Adhocism, Agency and Emergency Shelters: On Architectural Nuclei of Life in Displacement

Abstract

By drawing on the pre-fabricated timber shelters in the migrant camps of Dunkirk and Calais in northern France, this chapter investigates the emergency shelter as an ongoing spatial process designed for and by imagined and real users. While it is first designed as a mass-produced standardized structure for anonymous users, it is then re-designed ad hoc by its real users who appropriate it according to their specific needs, abilities and preferences. The chapter discusses the significance of agency of those adapting their shelters while arguing that displaced people need more than only a minimal structure to cope with their precarious realities.