To be a host in a hosting country
Hospitality as empowerment in asylum seekers’ centers
Master Thesis Project
Exhibited at the Nieuwe Instituut, Gallery 3 Open Space, February - June 2024
Exhibited at the DEMO DAYS “ What makes a home”, Eindhoven 2024
Selected for the Dutch Design Week 2022
The research - based project investigates the social, spatial and political mechanisms that occur within the temporary housing and living conditions in asylum seekers' centres in the Netherlands. The emphasis is on gaining insight into the influence that such mechanisms can have on urban development policy regarding the construction and design of these types of facilities.
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 asylum seekers can
have the spatial agency to be host as an empowerment tool while living in
temporary structures far from home.
While migration is often addressed at national or continental levels, this project focuses on the everyday lives of asylum seekers—how they navigate legal systems and exclusion in the places they find shelter, work, and a sense of home. It introduces diverse research methods to bring forward lived experiences often overlooked by urban and housing policies.
Through this work, I developed The Art of Invitation, a participatory practice implemented through workshops in several asylum seeker centres across the Netherlands. Using drawing and mapping, the workshops invited participants to reflect on claiming space by becoming hosts, turning these reflections into small, context-specific actions to foster agency within temporary living environments.
The practice raised questions around public and private space, identity, and belonging, while exposing policy gaps that overlook the social and spatial needs of asylum seekers. In response, I proposed a new planning chapter for municipalities titled To Be a Host in a Hosting Country, offering guiding principles for designing refugee centres grounded in care and community.
This 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 asylum seekers’ centres
with the presence of a communal space to practice hospitality.
credit @Giulia Menicucci
To be a host in a hosting country
Master Thesis 2021-2022
interview by Bni
