons displaced due to natural disasters differ enormously, they do affect the camp layout.

Nevertheless, the San Francisco earthquake is important and has frequently been studied to draw attention to critical limitations in planning (Davis, 1978, p. 80-81). In a few short months after the earthquake, more than 5,000 shelters were built by the Army Corps of Engineers to accommodate over 40,000 displaced persons (Architecture for Humanity, 2006, p. 33). Response to the disaster – a militarystyle camp - was certainly rapid and efficient. The emergency shelters were arranged on an equidistant grid with little consideration for community, privacy, or ownership of the settlements by the resident families (Kennedy, 2008, p. 78). These criteria are still present in camp design and have the same effects on the lives of refugees.

Between 1906 and World War II very few written documents or drawings were made of planned camps despite an enormous increase in large-scale movements of refugees around the world. The camps were extremely transitory or self-settled and not designed as such.

The debate on camp design began in earnest in the early seventies when humanitarian aid agencies printed the first technical handbooks about camps (mainly for internal use). One such handbook, entitled Oxfam Technical Guide Plastic Sheeting: Its Use for Emergency Housing and Other Purposes, was produced

by Howard and Spice (1973). In addition, the growing number of NGOs swelled the number of humanitarian aid organisations, inputting knowledge and ideas from other fields such as logistics, transportation, public health, and urban planning. Thanks to key texts such as Housing by People, written by Turner in 1976, there was also a growing focus on a bottom-up approach and, more in general, on participatory processes in urban and architectural planning.

This is the basic framework Fred Cuny exploited to develop his design model for camps using a community-based approach.1 In 1971 Cuny founded Intertect Relief and Reconstruction Corporation, a multidisciplinary organization dealing with technical areas of humanitarian aid, i.e. shelters, WASH (water sanitation and hygiene), and logistics. The Cuny Centre subsequently put all the work by the organization into an archive which became an extremely important methodological and theoretical resource tool for camp design. Unlike the documents by humanitarian organisations which present finished products without explaining the processes used to develop those products, Cuny’s archive is the only one in the world with documents illustrating the work they performed in the field (Kennedy, 2008, p. 81).

Cuny founded Intertect after his own personal experience of the Biafra war in Nigeria in the late 38

Howard & Spice, 1973.

Assembly instructions for emergency shelter, Oxfam Technical Guide Plastic Sheeting (Howard & Spice, 1973, pp. 34, 35).

1960s. The humanitarian aid supplied after this war is considered a template for the humanitarian interventions implemented during the Complex Political Emergencies of the nineties because it merges both the political and humanitarian dimension (Ercolessi, 2004, p. 3). As a result of his own experience Cuny developed holistic cross-sectoral interventions based on the aims of the affected community and its ability to develop its own self-support tools. Ian Davis (1982), Cuny’s colleague and collaborator, expressed this idea about the role of technicians and humanitarian workers in post-emergency relief management: “The primary resource in the provision of post-disaster shelter is the grass-roots motivation of survivors, their friends and family. Assisting groups can help, but they must avoid duplicating anything best undertaken by the survivors themselves”.

Davis worked with Cuny and it was his text that contained the first embryonic vocabulary chosen to describe the crucial elements of a camp, i.e. shelter clusters design rather than the military-style design used to describe the San Francisco camp in the early twentieth-century. They based their approach on the parallel meanings of clusters (groups of shelters) and

community. The grouping of family housing units (shelter clusters) is a spatial configuration allowing people to create a social configuration based on preexisting community relations. This criterion is not universal, but makes it possible to assess whether or not planning is socially and culturally adequate; it can also be calibrated depending on the context and the use of public and private space in different cultures. The first albeit limited documented project dates to 1972; it actually implemented the idea of clustered shelters and was a radical break with military-style camps.

The project involved the construction of a camp in Coyotepe, Nicaragua, after a strong earthquake struck the city of Managua. The overall layout of the shelter clusters, which also had cooking facilities and toilets, was similar to that in small, almost self-sufficient rural villages. Whilst there is no documentary evidence to assess the validity of this model compared to others, nevertheless much of the literature written on this topic in subsequent decades considered this option as the most desirable for ethical reasons, also because it followed the principles of community building urban planning practices. Later on claims were made (although difficult to substantiate) that this layout was to a large extent responsible for various benefits (it exhibited a greater sense of community, had far fewer social problems, i.e., crime, vandalism, etc.) and cost 37% less to operate than other contemporary camps in the same area (Kennedy, 2004, p. 29). The camp became a model replicated in other parts of the world, but it often lost one of its most positive traits: flexible clusters. The apparent similarity of the square clusters actually allowed a certain amount of flexibility in the number of shelters per cluster, and even in the shape or borders of each cluster. This flexibility is built into the schemata for camp layout designs which Cuny included in his 1981 draft of the first edition of the UNHCR Handbook for Emergencies (UNHCR, 1981); however, it is not included in any subsequent set of guidelines (Kennedy, 2008, p. 89).

Another example is the camp built in 1973-74 after a disastrous flood in the Khulua region in Bangladesh.

Compared to the Nicaraguan project, this time Cuny made a series of improvements: - greater attention to the surroundings in terms of assessment of population density; - assessment of the climate and micro-climate on three separate levels with sufficient flexibility so that the area of a ward and the number of shelters in one ward could be changed or reduced to create sufficient space for semi-public space; - consideration of the social structures of the beneficiary community, at ward-level and shelter-level; - the camp layout was designed to positively support peopleâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s livelihoods, it also had a technical training programme and the shelters could be adapted by the inhabitants themselves (Kennedy, 2008, p. 92).

Intertect, 1973.

Site plan and aerial photo of the Coyotepe camp in Managua, Nicaragua designed by Fred Cuny, (Kennedy, 2008, pp. 87, 89).

39

â&#x20AC;&#x153;The primary resource in the provision of post-disaster shelter is the grass-roots motivation of survivors, their friends and family. Assisting groups can help, but they must avoid duplicating anything best undertaken by the survivors themselves.â&#x20AC;?

What should be the role of architecture in the aftermath of a disaster? (Davis, 1982).

Despite these improvements, in the years to come interest in this camp focused primarily on the use of certain design criteria based on minimum standards, especially the distance between the latrines and the shelters.

In fact, by the late seventies, a rationalization process based on quantitative minimum standards began to be used in camp design and emergency management.

This trend was triggered primarily by the need to achieve the best possible distribution of the scarce resources available. The most representative text illustrating this trend is entitled Urbanisation Primer (Caminos & Goethert, 1978) in which the authors not only use mathematical calculations to describe design rationalisation, but also set out the shortest possible routes for infrastructures or minimum acceptable standards of delivery per person or per household.

Public health is another fundamental field influencing the standardization of camp design. The need to improve public health became part of humanitarian interventions when a text entitled Guide to Sanitation in Natural Disasters was published in 1971 by the World Health Organization; beginning in the eighties it became one of the main concepts in all handbooks on refugee camp design. Knowledge transfer started in the early eighties due to the worldwide intensification of conflicts and emergencies and an increase in the numbers of displaced persons. In turn this led to an increase in the number of humanitarian aid agencies which often had no kind of prior experience in emergency management. As a result, the UNHCR - the most important worldwide emergency response agency - decided to publish a global response guide entitled Handbook for Emergencies intended to be used internally and also by the many other agencies with which the UNHCR signed memoranda of understanding to become implementing partners.

Cunyâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Intertect organisation continued to produce theoretical and practical guides and worked in some of the most acute international crisis areas, for example in 1978 in Cambodia during the Vietnamese invasion, and also during the war between Ethiopia and Somalia in 1979. In 1980 Intertect published two guidelines now part of camp construction policy: they envisage 40m² per person in a camp, and 15 litres of drinking water per person per day. The guidelines also included simple drawings of community units with 16 shelters, placed in a circle, communal food preparation facilities, garbage and WASH services for each community unit (Kennedy, 2008, p. 101). These guidelines highlight the core issue of balance between universal minimum standards and their implementation in local communities, i.e. how to reconcile specifics and global relevance. Intertect illustrated the crux of the matter and provided its view on the function of handbooks (Kennedy, 2008, p. 102). Size or density should not be the key issues, instead the focus should be on

Intertect, 1975.

Plan of Khulna camp in Bangladesh, (Kennedy, 2008, p. 91).

41

whether or not these camp systems satisfy residentsâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; needs. Camps must be planned like towns, and the same factors have to be considered. The design of each camp must reflect the community structure of the refugees and materialise the relationship between clusters and the community theorised by Cuny in the early seventies (Kennedy, 2008, p. 102).

For reasons which will be discussed later in this paper, these key arguments will not remain valid or survive for long. However, when these criteria appeared in 1981 they became part of the first draft of the UNHCR Handbook for Emergencies edited by Fred Cluny. The handbook focused on general emergency management with a chapter specifically on camp design. In this first draft, the information and sketches referred to some of the concepts adopted for the 1973 camp in Bangladesh, but other functional aspects were simplified and streamlined with fuller and more nuanced text justifications (Kennedy, 2008, p. 104).

Nevertheless, the community layout remains the same: a decentralized community approach with small semi-independent community units or villages, and flexible shelters inside the clusters to satisfy the refugeesâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; needs. Each decentralized facilities is part of a semi-independent community unit rather than being located in the spaces in-between community units, as in Bangladesh. In general, the standards were mostly qualitative, unlike those in future editions. Universal applicability is the main concept in the full edition of the handbook (1982), however little or no reference is made to any relationship between the camp and its surroundings thereby weakening many of Cunyâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s initial insights. The general concepts of the camp design in this edition remain by and large unchanged and are still applied today although several of the more recent guidelines contain examples of alternative designs.

The model is based chiefly on the segmentation of open-plan shelter cluster modules arranged around a central administrative block, with space for community activities. One of main shortcomings of this arrangement is undoubtedly the non-assigned spaces between the clusters which, since they are empty and do not have any real function, jeopardise the relationship with the surroundings and the area outside the camp. However, the most controversial and still relevant aspect is the lifespan of the camp, a concept raised in the handbook which makes no reference at all to how camps (or even an individual cluster module) may develop over time: this represents a systematic denial of the unpredictability of the lifespan of the planned camps (Kennedy, 2008, p. 106).

Above. Cuny, F., 1981.

Three different configurations of shelter clusters for refugee camps, UNHCR Handbook for Emergencies, 1981 First draft (Kennedy, 2008, p. 110).

Opposite. Hardin, K., 1987.

Two different configurations of shelter clusters for refugee camps, (Kennedy, 2008, p. 110).

1 Fred Cuny was an American disaster relief specialist. He was active in many humanitarian projects around the world from 1969 until his forced disappearance in Chechnya in 1995. Source: <http://www.cunycenter.org/>

42

Camp design. Guidelines 1981-1995 From the first to the second edition of the UNHCR Handbook. A review of policies on refugee camps and settlements and the adaptation of the community-based approach.

The first full edition of the UNHCR Handbook for Emergencies was printed and circulated in 1982 as a revised version of Cunyâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s draft. This edition was used as a basis for changes which gradually and radically modified the idea of community clusters designed and implemented by Intertect, so much so that the model disappeared. The UNHCR changed the wording of the 1982 full edition of the Handbook for Emergencies, to state, at the introduction to the relevant chapter, that refugee camps should normally be considered as a last resort (Kennedy, 2008, p. 113). In 1984-85 the UNHCR launched a major review of its emergency response policy. The result was the introduction of the concept of durable solutions and voluntary repatriation

as being the best choice for refugees. This trend impacted enormously on camp design, disregarding the fact that most camps will have a finite and yet unpredictable lifespan. Any terms which could depict the camp as a space that might become permanent was gradually removed from the handbooks and replaced by ones which give the impression of stability, such as roads, houses, village, town (Kennedy, 2008, p.

107). The UNHCR established a clear distinction between a temporary camp used only in emergencies, and settlement which can develop and be considered as spatially and economically connected to its surroundings (Schmidt, 2003). Intertect continued its conceptual work during the eighties, but due to this

43

evolution in the concept of camp, appears to have taken two quite different paths.

On the one hand Cuny argued that his theory that camps can be turned into permanent settlements like a city was still valid because the lifespan of a camp is unpredictable. On the other hand, Keith Hardin, another Intertect associate, published guidelines for camps based on their temporary nature, but he also considered possible expansions when new refugees arrived at camp. Itâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s important to note that between the early seventies and mid-eighties the average size of camps worldwide had also grown; in fact, some camps could now house up to 18,000 people (Kennedy, 2008, p. 111).

If on the one hand this requires camp planning to be decided in advance, thereby sacrificing any kind of flexibility for users (i.e., where to put the shelters), on the other it also involves rethinking the city/camp relationship. The model elaborated by Keith Hardin became the theoretical basis for a major training program at the Disaster Management Centre at the University of Wisconsin in 1987 as well as for many other initiatives up to the nineties, including a training programme for UNHCR managers focusing on the camp as a tool to ensure the basic survival needs of refugees (Kennedy, 2008, p. 107).

Many criticisms of the idea of planned camps began to emerge in the eighties, above all in ethnicanthropological articles or books, such as one published by Barbara Harrell-Bond entitled Imposing aid (1986).2 These critiques reinforced the idea of a camp as the last resort for refugees, also in light of the fact that its temporary nature required less political support by the host countries (Kennedy, 2008, p. 112).

Although never edited by the UNHCR, the text entitled Refugee camps, a primer for rapid site planning written by Goethert and Hamdi (1988) unequivocally underlined the temporary nature of camps and effectively influenced the work of the UNHCR. The text reads as follows: â&#x20AC;&#x153;Camps are planned to address basic survival needs, regional integration is a low priority, and they assume that refugees are short-term and temporaryâ&#x20AC;?.

These limitations became stuck on the temporal evolution of camps and the ensuing impossibility to establish any kind of relationship with the surroundings outside the camp (Kennedy, 2008, p.

112). The combination of all these elements formed the conceptual basis of the second edition of the UNHCR Handbook for Emergencies in 1998.

2 Barbara Harrell-Bond is the founder of the Refugee Studies Center, Oxford University, one of the most influential institutions worldwide dealing with the study of forced migration since 1982.

44

Camp design. Guidelines 1995-2013 The minimum standards published by the Sphere Project and the hierarchy of space behind current camp design.

The exponential increase of minimum standards is the element that further differentiates the second edition from the first edition of the UNHCR Handbook for Emergencies. The standards become more quantitative, unlike the qualitative ones introduced

by Intertect in the seventies. During the nineties humanitarian aid grew in terms of budget, actors and beneficiary populations. This led to greater demand for accountability and the need for tools to assess the work of humanitarian organizations. This demand becomes more pressing during 1994-95 crisis in Rwanda due to the disastrous conditions of the overcrowded refugee camps reported by worldwide media (Polman, 2009).

The Sphere Project was developed in response to this situation; over the years it has become the most widely known and internationally recognized interagency forum for developing minimum standards for humanitarian response and has been signed by all of the implementing partners. The common aim is â&#x20AC;&#x153;to improve the quality of humanitarian assistance and the accountability of humanitarian actors to their constituents, donors and affected populationsâ&#x20AC;?.3 The first result of the project is the 1997 set of guidelines entitled Humanitarian Charter and Minimum Standards in Humanitarian Response. The Sphere Project organizes training programmes with the support of major NGOs and donor agencies; together with the UNHCR handbook, the one produced by Sphere has become the most consulted and most used handbook. Like the UNHCR handbook, only one chapter of the Sphere Project publication deals with camp design: Minimum Standards in Shelter, Settlement and Non-Food Items (Sphere Project, 2011, pp. 239-287). Kennedy (2008) emphasised that the standards in the chapter appear to be qualitative while in actual fact they can be numerically verified using key indicators, i.e., numerical criteria associated with every standard in order to measure efficiency; this effectively achieves the accountability requested in the nineties.

Furthermore, the guidelines use a definitive but at

the same time generic vocabulary which eliminates alternatives or different solutions according to the locality. The Sphere Project is a handbook focusing on public health; it was influenced by the disastrous hygienic conditions of several contemporary camps which impacted on the health and safety of refugees.

On this issue Kennedy (2008) underscores not only the need to comply with these criteria in camps, but to remember that these principles are not the only ones that can be adopted, unlike the principles in the handbook by the Sphere Project and the second and third version of the UNHCR handbook. If living spaces always have to be designed to satisfy public health standards, then this severely limits alternative designs of albeit temporary living spaces that satisfy the needs of users. The Sphere handbook does not explicitly explain the reasons for this methodological choice, instead it states that the general rationale behind the text is a human rights-based approach to humanitarian response, as well as providing references to all key documents, declarations and international conventions. As it stands, the Sphere Project is a declaration of universal egalitarianism: to ensure the survival of the most vulnerable by providing minimum resources to everyone. Restitution is the way in which the Sphere Project interprets the response to those rights, in other words any individual who has lost their home should have that right returned to them through the positive provision of a minimally adequate shelter.

This restitution becomes the goal itself, rather than the means to any other end (Kennedy, 2008, p. 117).

The model layout of camps and shelters in the Sphere handbook is the same as the one in the UNHCR handbook, i.e., a hierarchy of components from a single shelter to a residential cluster, to a block, and a closed-off area isolated from its surroundings, and with very different functions compared to inside the camp. Emphasis is laid on the short lifespan of camps without any reference whatsoever to the theories of the seventies, such as the long-term consequences 45

of short-term actions. As a result no spaces and processes are envisaged enabling refugees to create their own livelihoods and gradually modify their living environment. Nevertheless, Sphere standards provide a clear and non-negotiable line in the sand, which did not exist in the past, especially for those organizations working in natural disaster areas, or working outside the UN umbrella-funding system (Kennedy, 2008, p. 118). After nearly two decades of debate on the relations between local application and overall guidelines, Sphere focused on producing a universally-applicable handbook. The second edition of the UNHCR Handbook for Emergencies, printed in 1998, also moves in this direction. Furthermore, this latter edition does not include camp design drawings already fairly irrelevant in the first edition.

In the late nineties other texts written by authors and other sources were printed and circulated with several novel ideas although they all referred to the same camp design criteria published by the UNHCR and Sphere Project. Countless texts exist on this subject, but in this paper we will analyse only those that Kennedy (2008) classified as the most innovative and important in the field of camp design. Published by individual humanitarian aid agencies and universities, these texts are based on peer-review processes. Camp design is not the only topic in these handbooks, but the strategic goals tend to be described in a more complex and flexible manner compared to the standard durable solutions proposed in earlier handbooks. They also contain several long-term ideas on the design and construction of refugee camps.

The first book of this series is Shelter Provision and Settlement Policies for Refugees: A State of the Art Review (Zetter, 1995). The text is considered crucial because it contains the community-based approach developed by Cuny and Davis two decades earlier.

However, even if it deals exclusively with shelters and refugee settlements, there are no explanatory drawings of the camp design concept. Moreover, the term refugee is more specific and politically oriented according to the Geneva Convention (1951), unlike earlier texts by Cuny and Davis who used the term refugee chiefly to describe all those who had lost their homes in large-scale natural disasters. The reason why this text is more important is because it includes reliefdevelopment continuum in camp design. On the one hand emergency relief must be short-term while on the other it must support and integrate rehabilitation and development as part of an overall strategy to reinforce local capacities and livelihoods (Ercolessi, 2004, p.

14). This makes the durable solutions used for the housing of refugees more meaningful; it focuses on contextualised practices and on the right to enhance local skills and knowledge. Zetter introduced the term transitional, i.e., transition from an emergency to the development of long-term planning of refugee 46

Transitional Settlements Displaced Populations (Corsellis & Vitale, 2005).

settlements. Despite the importance of Zetterâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s text, his theories remained somewhat outside the mainstream of policy development and have never become part of the official policies and handbooks published by the UNHCR and Sphere Project.

Another important experience was undertaken by a small group of researchers from Cambridge University, initially named Shelterproject and now known as Shelter Centre. Its most celebrated text is Transitional Settlement Displaced Populations (Corsellis & Vitale, 2005), printed after a long period of drafts and peerreviews. Despite the fact the authors immediately state they use the UNHCR and Sphere standards, this set of guidelines reinterprets some of the main concepts of the work by Cuny-Davis and Zetter (1995). In particular, it is clear that the definition of transitional settlements is provided so that readers focus on the affected population rather than on humanitarian aid agencies.4 The main role of these agencies should be to support a process, rather than provide results. Corsellis & Vitale (2005) emphasize the importance of support for the sustainable livelihood of refugees associated with a broader transitional criteria considered as a transitional phase within relief-development continuum.

The innovative concept in the handbook is that it does not stigmatise any specific settlement model

Camp: approximately 20,000 inhabitants

4 sectors • fire breaks: 30m per built-up 300m • roads follow contours and lead out from centre • run-offwater also follows contours • features used to break repeating pattern • administrative centre located at the centre of the camp.

