Author(s): Ayham Dalal

HUMANITARIAN / COMMUNITY ARCHITECTURE

In Zaatari camp, Jordan, thousands of Syrian refugees were sheltered in tents and caravans, which they steadily appropriated and turned into dwellings. In this book, Ayham Dalal takes a closer look at this remarkable transformation - a process that involved the dismantling and reassembling of the camp. This transformation is challenging its humanitarian order and disciplinary machine, while allowing refugees to construct dwellings that responded to their social and cultural needs. Caravans were turned into architectural elements and financial assets, and materials were negotiated in relation to prevailing politics and time. These practices not only humanized the shelter and the camp but also underlined the importance of a "right to appropriation" in a world where bottom-up practices of "habiting" are being increasingly repressed by the top-down production of "habitats".