Full Article:

This paper presents research on the design challenges in refugee camps where “temporary" shelters often evolve into permanent homes and larger communities. These transformations convey an informal design process, a phenomenon evident in Irbid Camp for Palestinian refugees in Jordan. To study this site and design process in detail, shape rules based on the transformation of ten individual housing units are developed, with consideration of area and growth limitations inside the refugee camp. The Irbid Camp Grammar reveals a modular, grid-based logic at play in the incremental and spontaneous design of refugee housing from temporary shelters to permanent homes. This study is one step forward in helping us understand how formalizing this growth logic can contribute to the design of better emergency housing interventions in the future.