The Refugee Academy is founded on the belief that refugees and immigrants can be a national asset. With their open education philosophy rooted in the UN’s universal declaration of human rights, the Academy provides native-language education to help migrants find work within Germany. It utilizes volunteers who are willing to teach, and the curriculum isn’t limited to any particular trade, skill or ideology. Beyond mere vocational training, the Refugee Academy emphasizes the creation of community and the social construction of a new homeland.  They organize city tours and classes to help migrants understand more about Germany. In a sense, their work is really about designing new ways to think about migration – work that is desperately needed in our current geopolitical landscape.

Please listen to Eric Cesal’s interview with TeeKay Kreissig, one of the founders of Refugee Academy, on Social Design Insights.

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Since its founding, Turquoise Mountain has worked in Afghanistan and continues to support thousands of families in Kabul, Bamiyan, and the northern region by providing support, education, and family health services. They also generate livelihood opportunities through craft production and the preservation of built heritage.

In Myanmar, Turquoise Mountain has trained hundreds of artisans across crafts to enhance the quality of work. In 2016, the nonprofit completed the restoration (the first to meet international standards) of a street in Yangon’s Historic Downtown, educating 250 people in building and conservation in the process. In 2019, they reimagined the landmark Tourist Burma building, training over 500 builders and engineers while reinstating the building as fit for public use. 

In Saudi Arabia, Turquoise Mountain is giving hundreds of artisans access to new commercial opportunities that preserve craft traditions. They aim to build a sustainable crafts sector that reflects quality and authentic design to appeal to clients across the Middle East and beyond. The nonprofit also holds workshops on entrepreneurship, branding, production, and more to help artisans develop their work.

In Jordan, Turquoise Mountain works on heritage-led regeneration projects that support local communities and the wider population through employment and training in historic building restorations. In doing so, Turquoise Mountain supports the economy, helps communities in the long term, and maintains the significance of the region’s history.

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Previously, de Finis and collaborator Fabrizio Boni worked to document emergency housing in city slums. After joking that there was no space in Rome for the residents to live, they began work on a film with a sci-­fi premise: the residents of Metropoliz build themselves a rocket and take off for the moon.

The film “Space Metropoliz” enlisted the residents at all stages of development like building sets, acting as extras, etc. The completed film became a catalyst for ongoing work in Metropoliz, giving rise to the ‘museum.’ 

Today, MAAM has attracted installations from numerous notable artists and become a gathering point for scholars and activists interested in housing, eviction, and how to find peaceful coexistence in contemporary urbanism. An unused elevator is covered in gold by artist Michele Welke, commenting on both the Midas touch of art and the role of money in self-elevation. A room once used for stripping carcasses is now home to a giant mural featuring pigs strung up for slaughter, concluding with two happily scampering away. Other areas include a vegetable garden and a nursery where volunteer teachers provide tutoring for the residents’ children.

In the last decade, MAAM has become a cultural phenomenon in Rome, recognized and celebrated by the city administration in 2017 as a virtuous example of the social and cultural growth of the city. However, while the notoriety of the factory has afforded the residents at least some protection against the threat of eviction and the violence that often comes with being undocumented and untitled, unfortunately, the residents still live under the constant threat that officials will make them leave.

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Hester Street deploys four core strategies in its practice: 1.) Start with neighborhoods to build on existing social networks and local institutions; 2.) Change the narrative by centering communities of color; 3.) Re-imagine democracy and re-shape government to be more inclusive, equitable, and accountable; and 4.) Build power and deliver impact by equipping communities with tools to level the playing field. 

The organization has worked with partners serving all over New York City,  New York State, and throughout the country. They work closely with CBOs led by and serving communities of color to provide technical capacity to advance their goals and project work. They also work with government executives, staff, legislators, and agencies to develop and deploy the skills and tools necessary to ensure transparency, accessibility, equity, and accountability to communities of color. 

Hester Street has developed neighborhood plans that prioritize affordable housing, economic opportunity, and public health; supported efforts to strengthen economic self-sufficiency and self-determination in the Navajo Nation; stemmed the tide of CBO displacement by acquiring and developing new community centers in NYC; advanced people-powered, culturally-driven, post-disaster climate justice in San Juan, Puerto Rico; re-imagined beloved and democratic public institutions – libraries and parks – as true Palaces for the People, and; engaged hundreds of thousands of New Yorkers in policy conversations for cultural equity, mental health for all, gender equity, and the future of fair housing. In the past five years alone, they’ve engaged well over half a million community members, directed more than $750 million of new public investment in low-income communities of color, and secured more than $50 million for community-owned capital projects.

