Gimme shelter

The Rohingya Refugee Camp covers eight square kilo­me­tres – and wants to offer a little protec­tion.

The Rohingya are an ethnic group in Myanmar. The United Nations clas­si­fies them as the “most seriously perse­cuted mino­rity in the world”. They suffer forced labour, illegal detention, torture, rape and murder. An esti­mated 1.5 million Rohingya live state­less in exile, many of them in Bangla­desh.

With the ‘Beyond Survival’ safe space, archi­tect Rizvi Hassan conti­nues to intro­duce commu­nity-centric, bamboo struc­tures within the Rohingya refugee camp, a tempo­rary ‘city’ which sprawls across five square miles of Bangla­desh. 

While the massive camp hosts more than six hundred thousand Rohingya refu­gees from neigh­boring Myanmar, the newly built ‘Beyond Survival’ safe space offers Rohingya women and girls a place of retreat, serving as a place for lear­ning, crea­ting, and sharing.

The mate­rials used are very simple and available nearby.

The project comprises a soci­ally enga­ging design and build process which served to benefit parti­ci­pants of all genders. The team took note that male parti­ci­pants from the camp were eager to involve their family members – wives, daugh­ters, mothers, and sisters — with the center’s acti­vi­ties.

With the ‘Beyond Survival’ safe space, the archi­tect favored simple mate­rials which were locally available. as the project had been cons­tructed quickly and on an emer­gency basis, the struc­ture was built using untreated bamboo — a mate­rial which will decay in few years and will be replaced with treated bamboo. the roofing mate­rial is made up of straw and water­proof tarp, a compo­site which must be changed in one year and replaced with alter­na­tive durable mate­rials for longer use.

The mate­rials and exte­rior design avoid distur­bance for elephants.

While the project’s inte­rior is expressed with vibrant, cheerful colors, the exte­rior appears more ‘ragged’, visually inte­gra­ting with its natural and built surroun­dings. Its texture and color palette draw influence from the ‘paner boroj,’ or betel leaf, often seen in the surroun­ding rice fields.

Beyond survival is very near to an asian elephant habitat and one can often see elephants getting down from the hills at the back­grounds. The mate­rial and exte­rior scheme avoids distur­bance for elephants. however, red and yellow colors don’t distract elephants either so was used for inte­rior court and several openings.’