Sector: approximately 5,000 inhabitants

4 blocks • fire breaks:15m between blocks • should contain central recreational/commercial spaces

Block: approximately 1,250 inhabitants

16 communities • fire breaks: 6m (pathways)

Community: approximately 80 inhabitants

16 plots with 16 shelters • fire breaks: 2m between dwellings

drainage should be well planned and maintained

• drain water must not pollute existing surface water

or groundwater, or cause erosion.

Hierarchy of modular space of refugee camps Camp sub-divided into sectors, blocks, and communities, Transitional Settlements Displaced Populations (Corsellis & Vitale, 2005, p.380) 47

latrine

refuse container

shower

road/surface water drainage

tap stand

family dwelling on family plot

Layout options for community modules Clockwise: Standards for service provision for a community, Hollow square plan, Staggered plan, Community road plan (Corsellis & Vitale, 2005, p.381-391).

48

for refugees and, at the same time, does not assume that the model is universal. Six different transitional settlement solutions are described and their positive and negative traits assessed as part of an ongoing process rather than its end result. Planned camps are one of these solutions, and several implemented examples are described and evaluated.

The examples are all shelter clusters camps, in contrast to the linear sequence of shelters Davis labels militarystyle (1982). Although these are all positive examples, they reveal a rigid consolidated hierarchical layout of camp space without apparently being aware of the origins and reasons as to why this hierarchy was created in the first place (Kennedy, 2008, p. 131). Despite the fact that the design is limited to the innovation of a single cluster, rather than the planning of an entire camp, it is one of the most important texts on camp design produced in recent years.

Another important text is the Camp Management Toolkit produced in 2004 by just one organization: the Norwegian Refugee Council. The toolkit focuses only on refugee camps, but not exclusively on camp design. The chapters dealing with different kinds of camp design are presented in two chapters: Camp setup and closure (NRC, 2004, pp.187-236), and Shelter (NRC, 2004 pp.453-484). Although the ‘toolkit’ text was published prior to the one by Corsellis & Vitale (2005) it makes several references to their publication due to the long peer-review process that preceded the final draft of both handbooks. It never provides an accurate definition of camp even though it indicates several possible development processes.

The Council wanted to provide a practical handbook to groups who manage and plan camps, above all on issues relating to the security and safety of refugees.

Emphasis on these issues reduces the space dedicated to relief-development continuum, although indications are provided regarding the space-time aspect. At the very least, it is a revision of the terminology used to define the relationship between camp and city. The hierarchy of the camp is described using terms reminiscent of the idea of the city such as neighbourhood, township, camp town, camp city (NRC, 2004, pp. 37-40). The proposed camp layout is based on clusters - four different variations compared to the central axis - but since the layout is hypothetical no reference is made to the relationship between the site and its surroundings. Its main shortcomings depend on the NRC’s participation in the Sphere Project and the fact that the agency is a powerful implementing partner of the UNHCR. This means that the NRC subscribes to the minimum standards policy in the main guidelines.

Furthermore, there is no visible connection between the objectives and the design of the camp. Instead the order is inverted, in other words rather than starting with the objectives and then creating an optimum design based those objectives, the design comes first

followed by how the design might support the general objectives, (Kennedy, 2008, p. 135).

After publication of the above-illustrated texts, the two main handbooks, the Sphere Project (2011) and the UNHCR Handbook (2007) were revised and new editions published. The new edition of the Sphere handbook states that it is impossible to achieve numerical standards immediately and that in some cases several standards may be ignored to avoid tension due to inequalities between the camps and neighbouring communities. In other words, this edition ‘loosens’ the principle of universal application of the standards in favour of support for local adaptation of the interventions.

In fact, these more qualitative shelter standards allow families to gradually increase the performance of their residential homes; in turn this enhances the transitional process from emergency to durable solutions (Kennedy, 2008, p. 138). In 2007, UNHCR published the third edition of the most internationally recognized set of guidelines, Handbook for Emergencies. The chapter Site selection, Planning and Shelter (UNHCR, 2007, pp. 207-224) deals with the design of settlements for refugees. After reiterating the initial premises of the handbook (UNHCR, 2007, p. 6-8), the chapter emphasises the importance of the participatory processes that should be implemented with government and local authorities (when choosing the site) and with refugees (as regards camp planning). The chapter

Camp Management Toolkit (NRC, 2004).

49

recommends that a bottom-up approach be adopted at all times, starting with the smallest social units and preserving traditional social arrangements and structures as far as possible (UNHCR, 2007, p. 206).

Nevertheless, there no instructions regarding the implementation of these processes or directions about how to solve potential conflicts related to the use of planned space within communities. In particular, there are no indications regarding the participatory process concerning the camp layout, i.e., the mutual position of shelters, the number of shelters in each cluster, and the service areas for residents. Compared to previous editions, the third edition analyses the different options for transitional settlements and describes their advantages and shortcomings. The options are: dispersed settlement, mass shelter, and camps. Camps are always considered the last option (UNHCR, 2007, p. 206). The chapter goes on to describe the criteria for different aspects of camp design, from site selection, to planning and shelter design. The guidelines are always numerical: the chapter outlines the recommended minimum surface area per person (45m2) so as to determine the expected size of the camp and select a suitable site; it also envisages free space for future expansions (UNHCR, 2007, p. 210). Other minimum standards are provided to ensure not only the right

UNHCR Handbook for Emergencies, Third edition, (UNHCR, 2007).

50

distance between shelters, but also population density for the facilities and infrastructures (UNHCR, 2007, p. 213).

The hierarchy of spatial elements in the camp remains unchanged compared to more recent models. Although modular planning is recommended, the handbook also specifies that this does not necessarily mean using a grid layout even though a linear or grid layout is described as suitable due to its simple design and easy implementation. It goes on to add that every effort should be made to avoid a rigid grid design which ignores community layout and interaction, for example the use of facilities, because a rigid grid design does not create a potential sense of belonging, which is crucial for proper usage, cleaning and maintenance (UNHCR, 2007, p. 216).

Here too, the procedures to implement these criteria are poorly explained and the handbook does not provide information on the design and procedural processes required to assess these needs. However, compared to past editions it provides a graphic template for the design for a community cluster. This design replicates the U-shaped clusters of Cunyâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Bangladesh designs in the seventies, however it does not focus on the spaces between clusters and relations with the outside world.

Proof of the systematic nature of the illustrated choices

Humanitarian Charter and Minimum Standards in HumanitarianResponse, (Sphere Project, 2011).

is the fact there are no references to the relationship between the camp, its immediate surroundings and the local population (Kennedy, 2008, p. 137).

A general review of the current guidelines shows that the camp design model is based on the concept of onesize-fits-all, a rigid and extremely structured system which has led to an almost univocal and global camp design, albeit with several variants. The numerical standards used to achieve objectives of safety, hygiene and protection are materialised in a spatial hierarchy of the built environment reiterated in most handbooks: shelter, cluster, block, sector, and camp. In some cases (Corsellis & Vitale, 2004) more attention is focused on open spaces and the transition between public and private spaces; this is thanks to the morphology of the U-shaped clusters that introduce design elements which are very different to the dominant linear or grid layout. Generally speaking, the quantitative aspects (minimum standards for settlements and the assessment of shelters, camps and settlements) are now considered priority items in the effort to protect refuges because they are, to all intents and purposes, life-or-death issues. This trend ignores the operational or performative aspects influencing the quality of life in a camp, such as the attempt to create oneâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s own livelihood. In other words, the global camp design model does not explicitly provide the human right to self-determination, to a dignity that is impossible to reach when all that is provided is the minimum required to survive in a built environment, or rather in an environment built at the speed of light, with absolutely no proper spatial relations. This set of measures is part of recurrent protocols dedicated to the use and management of space and seems to ensure the permanent exclusion of refugees (Bauman, 2004, p. 98). There is a net divide between residential and non-residential functions; furthermore, this separation vis-Ă -vis the camp surroundings and host communities is increasingly exacerbated for political reasons and eventually turns into segregation. The possibility for pre-existing routes to pass inside the camp is not envisaged, or better still, is implicitly contrasted. Entrance to a camp is always filtered by the admin offices of the humanitarian aid agencies, and boundaries are cordoned off with security fencing.

This is the spatial configuration envisaged by current camp design; the intention is to safeguard and protect, but in actual fact it appears to always keep the refugees slap in the middle of painful impermanence (Bauman, 2004, p. 95), thereby completing the process of sociopolitical deprivation which began with the long journey that led these individuals to become displaced persons and then refugees.

Lolachi, M., 2007.

Modular Design Concept Shelters, 16/sub-block, 1 shelter/family, 16x 5 = 80 refugees/sub-block, each shelter area18 m2 (UNHCR, 2007, p. 214).

3 Source: <http://www.sphereproject.org/about/> [Accessed 20 October 2013].

4 See chapter 2, Overview of the protection of the right to housing.

5 See chapter 2, Refugees. Who are they and who protects them.

51

Summary. Development of current camp design Community-based approach and minimum standards. Two different perspectives have contributed to the development of current refugee camp design (Kennedy, 2004; 2008).

(WHO, 1971) Guide to Sanitation in Natural Disaster

MINIMUM STANDARDS

Minimum standards for public health.

1970s Knowledge transfer

1970s Universal?

New NGOs, new technical skills were transferred from logistics, public health, urban planning.

How can manuals be universal and locally applicable?

Fred Cuny.

1971 Intertect Humanitarian aid agency founded by Fred Cuny, with community-based approach to the technical aspects of camp design.

SHELTER CLUSTERS

1970

(Turner, 1976) Housing by People Key text on self-build and participatory processes.

1975

Manuals and guidelines Bibliography Ideas, facts and vocabulary Agencies and organizations Design approaches

(Caminos & Goerthert, 1978) Urbanisation Primer Minimum standards in order to rationalise camp design.

1984-85 UNHCR Durable solutions 1980 Guidelines 40 m2 overall per person in a camp and 15 litres of drinking water per person per day. The earliest guidelines attributed to the WHO.

1980s Camp city Camps must be planned as if they were cities, considering the same factors. Intertect.

Planned camps are described as being a last resort for displaced populations.

(UNHCR, 1982)

(UNHCR, 1982) Handbook for Emergencies

(UNHCR, 1981) Handbook for Emergencies

Vocabulary and processes of the community clusters design.

Draft by Fred Cuny.

1980/90s Camps and settlement Temporariness and stability defined by the UNHCR with important consequences for the life of refugees within camps.

(Harrell-Bond, 1986) Imposing Aid

First edition.

(Davis, 1978) Shelter After Disaster

1980

1982 Last resort

Removal of all vocabulary references to permanent settlement features such as villages, streets and housing.

The earliest critiques of the use of planned camps, followed by several other academic texts.

1985

1998 Universal Sphere vocabulary is mostly generic and imperative, without differentiation in the local application.

(SPHERE

PROJECT, 1998)

Humanitarian Charter and Minimum Standards in Humanitarian Response First trial edition.

1997 Sphere Project

1990s CPEs

Initiative of several humanitarian agencies to improve the quality and the accountability of humanitarianism.

(UNHCR, 1998) Handbook for Emergencies Second edition.

The increased size of humanitarian interventions, in terms of budget, actors and beneficiaries, demands more accountability.

(Zetter, 1995) Shelter provision and Settlement Policies Vocabulary and community-based approach with references to Fred Cunyâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s work.

1990

1995

1997 Shelter Project Small group of researchers with field experience based out of Cambridge University, today known as Shelter Centre.

2000

Manuals and guidelines Bibliography Ideas, facts and vocabulary Agencies and organizations Design approaches

(SPHERE

PROJECT, 2000)

Humanitarian Charter and Minimum Standards in Humanitarian Response

(SPHERE

PROJECT, 2011)

Humanitarian Charter and Minimum Standards in Humanitarian Response

First edition.

(UNHCR, 2007) Handbook for Emergencies

Third edition.

CURRENT CAMP DESIGN

Third edition.

(NRC, 2004) Camp Management Toolkit First edition.

(CORSELLIS & VITALE, 2005)

2000s Transitional settlements

Transitional Settlements Displaced Populations

Definition of this term as a result of the peer-review process initiated by Shelter Project (Shelter Centre).

2005

Universal design type, consisting of numerical standards that define physical dimensions and a rigid hierarchy of space (shelter, cluster, block, sector, camp). The result is similar to a military-style camp. The internal functions are separated (residential and service facilities), just as camps are physically and politically separated from the host communities. There is a systematically determined lack of correspondence between the refugeesâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; needs and the performance of camps in terms of spatial flexibility in time, at community, micro-urban and urban level.

2010

2013

Shelter design. From emergency to durable solutions The transitional shelter approach. Handbooks, most common solutions and inadequate prefabricated shelters.

The post disaster household shelter is the most common object in the built environment of refugee camps. This section will identify the shelter design described as desirable by the main handbooks and guidelines, and then compare it against the shelter design used in the Zaatari camp. As mentioned above, the term shelter is used to describe a temporary abnormal condition; it differs from the term housing which instead suggests an idea of permanence and normality. A shelter is a housing solution provided to refugees, especially those in camps; over the years the design of shelters has evolved based on a process formalized by the UNHCR with the transition from emergency to durable solutions.

Providing shelters is usually the most expensive budget 56

Garten, M., 2013.

Aerial view of the Zaatari refugee camp. Available at: <http:// civilianstories.org/> [Accessed 5 December 2013].

item in camp management (UNHCR, 2007, p. 232).

All previously analysed camp design handbooks also deal with shelters, chiefly from the management and organisational viewpoint required by the implementing partners, but also, albeit to a lesser degree, from a design and technical viewpoint.

There are several definitions of the term shelter, but they are all conceptually similar to the following definition: habitable covered living space, providing a secure, healthy living environment with privacy and dignity for the groups, families and individuals residing within it (Shelter Centre, p. 199, 2012).

In the aftermath of a disaster an emergency shelter, such as the tent, is the first choice for reasons of speed, convenience and reduced cost. White tents with the UNHCR blue logo are the most well-known standard solution and are normally used in planned camps. Their features and technical specifications are laid down in the UNHCR relief item catalogue (UNHCR, 2012c).

The tents (660x400x220 cm) can accommodate a group of four or six people; their lifespan depends on their quality, storage time before distribution, the climate, and the care taken by their inhabitants. Generally speaking the tents do not last more than twelve months and are especially inadequate either during the cold winter weather, or at high temperatures. Following the initial emergency phase, the UNHCR usually provides more durable solutions whenever possible.

The gradual improvement in housing conditions (known as transitional shelter), from emergency to durable solutions, involves providing shelters made of stronger and more protective materials than tents. The materials must have the following characteristics: they have to be upgradable and be able to be used as part of a permanent house or be reusable for other purposes; they have to be able to be relocated from a temporary site to a permanent location, resold to generate income to help with recovery, or recycled for reconstruction.

(Shelter Centre, 2012, p. 2). Construction materials change depending on local availability and how technologically developed the construction industry is in host countries. Optimal solutions should be as similar as possible to the choices normally made by people when building a permanent settlement in their own country. Nevertheless, the UNHCR Handbook for Emergencies (2007) states that plastic sheeting is a crucial item, especially for additional roofing over shelters. The handbook recommends that the load-bearing structure of the shelters be made of bamboo or wood, but it also warns against the risk of overexploitation of nearby wooded areas. Construction of shelters and their ensuing improvement should be self-managed by individuals and social groups with supporting technical skills since this reinforces identity. This choice potentially reduces construction time, contains costs, corresponds to the real needs of people, and promotes cultural identity and

sense of ownership in the community in question.

Notwithstanding the kind of materials used, minimum standards differ according to the climate: a minimum of 3.5 m2 per person in tropical, warm climates excluding cooking facilities or kitchen, and minimum of 4.5 m2 per person in cold climates, including the kitchen and bathing facilities (UNHCR, 2007, p. 221).

This paper has not cited or considered another kind of shelter, prefabricated shelters, a solution extensively adopted in the Zaatari camp in Jordan. A long list of reasons why prefabricated shelters are not ideal are detailed in most handbooks (Corsellis & Vitale, 2005; UNHCR, 2007; Shelter Centre, 2011). The Handbook for Emergencies lists these reasons which are also included in many other handbooks: high unit cost, long production and shipping time, transport problems including cost, assembly problems, inadequacy of the shelters vis-Ă -vis specific cultural and social norms, and cooling problems in hot climates (UNHCR, 2007, p.

222). These are the reasons why prefabricated shelters are not suited to the transitional shelter approach.

Furthermore, they do not facilitate involvement of the community in planning and implementation since prefabricated shelters are industrially produced. Case studies have shown that in some places itâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s cheaper to rebuild permanent housing than it is to purchase prefabricated shelters (Shelter Centre, 2011, p. 8).

The above reasons make the choice of the Zaatari shelters (built while the summerisation kit for shelters designed by FAREstudio was being elaborated) even more questionable. Since data illustrating how often prefabricated shelters were used in planned camps is unAvailable at: the web, the author wrote directly to UNHCR official sources to obtain this data using its institutional query form. No answer was provided, despite having specified the purpose of this academic research. An answer by the UNHCR Geneva office, its headquarters in Amman, or its statistics office, would have had to show the very evident contradictions between the recommendations in their Handbook for Emergencies and the choices made for one of the biggest camp in the world (Zaatari).

Since the next part of this dissertation required said data, the author interviewed two influential experts on emergency shelters. The interviews are reported below.

57

â&#x20AC;&#x153;Everybody wants the same thing, rich or poor, not only a warm, dry room, but a shelter for the soul.â&#x20AC;?

Mockbee, S., 2004. (Architecture for Humanity, 2006, p. 50).

Above. UNHCR, 2009.

Construction of shelters in Pakistan with bamboo structures and tarpaulins for roofing.

58

Interview. Shelters according to James Kennedy James Kennedy, influential expert on design and implementation of emergency shelters, responds to authorâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s questions (14 November 2013).

From emergency to durable solutions. What are the most widely diffused and the most appropriate transitional shelter solutions for this process in planned camps?

James Kennedy I think in terms of appropriateness, it depends where the camp is. A camp in Afghanistan will need very different shelters from a camp in the Congo. I think very often the first shelters in a planned camp are canvas tents, that does not mean that the canvas tents are the most appropriate but they are massed produced, there are very large stockpiles, large warehouses full of this tents and they are very quick and easy to set up. The other problem is that for every camp in the world, it was assumed that the camp will not be permanent, even though we know that there are camps in Palestine which have been there for 16 years, or the Daadab camp in north of Kenya. So, even though there are several camps which are been in the existence for very long time, at the beginning the organisational assumption is always that the camp will not be permanent. So this is then a problem with the word transitional. The idea behind transitional shelter is that it concern how be a part of a process, be a stepping stone toward durable sustainable housing.

But the problem in camps is that if the camps are closed tomorrow, then, how is the shelter transitional?

Do the families take all the shelter materials with them when they are returning home? What is the transitional aspect? I think that is perhaps why the main book that has transitional in the title was not transitional shelter but Transitional Settlement Displaced Populations.

And so then because it was looking at displaced

Shelter Projects 2011-2012 (IFRC, UNHABITAT, UNHCR, 2013).

James Kennedy (Wallsend, England, 1969) He has received degrees from the School of Oriental and African Studies at London University, Beijing Film Academy, Wolfson College at Cambridge University, and a Master of Architecture in Human Settlements degree from the Katholieke Universiteit Leuven.

He has worked extensively as an emergency shelter programme manager in Sri Lanka, Pakistan, Indonesia and Kenya, and has conducted training in emergency shelter in Sri Lanka, Somalia, Senegal and Uganda, and at Cambridge and Georgetown universities. He has been a peer reviewer for a number of global shelter guidelines, and has had articles published in Forced Migration Review, the Journal of Contingencies and Crisis Management, Humanitarian Exchange and the Harvard Design Magazine.

59

populations, people who still need to return home, perhaps. The camp is part of the process to returning home. Possibly they can take the shelter materials with them but maybe not, we do not know.

There are, in many camps, as you will see in the Middle East, or as you might see in documentation from Pakistan, there are shelters which are bigger and stronger than tents. There are examples of that in Ethiopia, for instance. If you look in the most recent version of Shelter Projects 2011-2012 (IFRC, UNHABITAT, UNHCR, 2013), then I think you find a case study on using this sort of bamboo shelters in Ethiopia.

They depend upon how much budget is available and they also depend upon local climate and the needs to physically protect the people living in the camps. But it is hard to say whether they are really transitional, they are just sort of bigger, stronger tents in a way.

It is not so easy to say that they are really part of a process towards durable solutions. It is not also easy to show convincingly how those shelter materials could be reused or carried away. I think this is a notable prevalent model.

