portfolio

This is a refugee marketplace design made for Place and Displacement competition. The task was to design a sustainable marketplace with an operational plan for a vulnerable population in Za’atari refugee camp. Our transitional open-system design proposes a bottom-up approach in the development in Za’atari refugee camp — enabling development rather than relief orientation. It is is designed to start at a small scale, and then rapidly grow taking bigger and bigger steps in becoming a fully grown community with its own developed identity.

We considered flexibility and modularity at every scale, from urban planning to furniture in the market stalls. This makes the camp sustainable in a way that every part is replaceable, re-attachable and reusable, but also allows valuable opportunity for creativity — whether in collective design of the market arrangements, or individual decisions about their own market stall function, appearance, arrangements and use.

Just like LEGO bricks, everything is designed in a micro scale, but flexible and open in macro scale: Inhabitants decide about configuration of their market and it’s content, and allows every individual the freedom to govern their own stalls, constructions, shared spaces and units. This helps remove fixed boundaries (where it can) and creates flexible and adaptable user-governed solutions. The development of the ‘city’ reflects the development of the users.

​

Modular attachments to stalls can be easily reused and shared, as well as dismantled to contribute to future builds. Every piece (and stall design) is replaceable/adaptable, and can be maintained and reused/recycled on site. This repeatable logic extends directly to the larger urban planning and future development — all according to a variety of adaptable arrangements.

Political changes can be acknowledged and benefited through our design, as it responds to existing UNHCR structure to compliment social balance, and makes steps to maintain the balance through transitional development for shared and individual acknowledgement of a collective good.