This website uses cookies

Royal Danish Academy – Architecture, Design, Conservation uses cookies to create a better user experience, to interact with social platforms and for anonymised statistics of traffic on our website.

Social media cookies enable us to interact with well-known social media platforms and content. This may be for statistical or marketing reasons.
Neccesary to display YouTube videos
Neccesary to display Vimeo videos
Preference cookies enable a website to remember information that changes the way the website behaves or looks, like your preferred language or the region that you are in.
Is used for UI states

Youth Centre as an Urban Laboratory in the Sahrawi Refugee Camp of Smara

Date
20.03.2018

Projecy by Beatriz Villapecellin Villanueva, a graduate from the Institute of Architecture and Design and programme Spatial Design. 

 The project focus on Saharawi young people living in the Smara refugee camp. The aim of the project is to improve living conditions, reduce the vulnerability of Sahrawi refugees and strengthen their resilience. The centre proposes youth retention initiatives to ensure that refugees can stay in the camps with a certain degree of self-sufficiency, giving them a new sense of dignity and security, as well as more control over their own affairs. 

 

INTERIOR VIEW OF THE CENTER

The programme outlines the urgent need to question assumptions about the conditions and dynamics within the Sahrawi refugee camps and to develop policy and programming responses accordingly. This is particularly significant, given that idealised depiction of life in the Sahrawi refugee camps potentially risks normalising the status quo.