To be a host in a hosting country: hospitality as empowerment in refugee centers
To be a host in a hosting country creates participatory practices to give asylum seekers the spatial agency to be host, as an empowerment tool while living in temporary structures far from home. The focus is on the creation of a policy to include, in the design process of these structures, the presence of collective spaces designed bottom-up through processes of tracing and drawing together with those living on the front line of precariousness.
Cross-border/international
Netherlands
Italy
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Mainly urban
It refers to other types of transformations (soft investment)
To be a host in a hosting country explores new processes towards calming spaces in hostile domestic environments. It creates participatory practices to give asylum seekers the spatial agency to be host, as an empowerment tool while living in temporary structures far from home. The focus is on the creation of a policy to include, in the design process of these structures, the presence of collective spaces designed bottom-up through processes of tracing and drawing together with those living on the front line of precariousness.
Within this trajectory, a participatory practice, The Art of Invitation, has been developed. The Art of Invitation consists of a series of workshops designed and introduced in different asylum seeker centres across The Netherlands with the support of De Vrolijkheid. The aim is to start a conversation with any medium participants feel like expressing themselves, to reflect on which space inside the centre they could claim by being a host. There is a moment, during the workshop, when these reflections are transformed into actions and participants are empowered by being hosts.
Recognizing that the current Dutch policy regulations lack an understanding from the asylum seekers' perspective and miss the necessity of creating collective spaces, this project develops a proposal for municipalities. In particular it introduces The Art of Invitation as a new fundamental criteria for the planning of these centres. The proposal comes to life not only with a new wording but also with illustrations to show how the architectural drawing is no longer exclusively about spatial configurations, but includes traces and objects of everyday use patterns. The hope is that The Art of Invitation will constitute a base for the allocation of refugee centres with the presence of a collective space. The ambition of the project is to make that space the place where asylum seekers can also work, since,depending on their asylum status, they are not entitled to do so.
Hospitality
Policy Making
Participatory design process
Inclusivity
Asylum Seekers Centers
- Social Development
- Accessibility in terms of inclusivity
- New possibilities for the design disciplines to reevaluate more the existing
- Space for asylum seekers to work into
Sustainability is deeply linked with the idea of development. A development that aims to find a balance between human and nature and the surrounding environment. That development though it is also highly significant in a context of providing the structure for a social development. In that case, To be a host in a hosting country, reaches the sustainability target at its core.
Based on a participatory design process, the project addresses the needs of the communities inside asylum seekers centres, giving them the possibility to be manifested. Any result that will come up will be community led and significant because achieved together with whom will benefit from it at first.
With a focus on the existing buildings inside asylum seekers centres, the project does not require additional building up. It rather aspires for a different and more inclusive way of using/living/approaching the buildings already present at these locations. With a strong approach from design toward policy making the project outlines new possibilities for the design discipline to reevaluate more the existing environments with different design media.
The intention of the project is to create a collective space inside asylum seekers centres as a location where asylum seekers could host but also work since the right to work is, depending on the asylum status, sometimes denied.
- Focus on the familiar and subjectivity for the community in the design process
- Create a connection between asylum seekers centres and the city environment
- Ownership of the design proposal given to the community
The nature of the project has a focus on the process rather than on the outcomes. It presents a strategy to provide other strategies and design planning proposals. To be a host in a hosting country wants to make a change in the relationship between designers and users, tearing down that gap that always makes the designer the one able to make the final design decision. With a focus on the domestic environment, the project raises questions about how a designed space really reflects the subjectivity of the individuals, approaches their own familiar, meets their needs and sets the basis of the creation of social behaviour patterns in hostile living conditions. Using the term "domesticity", an architectural landscape which consists of the spatial, emotional, material, economic, sexual, and territorial aspects of everyday reality is described. Are these aspects always included in the programme for the design and allocation process for asylum seeker centres?
This project has been introduced in locations that are not connected with the city areas. Public transportations is few and not often available. The Art of Invitation, parallel to being a tool to give spatial agency to asylum seekers, works also as a tool to open up the connection between the centres and the urban environment.
The project, which stands out thanks to its adaptability to different frameworks, is exemplary in this context because it gives to the community the ownership of the design proposal.
- Hospitality as an inclusive design method
- Workshop to empower the community
- Right to work
Hospitality has different meanings in different cultures. Nevertheless at the core of it lies the notion of openness and inclusivity. Hospitality does not only mean being able to welcome someone else in one’s safe environment, but it especially means to make that environment safe, because often, unfortunately, that is not the case. When asylum seekers are welcomed in temporary locations, hospitality is not always reached. This project aims to reach hospitality, shifting it from the common knowledge we have of it. What would it mean for someone to be a host while being hosted?
This project is a clear example on how legislation, policy making, design and collective care can come all at one. It provides inclusivity not only in the target group but also in the parties that can be involved in the process.
