Synthesis

The architecture for refugees – vastly explored throughout the architectural discourses and practices during the last three years – plays a determinate part integrating or segregating them in a different society from their own. The experiences variety regarding these human fluxes, o a medium or long term, lead toward a favorable solution for the European space: easily implemented refugee centers that are not subjected to the risk of turning into a ghetto.

The necessity of detailing this kind of answer as an architecture program is more imposing as pressures from Italy and Greece are still being sensed at Europe’s entire level, and pollution climatic changes, extreme poverty, etc.… are foretelling and increase of the migration phenomenon during the next years.

The refugee center - an architecture program

A refugee center is defined by the following parameters: occupants type (asylum seekers / refugees with recognized status / mixed groups), the place (emplacement) and the occupation period (temporary / permanent). The purposed research theme drives toward two of those parameters (refugees with a recognized status) and the last (temporary occupancy), seeking the purpose of interrogating the way architecture engages the integration process for refugees.

The place has a special importance facing this kind of institution, from a strategic point of view (within a national / local level), as well as from a functional point of view. The existence of public services nearby and the possibility of developing withheld by the integration program outside the center and diminish the possibility that the refugees become to dependent to it. It is recommended as well that the emplacement of the refugee centers in cities, accessing infrastructure, might be dealt in a way that their functioning strategy would cope with the development interests of the referenced territory.

Sheltering a a small number of persons (from 50 up to 100, towards maximum 300-400), during an occupancy period (comprised between 6 – 9 / 12 moths, during the integration process) and facing the unpredictable evolution of the migration phenomenon as well as the managing policies (on a EU and a national level), the program itself is placed on the intersection of temporary and permanent.

The refugees’ needs create the premises of forming a third category of functions that a refugee center that has to include or that can be found in its immediate vicinity necessary functions (that concern security and administrational needs), recommended functions (that concern a cultural dimension) and optional functions (that according to the place – physically or socially – may generate negotiations zones between refugee communities and host communities towards a common comfort). These spaces – built or free – are frequented / managed / lived, in various proportions by refugees, people from the neighborhood (city), employed staff or volunteers.

Distributing refugees in centers and housing units must be done according the principle of a familial unity (same family members are lodged, as much as possible, together or in adjacent spaces). Also, vulnerable persons (lone women, unaccompanied children, persons that have mobility issues) need a special attention given by these functional proximities, as a favorable dimensioning of living spaces.

Common areas – being neglected in many subjects – represent a high stake in the spatial configuration of the ensemble, as far as the limit between an institutional administrative type limit and a self-management between refugees may be pushed.

Under social, economic and political pressures also regarding the eventuality as which the number of refugees – against previsions – might decrease, the problem raised is about taking in consideration alternate uses for these centers (social dwelling, student housing units, etc...). Therefore, a flexible structure or a judicious compartmentation that will allow a fast conversion from a function to another, without the loss of architecture quality, is recommended.

Instructions that are used as norms, referring the necessary equipment and features, areas (or volumes) belonging to centers as well as other information regarding the function and management of an institution of sort may be found in the European Asylum Support Office Guide concerning receiving conditions: operational standards and indicators, started in 2016 (2017 adapted to special situations) by the European Asylum Support Office.

Refugee center in Bucharest - strategy 

Being a member of the European Union since 2007 as having the intention of joining Schengen space alike, Romania declares its availability since 2009, to receive around 200 refugees, if needed. The European Committee's decision taken in 2015 to establish obligatory  refugee quotas for all the Member States, generated, for some months, heated debates throughout the country.

Romania welcomes the new year – 2018 – with a surprisingly low number of relocated refugees from Greece and Italy during 2015 – 2017 (710 persons, as against the 4000 established by the European Committee imposed quota), yet encountering a significative increase of asylum granting demands (4050 only in 2017 from which 1300 cases were solved by the grant of a type of protection).

The conditions of the six regional housing and procedure centers for asylum solicitors are precarious whereas the predicted refugee number that are to be accepted in the following years still rises. This situation brings out the problem regarding the way that Romania may answer to those pressures in a sustainable vision on a medium and long term.

The German experience on the matter is most revealing since the managing policies of the refugee fluxes are intertwined with an urban development. Polarizing refugees in the large cities is an already working strategy in Romania (Timișoara, Bucharest, Galați and soon Cluj Napoca), thus the thought that the strategy itself might cover the development interests at a territorial level (on a national or a local scale) is advisable.