The prefabricated shelters, that we have see around Syria, in Turkey, in Jordan, are not at all common in any other camps. I think the only other camp I know, where there are these prefabricated camping houses, is in Yemen, maybe two or three years ago. I think the key to this is the levels of funding, because these cost a lot of money, just to purchase and to store and they actually take a lot of extra money to run. They need to be electricity supplied to each of these shelters, in some cases each shelter got air conditioning or ventilation.

It is not just the costs to construct and to install, but also the costs to make sure they are liveable every day of the year, and also to maintain the shelters and to repair them. There is money in many part of Middle East, there are some quite rich donors there, but this is not characteristic. If you go in the central Africa, maybe the average cost of the shelters is less than 200 dollars, and it is mainly just plastic sheeting, sticks and mud.

The situation now in and around Syria is not typical for most other part of the world.

What would you change in this process (emergency tent, transitional shelter, etc.)?

Do you think it is adaptable to all situations and if not, why?

JK There has been a lot of debates since January 2010 about rather this process is still appropriate, although, almost all of this debate is concerned non-displaced populations after a natural disaster, so that debate is not been looking at planned camps and for the most part is not been looking at armed conflict situation.

There are people saying: why waste time and money on 60

tents and transitional shelters, why not just go straight to permanent reconstruction? Why go to step by step?

I think the problem of humanitarian organisations is that some families, maybe a lot of families, are able to start rebuilding immediately and the day after the disaster somehow they can start to put things together.

However, that is not everybody. There are always some people who are at the end of the queue. Some people who cannot get the money, some people who cannot get the materials for permanent housing. While they are waiting to rebuild, while they are looking for that money or while they are waiting for the delivery of the materials, where do they live? You need something that is quick, that can be distributed to lots of people. The problem is how does an NGO, how does an humanitarian organisation, figure out quickly at the beginning which families can do rebuilding immediately, and maybe they need help rebuilding, and which families cannot do rebuilding immediately and need help on different route? How many families still do need some sort of transitional shelters or some shelter that is basic but they can upgrade later? How many families really do need to be able to move around and to have something which is lightweight, which they can carry with them?

Itâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s a problem of the assessment and the targeting. The NGOs and the humanitarian actors are not good at that yet.

Then, as I understand, a lot of your work has been in planned camps and in planned camps for refugees or IDPs displaced during armed conflict. Then, the question always is when will the camp close? When will the conflict stop? When will people go home? If you build more permanent housing are you going to waste those fund? Are you going to waste those resources?

And again the humanitarian organisations are not very good at those sort of strategic long-term diagnosis. If, for instance, you knew that the camp was going to close in six months, and everybody in the camp knew that the camp was going to close, and if you went to all the refugees and say them you are going home in six months, we give you each five hundred dollars now, you can do two things: you can spend the 500 dollars on your shelter here in the camp, or you can keep the 500 dollars for when you go home. Probably a lot of people would choose to live in not so good shelters and keep the money as capital for their return home. If the camp is closing in one month, I think a hundred percent of the refugees will just keep the money, they would not spent it in the shelters. But if you told them the camp is closing in one year, and maybe there would be a winter, maybe a rainy season, then maybe some percentage of the refugees would spend some of their money in the shelter. If you told them that the camp would not close five years, then maybe the majority of them would spend their money on the shelter in the camp.

And if you told them you are not going back for 20 years, than I think all of them would spend their money

on the shelter in the camp. The problem is where do you go, where is the point in the timeline where people decide that really the priority is spending money on the shelter in the camp, is it when everybody guesses that the camp would be there for one year, 18 months, 20 months, 24 months? That is what we do not really know how to judge, how to decide.

What kind of relationship do you think exists between the clustered shelter design and shelter typology?

JK I think itâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s better give some specific examples from around the world. I think you have seen some different designs for clusters inside the camp. The one that you see most commonly in the UNHCR Handbook for Emergencies was designed for north of Sri Lanka and it works in the northern Sri Lanka and it works in northern Sri Lanka, in west Africa, it does not work in Afghanistan or Pakistan, it does not work for Somali population in northern Kenya. The most of the clustered designs assume that there will be one shelter in the middle of a plot of land. There is no standard design where any of the shelters can touch each others.

I think the reason for that is that a lot of the thinking, writing and research into the design of those clusters was done based on camps in Sub-Saharan Africa where the shelters are made of very lightweight materials but also materials that are very flammable and so therefore there always needed to be space in between the shelters. Not just for fire but also to trying reduce transmission of diseases and also to certain extent for just privacy, reducing noise.

There have been camp, for instance in Afghanistan or Pakistan, where this sort of open space clustered design was implemented by the UNHCR and then all the families, because they wanted privacy, and they did not want anybody looking at the families, they then closed off the open spaces and they used all the plastic sheeting not to cover the shelters but they used the plastic sheeting to make fences around the plot of land. Also in northern Syria and in northern Iraq, in Kurdistan, it is becoming more common actually.

This means that you do not have the same evacuation routes, it may compromise the fire safety or the gaps to void transmission of diseases.

At the same time, there have been one or two people doing research on thick mud blocks. Then can you build groups of shelters together, so that they are sharing walls? In theory it is possible and in theory it would reduce the amount of materials, in theory it would give more free space. But I do not think it has ever been actually implemented in a camp. There have been proposals, but I do not think any program has gone and implemented it. I think part of the reason of this is how do you divide the materials? If four families leave the camp, they live in different directions, how do you divide the roof materials between the four

families?

The other problem, or the fear, is that if you build shelters right next to each other, eventually you just create a very dense slum. If you keep on building together more and more, the refugees feel they have permission to build more shelters right next to each other. So you end up with very densely populated slum, which also need to be avoided. So there has been this research and this concept note but that has never actually happened in the field.

I think in terms of sharing space often for Somali refugees, for Afghani, Bangladeshi, and I think also now in the Middle East, the designs are just using short double rows for shelters, so they are not in clusters, they are not in square groups. Two long lines of shelters, back to back, but cut short, so usually ten shelters long and two shelters wide. There is no community space to share in the middle, but that is ok because those families would not share community space, they want closed off space. So these long rows allowed the families just to claim their own private space much more easily.

Have you ever been involved in operations to implement prefabricated shelters? And what is your design approach to improving (in the case of winterisation, summerisation) this kind of shelter?

JK No I have not. As you know there is a lot of criticism of prefabricated shelters. In most other emergencies, outside of the Middle East, there is a clear policy not to use prefabricated shelters. This is because they cost too much, because they come from other countries and so the construction is not helping the local economy.

Often the design is not appropriate either for the local culture or for the local climate. It is often difficult to impossible to repair them, because the materials they have been built with are not locally available. So those are the normal standard arguments about why not to use prefabricated shelters.

In the case of the Middle East the prefabricated shelters have been used, in part because the families, are urban middle income families that in terms of their own expectations and their own sense of dignity, they want something looks like a real house as much as possible. It is also because there is the money there, the money coming from the Gulf, coming from the Turkish government. The problems then are, keeping those houses going, we will see what happen if the conflict continues for longer time. In terms of winterisation and summerisation, or climate adaptation, I know that there are some NGOs again in Jordan, Lebanon, Turkey or Kurdistan, who experiments with putting shade nets on top. There are also now some guidance, some graphic information leaflets, some posters, which have been prepared. They are no ready yet, but they basically show families ten ways to make your prefabricated 61

shelter warmer, or ten ways to keep the heat in. These are simple stuff, that you and I may do for our own apartment back in Europe, I mean, you make sure that there are no cracks between the window and the wall, or actually you put some extra layer plastic sheeting behind the window, maybe create an extra layer on the ceiling, a false layer with plastic sheeting or a cloth to keep some heating there, very standards things.

Then I know also that there are some NGOs that are trying to help the families buy insulation materials, particularly wall panels, panels for extra layers of walls for some of these shelters. That has been done for relatively small number of families so far, I do not know if they will continue on a wider scale.

The UNHCR Handbook for Emergencies does not recommend prefabricated shelters.

When and why were these solutions chosen for planned camps?

JK That is correct and due to the reasons I have just given. I am not sure who made the decision for the prefabricated shelters in the Middle East. I honestly do not know whether that was the local government authorities, or whether it was some of the private donors, I honestly do not know what they were thinking and why they decided for those shelters.

Most of the prefabricated shelters were donated by the Gulf states and produced in Jordan for the Zaatari camp.

JK A lot of the Golf donors are very new to humanitarian involvement and they are not always very good at communicating their own discussions with everybody.

Are there any global economic data on the expenditure for the different shelter typologies?

JK It does not exist global economic dates for every shelters typology, but if you look at all four editions of Shelter Projects (IFRC, UNHABITAT, UNHCR, 2009, 2010, 2011, 2012), there you can find some summary showing you all of the shelters. I think that changes from edition to edition, but it shows you how big the shelters are in terms of square metres, it shows you how much they cost. In the later edition, if you go to the Individual Case Studies, they try to say how much the materials cost and how much the other costs were for logistics or for program administration. One or two editions have some information on how long it took the project to construct all of the shelters as well, comparing different shelters. Those are not every shelters in the world, that are just the different shelter projects that the authors were able to find, that we were able to find. So it is not complete but it should give you some examples of how much different shelters cost.

The other two books that you can download which may also have some costing information, one is called 62

Transitional Shelters. Eight Designs, (IFRC, 2011).

Transitional Shelters. Eight Designs (IFRC, 2011) and there is another version coming out in the next couple of months, a second edition, Transitional Shelters. Ten Designs. So that is coming out soon but I do not know the exact publication date. Those are very specifically for transitional shelters constructed locally, using locally available materials, it is very different from prefabricated shelters for instance.

One other thing to think about is that if you give somebody a shelter which costs only a hundred dollars, but you need to repair it every six months, and every six months you have to pay another fifty dollars, over five years that would cost more than a shelter which costs five hundred dollars, but never needs to be repaired.

I think one of the things to really think about is not just initial or installation costs, but to think more about lifespan costs. How much does it costs to build the shelter, to live in the shelter and to demolish the shelter, or how much of the shelter can be reused or not. Those I think also need to be take in consideration.

The design and implementation process of the prefabricated shelters in the Zaatari camp revealed a lack of consideration of lifespan. This caused a lack of rationalization of performance and costs of the prefabs.

Why in your opinion this happened?

JK It depends firstly on how the humanitarians are able to think strategically, if they have capacity to think in a long-term. It also depend on, if you look back at the beginning of 2013, there was people saying that the war will be over in six months, and than things changed and so by this summer then it was obvious that maybe the war was not going to an end. But if you were in Jordan in March, you might think about summerisation, but you think the wars will end, people will go back home, we do not need to think about winterisation. And then the constrains, the political situation and the military conflict changed. I think then also for this camps the question is also, if the war does end, if families do go back home, then what happens to all of those shelters?

What happens to all of the local infrastructures?

63

Interview. Shelters according to André Ullal André Ullal, influential expert on design and implementation of emergency shelters, responds to author’s questions (November 2013).

From emergency to durable solutions. What are the most widely diffused and the most appropriate transitional shelter solutions for this process in planned camps?

André Ullal For statistics regarding most widely diffused transitional shelter solutions, I suggest www.sheltercluster.org A strategy that I saw adopted in Pakistan following the 2010 floods there was an incremental approach. In this incremental strategy, during the emergency response tents were distributed, then in the following months construction materials were distributed to reinforce tents: timber and CGI sheet to build roofs over tents, sand bags to build walls around tents. This strategy enabled a degree of flexibility - beyond reinforcing tents, the additional materials were used for a range of needs, including: buildings walls to maintain purdah (seclusion of women), construction of bathrooms, shelter for animal feed etc.

What would you change in this process (emergency tent, transitional shelter, etc.)?

Do you think it is adaptable to all situations and if not, why?

AU Rather than defining a shelter design (emergency, transitional etc.), it may be more effective to enable people to choose the items/materials that they require to meet their particular shelter needs. For example, yards/warehouses could be established containing a range of materials/items (tents, timber, tarpaulins, CGI sheets, rope, cement etc.) and coupons of fixed value distributed to people that enable them to select materials (up to the coupon value) best suited to meet their particular needs. In parallel, shelter designs could be defined (with built examples there to inspect) together with the lists of materials required to build those designs, to assist people that are uncertain which materials they should choose. An Ikea store for emergency/transitional shelter needs.

This approach assumes that people have access 64

to a centralised yard/warehouse, which may have limitations for inaccessible areas such as north-west Pakistan. Also, current typical procurement policies demand contracts with suppliers for fixed quantities of materials, thus demanding an accurate estimation of demand for each material. Supply contracts would require amendment to enable greater flexibility - for example, supply of between 10,000 and 100,000 CGI sheets etc., rather than fixing an exact number.

What kind of relationship do you think exists between the clustered shelter design and shelter typology?

AU By clustered shelter design, I assume you mean single units arranged in clustered settlement patterns, as opposed to the grid/array settlement patterns typically adopted for camps. Efficiency of land use would be a key concern here.

The establishment of camps is often politically/ economically contentious - governments allocate land for a camp without a clear indication when the camp will be closed/land returned - camps place a burden on local resources and can disturb local ethic balances.

Such concerns may lead to a minimum of land being allocated for camps, hence demanding maximum efficiency of settlement planning, leading to grid settlement patterns. Consider the broader economic and political implications of settlement planning and shelter design.

Have you ever been involved in operations to implement prefabricated shelters? And what is your design approach to improving (in the case of winterisation, summerisation) this kind of shelter?

AU I have never used prefabricated shelters. I can see some benefits related to the ease of procurement: single supplier, single contract, clearly defined shelter result etc. Some issues to consider: lack of flexibility to meet various shelter needs, difficulty pre-positioning bulky

prefab kits, lack of flexibility to ‘stretch’ prefabricated kits to meet greater numbers of people, new tools/skills required to assemble prefabs.

The UNHCR Handbook for Emergencies does not recommend prefabricated shelters.

When and why were these solutions chosen for planned camps?

AU A few issues noted above. For UNHCR, prepositioning and flexibility are particularly important. Shelter Clusters typically have contingency plans that call for prepositioning of materials in case of emergency - UNHCR and IOM typically play a lead role in prepositioning. Tents, tarpaulins, CGI sheets and timber or bamboo poles are favoured as they provide a degree of flexibility re: the shelter needs (design and numbers). For example, 10,000 CGI sheets can assist 1,000 families (10 sheets per family) or 2,000 families (5 sheets per family). Pre-fab kits don;t enable the same flexibility. Cost and storage compactness may also be considerations.

Beyond pre-positioning, I believe flexibility is the greatest consideration leading organisations away from prefabricated shelters.

Are there any global economic data on the expenditure for the different shelter typologies?

AU I would start with the shelter cluster website noted above. Also, IFRC has a shelter team in Geneva that monitors and disseminates shelter information - they may also compile statistics. UNHCR and the Red Cross (IFRC, ICRC plus various national Red Cross agencies) provide the majority of shelter assistance in response to displacement (UNHCR) and disaster (Red Cross) - I expect that together they would account for around 80% of shelter provision. A review of annual reports, etc. from these agencies might provide indicative statistics for global shelter generally.

FAREstudio, 2013.

From canvas to appropriate winterised shelter. Shelter tent prototype proposed by the UNHCR for the 2005 earthquake in Pakistan.

André Ullal (London, England, 1974) He has received a Bachelor of Engineering in 1995 from the Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology, a Bachelor of Planning and Design in 1998 from the University of Melbourne, a Master of Architecture in 2011 from the University of Melbourne and currently he is Doctor of Philosophy (PhD) on Construction Management & Economics Research - Research topic: State-building and Construction – Management and outcomes of construction programmes during the conflict in Afghanistan. He worked as architect and consultant for the Australian Red Cross, UNMIT and UNDP in Afghanistan, Timor Leste, Pakistan, Thailand. In 2009 he was Chair of the Emergency Shelter Cluster Technical Working Group and member of UNDP Afghanistan Contracts and Procurement Committee.

65

II

Context

The Zaatari refugee camp in Jordan

4

The Syrian Civil War. Refugees living in neighbouring countries

2,125,339

Syria Regional Refugee Response <http://data.unhcr.org/syrianrefugees>.

11 November '13 2M

1M

0M

May '12

January '12

September '12

Janauary '13

May '13

Ankara

September '13

Armenia Azerbaijan

TURKEY

506,551 Iran

SYRIA

Cyprus

IRAQ

LEBANON

Mediterranean Sea

197,844

812,268 Beirut

Baghdad

Damascus Amman Palestine Jerusalem Israel

Cairo

JORDAN

548,780 Saudi Arabia

EGYPT 126,081

Red Sea

Zaatari refugee camp, Mafraq Other UNHCR refugee camps

69

The Syrian Civil War. Refugees living in regions of Jordan

548,780

Syria Regional Refugee Response <http://data.unhcr.org/syrianrefugees>.

11 November '13 500k 250k 0k

May '12

September '12

January '13

May '13

September '13

SYRIA

Iraq

IRBID

124,264 ALJUN

9,866

JARASH

10,526

BALQUA

Palestine

14,375

AMMAN

135,485

MADABA

7,550

MAFRAQ

173,240 ZARQUA

48,351

KARAK

8,559

Israel

TAFILAH 2,113

JORDAN MAAN 5,511

Saudi Arabia

AQABA Egypt

2,057

Zaatari refugee camp, Mafraq Other UNHCR refugee camps

70

The housing conditions of Syrian refugees in Jordan A short overview of the Syrian civil war and the living conditions of the thousands of refugees who escaped in neighbouring Jordan.

The Zaatari refugee camp in Jordan owes its existence to belligerent events that, since 2011 have shaken the Arab Republic of Syria and the entire Middle East, with harsh riots related to the broader context of the Arab Spring. Conflicts turned into civil war in 2012, when the riots spread nationwide, with an increasingly violent response by the Syrian government. The strong ethno-religious fragmentation of the Syrian republic exploded into military operations conducted by the regime of President Bashar al-Assad in opposition to the rebel militias (Canali, 2013). The forces involved go far beyond national borders, with geopolitical consequences that affect the entire Middle East, from Qatar to Palestine, to Israel, to Saudi Arabia. After a debate within the Security Council, the UN intervened with a consequent stationing of naval aviation unit of the great powers (Russia, UK, France, and USA) all around the Arabian Peninsula. (Caracciolo, 2013).

Beyond the geopolitical consequences, the ongoing civil war in Syria has caused the affected population high levels of suffering. The diaspora worldwide is also destabilizing the countries that host the huge exodus of Syrians. In November 2013 more than 2.1 million people were forced to flee from their homeland and seek asylum in other countries. This trend is in constant growth, due to the intensification of the Syrian war.1 The UN High Commissioner for Refugees, Ant贸nio Guterres, has stated that the war in Syria has caused the worst refugee crisis since the genocide in Rwanda in 1994 (BBC, 2013a). The countries most affected by this exodus are the neighbouring countries, Lebanon, Turkey and Jordan.2 The bigger refugee camp, Zaatari, is in Jordan. The Kingdom of Jordan allows free access of Syrians to its territory and ensures safety and care for them, even though this contributes to exacerbate situations of political and economic instability for the country and its monarchy (Marziali, 2012).

The majority of Syrian refugees come from areas close to the Jordanian border, namely from Daraa and Damascus, where clashes are more frequent and

violent.3 Those who arrives, after a sudden escape with little or no resources, tell of continuous bombardments, water and electricity cuts and schools closed (Natta, 2013). The Jordanian legislation allows Syrians to enter the country without a visa and guarantees of access to the national labour market, even though this puts Jordan under severe humanitarian and demographic pressure. Nonetheless, the vast majority of Syrians cross the border through unofficial passages.

As a result, the Jordanian authorities confiscate their documents and limit their freedom of movement. Thus the refugees are obliged to reside in the UNHCR planned camps.

In November 2013 there were five camps in Jordan and they are all in the north of the country, near to Syria.4 The refugees can regain their documents and their freedom of movement and settlement outside the camps only if sponsored by a Jordanian citizen (Marziali, 2012). This diffuse resettlement solution is positively advanced by many manuals, such as the UNHCR Handbook for Emergencies. This solution would enable active processes of socio-economic integration of small groups of refugees in local contexts. This could reduce the human, logistic and economic pressure caused by the extreme living conditions within the camps. It should be noted that the living conditions in rural or suburban areas are extremely uncomfortable and often lack essentials, with little or no differences with the camps. In fact, direct and indirect evidence shows that the conditions of the houses that Syrians rent in Jordan are extremely poor (Natta, 2013).5 However, analysis of data on the permanence in the camps reveals that refugees who have the opportunity, tend to leave the camp for other accommodation. There is a constant flow of people that opt for voluntary repatriation because of the extreme living conditions within the camp, and despite the fact that the war is not over. However, the return to their homes sometimes becomes impossible, because the houses have been occupied by the loyalist army, as reported by numerous witnesses (Natta, 71

2013). People who opt for this solution are defined returnees by the UNHCR, i.e. people still in need of protection and assistance after voluntary repatriation.