We had a chance to talk with Isella Ramirez of Hester Street about their most current projects, and how their particular form of activism helps facilitate thoughtful development on behalf of historically voiceless communities in East Harlem and beyond. Listen to the episode below.

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When improving environments for displaced people, it is imperative to balance the hope that the location will be temporary with the development necessary to make the space livable. Refugee camps are often viewed as places of misery, unworthy of improvement. Developing infrastructure and amenities within one can be viewed as making it permanent. However, denying improvements to the camp and forcing residents to live in inhumane conditions violates basic rights. DAAR addresses this duality through several strategic practices. 

In 2012 they founded Campus in Camps, a university in a refugee camp, to connect a site of knowledge production with the site of social stigmatization. The formation of informal learning environments has been further developed in the Tree School Project in different locations worldwide. In 2015, they built a concrete tent in the Dheisheh refugee camp in Bethlehem as a gathering space for conflict resolutions, alternative pedagogies, and celebration. In 2019, the reconstruction of Al Nada social housing after its destruction by the Israeli invasion introduced shared common spaces. 

In addition to the physical work done, several books have been written by DAAR. Refugee Heritage challenges dominant definitions of heritage and mainstream narratives, proposing exile instead as a radical perspective that can take us beyond the limitations of the nation-state. Permanent Temporariness is a book-catalog that accounts for 15 years of research and experimentation within and against the condition of permanent temporariness. In Architecture after Revolution, the DAAR team invites the reader to rethink current struggles for justice, not only from the histor­ical perspective of revolution but also from that of a continued struggle for decolonization, presenting a series of projects that try to imagine “the morning after revolution.”

We had an opportunity to have an extended conversation with Alessandro Petti and Sandi Hilal on our podcast, Social Design Insights. Listen to the episodes below.

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Many memorials and museums focus on a specific conflict. They memorialize a battle, a war, a genocide, or a victory. The Conflictorium transcends this limited framework and holistically address how conflicts begin and how they can be resolved.

In addition to the exhibitions, the center hosts daily poetry readings, discussions and artist workshops.

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Bait al Karama has two main goals. First, it supports women’s social and economic needs through a food-based social enterprise. Second, it hopes to draw international attention to the Old City as a place of art and culture via cultural and artistic initiatives and sustainable tourism. To achieve these goals, the center hosts lunches and culinary tours to explore the culinary traditions of the Old City. It also provides social and educational activities for the community. 

In addition to generating income through tuition and fees for cooking classes, the center allows for a cross-cultural conversation through which the women can tell their stories, disseminate Nablusian cuisine, and promote peace and understanding.

The center has multifunctional rooms to host gatherings and workshops, but the focus is the cooking school and its attendant workshops and classes. The women of the Old City teach visitors how to make traditional favorites, and the center offers supplemental educational programs for the women themselves, including regular workshops on basic nutrition, as many of the women in the area are struggling with food disorders brought on by posttraumatic stress.

Recently, the project “Fatima’s Chronicles” – an oral narration of food, taste, and gestures – has begun as a further step to involve the local community in a process of awareness towards their own food heritage and to actively engage with its preservation. This “recipe book” will emerge from a multitude of voices from the community itself. The project consists of participatory research into the local food production, recipes, and food spaces in the Old City, involving the 50-70 women and youth who already participate in Bait al Karama’s activities.

We chose to honor Bait al Karama as sometimes peace needs to be designed. For many communities around the world who are dealing with conflict, statelessness, occupation and violence, design offers a meaningful and achievable step towards a more peaceful tomorrow. What we choose to design, and how we choose to design can act as a bulwark against the hopelessness and desperation created by war.

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Since their first project, FAST has worked in various countries including Georgia, Afghanistan, Iraq, Kosovo, and the Netherlands, though most of its recent projects have explored the Israeli­-Palestinian conflict. One notable project is the long-term collaborative research project BLUE: Architecture of UN Peacekeeping Missions and Design for legacy, which examines and makes UN peace missions’ impact on cities and communities visible. 

The book authored by founding director, Malkit Shoshan, called Atlas of the Conflict, outlines the 100­ year history of the conflict through maps and diagrams. Like much of FAST’s work, it explores settlements, borders, and displacement— and the architect or urban planner’s conscious or unconscious role in contributing to the landscape of conflict. 

Current work examines the impact of UN peace operations in conflict zones, and how collaboration can lead to higher degrees of urban resilience.

We had an opportunity to speak with Malkit Shoshan about the architecture of conflict on our podcast, Social Design Insights. Listen to the episode below.

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FAST is a Curry Stone Foundation Social Design Circle Honoree. Read more about it here.

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Isella Ramirez of Hester Street discusses their strategies for making communities be heard.

Hester Street Collaborative is a Curry Stone Foundation Social Design Circle Honoree. Read more about it here.

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