Marketplace in Refugee Settlements

Location: Kakuma, KENYA
Project Duration: 2017
Surface Area: 3000 sqm
Status: Competition

Project Summary

Before any architectural invention or intervention, we tried first to see, to understand what life is like in Kakuma.

Our starting point was the existing typology; a set of houses in clay and sheet metal arranged in a regular linear pattern, offering a monotonous and static landscape.
Following this observation, our first question was: what can we bring back, between an ordinary lived and an extraordinary wish and projected?

The spatial organization of the project has the strength to predetermine how an individual can potentially perceive his environment.

Leonardo Da Vinci, said “All your knowledge is from your perception”

Knowing that spatial organization influences the mood of an individual and that mood in turn influences how you learn, and that what you learn today will become your knowledge of the future (the project’s educational program), you can Therefore deduce that the formal choice and consequently the spatiality generated is the objective to be reached.

Consequently, a form came from heaven “an ovnie”, landed on the land of Kakuma, able to offer them a new hope and a new life. This ovnie represents a sign, according to C.S Peirce, a sign is everything that represents something other than itself for someone, the UFO will be perceived as a sign of hope.

The project is a circular structure that has undergone a deformation creating two different types of space: an interior space that houses the classrooms and an outdoor space that houses the market.

The interior space of the structure will house an oasis