The document summarizes research on the Burj El Barajneh Palestinian refugee camp in Beirut, Lebanon. It notes that the camp houses over 30,000 refugees in an extremely dense and limited space. It then discusses mapping networks within the camp to better understand issues around space utilization. The document concludes that interventions must be driven from within the community and involve collective design between local experts to experiment with solutions that strengthen the local economy over time while working within the camp's physical constraints.

1. Crafting futures in a Lebanese
refugee camp:
The Burj El Barajneh Souk
Nihal Halimeh
Helen Avery
Mahmoud Halimeh
RSD6 Symposium

2. 1. Context
Burj El Barajneh Palestinian camp, 2015
• The Palestinian Refugee camp was in 1949 by the refugees coming from Palestine, searing an empty plot at the intersection of
northern and southern of Beirut. The camp corresponds to a unique structure that has evolved according to the everyday
needs of its community through vernacular adaptation to a political and social constraints.

3. 1. The Context: Beirut
• Down Town
• Burj El Barajneh Refugee
camp
• Burj ElBarajneh Camp scale: 1/500
• Down Town scale: 1/500

4. • Complexity of the Camp in relative to the
city of Beirut
• Being limited in less than 1 square meters; 30,000 refugee are hosted in a compound virtually bounded and physically limited
by the surrounding context.

5. • Our Beirut – Life Styles
• Expensive life style
• The ability of living
• Refugees crisis
• Based on importing from
china and others
• Expensive real estate

6. 2. Resources

7. • Academic Education teaches us to create
things that are not always available in our
direct context.
• Whereas our context is in need of
solving problems instead of
creating from nothing.

9. Understanding the ways people live at a micro scale leads us to discover
a hidden network at the scale of the camp as a whole. Mapping the
various networks, their interconnections, and physical distribution over
the area provides a better understanding of core issues for the camp:
dead spaces versus a lack of space, poverty versus limiting laws, and
existing skills but with a lack of know-how.
3. Mapping

10. Current
Political party 01
Political party 02
Political party 03

11. Current

12. Current
• Public spaces (Piazzaz) are the most
active spaces where everyone
gathers

13. Current
• Public spaces (Piazzaz) where
industrial and commercial shops act

14. Sudden-Current
• The camp has hosted more than
15,000 Syrian refugees

15. Urgingasystem
The mechanism has created a piece of the city born of the functional needs of everyday and developed with
from instruments/elements owned that are part of images and memories.

16. INITIATING
Collectivesystem

17. Usingskills

18. tounfoldlimits

19. - to be able to think strategically
- act collectively & collaboratively
- be innovative
- create solutions
emerging from the specific
local context & circumstances
4. Collective Design

20. This context is hyperdense in the sense that there are no margins or
open spaces that can be used to introduce changes.
Everything is interrelated and interdependent so that any intervention
coming from outside is likely to cause damage to existing survival
strategies of the inhabitants, and thereby also create a reaction of self-
defence.

22. This is why vitalising the community and the local economy needs to be
driven from the inside
Collective design in this context means bringing together people with
different kinds of expertise and know-how, to work on finding possible
solutions and experimenting different ideas. These processes need to
be carried out over time to build stronger and more competent teams.

24. AIM:
Shaping social and physical spaces, rythms, flows and
moods to interconnect within the camp, network with
people outside, and allow commercial exchanges for
local craftsmen
Combining training, organization, development &
prototyping, improving structures and infrastructure

25. THANK YOU
‫شكرا‬
• Nihal Halimeh
• Helen Avery
• Mahmoud Halimeh