Other refugees have no resources and are forced to live within camps. The data on Zaatari, highlight two trends. On the one hand the number of new refugees is growing steadily, on the other hand the population of Zaatari has decreased by about 45% in six months.6 Therefore, large mass of people who do not have choice, enter what should be temporary accommodation, the camp, but that is actually an inescapable structure.

These people live in a permanent impermanence that is politically imposed, in a harrowing and alienating city that does not have the attributes to be a city.

FAREstudio, 2013.

Jordanian house in the region of Irbid. The house hosts a family of Syrian refugees: the conditions are extreme and the bathroom is outside.

FAREstudio, 2013.

A UNHCR tent in the courtyard of the Jordanian home owner. This is home to other members of the Syrian family.

Natta, A., 2013.

Family of Syrian refugees in front of the house that hosts them in Mafraq, Jordan. Available at: <http://temi.repubblica.it/ limes/i-rifugiati-siriani-in-giordaniapensano-al-rimpatrio/41486> [Accessed 11 November 2013].

1 Data Available at: <http://data.unhcr.org/syrianrefugees/> [Accessed 11 November 2013].

2, 3, 4 Ibidem 5 On-site inspection of the camp in April 2013 by Riccardo Vannucci (FAREstudio) and of some suburban areas where Syrian refugees were hosted.

6 Data Available at: <http://data.unhcr.org/syrianrefugees/> [Accessed 11 November 2013]. See next page for refugee figures.

72

The Syrian Civil War. Refugees living in the Zaatari camp

202,993

Syria Regional Refugee Response <http://data.unhcr.org/syrianrefugees>.

112,229

25 April '13

11 November '13

200k 100k 0k

March '13

May '13

July '13

September '13

November '13

SYRIA Irbid

Al Mafraq Aljun

70 km

50 km

15 10 km km

ZAATARI CAMP

Mafraq

Jarash

Al Zarqua

JORDAN

Balqua

Amman Zarqua

Amman

Zaatari refugee camp, Mafraq Other UNHCR refugee camps

73

74

Ngan, M., 2013.

Zaatari aerial view. Available at: <http:// news.nationalpost.com/2013/07/19/> [Accessed 5 October 2013].

75

Considerations on the Zaatari camp. Inside vs outside The characteristics of Zaatari site and how people lives while they dwell and work there.

The Zaatari refugee camp was first opened on July 2012 by the UNHCR, but has an area and a population comparable to those of a city.7 A multitude of tents and prefabricated shelters house more than 112,000 inhabitants within an area of more than 5 km2. In November 2013, this was the fifth most populated city in Jordan. (IRIN, 2013).8 Zaatari is a small village near the camp of the same name, and it is located in the north of Jordan a few kilometers from the border with Syria, within the region of Mafraq. The refugee camp is adjacent to a road that starts from the town of Mafraq and runs for many miles parallel to the Syrian border and crosses it at the most eastern part of the country. This is a borderland, a long strip almost of desert, where the local Bedouins believe that before the refugees came, the only resident was the devil; not even scorpions lived there, because of the

76

inhospitable climate (W端rger, 2013). This depressing view of Zaatari in local folklore corresponds with the description of the analysis of site selection for refugee camps provided by social scientists.9 Research for this dissertation found no official documents justifying the specific choice of this site.

However, it is clear that this site does not meet the minimum criteria set out in the UNHCR Handbook for Emergencies. For instance, for the protection and safety of the refugees, the Handbook recommends choosing a site at a reasonable distance from the border of their country of origin (UNHCR, 2007, p. 211) but the distance between Zaatari and the Syrian border is only 10 km. Nonetheless the proximity can facilitate arrival at the camp for people with only makeshift means.

This proximity can also facilitate relations between refugees and the parties involved in the war, with

significant consequences in the criminal manipulation of humanitarian aid.10 The guidelines also provide criteria in terms of size and population. The population of the camps should not exceed 20,000 inhabitants (UNHCR, 2007, p.

210). Zaatari hosts a population that is almost ten times higher than that maximum number. This is because of the huge, constant flow of Syrian refugees that reach the camp and need shelter in a short time.

Consequently, there is an increase in social, logistical and technical issues within the camp.

The guidelines provide criteria for land use and land rights. In most countries land for the establishment of refugee camps is scarce. Often, sites are provided on public land by the government, through agreement of national and local authorities. The huge size of Zaatari could therefore be caused by the difficulty of finding other suitable land to build other camps, even though there are four other camps in Jordan that are smaller.

The reasons for this choice by the UNHCR are not declared and cannot be assessed.

Another standard is accessibility to the site (UNHCR, 2007, p. 212): in Zaatari it is provide by the main road, adjacent to the camp, which leads to Mafraq and then to Amman, about 70 kilometres away. Thus, the fact that the road does not pass through the camp is an implicit choice to exclude and segregate the refugees on the part of the authorities (the Jordanian Opposite. Francis, J., 2013.

Outside the Zaatari camp.

Available at: <http://photos. oregonlive.com/photoessay/2013/10/syrian_refugees_ from_amman_to.html> [Accessed 12 October 2013].

government and the UNHCR). The handbook states that there may be advantages in choosing a site near a town, subject to consideration of possible friction between local inhabitants and refugees (UNHCR, 2007, p. 212). Zaatari is in a semi-desert area in order to easily foreclose any form of exchange with the surrounding small villages by fences with barbed wire. This solution also facilitates compliance with the constraints of Jordanian legislation which allows freedom of movement only to refugees who have a Jordanian citizen who guarantees for them.

A further standard for the site selection is the presence of vegetation (UNHCR, 2007, p. 212). This is impossible to meet in the semi-desert area of Zaatari (UNHCR, 2007, p. 212). Furthermore, the availability of water resources is a central issue because of drought in many areas of Jordan.

In this context Zaatari camp has swiftly been implemented and it has become a receptacle of people exhausted by suffering. Most of these people have no choice but to live there for an unpredictable and probably indeterminate time. The metaphor of the afterlife that is powerfully used by Bauman (2004) seems to fit Zaatari: â&#x20AC;&#x153;Once a refugee, forever a refugee.

Roads back to the lost (or rather no longer existing) homely paradise have been all but cut, and all exits from the purgatory of the camp lead to hellâ&#x20AC;?.

Despite the difficult conditions of life of refugees in Below. Kohler, J., 2013.

Inside the Zaatari camp.

Available at: <http://news.yahoo. com/zaatari-refugee-campsyria-170358067.html> [Accessed 12 October 2013].

77

Zaatari, every day, four buses stop at the camp to collect people who want to travel back to Syria, in the neighbouring region of Daara. The refugees stand in line in the morning, and when the buses arrive, they fight over seats, because they would rather live in a war zone than in Zaatari (W端rger, 2013). The management of this complex and controversial camp is coordinated

by Killian Kleinschmidt, the highest officer of the UNHCR, known as the mayor of Zaatari. Over thirty humanitarian organizations, including NGOs and intergovernmental agencies work within the camp.

Above. Aly, H., 2013.

Entering a new life: refugees arrive at Zaatari camp in the middle of the night (Aly, 2013).

Below. Rasmussen, B., 2013.

Four buses every day, paid for by the Jordanian government, take refugees across the border, where they are either met by a Free Syrian Army escort or left to find their own way to their towns and villages in Syria.

Available at: <http://lightbox.time. com/2013/08/21/m> [Accessed 27 November 2013].

7, 8 Data Available at: <http://data.unhcr.org/syrianrefugees/> [Accessed 11 November 2013].

9 See chapter 2, Planned camp. Space, time and citizenship.

10 See chapter 6, Trends in climate and temperature in Mafraq.

11 See chapter 1, Who are the real beneficiaries of the system?

78

Kohler, J., 2013 Zaatari refugee camp: each day, 3.5 million litres of water are distributed. Available at: <http:// uk.news.yahoo.com/lightbox/> [Accessed 10 November 2013].

Above. Kohler, J., 2013 The UNHCR registration centre in Zaatari. Available at: <http:// www.vice.com/> [Accessed 10 November 2013].

Below. Hamed, M., 2013 Fire-fighters and Syrian refugees extinguishing a fire in the Zaatari camp in March 2013. The fire damaged some 35 tents in the camp. Available at: <http:// wodumedia.com/syrian-refugeesupdate-2013> [Accessed 25 November 2013].

79

â&#x20AC;&#x153;Once a refugee, forever a refugee. Roads back to the lost (or rather no longer existing) homely paradise have been all but cut, and all exits from the purgatory of the camp lead to hellâ&#x20AC;?

Bauman, Z., 2004, p. 96

Vargas, L., 2013.

One of the main road in the Zaatari camp. Available at: <http://www. talkradionews.com/> [Accessed 10 November 2013].

80

Agriculture

JHCO Camp management

JHCO LWF Child protection

FCA IFH/NHF IMC JHAS LWF MC NHF SC UNFPA UNHCR UNICEF Community services

INTERSOS IRD JEN NHF UNHCR UNICEF Coordination

IFH/NHF IMC IOM HCO UNHCR UNICEF

Core relief items

IRD JEN JHCO LWF UNHCR UNICEF Education

FCA IOCC JHCO JICA LWF MoE NRC SC UNESCO UNICEF Environment

JHCO Food security

JHCO SC UNHCR WFP Gender-Based Violence

IFH/NHF IRC JHAS NHF SC UNFPA UNHCR UNICEF

Health

ACTED GSF HI IMC IOCC IOM JHAS JICA MdM MoH Jordan MSF NHF SC UNFPA UNHCR UNICEF Livelihood

JHCO NRC

Protection

HI JHCO UNFPA UNHCR Registration

JHCO Reproductive health

IFH/NHF UNFPA UNICEF Shelter

JHCO LWF Transportation

Logistics

IOM IRC JHCO THW Mental Health

HI IMC LWF NHF UNICEF

JHCO LWF WASH

ACTED IRD JEN MC OXFAM THW UNESCO UNICEF

Nutrition

JHAS MSF SC UNHCR UNICEF

Who’s Doing What Where?

Humanitarian aid agencies working in the Zaatari camp. Source: <http://data.unhcr.org/syrianrefugees/> [Accessed 5 October 2013].

81

The Zaatari design.

Theory, project, implementation

5

Camp design. Theoretical model vs the project A comparison between the Zaatari project designed (and not justified) by the UNHCR and current global camp design criteria.

This chapter will examine three aspects of camp layout. The first is the project, namely the camp design and policy developed by the UNHCR together with the Jordanian government. The second involves a comparison between the Zaatari project and the theoretical model of current camp design examined in Chapter 3 of this paper. In particular, correspondence between the criteria in the UNHCR Handbook for Emergencies (the most widely-used handbook), and the way in which the UNHCR implemented the criteria in the Zaatari project. The third issue, discussed in the next section, will evaluate how reality has materially affected the UNHCR camp project and modified it during a period of approximately one and a half years.

In other words, the static aspects (project) and dynamic aspects (implementation) of the Zaatari camp will be assessed to verify whether the systematic (politically determined and guideline-based) lack of correspondence between time, user requirements, and camp design performance is a critical structural issue also present in the Zaatari camp.

One important issue to remember is that Zaatari is the second largest camp in the world (BBC, 2013b); the Zaatari camp is proof of the trend towards increasingly large mass exoduses. Its enormous size further complicates the inherently complex design of the camp, first and foremost the housing issue.

Another important issue, albeit difficult to verify, is to what extent the resident population is involved in the design and implementation of their alleged temporary living space. An important report by the World Bank focusing in general terms on growth in the more vulnerable areas of the world (Architecture for Humanity, 2006, p. 49) briefly summarises the key role played by self-determination in relation to the provision of any kind of public services: “The main difference between success and failure is the degree to which poor people themselves are involved in determining the quality and quantity of the services they receive”.

For contingent and structural reasons the involvement of refugees was presumably very limited in the Zaatari camp and did not focus on the design (or customized implementation) of satisfactory spatial configurations specifically designed for refugees communities. To try and verify this statement the project was initially analysed based on a reconstruction of the camp layout created by interpolating different and at times collateral sources. During the drafting of this paper no official documents existed regarding the reasons for the UNHCR design choices implemented in Zaatari.

Repeated attempts by the author to contact the UNHCR offices in Geneva and Amman failed, and no answers were provided by its implementing partners directly involved in the management of the built environment of the camp. Additional information would certainly have been helpful for a more in-depth assessment of the choices and methods implemented in Zaatari.

Most maps of the camp are largely produced by the UNHCR and available at its website, but they are not comprehensive.1 The only map (UNHCR, 2013e) showing the planned spatial configuration of the maximum extension of the camp (not exceeded in November 2013) is a masterplan of over 500 hectares dated March 2013.2 It provides information about the road network, shelter plots, the shape of districts (called sectors in other documents) and the main infrastructure and facilities areas. The masterplan does not show the intended use of certain confined areas and there are no clear indications about the number of expected inhabitants. It’s also impossible to realistically calculate the number of inhabitants because of the unpredictable events of the Syrian Civil War. In addition, there are no estimates regarding the overall size of the camp and expected inhabitants visà-vis the criteria used to draft the masterplan. However, it’s possible to estimate the number of inhabitants based on a simple calculation of its expected size.

Handbook for Emergencies recommends that the minimum surface area per person should not be less 83

0

50

100

150 200

300 m

Entrance

Roads Paved road Commercial road

District

03

Unpaved road

Infrastructures and facilities Hospital and clinic

District

01

School ONU offices NGOs offices Registration office Police

District

District

Mosque or Musallah

02

04

Distribution centre Community centre Child friendly space

Residential area WASH centre Kitchen Emergency tent

District

12 Temporary area for new arrivals

Prefabricated shelter

District

11

Zaatari masterplan: expected population (30 m2/inh.)

177,000

84

531 ha

Guidelines: expected population (30 m2/inh.) (UNHCR, 2007)

20,000

60 ha

District

05

District

06

07

District

District

District

10

09

District district

08

Zaatari camp masterplan Masterplan of the camp based on drawings by the UNHCR, 25 March 2013. (UNHCR, 2013e). Available at: <data.unhcr.org/syrianrefugees> 85

than 30 m2, but in optimal conditions it should be 45 m2 per person (UNHCR, 2007, p. 210). The minimum 30 m2 surface area per person includes the area necessary for roads, footpaths, educational facilities, sanitation, security, firebreaks, administration, water storage, distribution, markets, relief item storage and, of course, shelter plots (UNHCR, 2007, p. 210). Land for agricultural activities or livestock is not included.

The latter are provided if larger areas are available, but in any case they are not generally considered a priority during emergencies. The maximum size of the Zaatari camp, specified in the UNHCR masterplan, is not indicated on the document, but can be estimated from a satellite view taken during the same period, i.e., 5,310,000 m2 (UNOSAT, 2013f).

It is possible to estimate the number of inhabitants that the camp can accommodate based on the number of shelters in the masterplan and after verifying the absence of land earmarked for agriculture. In the worst possible scenario (30 m2/inh.) the inhabitants should be 177,000, while in the best scenario (45 m2/ inh.) they should be 118,000. The trends illustrated in the previous chapter show that these numbers grew enormously during the lifespan of the Zaatari camp, topping 200,000 inhabitants in April 2013.

The masterplan also emphasises several important choices regarding the relationship between public and private areas in the camp (these terms are ambiguous because the land and assets of the refugees are not their property). There is a rigid and structured relationship between the residential areas and the facilities. In short there are two design scales, and transitional spaces between facilities and housing units are almost nonexistent or represented by generic aggregation hubs or childrenâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s playgrounds located between blocks. Instead there should be margins of hybridization between the facilities and housing units to help humanise what is a highly standardized built environment.

The orthogonal grid plan is bordered by a tarmac road and security fence circling the camp; it is slightly curvilinear, probably following the boundaries of the available land used to build the camp. Most nonresidential functions are near the single entrance, as are the registration area for new refugees, the admin offices of the UNHCR and several NGOs, the main warehouses, distribution centres, schools, and health facilities. This concentration of infrastructures is due to the fact that the road running south-east from the entrance was the first to be built and is surrounded by the first sectors of the camp, including all public facilities. Nevertheless, some public buildings in the masterplan are located at the opposite end compared to the entrance. Recent satellite views (UNOSAT, 2013g) showed that some of these facilities were yet to be built in November 2013.

Assessment of the number of facilities per camp resident is not included in this analysis, due to its 86

complexity and lack of information. Nevertheless, the masterplan unequivocally appears to show that the number of basic facilities (WASH and kitchens) is calculated based on the minimum standards in the handbook (UNHCR, 2007, p. 215), The fact that the camp and number of inhabitants can vary quite suddenly proves that these standards are not sufficient in densely populated housing areas.

The spatial hierarchy of the camp is easy to recognise, at least in the camp design. The next section will demonstrate how this changes abruptly after it is actually implemented.

Recurrent elements of the modular design proposed in most of the guidelines are present in the masterplan (Corsellis & Vitale, 2004; UNHCR, 2007; Sphere Project, 2011) and are as follows: camp, district (or sector), block, community, and family.

The inhabitants envisaged by the UNHCR Handbook in each of these spatial categories differs from the rough estimate for Zaatari, especially the total number which is almost ten times the envisaged figure of 20,000 inhabitants - the maximum number normally indicated for a camp (UNHCR, 2007, p. 210).

The main camp modules are the districts (or sectors); they are fairly regular in shape and border the main tarmac roads. The maximum recommended number of districts is four, each with a population of roughly 5,000 inhabitants. Zaatari has twelve districts and even a hasty calculation shows that each district is designed to accommodate an average of over 10,000 individuals. Districts are further divided into blocks, each accommodating 1,250 people; each block consists of 16 units which the Handbook calls a community. In Zaatari most of the districts have 18 blocks accommodating more than 1,400 individuals.

Some blocks are smaller, but on average the actual population density of many blocks is higher than the theorised density, as shown by satellite views of the shelters (REACH, 2013a). The community, smaller than a block, is a unit consisting of 16 lots for 16 shelters. This minimum standard corresponds to the design for Zaatari.

The smallest module of this spatial hierarchy is the lot for a single shelter considered as the living space for a household of 4 to 6 individuals.

Although this set of minimum standards has been rather faithfully, even if not always numerically, implemented in Zaatari, it should be assessed based on the quality of the built environment. In particular, critical areas emerged in the relationship between the reciprocal arrangement of the lots and the shelters in the lots, as well as in the social and family groups living there.

Each community is arranged in two long rows each with eight shelters and a central passageway leading to the restrooms, kitchens and main roads. The UNHCR uses a semantically and conceptually inappropriate term (community) to define this spatial configuration.

Expected inhabitants by the UNHCR handbook (2007)

5.000

1.250

80 5

Sector 4 blocks

Block 16 communities

Community 16 shelters

Family 1 shelter

Expected inhabitants by the Zaatari masterplan (30 m2/inh.)

10.080

1.440

80 5

Sector 6 blocks

Block 18 communities

Community 16 shelters

Family 1 shelter

Hierarchy of space.

Guidelines vs Zaatari Inhabitants per sector, block and community of a refugee camp in the guidelines (UNHCR, 2007) compared with the Zaatari project.

87

Unlike the terms district, sector, or block which define a material concept, the term community defines an immaterial, non-administrative concept referring to an orthogonal subdivision of space. This is abnormal to say the least. According to the UNHCR Handbook these community modules are one dimensional plots and are expected - in general, non-quantifiable terms - to help recreate a sense of community (pre-existing or potential) thanks to the fact that the shelters are arranged in two parallel rows surrounded by a potentially endless number of other rows.

Merely applying a numerical standard establishing that a community has to be composed of sixteen families, and that each family should have an average of 5 members regardless of each membersâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; social, cultural and environmental background, is aimed at ensuring equal access to basic facilities but to all intents and purposes it is a design model that uses spatial devices to control the refugees. In addition, it is a design that deprives them of their right to independently decide their living space.

The sprawling Zaatari camp with its obsessive repetition of a normalised model of numerical standards represents the worst possible outcome of the assumption one-size-fits-all currently embodied by global camp design. The participatory processes recommended by the UNHCR (2007) are nowhere to be seen in the design of this camp.

What has survived is only a pale reflection of the community-based approach developed and published

by Fred Cuny in the seventies. Furthermore, the language used by the UNHCR is devoid of the intrinsic and potential socio-cultural value of a spatial design of the built environment of camps.