Bucharest is the largest urban center in Romania, being an appropriate setting to experiment (social and spatial) relationships that can be set between the refugee community and the host community, during their integration process once they have achieved the refugee status. The various social backgrounds from which these people come from as well as the facilities offered by the city that might interest them – such as continuing their studies, since most of them are minors – places this kind of approach in Bucharest at avail. On another hand, the city’s need to attract youth (with notable implications, from economic and social points of view) can be satisfied by investing in the educational infrastructure, an important part of it being represented by student housing units whose alternative (better adapted to the students’ needs) comes from the private sector as a more expensive and less accessible. The superposition of both social (and economical) demands – set in an indeterminate relationship with the urban infrastructure and image – may lead to the premises of a sustainable strategy of population management that transit through various structures of the city (the refugees during their integration program as well as the students during their studies), on a medium and long term and on national scale of practicability.  Such a functional interference is more plausible since between youth – most active socially – connections can be easily made, given common interests.

The chosen site is emplaced nearby Regie Student Housing Complex, having a double opening towards Dâmbovița, and from a cul-de-sac drawn from it. In contrast with the other (possible) sites, this one has the advantage of a well definite neighborhood and a strategic positioning within its zone (close to the bridge that leads to student housing units, also having public services of interest in its proximity, Emergency University Hospital, 20 Police Precinct, commercial complexes Carrefour and Crângași, etc...).

The shape of the site as the constraints generated by urban regulations lead towards a bar type of constructible (small opening towards the street, a large depth and also the possibility to vertically extend the building). This situation is recurrent in Bucharest and opens up the pretext of reinterpreting the block of flats, regarding the inherent spatial relations as well as its established connections with the surrounding vicinity. The sites double opening – towards Splaiul Independenței and to a cul-de-sac - draws upon the way the architectural object is treated regarding its relation to the Dâmbovița river, as a specific Bucharest courtyard being an interstitial space (in a physical and metaphorical way, or as a initiatory journey).

The project is developed following, at the same time, two narrative threads: the refugees that have to be sheltered and integrated and the students that require spaces adapted to their needs. Following up on the context of a possible external funding, a collaboration with the Polytechnic University of Bucharest might be taken into consideration, as it may provide spaces for the usage of some activities that are part of the integration program in exchange of a later functional conversion of the center (as student housing) – a reversible process if needed.  

Summary

The migration phenomenon is not a problem, as it is often illustrated in the public space, but a mere constant in humanity’s history. Under their different forms, the migration effects may be tragic for the populations dislocated from their lands as well as for the local population with whom they interfere if the asylum issue is treated in a superficial manner.

The various experiences of this kind in the European space had a profound political implication during the last seven years since the – late – research of solutions to manage the refugee fluxes at the Union’s level – was not met with the wanted effects. The refugee crisis marked recent architectural discourses whose inertia would diminish once the exploration of medium and long term effects strategies begun, to the prejudice of emergency architecture (that is ephemeral and whose purpose was already achieved).

The Venice Architecture Biennale (from 2016), architecture competitions as well as other events with an architectural theme are relevant in the process of interrogation of what it designate architecture for refugees and its part mediating social and intercultural relations between refugee and host communities, under a sociological spectrum. The themes of integration and segregation, as well as the legitimacy of dissociating between economic migrants and  refugees (having direct consequences on the way the asylum problem is set), constitute topics of a major importance dealing with the complex character of the migration phenomenon (which is irreversible and unpredictable, depending on a large amount of factors). Also, Germany’s contribution, on a theoretical and practical level, is illustrative for outlining guidelines that draw upon the matter of a sustainable implementation of the refugee centers at a territorial (national or local scale).

Thus the necessity of theorizing this kind of interventions, as a prior and determinant stage for architectural design, is imposed. The refugee center is listed in the registry of architecture programs, set at the confluence between permanent and temporary.

In Romania, the refugee motive – pendulating at the top of political and media interests – is overlapping a student emigration crisis, partly due to the lack of initiative of investing in the educational infrastructure. These two observations will establish the pretext for the diploma project’s conception, that would permanently question the functional duality for a proposition of its kind: refugee housing unit ↔ student housing unit in Bucharest.

© Laura Mazâlu