The project has been developed with a workshop format. The Art of Invitation has been introduced in different asylum seekers centres in The Netherlands. Workshop is the right medium to engage with, to create a sharing moment to communicate, create, imagine together. With a focus on drawing and moquettes’ making, the format of the workshop immediately translates an idea, a feeling, an image, into a real object or space that can be further developed. Being all together sparks inspiration and exchange of knowledge between participants. Applying the workshop format in such locations, not only provides inclusivity but achieves empowerment, a characteristic not often present in such hostile environments.
The intention of the project is to develop a design strategy able to provide the presence of a collective space when locating or planning an asylum seekers centre. There is the necessity to create a space where residents can also work since that right is sometimes denied even if it constitutes one of the main rights everyone should be entitled to have
The engagement of asylum seekers has been fundamental for the design and implementation of the concept. The project functions as a collector of voices, memories, skills and inputs. Its results are community led and this represents the bigger benefit of working and involving residents of the locations this proposal wants to intervene into. The ambition of the project is to involve neighbours of asylum seekers centres to set a dialogue between the two parties in helping the social, economical, political integration of asylum seekers into the hosting country. At the present status, this project sees the involvement of the COA (Central Organization for Asylum Seekers) at a local level, meaning in each centre. COA took part in the workshop and together with De Vrolijkheid helped the creator of the concept in developing those workshops. The intention of the project is to bring that engagement also at a European level through the realisation of a policy that uses The Art of Invitation as a criteria for planning and designing the environments inside asylum seekers centres
This project has been developed within the framework of the Master Interior Architecture at the Royal Academy of Art in The Hague as a master thesis project. Although it then overcame the boundaries of the university’s environment, that same environment represented the first stakeholder at a local level. Thanks to De Vrolijkheid ( Art Projects in Dutch Refugee Centers) this project has been introduced in different asylum seekers centres across The Netherlands. They have been the bridge between the creator of the concept and the COA (central organisation asylum seekers). The aim is to keep presenting and testing the spatial vision of hospitality this project introduces in other locations and to work with municipalities.The project is now at a stage where COA is interested in developing it further in specific locations but the network with other stakeholders on a national level, especially with municipalities, will be developed next year. The hope is that COA can make use of The Art of Invitation in the framework of To be a host in a hosting country as an executive planning criteria for the allocation of asylum seekers centres and as a tool to use in co-designing the domestic environment of asylum seekers.
Multidisciplinarity is at the core of this proposal. This project begins from a field research based on interviews to then develop design strategies through participatory workshops to, in the end, make a policy regulation proposal. During the process different parties intervened: the COA, the coordinator the asylum seekers centres from De Vrolijkheid side and the creator of the project. Above all of these, the main contributions came from the participants, people with different backgrounds, different stories and different skills merging all together trying to develop a new vision for their living environments. The plan for the development of the project is to keep this collaborative and multidisciplinary nature on going.
The concept presents a pilot project that could envision new and different ways of approaching the living conditions in asylum seekers centres. If mainstream narratives are based on providing a standard for the living of people fleeing from their home country, To be a host in a hosting country aims to empower those same people to feel at home having spatial agency on these temporary structures. What does it mean hospitality if not to have the freedom to become also a host and not only a guest? The shift in the understanding of hospitality is what makes this proposal unique.
Offering a spatial intervention based on an innovative model of spatial planning that starts from the specific user to reach a general policy regulation, this project connects a social approach and a spatial one in a direct way, which is not often the case in mainstream practices.
This project creates a feeling of home based on subjective values that emerge during the workshop’s phases. It envisions a different understanding of the relationship between designers and users, putting these two parties at the same level. In the last few years many practices are going in this direction. Nevertheless there is a tendency, from the designer’s perspective, to abuse the design skills and work towards objectivity rather than on subjectivities. By arising and engaging with subjectivities, this proposal questions the notion of objectivity often associated within the design field as a positive connotation.
Working on two scales ( the domestic and the urban one) going from workshop format to policy making, the concept invites one to look at the design field in a multidisciplinary perspective.
With the creation of a collective space for asylum seekers to be hosts and to perform the right to work, this project provides the possibility for integration and cultural exchange. It also consequently offers new values for the economy of the hosting countries.
The concept has been developed in The Netherlands but it touches upon an European’ issue. The whole methodology of researching with the workshop, engaging with all the parties around asylum seekers centres, creating a connection with, if there is the case, the city area, offers systematic proposals that can be applied elsewhere in Europe. The intention of the project, in a long time projection, is indeed to test this vision of hospitality in other asylum seekers centres across Europe, to be able then to design a policy proposal that could be run to a national level and beyond. That methodology would be characterised by univocal criteria upon which European countries can have mobility of action.
Improving the living conditions in asylum seekers centres is one of the most pressing global challenges of (this) time. To be a host in a hosting country tackles that challenge from the inside, developing approaches to decision making that empower the ones living on the front side of precariousness. The engagement of the residents of the centres in planning their domestic environment is a local intervention for a global challenge. That engagement, developed over time, will contribute to the social and cultural integration of asylum seekers and will constitute an economical strengthening, in the short and long terms, valid for the asylum seekers and at the same time for the hosting country.
Using design as a social facilitator answers to the global challenge of social equality and respects human rights and it functions as a support for nowadays ideas to reach a better future.
