The Shu’fat School embodies an ‘architecture in exile’: it is an attempt to inhabit and express the constant tension between the here and now and the possibility for a different future. The architecture of the school does not communicate temporariness through an impermanent material construction. These materials are too often instrumentalized for a “politically correct” architecture that relegates refugees to living in shantytowns. Rather, through its spatial and programmatic configuration this architecture in exile attempts to actively engage the new ‘urban environment’ created by almost seventy years of forced exile. Perhaps this is a fragment of a city yet to come.
Photo Anna Sara for Campus in Camps
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SCHOOL IN EXILE: EDUCATION AND ARCHITECTURAL FORM (PDF)
On Participation by Sandi Hilal