It is extremely difficult to assess a design process, especially in this case where unstable and extreme conditions reign supreme, but the design premises appear to deliberately eliminate any form of participation by camp users. It is also very difficult to try and fill the gap between supplying a shelter and creating a sustainable community. This process requires technical and social skills to solve common problems based on the needs of the community. This kind of process cannot be designed on the drawingboard largely because of the exceptionally unstable and unknown nature of the communities for which it is intended. Nevertheless, the design assumptions provided by the UNHCR for Zaatari (at least in the very few documents which can be consulted) point to a total lack of correspondence between any form of participation by users and the masterplan, between global project and place, between a timeframe and specific individuals.

1 The website that monitors the Syrian crisis, with official documentation of the UNHCR is <http://data.unhcr.org/syrianrefugees/> 2 The site area was obtained by comparing a satellite detection with geolocalised boundaries (UNOSAT, 2013g) and the aforementioned masterplan.

88

â&#x20AC;&#x153;The main difference between success and failure is the degree to which poor people themselves are involved in determining the quality and quantity of the services they receive.â&#x20AC;?

World Development Report, World Bank, 2004. (Architecture for Humanity, 2006, p. 49).

Above. Francis, J., 2013.

A Syrian refugee digs a hole for the sewer from his tent towards the street. Available at: <http://photos. oregonlive.com/> [Accessed 8 November 2013].

89

Camp design. Project vs dynamic vision How does camp design change in relation to resident communities?

So far assessment has been based on theoretical and imaginary forecasts, protocols and camp designs, based on unstructured but relevant background information regarding actual living conditions in the camp.

Substantial conformity between the current model of camp design and the Zaatari project was verified in the previous section. Now it is possible to pass on to the third phase of this assessment of the camp layout.

This section will try to understand how the model was implemented and above all how reality influenced and thereby modified the model; this will be achieved by dynamically trying to break down the preordained limits of an alienating equalitarianism associated with 90

the distribution of vital aid for refugees.

Various tools are available to perform this task. The first is the set of satellite views (UNOSAT, 2013ag) that provide a map of the geo-location of all the shelters and buildings of the camp facilities; the map is updated almost on a monthly basis from September 2012 to July 2013.

Another helpful tool is the OpenStreetMap, an online resource providing free mapping data; this cartographic data available is free from legal or technical restrictions and can be shared by users and the UNHCR.3 One of the layers which can be activated on the worldwide cartographic map is the layer

regarding humanitarian aid; it shows the geo-location of facilities, infrastructures, business activities and other updated information which can help in the analysis of the dynamic performance of the camp.

Another available tool is a set of statistics, information and experiences provided directly by FAREstudio during the summerisation project. The data includes extensive information provided by the implementing partners (the clients of FAREstudio), and also by an on-site inspection of the camp by Riccardo Vannucci in April 2013.

The first satellite views unequivocally show how the lines drawn on the masterplan have in fact changed (UNOSAT, 2013a-b). The location of the new shelters built in September changed radically in the months that followed. The alleged control over the planning

of the camp was literally demolished by the growing and ever-changing needs of the camp inhabitants.

The rigid spatial response to these needs is physically visible in the impossibility to adjust and improve the conformation of the living space over a period of time (albeit very short) without totally altering the order planned and implemented by the UNHCR. People move and the shelters move with them. To a degree, the emergency shelters provided in the early stages of construction (UNHCR lightweight tents) actually facilitated these movements. However, the biggest movements occurred with the prefabricated shelters donated in large numbers by the Gulf States to gradually

Opposite and below.

Francis, J., 2013.

Self-managed planning, Zaatari camp. Shelter dragged with hand truck. Available at: <http://photos. oregonlive.com/photo-essay> [Accessed 12 November 2013].

replace the tents and improve housing conditions. The shift from emergency to prefabricated shelters helped unhinge the pre-planned order of the blocks and communities envisaged in the UNHCR project. The shelters identified by a geolocation system displaying them as separate abstract points (UNOSAT, 2013thg) shows how they were very rapidly and seemingly randomly shifted. At first glance the dynamics of these movements appears as absolutely incomprehensible.

However, these movements are nothing but the inevitable and self-managed construction of a different spatial hierarchy more suited to the real, specific needs of the camp inhabitants. Since they do not know how 91

long they will have to stay in the camp they are forced to revise the predetermined spatial relationships.

These movements show how eager the inhabitants are to rearrange what the UNHCR has pigeonholed into predetermined shapes without even the smallest possibility to make changes or decide for themselves.

Since the camps are invisible at night to the camp police and security forces, the shelters are moved using rudimentary means of transportation, such as hand-built trucks or gas cylinders on which to roll them. These movements now take place increasingly during the day.

There are various reasons for this: moving closer to relatives or acquaintances, creating a more familiar environment, buying and selling shelters to improve their living conditions either inside the camp or on the outside where there is a thriving trade in shelters in the most deprived areas of the North Jordan.4 Their sale is related to the control of the social dynamics of the management and administration of humanitarian aid. The necessarily long and variable time it takes to replace tents with prefabricated shelters has fuelled a black market controlled by power groups within the camp. Before the UNHCR is able to install shelters free of charge these groups provide prefabricated shelters to anyone with the money to buy them, thereby generating social tensions.5 This is one of the most complex issues affecting all camps,i.e., the assessment and identification of different levels of needs depending on the conditions of each household.6 Itâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s almost impossible to access socio-economic information about refugees in order to calibrate the delivery of aid, at least in the short term. In addition, this would clash with the principle of providing indiscriminate humanitarian assistance to all suffering individuals, a principle already widespread when Henri Dunant was alive.

We should also consider that individuals in the camp have no choice. There are several reasons for this: they probably have no economic means to live elsewhere; no Jordanian citizen will vouch for them thereby providing them with freedom of movement; they have no intention of returning to Syria where itâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s very possible they no longer have a home in which to live. It is important that the camp design must be tailored to these huge groups of suffering individuals and their needs.

Meeting the needs of a specific social group means understanding the culture of the land the group comes from, for example to facilitate spatial relationships which are obviously different, but at least moderately similar, to the traditional way in which space is used in their native country, i.e., the housing traditions of southern Syria (the area where most of the refugees come from). Space is also influenced by culture, i.e., intangible factors, such as religion, which especially in the Middle East is characterised by multiple minorities often in conflict with each other. Other minorities or 92

2013. Four blocks of district 10, Zaatari camp. Grey=shelters, black=services. Evolution from November 2012 to June 2013 (UNOSAT, 2013a-g)

social groups have special needs and require more protection for reasons of gender or age. Humanitarian aid agencies appear to focus greater attention to these issues and provide a more efficient response, at least as regard the facilities and public spaces set aside for these groups.

It is undeniably impossible to capitalise on this spectrum of knowledge during the few months of a camp project, and yet it is probably the key to ensuring that over a period of time the project - physically implemented in the shortest time possible - satisfies the needs of its users to the greatest extent possible, understands their behaviour, and studies their origins and native culture.

A refugee camp is something like a Rubik’s cube. There is a wellorganized plan, with everything set in place. “But when people start fiddling around with it, it’s very difficult to get back together.

There is a limit to what we’ve got control over.”

Harper, A., 2013.

A representative of the UNHCR in Jordan speaking on monitoring and self-management in the Zaatari camp. (Hackl, 2013a).

3 OpenStreetMap data are available through: <http://www.openstreetmap.org/> [Accessed 10 November 2013].

4, 5 These dynamics were observed by Riccardo Vannucci during the on-site inspection of the camp in April 2013.

6 For more on these claims, see Chapter 3, Interview. Shelters according to James Kennedy.

93

Right. Ngan, M., 2013.

An aerial view of the Zaatari camp. Available at: <http://news. nationalpost.com/2013/07/19/> [Accessed 5 October 2013].

Below left. Kohler, J., 2013.

The name given to the shopping street in Zaatari. Available at: <http://ca.news.yahoo.com/ photos/> [Accessed 5 October 2013].

Below. Kohler, J., 2013.

The shopping street in Zaatari.

Available at: <http://ca.news. yahoo.com/photos//> [Accessed 5 October 2013].

94

Morphological and demographic evolution of the Zaatari camp Location and quantity of shelters and services with related data, based on satellite views (UNOSAT, 2013a-g).

Shelters Services Density inh./ha

179

499

Refugees/shelter

38,678

Total refugees

REFUGEES

7.3

216 ha

4

5,163

15 November 2012

95

866

174

54,660

helter

REFUGEES

4.6

314 ha

96

5.2

11,966 3 January 2013

Shelters Services Density inh./ha Refugees/shelter Total refugees

236

892

95,703

REFUGEES

5.2

405 ha

18,169 3 February 2013

97

helter

1,246

356

182,302

REFUGEES

7.2

511 ha

98

25,316 4 April 2013

Shelters Services Density inh./ha Refugees/shelter Total refugees

1,657

326

173,107

REFUGEES

6.2

531 ha

27,966 19 May 2013

99

Shelter design. Project vs dynamic vision The emergency to durable solutions process visible in the camp after transition from the UNHCR tents to the unusual prefabricated shelter solution self-managed on a microurban scale.

The type of shelter distributed in the camp played a key role in the implementation and alteration of the Zaatari masterplan. The meaning of the term â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;projectâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; should once again be intended not only as the design of an object, but as the concept of a process of gradual improvement of the living conditions in the camp.

Management and time-related elements are behind these design choices and are part of the refugee protection procedure envisaged by the UNHCR: from a (temporally unpredictable) emergency to durable solutions. In particular, the process in Zaatari involved gradually replacing the UNHCR emergency tents with prefabricated shelters. Beginning in later 2012, the Gulf States donated 25,000 units of these prefabricated shelters. Comparison with the transitional shelter process will be described in this paper chiefly as part of interviews with AndrĂŠ Ullal and James Kennedy.7 The interviewees consider these prefabricated shelters to be an atypical solution due to their cost and the fact they are technologically very different to the ones in most countries where refugee camps are located (especially in Africa and parts of Asia). Jordanian companies were commissioned the production and supply of these shelters due to the technological and production expertise of its relatively advanced industries. The technical specifications provided by the UNHCR to the Jordanian suppliers show that the UNHCR requested military-style industrial prefabricated shelters (i.e., used in military camps, worksite cabins, telecommunications plants). The modular partition walls are supported by a steel framework resting on four feet measuring 30 centimetres. The walls are made of a 40mm polyurethane insulated sandwich panel covered on both sides with a pre-painted hotdipped galvanized steel sheet. The panels are also used for the slightly sloping roof. The shelter is a standard-size parallelepiped: the base measures 5x3m FAREstudio, 2013.

Prefabricated shelters in the Zaatari camp, April 2013.

100

Above. Sokol, B., 2013.

Shelters according to the UNHCR. Available at: <http://news.nationalpost. com/> [Accessed 8 November 2013].

Below. Ngan, M., 2013.

Shelters in real life. Available at: <http://www.thetower.org/> [Accessed 8 November 2013].

101

Minimum specifications for prefabricated shelters Material specifications provided by the UNHCR for the 25,000 prefabs donated by the Gulf States for the Zaatari camp. (FAREstudio, April 2013).

102

Roof Roof panels consist of 40-75mm thickness of Polyurethane insulated panel (PU) with the following specifications: Width : 1000 mm standard modular sections, Density : 38-42 Kg/m3 density (avg.), Thermal Conductivity : Below 0.022 Kcal/mh. The Panels are covered on both sides with 0.35mm thickness of pre-painted hot dipped galvanized steel sheets, corrugated on the out side and flat on the inside and outside with all required flashing and accessories. Roof panels are joined together and fixed by means of self-drilling screws to the top parametrical profile which will act as a gutter for roof rain water drainage through corner columns.

Wall Panels Walls consist of 40 mm Polyurethane insulated sandwich panel with the following specifications: Width : 1000 mm standard modular sections, Density : 38-42 Kg/m3 density (avg.), Thermal Conductivity: Below 0.022 Kcal/mh. The panels are covered on both sides with 0.35 mm pre-painted hot dipped galvanized steel sheet. The panels are provided with tongue and groove joining system. All corner joints are covered with white thin steel flashing section. Wall panels are being inserted in a U-shape guide profile fixed to the perimeter profile of bottom skid and are fixed to the upper roof cold formed profile by means of self drilling screws.

Skeleton & Steel Framework Skeleton of modular unit will consist of cold (Press)-formed steel beams for bottom skid to the required dimension Bolted together made of painted black steel or painted galvanized steel with 2.5 mm thickness. 2.5 mm Thickness of 4-corners made from painted black steel or painted galvanized steel will be connected to steel skid by bolts. Underground clearance is 30 cm (length of 4 legs).

Floor The floor skid consists of painted black steel or painted Galvanized steel C-200/2.0mm supported by painted black steel or painted Galvanized steel C-140/2.0 mm as secondary beam, all connected by bolts. Steel skid will be covered with 0.6 mm thickness of galvanized corrugated composite decking sheet (as reinforcement).

Decking sheet will be covered with one layer of 12 mm thickness plywood fixed by means of self-drilling screws.

Floor finish will be glued PVC with 1.5 mm thickness.

Door & Windows Door will be single leaf (fold) made from polyurethane insulated sandwich panel (same wall panel) with extruded aluminium frame profile size 1000x210 cm with a cylinder lock and 3- keys with handle. Windows will be extruded aluminium profile RAL9002, glazed window 1000 mm x 1000 mm, 6 mm single Glass, sliding type with lock. Windows will be provided with fly screen with (1.5x1.5 mm) hole opening and a security grill.

Electrical Work Unit will be provided with following: 1 x Internal globe light with protection cover with (1x15) W energy saving lamp. 1 x external globe light with protection cover with (1x15) W energy saving lamp. 2 x of 13 Ampere power socket, European type. Main D/B include10-Ampere circuit breaker for lighting and 25-Ampere circuit breaker for sockets. All wiring shall be installed in PVC ducting.

103

by 2.4m (height). Since the thermal performance of the shelter envelope is inefficient, the shelter needs to be equipped with an air conditioning system. The shelter has two windows and a door and is designed to accommodate an electrical system for the lighting and air conditioning systems (not included in the Zaatari model).

The shelter is therefore an industrial product which should be subject to strict quality controls; it performs well only if it complies with the production protocols.

Since so many shelters were needed, compliance of these building specifications was very irregular and heterogeneous in terms of quality, size and equipment.

These irregularities are visible in the numerous photographs taken by Riccardo Vannucci during his inspection in April 2013. For example, water seeped through the roof of many of the shelters just a few months after they were built due to material defects in their assembly and quality. This raises questions as to the cost-benefit of the decision to choose these prefabricated units. The UNHCR tent costs approximately $500, while a prefabricated shelter ranges from $3,500 to 5,000.8 The two solutions last roughly the same length of time: a prefabricated shelter lasts a little less than double the time of the UNHCR tent (expected duration, 24 months), but costs six or ten times more than the tent. The fact these shelters are badly built invalidates the concept of transitional shelters considered as a more lasting, albeit temporary solution compared to emergency shelters. Furthermore, a prefabricated shelter requires a lot of electricity if it is to be used in areas with extreme temperature shifts, and Zaatari is a camp where energy is not available.

In other words, the camp does not have the resources required to install air conditioning units, and in many areas of the camp there is no electricity to make them work if they were installed. Very few households can afford electricity; in some cases diesel generators are used and neighbouring families can purchase the energy produced. But most cannot afford electricity and air-conditioning and so they suffer through the extreme summer months inside the shelters. This very inappropriate choice further exacerbates social tensions due to unequal access to resources.

The prefabricated shelter is also culturally inadequate when compared against the specifications laid down in the most important manuals (UNHCR, 2007; Sphere Project, 2011). Each shelter is made up of a single undivided space measuring an average of 15 m2 (suitable for 4 people, 3.5 m2 per person): this open space does not guarantee the normal man/women relations typical of Syrian culture. Furthermore, no intermediate space is provided between the outside and inside, or between public and private areas. The

ensuing social distress is much more serious for women because the absence of transition areas further restricts their movement; Syrian culture prescribes that women should stay in the home, unlike men who are free to leave. This is a huge problem; in Syria people normally live in traditional houses with natural ventilation and shady areas in enclosed courtyards. Instead in Zaatari, they live in steel boxes exposed to the scorching desert sun. The summerisation project, illustrated later in this paper, has tried to mitigate these very harsh conditions.

Generally speaking, this combination of orthogonal grid planning and single block shelters is what causes this lack of space in which there is no privacy except for the walls separating inner and outer space. These inadequacies are visible during analysis of the selfmanaged, micro-urban and community-level movement of shelters. In this process a key role is played by the gradual replacement of tents with prefabricated shelters; however this replacement is not carried out at the same time for all refugees. The fact two different shelter solutions coexist (and sometimes two different social groups vying for different privileges) produces new spatial and social configurations. Refugees with the means and materials implement hybrid solutions (tent/prefabricated shelter) in order to rectify the unsatisfactory relational and spatial planning by the UNHCR. The ever-changing layout is a kaleidoscope of endless makeshift spatial solutions; the latter are self-implemented and impact enormously on both the micro-urban and urban scale of the whole camp. The reinvented and improper use of tents makes it possible for refugees to build open and covered transition spaces; they find novel ways to combine the prefabricated shelters and create spaces more suited to their needs; the latter include privacy, shade, gender separation, and commercial spaces. All this is documented by photographic surveys as well as by satellite images, as mentioned earlier. Tents become verandas, transitional areas between shelters; alternatively, plastic sheets are used to create small covered courtyards shielded from indiscreet eyes. These solutions are yet another example of the inadequate design and how it fails to envisage or facilitate this behaviour. The Zaatari masterplan did not provide this kind of hybridisation, instead it produced the opposite effect compared to what was envisaged by choosing the orthogonal military plan: total self-generated chaos which sometimes leads to situations of excessive density and the very real danger of sanitation, health and security problems (Hackl, 2013a). The critical issues regarding the urban scale are also applicable to the shelters, i.e., a basically substandard and rigid camp design which does not satisfy their real needs, but is imposed on camp users and beneficiaries.

7 See Chapter 3, Interview. Shelters according to James Kennedy and Interview. Shelters according to AndrĂŠ Ullal.

8 Source: FAREstudio, 2013

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Top left. Kohler, J., 2013.

Carpentry work to modify a shelter, Zaatari. Available at: <http:// uk.news.yahoo.com/> [Accessed 20 November 2013].

Top right. FAREstudio, 2013.

Hybridization between tents provided by the UNHCR and prefabricated shelters in order to build a veranda.

Above left. King, R., 2013.

A refugee moves a shelter by hand truck. Available at: <http:// www.vice.com/> [Accessed 20 November 2013].

Above right. Kohler, J., 2013.

Tents, sheets, panels and prefabs, a semblance of home. Available at: <http://uk.news.yahoo.com/> [Accessed 20 November 2013].

Below left. Kohler, J., 2013.

A water fountain built in front of a shelter. Available at: <http:// uk.news.yahoo.com/> [Accessed 20 November 2013].

Below right. Kohler, J., 2013.

Sandwich panels from other shelters used to build a house. Available at: <http://uk.news.yahoo.com/> [Accessed 20 November 2013].

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Winterisation by the NRC. A case of shelter improvement Analysis of the shelter improvement implemented by the NRC in Autumn 2012; comparison with the summerisation design brief in Spring 2013.

The NRC is an influential implementing partner of the UNHCR in the Zaatari camp. In autumn 2012 it proposed and implemented a camp winterisation project (NRC, 2012). This section will examine the winterisation project in order to provide additional elements with a view to verifying the political and temporal (temporary) issues of the summerisation project in relation to the dynamics between proposal, design and implementation.

Winterisation consists of a package of measures to protect refugees in the camp from the harsh winter conditions in the region of Mafraq. At the time the NRC draft was submitted (25 September 2012), roughly 30,000 individuals were registered in the camp, a figure that was expected to reach 150,000 by yearâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s end, with peaks of 1,000 daily arrivals of new asylum-seekers (NRC, 2012, p. 1-3). The quality of the design choices was undoubtedly affected by the short supply and delivery time of the materials required for the three proposed kits. The supply schedule was eight weeks, i.e., between September (presentation of the project) to December, in other words in the middle of 106

Above. FAREstudio, 2013.

Tents with winterised veranda designed and implemented by the NRC. Below. NRC, 2012.

Sketch of the winterisation project for the UNHCR tents.(NRC, 2012, p. 17)

NRC, 2013.

Sketch of the winterisation project for the UNHCR tents.(NRC, 2012, p. 18)

winter when average temperatures were close to zero degree Celsius.

The three kits included the following items: winter clothes, blankets, heaters, fuel supply, and construction materials to equip the UNHCR tents with an outdoor patio for fires. This latter measure is the most interesting as regards this paper and the summerisation project because it can be used as reference to compare performance and procedures, and for this reason will be analysed in-depth.

