Design to Live : Everyday Inventions from a Refugee Camp / edited by Azra Aksamija, Raafat Majzoub, and Melina Philippou.

Format:

Book

Contributor:

Aksamija, Azra, 1976- editor.

Majzoub, Raafat, editor.

Philippou, Melina, editor.

Series:

The MIT Press

The MIT Press Series

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Refugee camps--Jordan.

Refugee camps.

Refugees--Jordan--Social conditions.

Refugees.

Azraq (Refugee camp).

Physical Description:

1 online resource (345 pages)

Edition:

First edition.

Place of Publication:

Cambridge, Massachusetts : The MIT Press, [2021]

Summary:

The power of art and design to create a life worth living: designs, inventions, and artworks from the Azraq Refugee Camp in Jordan. This book shows how refugees use art and design to transform their living environments, restoring humanity within circumstances that seem aimed at depriving them of it. Featuring more than twenty projects created by Syrian refugees at the Azraq Refugee Camp in Jordan, Design to Live offers a new way of understanding design as a subversive worldmaking practice and as tool for reclaiming agency in conditions of forced displacement. The projects--including a vertical garden, an arrangement necessitated by regulations that forbid planting on the ground; a front hall, fashioned to protect privacy; a baby swing, made from recycled school desks; and a chess set, carved from broomsticks--showcase the discrepancy between standardized humanitarian design and the real sociocultural needs of refugees. This bilingual book in English and Arabic documents designs by refugees through architectural drawings, illustrations, photographs, and texts by the camp residents, humanitarian workers, and researchers who collaborated on the book across cultural and disciplinary borders. Design to Live is the product of a three-year joint project of the MIT Future Heritage Lab and the Syrian refugees at the Azraq Refugee Camp, supported by CARE-Jordan and the German Jordanian University.

Contents:

Intro

Table of Contents &gt

Acknowledgements

Preface

Perspectives on Life at the Camp

Placed in a Timeless Base

The Power of Writing

Working in a Field of Traps

Landscape

Designs That Connect Residents with the Surrounding Landscape

Vertical Garden

Kitchen

Oven

Pigeon Breeding

Intimacy

Designs That Mediate Intimacy within the Family and the Community

Outdoor Majlis

Entrance Hall

Courtyard

Fellowship

Designs That Question Life under Cultural Austerity

Rocking Crib

Plush Toy

Spinning Top

Chess Set

Desert Castle

Majlis

Tea Set

Coffee Station

Fountain

Energy

Designs That Enable Access to Resources

Water Cart

Water Storage

Water Faucet

Desert Cooler

Chandelier

Perspectives on Humanitarian Design

Life Worth Living

Reverse Urbanization

Humanitarian Design Gaps

Collaborations Across Borders

Refugee-led Designs as a Worldmaking Practice

Biographies

&lt

Table of Contents.

Notes:

OCLC-licensed vendor bibliographic record.

Description based on print version record.

Includes bibliographical references.

ISBN:

0-262-36635-5

OCLC:

1256586383