Home and Preparatory School for Unaccompanied Minor Refugees
Architectural concept - Ma degree work
After spending 2 years with the minor refugee community of Open Doors Hungary, with Nikolett Dendel we were inspired to work out an architectural concept for them by our Ma degree work closing our studies at Moholy-Nagy University of Art and Design, Budapest, Hungary. Our degree work was the design of a Home and Preparatory School for Unaccompanied Minor Refugees arriving in Hungary. Because of the complexity of this topic, we calibrated our architectural concept based not only on our personal experiences but also on an environmental psychology level. While my theoretical thesis was about the topic of “home”, Nikolett’s was about alternative educational spaces. With our theoretical researches our goal was to prove that a nonfunctional and harmful environment creates barriers for the process of inclusion.
Degree work of Nikolett Dendel and Erzsébet Hosszu
Supervisor: Balázs Marián Dla
Architect consultant: Zsófia Csomay
Theoretical consultant: Andrea Dúll PhD
2015 MOME
The target groups
This project has a focus on the special target group of Open Doors Hungary: unaccompanied minor refugees and asylum seekers. They are the ones who arrive in Hungary without any elder family members, they come mostly from the conflict zones of Afghanistan, Pakistan, Syria and Somalia. We have been working with them since the end of 2012 and we clearly realized what are their special needs and issues. They have challenges like lack of common language, lack of possibilities for self-expression, difficulties in the inclusion into the Hungarian community, depression caused by the loss of home, goods, values, community, cultural shock and also confusion about their identity and role in the society.
The second target group of our project is the Hungarian society, locals from the neighbourhood. As they have lack of knowledge about the topic of asylum, the can easily have prejudices and fear.
Our architectural concept had to reflect with the following challenges: to help to turn the new accomodation into a home (so it can become the scene of recovery), to support their education (so it can become the tool of integration) and to create open spaces for the outside world (so it can become the safe platform of the new connections and experiences).
The location
The venue of the project is an already existing, abandoned building in the 4th district of Budapest. We had more reasons to chose this site: This area is neither too close to, nor too far from the city centre (which means they will not stuck in another segregation but still they get a calm and safe environment), the integrated schools of Budapest are close to this area and also this area has direct public transport to the city of Fót (where they accommodated in the aftercare service after they turn to 18 years old). We also set it as an important goal to rebuild an already existing but abandoned building instead of designing a completely new one. We found this venue perfect for our goals: it has 2 buildings (one for the main functions and for the accomodation and another for the preparatory school) and it has a big garden (partly saved and partly open to the neighbourhood). The main concept according to the building was to demolish the parts which were added as supplements and also all the walls (as the building is structured up on pillars) to be able to refill the whole building with a completely new content.
Indoors
Preparation for the inclusion - spaces for recovery and education.
Outdoors
Games and informal community building
"(1) Everyone has the right to freedom of movement and residence within the borders of each state.
(2) Everyone has the right to leave any country, including his own, and to return to his country."
Universal Declaration of Human Rights - Article 13.
