Domestic refugee architecture in Jordan: a socio-spatial analysis of chaotic camps

Abstract

This paper explores the evolution of re-appropriated refugee dwellings in protracted scenarios in Jordan through the interrogation of humanitarian design solutions by mapping and analysing spatial enclosures of shelters in three separate camps. By exploring the ways temporary emergency shelters in camps built and managed by the humanitarian sector developed into a chaotic and aggregated built environment, we present a socio-spatial perspective on the architecture of containment. Interrogating the relationship between the traditional spatial practices of the region and the creation of what we call ‘domestic refugee architecture’, we unpack discussions on the occurrence of lived-in spaces that cross over imposed humanitarian tangents and subvert the conception of refuge as shelter for human bodies in the absence of culture and tradition. We conclude that, while displacement may mean geographic and physical dispossession from a homeland, it does not imply social and cultural dispossession.