The traditional ideal of living in a single-family home on privately owned land is no longer tenable. Conflicts, climate change, and inequality are key factors shaping this new reality of scarcity and displacement. How can architecture shape this new model of life? What can architecture do for and learn from the displaced?
Focusing on the Al Azraq Refugee Camp in Jordan, one of the region’s largest camps established in 2014 to shelter more than 35,000 displaced Syrians, this installation speculates on a near-future world in which most people have been forcibly displaced. The Al Azraq Camp has become the capital of the global “displaced empire.” In this story, we meet Wael, a young man born in Syria and growing up in the camp, as he defies this reality daily. He weaves his life despite confinement through new friendships with young people, such as Jar and others coming from different parts of Syria. Jar dropped out of school because he did not see how traditional education could better his future, but he could teach you how to mitigate the unbearable heat of standardized T-shelters with DIY air conditioners and shisha fountains. Wael is heading to the 2020 Olympics for a taekwondo match. They are part of a growing population of new nomads with fractured histories and hybrid cultural identities.
The T-Serai is the empire’s HQ, a portable palace reflecting the surplus and scarcity in the architecture of displacement. The tents and drawings of everyday life in the camp are the results of multiannual collaborations across borders. Imperial “almanacs” laser-burned on denim depict the “reverse urbanization” phenomena of the camp through the lens of fascinating inventions created by Syrian refugees. The ingenuity and resourcefulness of Al Azraq residents reveal the cultural, emotional, and architectural needs of displaced people within the context of scarcity, war trauma, confinement, and the struggle for a future. By altering and domesticating the standardized humanitarian T-shelters, displaced Syrians humanize humanitarian architecture using art and design as a medium of self-determination and worldbuilding.
Research PI and Artistic Direction: Azra Aksamija
Exhibition Installation Concept: Azra Aksamija, Zeid Madi, Dietmar Offenhuber, Melina Philippou.
T-Serai Tent: see T-Serai project credits.
Reverse Urbanisation Frieze:
Research leads: Azra Aksamija, Melina Philippou, Zeid Madi, Raafat Majzoub, Muteeb Awad Al Hamdan.
Syrian designers at the Azraq camp: Ali Fawaz, Abu Al Ajnabi, Abu Mohammad Al Homsani, Amer Yassin Abu Haitham, Mohammed Khaled Marzouqi, Majid Al Kan’an, Farez Jamel Vousel.
Syrian authors of poems and stories at the Azraq Camp: Heba Al Saleh, Nagham Al Saleh, Nour Ghassan, Samer Al-Naser, Hana’a Ahmed, Kifah Akeel, Hussein Al-Abdallah, Hasan Al-Abdallah, Hatem Al-Balkhy, Wa’el Al-Faraj, Nagham Alsalha, Heba Caleh, Mohammed Al-Hamedy, Ahma Al-Hassan, Jar Al-Naby Abazaid, Yassin Al-Yassin, Mustafa Hamadah, Jameel Homede, Abdulkarim Ihsan, Ahmad Khalaf, Rawan Maher Hossin, Mohammed Mizail, Jameel Mousli, Mohammed Shaban.
Photographic survey of inventions at the Azraq camp: Zeid Madi, Nabil Sayfayn and Al Azraq Journal Team members: Hussain Al-Abdullah, Yassin Al-Yassin, Mohammad Al-Qo’airy, Mohammad Al-Mez’al.
2D & 3D representation of inventions by MIT students and alumni: Noora Aljabi, Andrea Baena, Catherine Anabella Lie, Khan Nguyen, Melina Philippou, Michelle Xie, Stella Zhujing Zhang, Calvin Zhong, Ziyuan Zhu.
Advisors in Amman - German-Jordanian University: Rejan Ashour, Mohammad Yaghan.
Freeze Design: Natalie Bellefleur, Zeid Madi, Dietmar Offenhuber, Melina Philippou, Calvin Zhong.
Textile banners fabrication: Azra Aksamija, Stratton Koffman, Lillian Kology, Cameron Silva.
Textile installation, produced with the MIT Future Heritage Lab
Commissioned by the Venice Architecture Biennale 2021
Media: Humanitarian textiles, discarded clothes, military camouflage mesh, 2D and 3D drawings.
Dimensions: Tent 590 x 286 x 470 cm