URBAN
Refugee School House
The 115th John Stewardson Memorial Competition in Architecture is to design a school for refugee girls, to create a safe, creative, and educational learning environment; a space which provides peace, protection, education, connection, good health, and an improved quality of life for young women displaced by
the crisis in Syria.
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After analysing various refugee camps in Turkey and Jordan, it became evident that some camps provide more oportunity for user space manipulation than others. For example, the camp town of Za'atari has developed a thriving market strip around residential caravans. Caravans are grouped together to form streets and courtyards, similar to the towns of Syria. The camps town of Azraq is a very different story. Rows of caravans are rigidly arranged and organized for the refugees without room for manipulation and ownership by the displaced peoples.
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This submission into the competition aimes to provide a space that refugees can take possesion of and transform to suit various needs when camp regulations eliminate this freedom elsewhere, Standard sized shipping containers are designed to unfold at one side, in three directions, to provide a variety of spaces as the occupants desire. By only removing one of the sides of the container, the structural integrity of the original container shape is maintained, allowing the structures to be stacked without much extra reinforcing. This design provides not only the much needed school but a flexible area for the community to really take ownership of.
The prefab school allows for more flexibility in plan that the systematized layout of some refugee camps.
The Mosque (upper left) is located within it's own courtyard, making it available to the whole community without interfering with the students. The larger inner courtyard is the play area, protected and inaccessible to those not in the school.
Upper story of learning spaces.
The Mosque is a public space in the school design and available to the whole community. Swinging perforated panels provide variation in enclosure depending on season or function.
Shipping Containers are stacked to create upper story learning spaces and further shelter the play area below.