To be a host in a hosting country
Hospitality as empowerment in refugee camps
Master Thesis Project
Selected for the Dutch Design Week 2022
Exhibited at the Nieuwe Instituut, Gallery 3 Open Space, February - June 2024
Exhibited at the DEMO DAYS “ What makes a home”, Eindhoven 2024
My practice explores new processes towards knowing and claiming spaces. It seeks to expand cooperation and introduce different research methods in working with asylum seekers that would bring new contents in their everyday life. It speculates on the domestic environment that may emerge through processes of listening, tracing and drawing together with those living on the front line of precariousness. Within this trajectory, I created a participatory practice through which refugees can have the spatial agency to be host as an empowerment tool while living in temporary structures far from home.
The Art of Invitation is the workshop I designed and
introduced in different asylum seeker centres across The Netherlands. The aim is to start a conversation with any medium
refugees 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.
The vision of Hospitality that my project shows, aims to reconsider the
notion of privately owned and publicly owned space. My design continues in
that direction developing a proposal for municipalities, recognizing that the
current policy regulations lack an understanding from the refugee’s perspective
and miss the necessity of creating collective spaces. I propose a new chapter
called To be a host in a hosting country constituting new fundamental
criteria for the planning of refugee centres.
My proposal comes to life not only with a new
wording but also with illustrations that show how the architectural drawing is no longer exclusively
about spatial configurations but includes traces and objects of everyday use
and 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.
credit @Giulia Menicucci
To be a host in a hosting country
Master Thesis 2021-2022
interview by Bni