The NRC project report also provides interesting data regarding the accommodation of refugees in September 2012; it states that 80,000 individuals was the maximum capacity of the camp (NRC, 2012, p. 3).

In April 2013 the camp topped 200,000. At the time of winterisation 95% of individuals in the camp lived in emergency shelters, i.e., the UNHCR tents totally unsuited and not properly equipped for the harsh Jordanian winter. The NRC report also stated that it expected donor countries, especially the Arab Gulf states, to provide, before the onset of winter, roughly 2,800 prefabricated shelters against an estimated requirement of approximately 6,000 shelters needed to replace all the tents â&#x20AC;&#x201C; without considering the ongoing arrival of new refugees. As mentioned earlier, these are the same shelters for which the summerisation project was designed. The NRC went on to report that replacing all the tents with prefabricated shelters would be the right solution with which to face the winter months. At the same time, the NRC was aware that without doubling the number of shelters and speeding-up delivery it was highly unlikely that replacing the tents with shelters was possible before the onset of winter. This statement by the NRC raises more than one question about the adequacy of these prefabricated shelters. Even if prefabricated shelters are considerably better than tents for the winter months, they fall short of satisfying several important requirements during the summer months: their arrangement vis-Ă -vis the quality of the built environment and the fact they are culturally

FAREstudio, 2013.

The panels for the veranda provided by the NRC were used for commercial activities.

inappropriate. Furthermore their use is contrary to every recommendation in the handbooks analysed in this paper, i.e., to avoid, as far as possible, using prefabricated shelters for the reasons listed above and many others. The following spring these were the core issues of the summerisation project; to try and improve the inadequate technical choices made primarily by the UNHCR as the official manager of the shelters donated by the Gulf States. The prefabricated shelters increased to 25,000 units in April 2013; again, it became urgent and necessary to try and quickly provide some sort of protection from the extremely hot summer weather in Jordan.

The NRC report went on to provide a detailed analysis of the climate in this area (using the same source as the one used in this paper); it also reiterated several of the criteria contained in the Oxfam manual (Corsellis & Vitale, 2005) regarding the best way to achieve the strategic winterisation objectives. The NRC proposed two complementary strategies involving the enlargement of the UNHCR tents in order to protect the refugees who will spend the winter in tents. The first is to cover the tents with a water-repellent layer of plastic sheeting to make them more resistant to the winter weather and temperatures. The second involves building a ventilated veranda in front of the tents where the inhabitants can cook; this will not only mitigate the risks caused by smoke and flames, it will also create a transition space between the interior and exterior, and provide the much sought-after privacy totally ignored in the design of the UNHCR tents.

These strategies are also based on the fact that refugees tend to remove empty tents and reuse them inappropriately (at least compared to the high cost per tent supplied by the UNHCR). However, all the refugees are actually trying to do is to create better insulation against the cold during the winter and enlarge the tent space by building verandas (NRC, 2012, p. 6).

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III

Design

Overview of the project

6

Summerisation. The stakeholders The summerisation project stakeholders and their political involvement in the definition and implementation of the project.

The previous chapter described the winterisation proposed and implemented by the NRC for the 201213 winter season, i.e., a large-scale project with an enormous impact on the lives of the refugees. A similar program was planned for the 2013 summer season: the summerisation of the shelters. The project involved improving the thermal performance of the prefabricated shelters during the very hot Jordanian summer. This project was designed by FAREstudio, Rome (Italy) in collaboration with the author during his internship in spring 2013. The author adopted two perspectives - observer/ stakeholder, researcher/ designer – while drafting the project. Research for this paper investigates the system and context of the project; it performs an in-depth analysis of the data collected during collaboration on the project. This method can be considered as a critical report of important events and the reasons prompting the project. The report analyses the impact on the inputs during different phases of the project (output) as part of the system and context studied in the first and second part of this paper. Some of the inputs has already been described (technical characteristics of the shelters, climate trends, camp morphology, some of the refugees’ needs, etc.), but they will be analysed more in detail in this section.

Before illustrating details regarding the objectives and evolution of the project, it’s important to present the main stakeholders of the summerisation project and how they influenced the context. The main stakeholders are: the Jordanian government, Jordanian suppliers, the Gulf State donors, Syrian refugees, the UNHCR, other NGOs, and FAREstudio, an implementing partner of the UNHCR. The very little information obtained from the Jordanian government and its direct influence on Zaatari as the host country has already been partially presented, i.e., its influence contributed to the sense of permanent impermanence characterising the implementation and management of camps in general and Zaatari in particular. This proves that government policy focused

on ensuring that the host communities were not unduly unsatisfied because this negatively influences the quality of the built environment in which the refugees live.

Strong, indirect influence was also exerted by other stakeholders, i.e., the producers and suppliers of the materials chosen for the project. The industrialisation of the Jordanian economy was a crucial factor in delivering the project, an issue analysed in the next section.

The Gulf States also played an important economic role; beginning in the 2012 winter season they have gradually donated the 25,000 prefabricated shelters which triggered the summerisation project due to their inadequate performance.

The main stakeholders are instead (or should be) the Syrian refugees. Based on the analysis of the humanitarian aid system and refugee camps illustrated in the previous chapters this is not so obvious; further proof comes from the fact that summerisation was not implemented in the Zaatari project. The key role of the main users is compromised because although they are extremely needy, they have no money to spend.

The situation in the refugee camps reflects the concept expressed by Hashim Sarkis (Aravena, 2000, p. 7): “Projects are typically made for those who have money and, even when they are intended for those who do not have money, they still tend to protect their common interests, not individual ones”.

The hierarchical humanitarian aid system implements projects to improve the precarious living conditions of indigent beneficiaries. Consequently the latter benefit and suffer from these projects without being able to choose. This passive role has far-reaching and devastating effects, for example: due to economic, bureaucratic and political imbalance between all the other stakeholders, the summerisation program was not implemented.

The UNHCR is the coordinating stakeholder; it is the most important authority responsible for all 111

IGOs NGOs Governments Suppliers Technical consultant Users UNHCR

IMPLEMENTING PARTNERS

DONOR GULF STATES

SUMMERISATION STAKEHOLDERS

FARE studio

JORDANIAN SUPPLIERS

SYRIAN REFUGEES

GOVERNMENT OF JORDAN

Who’s who in the summerisation project?

The stakeholders involved in the definition of the summerisation project within and outside the Zaatari camp.

112

decisions regarding the camp (design, implementation, management, economics, and policy). The UNHCR cooperates with numerous implementing partners: about thirty NGOs provide for all the needs related to individual and collective life, from health care to food, from education to shelters. Economically speaking, these NGOs are tied hand and foot to the UNHCR, i.e., the survival of their operational and bureaucratic apparatus depends on the number and nature of the contracts they sign with the UNHCR in the camp. This statement is based on facts illustrated in the first part of this paper and appears to be confirmed by events associated with the Zaatari project and camp. In fact, the project was sponsored by one of the implementing partners which shall not be named in this paper. The NGO in question commissioned FAREstudio with the summerisation project.1 This organisation demonstrated considerable carelessness (almost incompetence) in the management of technical issues; this was caused by the very unclear assignment rules (signing of work contracts) regarding the UNHCR’s operational role inside Zaatari camp.

The vague and inconclusive management of relations emphasised two sides of the same coin: the rather odd behaviour of the real beneficiaries (the refugees and their needs) and the very real need by the implementing partners to win an economically lucrative contract regarding a crucial camp infrastructure (modification of 25,000 shelters).

FAREstudio, as project stakeholder, played a key role vis-à-vis technical issues, but was only indirectly involved in defining and above all implementing summerisation.

The hitherto described relations among stakeholders is in some ways difficult to decipher. It is unclear as to why the prefabricated shelters donated by the Arab Emirates were unconditionally accepted by the UNHCR, despite the fact they were proven to be inadequate. The rather phony idea that it was impossible to refuse the shelters because they were a gift does not explain the reasons for a choice with no obvious benefits to the living conditions of the refugees.

The time factor appears to be the most important reason for the failed implementation of the summerisation program (although the solution was indeed adopted in the courtyards of the UNICEF schools). FAREstudio drafted the project in April 2013; it was meant to be put in place in three months by the implementing partner: one month for preliminary activities and the training of refugees, and two months for implementation and construction. The project was still being discussed at the end of May, far too late to implement summerisation and provide real benefits in summer 2013. The

UNHCR spent along time considering whether to form groups of several NGOs with different roles and responsibilities in the project. Analysis of the delay identified important and implicit factors which were influenced by the relations between major stakeholders.

Political issues and logistic constraints may also have played a role in the delay; the latter were related to the promoters’ superficial estimate of the scale of the project, also in terms of budget. Failure to implement the project are in no way due to lack of competitiveness and a technically inappropriate design proposal

by FAREstudio. It’s possible that the implementing partner which proposed summerisation to the UNHCR did not carry enough (incorrectly defined) ‘geopolitical’ weight in the camp to be awarded such an important contract. This supposition was corroborated during a meeting held in April 2013 at the Zaatari camp.

The meeting, focusing on the topic of the shelters and in particular summerisation, was attended by representatives of the UNHCR and NGOs involved in the project, and the consultant Riccardo Vannucci (FAREstudio).2 The meeting and subsequent outcome proved that the UNHCR did not reject the project for technical or functional reasons, but due to economic, political and bureaucratic concerns associated with its implementation.

Generally speaking, the fact each stakeholder was involved in the impossible game of correlations between everything contributing to the definition of global (Mari, 2001, p. 69) did not produce the envisaged and hoped-for results. This proves that within the complex dynamics of a refugee camp, the degree to which a project impacts on reality depends on political, ideological and economic constraints. In other words, the innate desire to exploit this kind of situation in order to make money overrides the real humanitarian aims of the project and hinders proper distribution of resources; in turn this leads to what is, to all intents and purposes, a systemic drama.

In the next few sections, the paper will analyse the elaboration of the project in order to assess the tools used and possible impact of the summerisation program on the lives of the main stakeholders: the refugees.

1 The assessments in this section of the dissertation depend in large part from a set of unstructured data, i.e. the internship experienced in April 2013 by the author within FAREstudio.

2 Meeting held at the UNHCR office in Zaatari on 19 April 2013, and chaired by Werner Schellenberg, leader of the Shelter Working Group.

113

Summerisation. Context, scope, conditions and outcomes A critical report of the summerisation project based on the conditions and input which influenced its development.

Object 25,000 prefabricated shelters were donated by the Gulf States for the Zaatari camp. These should be equipped with air conditioning, but it was not possible in Zaatari, where electricity is not widely available.

Brief The aim of the summerisation was the improvement of the microclimatic conditions in the prefabricated shelters inhabited by Syrian refugees in the harsh summer climate of the Zaatari camp.

Users The project was targeted at Syrian refugees of the Zaatari camp, where the UNHCR gradually replaced emergency tents with prefabricated shelters with inadequate performances (thermal but not only).

Implementation FAREstudio was requested to provide technical consultancy for the project by an implementing partner, in order to propose a solution to the UNHCR.

Timing FAREstudio’s work started in the first days of April 2013. The summerisation program should have been implemented in the camp by early summer 2013.

Budget The budget was not defined, apart from rough indications with the aim of reducing the cost of the summerisation system to the bare minimum.

114

In April 2013 FAREstudio was invited as a consultant for the summerisation project. The Jordanian summer, with its extreme conditions, was fast approaching.

The semi-desert climate is characterised by cold winters and hot summers with average temperatures above 30°C, and no rainfall from June to September.

Furthermore, the camp site is swept by constant winds throughout the year: the two strongest are in summer.

The first is the Khamaseen, a hot dry south-east wind which blows for an average of 50 days between March and May and causes sandstorms. The second is the Shamal, a north-east wind primarily present during the day between June and September.

The initial brief was therefore to design solutions to improve the microclimatic conditions in the prefabricated shelters during the summer months.

The unsuitable prefabricated shelters were a major problem; they have no electricity or air conditioning and as a result are unbearable for at least eight months of the year. Statistics show that during the summer the temperature inside the shelters exceeds 30°C.3 For physical reasons, age, or gender, some individuals tend to spend most of their time in the shelters and therefore need solutions which improve indoor comfort. The needs of these social groups were assessed in spring 2013 during interviews with refugees and assessments by the implementing partners promoting the project.

The FAREstudio elaborated a design, or rather a flexible system (kit), which could be used at different levels, up to a micro-urban scale. The budget was very small (and not clearly defined from the start), and the situation called for tight deadlines because of the impending hot season.

As is customary for the FAREstudio, the project explored the possibility of using a discipline and a method – architecture –to help those deprived of rights by positively improving the built environment in places where design does not ostensibly play a key role. This approach involves focusing on complex issues of general and transversal interest in order to

help solve specific problems, but without forgetting architecture, in other words by reducing the impact of externally determined procedures and enhancing the ability to generate a specific system relevant to the key issues of the project (Aravena, 2007).

This design procedure was obviously influenced by information from several important direct sources: the camp, the UNHCR, the implementing partner for whom FAREstudio worked, the camp inspection by Riccardo Vannucci participated by the Shelter Working Group in April 2013, and studies on general topics in books or on the web (climate, Jordanian building industry, Syrian traditional architecture, etc.).

The collected data was elaborated and proposed by FAREstudio in two different solutions corresponding to the two next phases of the project. In turn, different versions of these solutions were drafted, however only the most relevant versions of the two solutions will be analysed in this report. The first solution (a canopy) is a ventilated shade roof for the shelter; the second (a veranda) is a roof for an open and transition space in front of the shelter. It was necessary to shift from the first to the second solution not only due to the reduced budget, but above all to produce a better solution with fewer resources. The design process gradually identified priority issues, after which any redundant operations were eliminated. Each version of the summerisation project was designed to reduce and simplify manufacturing, assembly, and supply of materials. Several factors influenced the process including the budget and an ethical focus on producing a proper project (Mari, 2001, p. 76). This

2013, Jordan Build Expo.

The schedule of the expo.

Available at: <http://www.jordanbuild.net/> [Accessed 7 April 2013]

definition refers to a project which intends to use other rules compared to the ones normally applied, i.e., a linguistically innovative project (type) developed as part of a specific scenario and context: prefabricated shelters in Zaatari.

The design process began with a market research on the building industry in Jordan and an analysis of the camp conditions. This approach was adopted because the availability of materials and local technological development are key data in the supply of materials, and therefore the project. The first important factor was the on-site production and assembly of the prefabricated shelters indicating that the local building sector was fairly advanced from an industrial point of view.

Another was the Jordan Build Expo, a medium-sized fair of building technologies which takes place every year in the capital Amman.4 The scenario in Jordan therefore differs from most countries hosting refugee camps since most of them are poorer and with little or no industrial production.

There were, however, other influential factors: little time to develop the project, a low budget, and the large number of its beneficiaries (refugees). Therefore the choice fell on low-tech, low-cost solutions, i.e., industrial materials readily Available at:-site in large quantities and easy to assemble without specific skills.5 Another key factor â&#x20AC;&#x201C; one of the most important - was on-site observation; this included inspections, photos and assessments by implementing partners of the way refugees tried to physically define their living space.

The next few chapters will examine the effect of these key factors on the development of the project.

FAREstudio, 2013.

Prefabricated shelters arrive yet assembled in Zaatari.

3 Temperature measurements were carried by the implementing partner that promoted the project in the Zaatari camp. Source: FAREstudio.

4 Informations on this expo are available at: <http://www.jordan-build.net/> [Accessed 7 April 2013].

5 The choices of materials will be analysed in the following chapters.

115

Trends in climate and temperature in Mafraq

116

Average Max Temperature (°F)

Average Min Temperature (°F)

August is the warmest month (fairly hot) having an average temperature of 91.4 °F (33 °C).

January is the coolest month having an average temperature of 35.6 °F (2 °C).

Average Temperature (°F)

Relative Humidity (%)

The average temperature in Mafraq is very mild at 61.9 °F (16.6 °C).

The annual average is 56% and monthly average ranges from 40% in June to 77% in January.

Total Precipitation Averages (mm)

Average Sunlight Hours / Day (h)

Average per year is 150 mm (5.9 in), or 12.5 mm (0.5 in) per month. The driest weather is in June, July, August & September, average of 0 mm. The wettest weather is in January, average of 36 mm (1.4 in).

Average hours of sunshine range between 5:9 per day in January & 12:7 daily in July. There is an average of 3,435 hours of sunlight per year with an average of 9:4 of sunlight per day.

90

35

80

30

70 25 60 20

50

40

15

30 10 20 5

0

10

Jan

Feb

Mar

Apr

May

Jun

Jul

Aug

Sep

Oct

Nov

Dec

0

Relative humidity

Temperature (°C) / Precipitation (mm) / Sunlight hours (h)

The city of Mafraq is the capital of the region of Mafraq and is located 686 measl, 15 km away from the Zaatari camp. Data available at: <http://climatemps.com/>.

Trends in winds in Amman Amman wind measurement station is located in the city of Amman (773 measl), 60 km away from the Zaatari camp. Data available at: <http://it.windfinder.com/>.

Jan

Feb

Mar

Apr

May

Jun

Jul

Aug Sept

11

17

16

16

17

22

14

12

7

8

8

8

9

9

8

8

Oct

Nov

Dec

Year

10

7

6

10

13

8

7

6

7

7

Wind direction Wind probability â&#x2030;Ľ4 Beaufort (%) Average speed (kts)

January

February

March

April

May

June

July

August

September

October

November

December 117

Summary. Chronology of conditions and outcomes Timeline of the design process, conditions and results of the summerisation project.

5 April

Summerisation FAREstudio as a technical consultant.

Prefab shelters Minimum specifications for prefabricated shelters donated by Gulf Sates.

Climate Cold winters and hot, dry summers in Mafraq.

Building industry Industrial production is relatively advanced.

UNOSAT Satellite views and photos of the camp.

Specifications For shelters suppliers by the UNHCR. Competitors Shade roof solutions for tents by a German NGO.

ROOF

Version 1

Survey Typical locations of shelters and refugee actions.

Meeting Shelter Working Group on the project in the camp: the implementation of the project is uncertain.

Report Transitional shelters and summerisation criteria.

Procurement Fabrics samples by Jordanians suppliers.

20 April

VERANDA Version 1

25 April

Vernacular Analysis on recurring types of traditional Syrian housing.

118

Conditions

Outcomes

Implementing partner Summerisation Kit Versions

UNHCR Bibliography, websites On-site inspection Syrian refugees

10 April

NRC Winterisation report 2012/13.

Self-built Photos from the camp of self-built solutions.

Simplification Shelter Working Group in the camp: simplify summerisation kit.

ROOF

Version 2

Zaatari camp UNHCR Shelter Working Group.

Zaatari camp On-site inspection by Riccardo Vannucci.

ROOF

Version 3

30 April

Existing solutions Photos of coverage solution for tents in the French military camp.

15 April

VERANDA Version 2

Budget Request of spending review for the materials of the kit.

119

Shelter summerisation.

The Canopy

7

Input. Existing solutions Traditional, industrial or makeshift solutions for the mitigation of solar radiation in summer; their influence over the design of the canopy.

The summerisation design process began with the analysis of the technical specifications of the shelters and climate data already presented in this paper. The implementing partner initially suggested that a canopy be designed to shield the shelters from the summer sun and lower the indoor temperature. There was a wide range of possible solutions which would have provided the requested shading and temperature mitigation.

Several solutions relating to similar contexts and conditions were chosen and used as reference as well as possible options for the project.

The first was a standard solution adopted in desert areas and implemented in the Mbera refugee camp in Mauritania. It is a lightweight canopy creating an open shaded area; the canopy consists of a large horizontal piece of fabric supported by wooden poles. The fact it is open on all sides ensures constant ventilation and a usable ground surface protected from direct sunlight.

In the Zaatari camp the thermal performance of the shelters was improved by the refugees with makeshift but inefficient solutions, proof of how inadequate the prefabricated shelters actually were. For example, the UNHCR tents were improperly used as an additional cover over the shelters, probably to stop rainwater from entering - a common occurrence due to faulty

Above left. FAREstudio, 2013.

Traditional shade canopy used in the Mberra refugee camp in Mauritania.

Above. FAREstudio, 2013.

An improper use of the UNHCR tent to cover a shelter in the Zaatari camp in Jordan.

Below. FAREstudio, 2013.

Shelter produced by PAI Engineering.

Its use has been proposed by a German NGO in the Zaatari camp.

121

production of the prefabricated shelters.

Another industrially produced solution was proposed by a German NGO for possible use in Zaatari. This solution was initially designed as a shelter, more suited as protection against the winter cold, rather than as a summerisation solution; the shelter had a semicylindrical metal roof and plastic sheets to close off the entrances. The producer company, PAI Engineering, developed the solution for the 2005 earthquake in Pakistan.1 The German NGO proposed to adapt this solution and use it as a canopy for the tents in Zaatari.

