Cidades nuas: estudo crítico sobre o modelo internacional de campo para refugiados

Abstract

The design of refugee camps represents an extreme form of the architectural practice. Despite the increasing number of people who are forced to live in such camps, the state of the art did not change substantially in the last decades and neither did the principles, the theories and the techniques applied in this field; the construction of the housing units was the only portion in which a significant progress has been noticeable. Programmed and designed to be temporary, refugee camps are based on emergency logics, whose main purpose is to ensure the survival of its inhabitants. In response to the need for immediate action, the emphasis is placed on short-term solutions, which mainly focus on the matters of health, hygiene and protection, at the expense of the social and spatial dynamics of the camp as whole. However, the durability of these structures usually extends far beyond what predicted, a strain which generates unique situations, physical manifestations of the state of exception. Moreover, in the attempt to give an adequate but universal response, the principles of equity and homogeneity are the pivotal points in the planning of the camps, a combination which translates into one single model, applied indifferently. The only truly universal needs, however, are the purely biological ones, and in fact, so conceived, camps become devices whose sole purpose is the mere survival of the human beings they host; in the words of Agamben, the main goal is to safeguard the naked life. Constructed in a modular way, without any spatial hierarchy apart from the pure separation of residential and public space, camps are therefore naked cities, stripped of all the characteristics that are necessary for the social and political well-being of their population. By size and number of inhabitants, but especially by the social dynamics they generate, camps are comparable to actual cities: it is urgent to extend the debate to the architectural and urban spheres.