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Designing for the Displaced
As part of a research project, students from Umeå University and Yasar University worked together over two academic years to make design proposals that housed and supported displaced people at the scale of a single building, a city quarter, the city of Izmir and at the wider region including the farm camps of Torbali.
Taken together these proposals describe an architecture and urbanism that prioritises the need to understand and maintain the identity and well-being of displaced people whilst solving their practical needs. The resultant network of projects propose a city and region where the nature of placemaking, architecture and urbanism is gently reworked in favour of the displaced.
Students of Umeå University worked as a live project office collaborating with the staff and users of Tiafi Community Centre to design and build new spaces on the roof of Tiafi’s building in the centre of Izmir.
The rooftop project provides training, therapy and sports spaces and a productive garden on the roof of the community centre. A specific part of the dialogue with Tiafi was to provide a space where the users could feel safe and valued and where hope could be nurtured. Hope was a specific part of the brief and we talk about the project not only in programmatic terms but as a crown or even a tiara.
The rooftop project provides training, therapy and sports spaces and a productive garden on the roof of the community centre. A specific part of the dialogue with Tiafi was to provide a space where the users could feel safe and valued and where hope could be nurtured. Hope was a specific part of the brief and we talk about the project not only in programmatic terms but as a crown or even a tiara.
The project is now being built by a combination of local stakeholders, refugees and students and will be finished later in the summer.
The Situation in Izmir
The city of Izmir has a population of nearly 3 million and is now host to almost 200,000 refugees. Izmir is known throughout Turkey as a desirable place to retire and appears to be quite wealthy, however, there are several large areas of concentrated poverty in the inner urban zone that have been rapidly expanding since the 1970's.
In recent years, Izmir became a transit point for migrants travelling on the Eastern Mediterranean and Western Balkan smuggling routes into Europe which intensified enormously during the early years of the Syrian Civil War (2011-2015). The EU-Turkey Statement of 2016 was designed to stem the flow of migrants into Europe and meant that many refugees were left to settle in the city. This settlement is almost entirely contained in areas of informal construction and insufficient infrastructure which is all they are able to afford.
In recent years, Izmir became a transit point for migrants travelling on the Eastern Mediterranean and Western Balkan smuggling routes into Europe which intensified enormously during the early years of the Syrian Civil War (2011-2015). The EU-Turkey Statement of 2016 was designed to stem the flow of migrants into Europe and meant that many refugees were left to settle in the city. This settlement is almost entirely contained in areas of informal construction and insufficient infrastructure which is all they are able to afford.
Tiafi Community Centre
In the Tepecik neighbourhood of the Basmane district of Izmir, the Team International Assistance For Integration (Tiafi) is running a community centre within an old shoe factory built in the 1960's.
Tiafiis a non-governmental organisation founded in 2017 that supports both the refugee and Turkish populations of Izmir by providing them with integration and social services, including free lunch service, exercise and movement therapy consultations, legal aid, social and medical service referrals and information, and women’s and youth development activities. These programmes are facilitated by a small full-time staff who are mostly refugees themselves and a fluctuating number of local and international volunteers. Within Basmane alone, approximately 60,000 Syrian refugees have settled.
Tiafiis a non-governmental organisation founded in 2017 that supports both the refugee and Turkish populations of Izmir by providing them with integration and social services, including free lunch service, exercise and movement therapy consultations, legal aid, social and medical service referrals and information, and women’s and youth development activities. These programmes are facilitated by a small full-time staff who are mostly refugees themselves and a fluctuating number of local and international volunteers. Within Basmane alone, approximately 60,000 Syrian refugees have settled.
Tiafi Community Centre supports Syrians living in Izmir after the 2016 EU-Turkey deal prevented them crossing between Turkey and the EU. The families, mainly led by women, live in substandard rental housing that cannot be issued with a legal address. This limits access to state and humanitarian support. With little income, and many children out of education despite legal rights to these, they are in need of support to survive”. Tiafi also supports local Turkish families whose situation can be equally challenging.
The building is located directly across from a small but popular park but also on a busy commercial street. Tiafi has rented two floors above ground as well as the parapet roof. Originally both floors were almost entirely open, but since Tiafi moved in they have repurposed the building to fit with the growing needs of their community.
Now, the ambition is to expand Tiafi's programme and create a social and productive space on the unused roof top.