This involved reducing the surface area of the metal semi-cylinder and leave the sides open to allow natural ventilation as well as protect the tent from the sun.

Documents illustrating this adaptation are unavailable, and even this solution was not implemented in Zaatari in summer 2013.

The project also studied military tent solutions, especially the ones used in the French hospital in Zaatari. Thanks to a metal frame a ventilated gap was created between two layers of the roofing. In addition, to lower the indoor temperature the floor of the French hospital shelters was raised off the ground using concrete blocks. Facilitating sub-floor ventilation reduces the amount of heat that rises from the ground, prevents humidity, and stops the accumulation of rainwater.

Elaborating the functional principles of some of these solutions is the basis behind the concept developed by FAREstudio for the first summerisation phase.

Above. FAREstudio, 2013.

Tent with ventilated roof. French military hospital in the Zaatari camp.

Below. FAREstudio, 2013.

Shelters spaced from the ground using concrete blocks. French military hospital in the Zaatari camp.

1 The website of the shelters producer PAI Engineering is <http://www.paibuilt.com/> [Accessed 20 April 2013].

122

The concept, requirements and performance of the kit Assessment of the thermal, structural and social criteria behind the design of the summerisation kit for the canopy.

1. Shelter

2. Roof: shade and ventilation

After implementation in the camp the shelter does not have protection from sunshine.

A canopy with overhangs shades the surfaces of the shelter and spacers facilitate ventilation.

3. Fixing and flexibility

4. Wall: shade and ventilation

The canopy is supported and fixed to the shelter, but must dissipate the energy of the wind.

The most exposed wall is ventilated and protected from direct sunshine.

5. Privacy

6. Community

Ventilated walls contribute to privacy inside the shelter and allow users to keep the windows open.

Optional canopies facilitate the configuration of a shaded and open space for the community.

123

The canopy has two basic functions: ventilation and shade over the surfaces of shelters exposed to sunlight.

Shade is obtained thanks to a horizontal surface with wide overhangs on all four sides of the prefab shelter.

Ventilation is achieved by leaving a gap between the roof of the shelter and the canopy.

The first version of the project (not reported in this paper) also involved placing shelters higher than the level of their four legs. This was intended to reduce the heat rising from the ground to the floor of the shelter and increase ventilation, like the solution adopted in the French military hospital. A small budget and deterioration of accessibility led to the rejection of this first hypothesis. The solution adopted for the canopy frame was inspired by the principle of a car roof rack.

possible configuration is to allow users to join two or more shelters, then anchor shade net to the two roofs and create communal areas. This solution will be developed in more detail in the next chapter regarding step two of the summerisation project: the veranda.

The criteria used for the summerisation kit, based on the concept, also include several macro-requirements and performance traits: X Flexible

- Adaptable to the dimensional heterogeneity of shelters, assuming 5x3 meters as a standard size.

- Composed of a modular and extensible framework to provide for an overhang and additional shade surfaces.

Simple - Rapid assembly with ordinary skills and simple tools.

- Equipped with an intuitive assembly manual.

Lightweight - Easily transportable, storable for management use and movable by users without specific means.

- Must not burden the shelter, especially on the weak edges of the roof, while using it as a support.

The frame uses the shelter as a support, just like a roof rack rests and is fixed to a vehicle. This provides a major benefit: no additional structures are required to support the canopy which would normally require foundations and some structural rigidity to cope with strong winds; as a result, more materials and additional costs would be required. The mass of the shelter is more than enough to stabilise the canopy when it is fixed to the prefabricated shelter, and also absorb and contrast the wind. The best choice is therefore a horizontal surface fixed to the shelter with ropes that are not too taut so that it can sway backward and forward. This is achieved by placing spacers which act as constraints; their key function is to ensure ventilation between the two surfaces. The spacers do not have to be placed in any fixed position, i.e., they should adapt to shelters which vary in size, and should not weigh on the edges of the pre-fabricated roof made of weak metal sheeting.

Furthermore, more shaded surfaces can be added to the canopy frame, above all optional ventilated walls.

Depending on the layout of the shelter, these walls can be placed along the two sides more exposed to the sun. This helps to protect the thin polyurethane walls of the prefabricated shelters and provides privacy.

People tend to keep the windows of the shelters shut to prevent people from looking inside and as partial protection against the sand brought by the winds, but with these optional ventilated and shaded surfaces the inhabitants can leave the windows open. Another 124

Removable - Easily removable with common tools for winter, maintenance or to be moved to other shelters.

Replicable - Composed of local materials quickly and inexpensively available in large quantities (industrial production).

Reusable - Composed of materials which can be recycled or reused with another function.

Vannucci, R., 2013.

Comparison of the thermal performance between prefabs and UNHCR tent.

Vannucci, R., 2013.

Sketches of the first version of the canopy with steel spacer and concrete blocks.

Vannucci, R., 2013.

Sketch of the first version of the canopy assembled on the prefabricated shelter.

FAREstudio, 2013.

Edge profile of the roof of a prefabricated shelter in Zaatari.

FAREstudio, 2013.

Roof panel of a prefabricated shelter in Zaatari.

125

Project development Elements of the canopy kit and the reasons behind the choice of technologies and materials.

This section will examine the various phases and reasons why the canopy kit was developed. The kit consists of four main elements: the steel frame supporting the shade net; the shade net; the fastening system consisting of ropes; and the spacers supporting the frame and separating it from the roof of the shelter to provide ventilation. From a logistics and supply point of view, the kit has very few elements; supply contracts were signed with a small number of suppliers in order to simplify delivery. The simple assembly system requires ordinary tools and no special skills.

This allows resident communities to create livelihood opportunities, but also reduces installation costs by skilled workers.

The frame is made from 1/2” galvanized steel pipes likes the ones normally used for gas or water. Many factors influenced the choice of this low-tech solution which changes the purpose for which they are normally used and turns them into a structure for the canopy.

First and foremost, the fact it is possible to cut different sized pipes and assemble them using threaded T or 90° elbows, makes this the right technology with which to adapt the frame to the very diverse size of the shelters.

The use of an angle grinder (or a hacksaw if there is no electricity) and a tap and die set - needed to adjust the pipes – are tools any plumber can use; if necessary unskilled users can also easily learn to use them. In fact, the project assumed that their assembly can be performed by the refugees themselves as a form of Cash for Work (CFW), i.e., as a way of providing employment and income (managed by the implementing partner):

126

Above. MSF, Shelter Centre, 2006.

Shade nets: technical specifications provided by the manual Shade Nets.

Below. FAREstudio, 2013.

Galvanized steel pipes 1/2” for the framework. Polyester ropes to fix the framework and the shade net. Agricultural fabric and tarpaulin, two of the samples purchased by Riccardo Vannucci during the on-site inspection of the camp.

Spacer. Option one

Framework

Galvanized steel pipes

Spacer

(Options 1, 2 or 3)

U-bolt

Pipe 1/2” (framework) Used Tire

Prefab Shelter

Spacer. Option two

Pipe clamp with anchor

Pipe 1/2” (framework) Concrete hollow block

Spacer. Option three

Pipe 3/4” + Pipe 1/2” (framework) Bent rebar

Steel plate

all that is needed are workshops to manufacture the materials in the kit.

The pipes are also cheap and readily available in large quantities since they are industrially produced locally.

They are also light enough not to weigh too much on the shelter, but are sufficiently inflexible and therefore self-supporting; they can also support the shade net.

The frame also allows for overhangs to protect the horizontal surfaces of the shelter from the sun.

The shade net is a key element; it was chosen because the material is available locally in great quantities.

Five different samples were collected by Riccardo Vannucci during the inspection in April 2013. Two were selected as the most suitable: tarpaulin and an agricultural fabric. The tarpaulin is heavier (165 gr/

m2) and quite expensive (1 JD/m2) compared to the agricultural fabric which is much cheaper (0.75 JD/m2) and lightweight (85 gr/m2). The fact it’s cheap means it probably won’t be stolen. However the tarpaulin is waterproof and can therefore be more effective over the roof of the shelter (not always in working order) and protect it from rain in the winter. Despite this performance (not required by the kit) the choice fell on the agricultural fabric since the main priority was to produce shade. In fact, since the fabric is air, water and wind proof it improves ventilation of the underlying area and brings down the temperature. This kind of material has to be dismantled before the onset of winter because it can be damaged by snow and rain.

This choice was also based on a shade net guide (MSF, Shelter Centre, 2006) with technical information about the features and benefits to look for when choosing the most suitable material.

The guide defines shade nets with respect to the shading factor and how the latter is affected by other factors: colour, material, production, density and type of fibre.

The initially selected agricultural net (sample acquired during the inspection) has a shading factor of 50% while the net chosen later (and used in the prototype made at the camp) has a shading factor of 70% and respects most of the criteria indicated in the summary table of the guide. The best size for the net is 6x4 meters; this ensures a 50 cm overhang on either side of the shelter (based on the standard size of a prefabricated shelter: 5x3 m). Six meters (length) corresponds to the standard size of the rolls that are usually produced; this avoids waste when the kit is being prepared. Instead, the four meter width is created by cutting the roll and finishing the net with grommets along the cut side sown with reinforcement tape. Cutting and sewing the net could also be performed by the refugees in the form of Cash for Work (CFW).

Another key element of the kit are the fastenings. A long-lasting, economical and easily available 6mm 127

polyester rope fastens the shade net to the steel frame.

Instead an 8mm rope is used to fasten the whole frame to the base of the shelter, taking advantage of the latterâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s mass, based on the car luggage rack principle.

Spacers support the canopy and separate it from the shelter. Depending on supply, three different options were envisaged for the spacers which had to have the same performance. Six spacers are provided in each kit; the spacers can be six old tires and twelve U-bolts, or six concrete hollow blocks with anchor pipe clamps, or six pieces of metal carpentry produced ad hoc.

Although the third option requires more complex manufacturing which has to be carried out by a blacksmith, it involves the use of simple metal parts: a steel plate, two bent rebars and a 3/4â&#x20AC;? steel pipe supporting the 1/2â&#x20AC;? pipes of the canopy frame.

Organising a workshop to provide jobs for refugees (CFW) may be appropriate for this solution.

Whatever the option chosen for the spacers, they need to be evenly placed along the edges of the roof of the shelter to stabilise the canopy and anchor the canopy frame. The frame is kept in place by the taut ropes and the friction of the tires (or other spacers) on the

roof of the shelter. The steel edges all around the roof prevent the spacers from falling off. The frame should flex slightly downward to counterbalance any stress due to the wind. The ropes must be tied to the base of the shelter to reinforce the system, but it should also remain elastic and capable of absorbing the energy of the wind.

The total cost of the canopy kit, according to the bill of quantities drafted by FAREstudio before visiting the camp (i.e., not final and based on European prices) is roughly $200. It is significantly higher than the cost of the veranda kit described in the next section. The fact it is so cheap means that the veranda kit is the best option for the camp (especially since 25,000 kits are required, one for each prefab shelter).

To conclude: the canopy kit comes with an intuitive assembly manual. The manual will be all the more successful if a training period is organised (two weeks envisaged by the implementing partner) during which qualified personnel should teach refugees how to assemble the canopy: The objective is to involve users as much as possible and strengthen capacity building among camp residents.

Below. Iberpress, 2013.

Landfill of tires in the desert of Kuwait.

128

Assembly: time, skills and tools

1. Materials

Soldering iron Vise Drill Angle grinder Spanner Bar bender 30 minutes 1 Blacksmith

2. Processing of the materials

e

ip

lp

e te

s te d mm la ize 50 lp m 4 n r e a m te ba m lv m . s 0x10 Re [8] m Ga 00 m G x 0 x 2 10 1 4" 1 1x 0x1 Ø 3/ 10

3. Welding of the materials e ip lp m e m e st 00 G. " 1 2 1/ r

Ø

a eb tr n m Be ] m [8 0 1

g in eld W

ar 450 eb m r nt 8] m Be 10 [ Ø

mm

le Ho mm 5

g in eld W

pe pi el mm e st 10 G. 00x 1 0x 10

Spacer. Option three.

Assembly Spacer composed of materials that are easy to procure and manufacture. The spacer supports and separates the shade canopy from the shelter.

129

Summary. Canopy summerisation kit Materials, tools, time, skills and instructions to assembly the canopy summerisation kit.

Framework

Spacer

26m Pipes 4x Threated Galvanized steel 90° Elbows Galvanized steel 1/2” 1/2”

6x Threated T Elbows Galvanized steel 1/2”

6x Used Tires 6x Blocks Concrete 50x20x20cm

6x Spacers Steel, made by a blacksmith

Vertical shade screen (optional)

Shade net

1x Agricultural 1x Rope Polyester Fabric 6mm x 30m Polyethylene Dark colour 600x400cm

Fixing

Alternative

1x Rope Polyester 8mm x 40m

2x Agricultural 1x Rope Polyester Fabrics 6mm x 60m Polyethylene Dark colour 300x250cm

1x Rope Polyester 8mm x 20m

Assembly: time, skills, tools

Alternative

4 hours

12x U-bolts Zinc-plated steel M8 with nuts and washer (Spacers: used tires) 130

12x Pipe Clamps Zinc-plated steel (Spacers: concrete blocks)

12x Threaded Rods Zinc-plated steel 200mm, Ø 8mm

1 Plumber 2 Unspecialized Workers Ladder, drill, spanner, tap and die set, angle grinder

Framework

Spacers

Shade Net

Threaded pipes with 1/2â&#x20AC;? galvanized steel elbows

Used tires or concrete blocks or steel spacers

Agricultural fabric fixed to the framework by polyester ropes

Fixing

Vertical shade U-bolts (or steel rods) wall to fix the framework to the spacers

Agricultural fabric and polyester ropes

131

1

1 2 4 9 mm

2

13 mm

3*

Tap and die set

Angle grinder

4

A. Positioning and assembling the spacers Repeat steps 1 to 4 for each of the spacers (tires) *4x400 cm Galvanized Steel Pipe 1/2â&#x20AC;? threaded through tap and die set

7

5*

6

Tap and die set

Angle grinder

6

7

B. Assembling the framework Repeat steps 6 and 7 for each joint between threaded pipes *4x200 cm, 4x100 cm, 2x400 cm Galvanized steel Threaded Pipe 1/2â&#x20AC;?

132

8

8

C. Fixing the agricultural fabric and the framework Fix the fabric to the framework with 6 mm rope, not too taut. Secure the framework to the shelter as on a car rack with 8 mm rope, not too taut.

D. Twin configuration with wall screens Solution with additional vertical and horizontal shading surfaces to improve internal climate of the shelter and gain an open but covered space.

133

Prototype. Canopy with tires and agricultural fabric Refugees assemble the prototype in the Zaatari camp in May 2013 with the implementing partner that promoted the project. Source: FAREstudio.

134

135

136

137

Prototype. Canopy with concrete blocks and tarpaulin Refugees assemble the prototype in the Zaatari camp in May 2013 with the implementing partner that promoted the project. Source: FAREstudio.

138

139

140

141

Shelter summerisation.

The Veranda

8

Review of existing solutions The summerisation kit was developed after personally witnessing several of the refugeesâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; needs which became increasingly apparent during the inspection in April 2013.

After designing the canopy, the veranda solution was developed by FAREstudio in the second half of April the second step in the summerisation project. Several decisive factors and reasons prompted this change of direction: the camp inspection by Riccardo Vannucci in the second half of April; his participation in a meeting (Shelter Working Group) with the persons named by UNHCR and NGOs as responsible for summerisation and other matters relating to the shelters; the shoestring budget was still not clearly defined even if summer was fast approaching. The inspection and meeting were two key moments, especially since they allowed the studio to collect and review new data regarding the refugeesâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; needs and environment. The shortcomings in the camp masterplan became much clearer during this phase of the project; evidence was found confirming the assumption that the configuration and spatial exploitation protocols (formulated at the outset)

FAREstudio, 2013.

Self-built transition spaces composed of makeshift materials in Zaatari.

were inadequate. The inspection made it possible to personally experience the crucial, widespread need to develop alternative solutions to help refugees expand and customise the unsatisfactory space of their prefabricated shelters. An account has already been given about the most frequent behaviour adopted by the refugees, i.e., to rearrange the shelters in order to create small courtyards, in other words, to satisfy their need for places in which to meet, to create transitional passageways, and sometimes to also enlarge the indoor space with additional, makeshift rooms. In the winter of 2012, the NRC winterisation project provided an albeit temporary solution to help them create additional rooms. The materials provided on that 143

occasion, as well as other makeshift materials (stone, wood, UNHCR plastic sheeting), were reused; this greatly increased the number of alternative, custommade solutions. Even the UNHCR tent was often used to create an additional room next to the prefabs, thereby compromising its use. Refugees usually tore open one side of the tent so that they could lift it and fix it to the roof of the shelter using bags of gravel or stones to hold it down. Then they tied the tent to the base of the shelters to create a room that communicated directly with the prefabricated shelter. In summer this â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;closed roomâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; solution has no ventilation; as a result the temperature inside the shelters goes up, like a sort of strange greenhouse. In addition, the economic value of the UNHCR tents (about $500 per unit) makes this improper use unsustainable. These additional rooms are used for cooking or washing: those with the economic means to do so try to build a concrete floor; however, in most cases, these makeshift solutions are often unhealthy due to the stagnation of water and moisture. Other open rooms are created simply by using shade structures and surfaces so that the inhabitants can stay outdoors during summer and yet maintain their privacy.

Another reason for this behaviour is that most Syrian families in the camp have more than 4 or 5 members (standard number of inhabitants per shelter) and need more living space; in addition, they also want to live close to other family members housed in other shelters.

This information emerged during several interviews conducted in the camp by the implementing partner of the spring 2013 summerisation project.

FAREstudio was already partly aware of these shared needs and ensuing self-built solutions during the first phase of the project, however hands-on observation during the second phase persuaded the studio to use the assumptions and importance of the summerisation project to shift from a shade canopy to a veranda, inspired by its own observations and as a rational response to the widespread behaviour of refugees in the camp.

144

FAREstudio, 2013.

Self-built transition spaces composed of makeshift materials in Zaatari.

The concept, requirements and performance of the kit Assessment of the thermal, structural and social criteria behind the design of the summerisation kit for the veranda.

1. Shelter

2. Improper self-built solutions

There is no transition space between private and open areas after implementation.

Refugees usually build non-ventilated transition spaces, using makeshift and improper materials.

3. Veranda: shade and ventilation

4. Combination of multiple verandas

The fabric fixed to the shelter shades the façade and provides a ventilated space that can be walked across.

The kit facilitates the aggregation of several shelters using the same materials.

The veranda solution was developed after observing the complete lack of transition spaces designed between the inside and outside of the shelter. As specified earlier, refugees have adopted multiple solutions to remedy the problem, however most of the time they use incorrect materials and fastening technologies and ignore the need to ventilate the shaded area and make it traversable. The veranda kit proposal recognised the importance of maintaining these solutions, but also the need to make them more rational, i.e., by intervening on the less efficient elements and making them easy to build for all refugees.

Altering the summerisation project in this manner would achieve two objectives: on the one hand, it

would provide a shaded space which could be used in summer. On the other - and the by far more important objective - it would give the refugees a small but important opportunity to design the built environment (not envisaged whatsoever by the current masterplan).

This objective would be achieved by providing an official institutionalised kit supplied by the UNHCR and implementing partner. Instead of designing a â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;packagedâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; project, this logic looked to define a code, a spontaneous organising mechanism which would generate the required, shared solutions. Instead of focusing on a functionally uniform format involving homogeneous, enclosed areas, the proposal was based on a dynamic concept: trying to incentivise assisted 145

1. Standard layout of prefabricated shelters in the lots provided by the masterplan 8,00 5,00

3,00

Prefab Shelter

Prefab Shelter 10,00

5,00

Prefab Shelter

2. In real conditions shelters are moved and grouped by refugees

Prefab Shelter Prefab Shelter

Prefab Shelter

Prefab Shelter

Prefab Shelter

Prefab Shelter

Prefab Shelter

3. The veranda facilitates the configuration of potential meeting spaces (1 kit / 1 shelter)

Prefab Shelter

Prefab Shelter

Veranda 400x250

Veranda

Prefab Shelter

Veranda

400x250

400x250

Prefab Shelter

Veranda

veranda

400x250

400x250

Prefab Shelter Prefab Shelter

Prefab Shelter

Prefab Shelter

Veranda Veranda 400x250

0

50 100

146

200

Prefab Shelter

400 cm

400x250

Prefab Shelter

Veranda

Prefab Shelter

Veranda

400x250

400x250 Optional Pole

Veranda 400x250

projects which would allow the refugees to determine, albeit only slightly, the micro-urban built camp environment. This solution is an attempt to reinterpret on a smaller scale the one-size-fits-all concept negatively applied to create a standard camp design model, and as a result provide a single kit which can be installed in many different ways. The system was designed to incorporate this flexibility based on two variables: the size of the shade net, and the position of the hooks to fix it to the shelter.

