Camp: Decolonizing Architecture

Abstract

The paper is based on the argument that the notion of “camp” is one of the practices of dwelling that could anchor architects, urbanists and spatial practitioners introducing new forms of infrastructure, public space, relation to existing cities and as well as methodologies. The everyday life practice of a refugee community in a camp is often applied by a normative design approach. Its public space is being understood as tabula rasa, an empty bowl. The refugee camp literature in architecture, which is limited, the basic argumentations are about the urbanization process of refugee camps, spatial practices and understanding the space of camp as state of exception. Through the problematization of public space he claims that the camp has a potentiality as a “anti-city”. Under the frame of this theoretical discussion, this paper will exemplify a comparative local condition of camps in West Bank, Jordan, Lebanon and Southeast Anatolia, which the authors are conducting since the last years.