DESIGN STUDIO, WS 2015/2016
Prof. Dr. Philipp Misselwitz, Nina Pawlicki

Refugee City
Coproducing Green Communities

Climate change and resource scarcity affect all of us, but impact the lives of poor communities in a particularly harsh way.

This semester we will continue working with refugees as urban actors, focusing on two case studies: the urbanised Jerash refugee camp in Jordan and deprived Berlin neighbourhoods with disproportionately high numbers of refugees. Despite obvious social, cultural and climatic differences, in both contexts, residents are preoccupied with unemployment, poverty and daytoday coping strategies. How can climate change adaptation strategies generate (small) gains and improvements, and help build resilient vulnerable communities?

The design studio will build a broad (global) understanding of community-based climate adaptation – often referred to as “greening slums” - a key priority for governments around the globe, United Nations (UN) and international development organisations. Following an invitation from the Gesellschaft für Internationale Zusammenarbeit (GIZ) and the UN, we will travel to Jerash Camp to work with local refugee groups and Jordanian architecture students on a series of 1:1 interventions, testing the possibilities for hands-on, low-tech solutions that seek to create synergies between daily needs and environmental concerns. Back in Germany, we will develop comparative strategies for a Berlin context.

We will be dealing with key questions such as: How can architects assist local residents to address specific everyday challenges through a more sustainable approach to the use and reuse of natural resources? How can we reduce waste, cope with water (and energy) scarcity, develop small-scale green economies or achieve improvements of local climates? The aim is to develop and implement prototypes and transfer this experience to a series of how-to-manuals.

The studio and the PiV have been organised and will be conducted in cooperation with the Chair of Landscape Architecture . Open Space Planning (Prof. Undine Giseke).