Due to the aforementioned requirements and procurement issues, the kit had to satisfy roughly the same specifications as the ones for the canopy, except for two important differences. The first is security, i.e., the need to leave open spaces as escape routes in case of fire; the second is that the proposed configurations

should never encroach on the surrounding lots. On the contrary, they should use the boundary as a point of contact to connect different spaces and create single areas, depending on the inhabitantâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s needs, and without blocking major roads. One kit was provided per shelter since it was impossible to know the exact number of families and in which shelter different members of the same families were housed. In addition, the kit was designed to be multifunctional â&#x20AC;&#x201C; another important requirement. It had to be adaptable and apart from shading open spaces also had to be a way to connect several shelters, thereby facilitating self-determined spatial relationships.

X Flexible

- Adaptable to the mutual self-managed layout of shelters - Composed of materials which can be easily resized with common tools.

Simple - Rapid assembly with ordinary skills and simple tools.

- Equipped with an intuitive assembly manual.

Lightweight - Easily transportable, storable for management use and movable by users without specific means.

Removable - Easily removable with common tools for winter, maintenance or to be moved to other shelters.

Replicable - Composed of local materials quickly and inexpensively available in large quantities (industrial production).

Safe - The kit should not hinder the fire evacuation routes or the car access provided by the masterplan.

Multifunctional - Each kit should provide different configurations, by creating shaded areas and facilitating spontaneous assembly of multiple kits.

Vannucci, R., 2013.

Sketches of the veranda fixing system to the shelter with U-bolts or hooks.

147

Project development Each shelter was assigned one summerisation kit. The kit was designed in three different versions according to its size and cost: potential solutions to connect several shelters.

A The veranda (450x300 cm)

Prefab Shelter

Standard single kit

The kit provides for each shelter: four U-bolts that must be fixed to the shelter at a mutual distance of 150 cm, ropes of different diameters and a shade net (450x300 cm agricultural fabric).

The veranda designs an open, shady space. Its function is not to add an extra room, but it can facilitate the customization of the shelter. The shade net for the veranda is not waterproof and it is preferable to remove it in the winter to prevent damage by snow.

20

0

150

450

500

150

Prefab Shelter

150

A Veranda

300

450x300

600

Prefab Shelter

Prefab Shelter

Prefab Shelter

150

B

150

450

500

150

Prefab Shelter

Veranda

0

148

50 100

200

300 cm

450x300

Veranda

450x300

B The veranda (450x300 cm)

Community space

Combining two single veranda kits the benefits increase. The summerisation kit is designed for one shelter. However, if users need community spaces between two or more shelters, this kit can facilitate forms of social empowerment. No extra materials are necessary, the material provided in the single kits is sufficient.

A The veranda (400x250 cm)

Prefab Shelter

Standard single kit

The kit provides for each shelter: four U-bolts that must be fixed to the shelter at a mutual distance of 130 cm, ropes of different diameters and a shade net (400x250 cm agricultural fabric).

The veranda designs an open, shady space. Its function is not to add an extra room, but it can facilitate the customization of the shelter. The shade net for the veranda is not waterproof and it is preferable to remove it in the winter to prevent damage by snow.

Prefab Shelter

0

A

400

500

30

Veranda 400x250

300

500

Prefab Shelter

Prefab Shelter

Prefab Shelter

Community space

Combining two single veranda kits the benefits increase. The summerisation kit is designed for one shelter. However, if users need community spaces between two or more shelters, this kit can facilitate forms of social empowerment. No extra materials are necessary, the material provided in the single kits is sufficient.

B

130 135

400

500

135

Prefab Shelter

B The veranda (400x250 cm)

Veranda 400x250

Veranda 400x250

Prefab Shelter

0

50 100

200

B

130 135

400

500

135

Prefab Shelter

Veranda

400x500

300 cm

149

Canopy

C The veranda (400x200 cm)

Veranda

and the canopy

Prefab Shelter

Prefab Shelter

300

500

300

Prefab Shelter

C

400

500

600

Prefab Shelter

Canopy

Veranda

Veranda

400x200

400x200

Canopy

400x600

400

0

50 100

400

200

400x600

400

300 cm

The technical choices decided for the veranda satisfy, first and foremost, the requirements regarding the possibility to obtain materials on site, but also the need to design a more efficient and cheaper system.

The ordinary tools and simple skills needed to assemble the kit reduces operations in the field to a minimum and allows refugees to assembly the kit by themselves. Some parts of the canopy and veranda kits are the same, although in the veranda kit the parts are technologically even simpler and less numerous: the U-bolts to fasten the ropes to the shelter, the pegs to secure it to the ground, polyester ropes, and the shade net. A decision was taken to provide four U-bolts or ring bolts (less efficient in distributing tension); this latter solution inevitably requires the walls of the shelter to be drilled in order to attach it to the veranda. The holes must be made using a low drill speed; the first half of the hole must be drilled from the outside, the second half from the inside. Hopefully this will minimize the damage to the sandwich panel and prevent water seepage and dust ingress. The best place to drill the four holes is along the upper edge of the panel where they are protected by the metal band circling the shelter. The hole for each bolt should optimally be positioned on a 45° diagonal thereby ensuring a more even distribution of the tension of the rope on the panel. The distance between each of the four fastening 150

The combination of the canopy kit with additional agricultural fabric (the same fabric used for the veranda, but 400x200 cm), facilitates the creation of a potential collective space. Joining the verandas of two or more shelters with canopies allows users to reduce indoor temperatures in the summer and increase living space outside.

bolts varies according to the size of shade net, from 130 to 150 cm.

Since the shade net comes in different sizes, this flexibility in placing the bolts makes it easier for the refugees to personally position the shelters, i.e., to create familiar, recognisable community spaces based on the inhabitantsâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; needs. Since it is almost impossible to control the shifting of these shelters, and despite the fact this issue is not part of the scope of this paper, users must be made to appreciate how to use the kit

Shelter

U-bolt 8 mm Rope 6 mm Rope Grommet Agricultural Fabric 8 mm Rope Reinforcement tape Sandwich panel

properly, in other words they must be told not to block the planned fire escape routes, and try - as much as possible - not to encroach on nearby lots.

The fastening ropes are the same ones used for the canopy, in other words a 8 mm polyester rope attached to the ground after passing through the U-bolts, and a 6 mm polyester rope to join the shade net to the main rope using the cable grommets. Pegs are used to attach the ropes to the ground, but they have to be buried to make them stronger they. Ballast can be used if pegs are unavailable, for example stones to tie the ropes, but they too have to be buried so they hold better.

Itâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s important that the system not be stretched too tight; the ropes have to be securely fastened, but they must allow the shade net some flexibility so that itâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s not damaged by high winds. The agricultural fabric was chosen for the shade net based on the same considerations and reasons put forward for the canopy.

The cost and performance of the five initial options of shade net taken into consideration are illustrated in the bill of quantities presented in the next few pages.

Users can modify the size of the shade nets based on the same Cash for Work formula adopted for the canopy. However, three standard sizes were chosen because they can be used to create different solutions, but above all each size has a different impact on the total cost of the materials required for the veranda. The bill of quantities was calculated based on a 300x450 cm shade net (the biggest); when made of agricultural fabric this brings the total cost of the veranda kit to less than $60 (costs provided by the suppliers contacted by the implementing partners in Amman, and not part of a possible tender).

To conclude, the veranda solution seems to be the most efficient; it is cheap, easy to assemble, requires very few suppliers, and allows the inhabitants of the camp minimum leeway in deciding how they want their living space. However, these reasons were probably were not enough to implement the project and provide a kit for each of the 25,000 shelters; the project never got further than the prototype produced by the implementing partners, apart from a little solution installed in UNICEF schools.

Vannucci, R., 2013.

Sketches of the fixing system with U-bolts to the sandwich panel of the shelter.

151

Bill of quantities. Five options

OPTIONS: 1.

1 Agricultural Fabric 85 gr/m2

OVERALL ASSESSMENT

COST [1 to 10]

SHADING FACTOR/PERMEABILITY

Sub Total

B. FRAMEWORK

Quantity

Unit Sub Total Price Total

[1 to 5] 13,50

0,75 10,13

1

1

5

4

10 21

Rope Polyester

25,00

0,20 5,00

30,00

0,10 3,00

8mm

2 Black/white 2.

Perforated Polyethylene 500 (n); 380 (b) gr/m2

13,50

3,00 40,50

3

3

2

5

4

17

Rope Polyester

6mm

3 Tarpaulin 3.

165 gr/m2 4 Polyester 4.

200 gr/m2 5 PVC, 600 gr/m2 5.

1

152

Unit Price

WEIGHT

Quantity

DURABILITY

A. SHADE NET 3,00 x 4,50 sheet, supplied with grommets and reinforcement tape

MECHANICAL PERFORMANCES

The BOQ includes five options of different materials easily available and locally produced.

The performance of the five materials are analysed with qualitative assessments.

16,40

13,50

1,00 13,50

2

2

4

2

8

18

U-bolts or hooks

4,00

1,60 6,40

13,50

3,50 47,25

4

4

3

3

2

16

Stakes

2,00

1,00 2,00

13,50

2,80 37,80

5

5

1

1

6

18

2

3

4

5

C. GENERAL EXPENSES Transportation, assembly on site, tools, technical assistance, etc.

TOTAL A+B+C

D. CONTINGENCIES [10%]

TOTAL A+B+C+D

Grand Total in JD

Grand Total in USD

36,53

3,65

40,18

56,75

OPTION 1

66,90

6,69

73,59

103,94

OPTION 2

39,90

3,99

43,89

61,99

OPTION 3

73,65

7,37

81,02

114,43

OPTION 4

64,20

6,42

70,62

99,75

OPTION 5

10,00

DURABILITY refers to combination of maintenance and workability.

MECHANICAL PERFORMANCES refers to performances in terms of tensile strenght.

SHADING FACTOR refers to opacity; in the case of the canopy total opacity is not desirable since it implies heavy weight.

1 3 Options selected for implementing the prototypes in the Zaatari camp.

153

Summary. Veranda summerisation kit Materials, tools, time, skills and instructions to assembly the veranda summerisation kit.

Assembly: time, skills, tools

Standard

Alternative

2 hours 2 Unspecialized Workers Ladder, Drill with 9 mm blade, spanner, measuring tape

3x U-bolt M8 or threaded rod 8 mm

1x Agricultural Fabric Polyethylene Dark colour 400x400 cm

1x Agricultural Fabric Polyethylene Dark colour 300x450 cm

1x Rope Polyester 6 mm x 30 m

1x Rope Polyester 8 mm x 25 m

Stake

Steel or stone to fix the ropes 154

Rope

Agric. Fabric

U-bolt

Polyester Polyethylene 300x450 Alternative: 8 mm cm (250x400 cm) threaded rod 8 mm

2x Stake

Steel or stone to fix the ropes

155

A. Drilling holes and fixing the U-bolts

1

9 mm

1 2 3 2

13 mm

3

13 mm

B. Drilling holes and fixing the U-bolts

4

1 2 3 4 5

150-160 cm

4

5

5

150-160 cm Repeat steps

1 2 3

9 mm

156

13 mm

1 2 3 4 5

C. Positioning the stakes and fixing the 8mm rope

6

7

6 7

6 7

D. Fixing the agricultural fabric with the 6mm rope

8

8

157

E. Optional shade nets: improper fixing The agricultural fabric provided by the kit can also be used to meet the need for privacy. An improper fixing of the fabric does not allow ventilation and may cause breaking of the fabric due to the wind.

F. Optional shade nets: proper fixing A proper fixing of the fabric allows ventilation, prevents breaking of the fabric due to the wind and does not obstruct escape routes.

158

Prototype. Veranda for residential shelters Refugees assemble the prototype in the Zaatari camp in May 2013 with the implementing partner that promoted the project. Source: FAREstudio.

159

160

Prototype. Veranda for base camp shelters Refugees assemble the prototype in the Zaatari camp in May 2013 with the implementing partner that promoted the project. Source: FAREstudio.

161

162

Prototype. Canopy and Veranda Refugees assemble the prototype of the veranda and the canopy in the Zaatari camp in May 2013 with the implementing partner that promoted the project. Source: FAREstudio.

163

Conclusions Do not turn your head the other way when faced with the flawed political and economic policies that affect the project.

If quality of life depends very much on how much you plan (the choices you make), and therefore on selfdetermination, then the life of refugees, - forced to live for the most part without most of these opportunities - is one of extreme deprivation and suffering. They are robbed of the right to choose and this is clearly visible in the built environment in which refugees are usually placed (confined): the planned camp.

The study presented in this paper established a direct link between camp design and management protocols and the gradual process whereby people loose their rights when they become displaced persons (i.e., forced to leave their homeland) and then refugees (guests in other countries, protected by international organizations). This link is based on an analysis of the morphology of the current camp design implemented in an almost standard manner the world over. The model was developed based on a set of pragmatic and ideological institutional constraints; the camp is closed to the outside world except for the supply of humanitarian goods and resources. The camps are often established in remote areas; this is due to sensitive agreements regarding land grants between the UNHCR and local authorities, as well as the criteria set out in relevant guidelines. This ‘one-way’ access, together with a single guarded entrance and barbed wire fencing, makes it impossible for the inhabitants to leave. The unbridgeable distance between the inside and outside of a camp further contributes to making it a non-place, i.e., a place without historical links or identity. The peripheral position of the camps vis-à-vis any existing communication route de facto systematically segregates refugees from neighbouring communities (and in some ways, from the whole world) in planetary frontier lands (Bauman, 2004, p. 94): this measure is taken to provide some sort of protection to the host country.

The rows of temporary shelters with guaranteed minimum health and hygiene standards create a rigid and predetermined spatial hierarchy intended to 164

provide everyone with the same benefits. These and other spatial policies contribute enormously to making refugees absolute outsiders, out of place everywhere except in places that are themselves out of place, i.e., refugee camps (Bauman, 2004, p. 100). This exclusion also depends on the time factor (i.e., how long the camp will last) and how it affects camp design. What should be a reasonably unpredictable length of time instead becomes presumed impermanence (the lifespan of a camp is influenced by how long wars last and is impossible to predict). This negatively influences the performance, materials and spatial relationships associated with camp design and implementation.

Transience is belied by data about most of the camps in the world; their average lifespan is anything but transient and in some case camps last more than twenty years.

A comparison between these general ideological design principles and the Zaatari project showed a near-total correspondence, confirming the systematically determined structural nature of the critical issues identified during the summerisation design. Implementing this model in the camp clearly revealed its shortcomings since it was unable to satisfy or even envisage many of the non-vital needs of the inhabitants. Refugees immediately proceeded to destroy the layout adopted by the UNHCR to satisfy needs not envisaged in the allegedly efficient militarystyle design. The fact the project envisaged creating communities by grouping shelters (standard shape, number and layout) - is a very far cry from the dynamic and ‘evolving’ concept of community. Refugees tackled these shortcomings by trying to find alternative configurations and by customising built space; they altered the arrangement and relationship between shelters and ended up by completely self-managing the settlement. It was a spontaneous reaffirmation of the right to design which every human being should enjoy.

In other words, the special but widespread behaviour of so many people was visible proof of the need for

survival which is at the origin of the ability to design (Mari, 2001, p. 83), an ability that leads to alteration of the environment in which people live.

Other critical issues were analysed in addition to the structurally inadequate choices made while planning Zaatari. These issues involve the choice of prefabricated shelters donated by Gulf States to replace emergency tents. Their poor performance visà-vis the summer weather, available resources, and the refugees’ social and cultural needs is plain to see, even to the most inattentive observer. This is where the summerisation project, with a potential but low margin of influence on reality, fits into the project. The two versions of the design increasingly interpreted the way refugees observed and responded, i.e., based on how they behaved vis-à-vis their needs. The canopy kit was designed to solve the problem of liveability inside the shelters, in particular for those social groups who do not want, or do not have the possibility to leave the prefabricated shelters during the summer and therefore require improved thermal performance. Instead the more effective veranda solution was intended to rationalise and facilitate a behavioural requirement, i.e., to be able to use outdoor space protected from the sun. Although hampered by stringent pragmatic and institutional constraints, this low-cost, low-tech kit tried to give the refugees an albeit very small possibility to make a choice. The kit is very versatile and would have allowed end users to choose the layout of the shelters; it would also have had a positive (albeit minimum) impact on the quality of life of the Zaatari refugees. It would have given them this choice, but it didn’t: the solution was not implemented primarily because of procedures determined by others, i.e., the international humanitarian aid system responsible for the protection of refugees and camp management (although the system was locally represented). The importance of the non-vital requirements of refugees (needed for a dignified life) does not seem to register with the management of the built environment in which the refugees are forced to live.

Using specific knowledge and tools (kit design) this project tried to solve non-specific problems (providing shade from the sun, and encouraging planned design) in the hope it would a spark an albeit minimum process of redemption for a large group of individuals.

The right to self-determination does not seem to be contemplated by current camp design, despite solemn repetition of the sacred and inalienable human rights laid down in handbooks and documents, and expressed by official rhetoric of humanitarianism. It wasn’t even possible to implement a very ordinary solution, i.e., to provide shade from the desert sun (a modest right, easy to defend); the project became embroiled in a decision-making process which is, to say the least, incomprehensible and is driven by economic, political and bureaucratic constraints (and therefore interests).

The background noise of the hard-working management machine that allots procurement contracts to eager, western NGOs, misconstrued the boundaries between the pain and incompetence that led to the construction of the camp in the first place.

If we consider the problem from a completely opposite perspective, it’s clear that, given the situation, designing the built environment is considered a collateral issue and the role of architects and planners (if envisaged) is completely influenced by a global ideological vision. This vision involves taking all possible measures, beginning with spatial measures, to ensure the permanence of refugee exclusion, human waste of the planetary frontier lands (Bauman, 2004, p.

97). Positive experiences proposing resistance to this system, such as the work done by James Kennedy and André Ullal, focus on the need to deal with this issue based on active, political awareness. This positive resistance was also personally experienced by the author during his apprenticeship at FAREstudio, a firm which aspires to ethical independence (very different to individualism and self-referentiality).

The lesson learnt by the author during the research performed for this paper is: maintain a political vision of architecture as a tool to redistribute resources and rights, even when the design budget does not coincide with productivity. Another lesson learned is to resist the temptation to exclude fields of knowledge considered unusable by society based on the specialist efficiency of alienation, and instead include them in the ethical tension that should permeate architectural design and knowledge.

165

166

Ngan, M., 2013.

Zaatari camp, aerial view. Available at: <http://www.theguardian.com/> [Accessed 5 October 2013].

167

Acronyms

ACTED

Agency for Technical Cooperation and Development

CENDEP

Centre for Development and Emergency Practice

CPE

Complex Political Emergencies

CRSR

Convention Relating to the Status of Refugees

DRC

Danish Refugee Council

ECHO

European Community Humanitarian Office

IASC

Inter-Agency Standing Committee

ICRC

International Committee of the Red Cross

ICT

Information and Communication Technology

IDMC

Internal Displacement Monitoring Centre

IDPs

Internally Displaced Persons

IFRC

International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies

IHL

International Humanitarian Law

IOCC

International Orthodox Christian Charities

IGO

Intergovernmental Organization

IMC

International Medical Corps

IOM

International Organization for Migration

IRC

International Refugee Committee

JHCO

Jordanian Hashemite Charity Organization

LIC

Low Intensity Conflict

LWET

Light Weight Emergency Tents

LWF

Lutheran World Federation

MC

Mercy Corp

MSF

Médecins Sans Frontières

168

NFIs

Non-Food Items

NHF

Noor Al-Hussein Foundation

NRC

Norwegian Refugee Council

OCHA

Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs

OECD

Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development

OHCHR

Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights

NGO

Non Governmental Organization

OXFAM

Oxford Committee for Famine Relief

THW

Technisches Hilfswerk

UN

United Nations

UNFPA

United Nations Population Fund

UNESCO

United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization

UN-HABITAT

United Nations Human Settlements Programme

UNHCR

United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees

UNICEF

United Nations Childrenâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Fund

UNDP

United Nations Development Programme

UNOPS

United Nations Office for Project Services

UNRWA

United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees

USAID

United States Agency for International Development

USCR

United States Committee for Refugees

VDC

Violations Documentation Centre in Syria

WASH

Water Sanitation and Hygiene

WFP

World Food Programme

WHO

World Health Organization 169

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