Life as a refugee would be testing for even the toughest of us, yet we must remember that there are 2.8 million Syrian refugees living that very life across the Syrian border, in neighbouring countries. They are distressed, surrounded by agony and pain with very little hope and very little in the way of provisions.
Tents are a quick response to the need for emergency shelter, but “it’s money that melts” says Venice Architecture Biennale 2016 director Alejandro Aravena. Investing in less temporary disaster-relief shelters should be seen as payment in advance for a long-term solution to the world’s housing shortages. Aravena champions an incremental approach to housing by providing low-cost partial solutions that residents can complete themselves.
He said that developing longer-term solutions like this for the refugees and immigrants flooding into Europe could help solve the continent’s existing housing shortage. His statements echo the sentiment of humanitarian aid expert Kilian Kleinschmidt, who opined that governments should stop thinking about refugee camps as temporary places and instead see them as future cities.
Since 2000, the International Development Association (IDA), the World Bank’s fund for the poorest, has provided over $28.5 billion to fragile and conflict-affected situations. Overseen by 173 shareholder nations, IDA aims to reduce poverty by providing loans and grants for programs that boost economic growth, reduce inequalities, and improve people’s living conditions. Using resources from IDA, the World Bank intends to work with the UN, multiple NGOs and local governments to fund the implementation of a new type of refugee solution. The brief requires architects, designers and contractors involved to create a visionary camp which would allow Syrian refugees to form a community in Lebanon, on the nearest safe site to their home country, a community which would become self- sufficient eight years after completion and yield a surplus of resources in its tenth year.
