**Samar Maqusi 1,2**


Received: 7 July 2017; Accepted: 20 July 2017; Published: 16 August 2017

**Abstract:** 'Space of Refuge' is a spatial installation directly addressing issues of inhabitation within Palestinian refugee camps in different host countries. It does so by illustrating the various modes of spatial production and subsequent evolution of Palestinian refugee camps, with particular focus upon unofficial acts of "spatial violation" that have emerged because of the increasingly protracted nature of the refugee situation.

**Keywords:** spatial installations; Palestinian refugee camps; production of space; conflict; protracted refuge

### **1. Spatial Concept**

'Space of Refuge' is a spatial concept and intervention that emanated from extensive fieldwork inside Palestinian refugee camps, namely Baqa'a camp in Jordan and Burj el-Barajneh camp in Lebanon. This was part of my Ph.D research at the Bartlett School of Architecture, which directly addresses issues of inhabitation within Palestinian refugee camps in different host countries. It investigates modes of spatial practice and production by both the refugees inhabiting the camp and the host governments hosting the camps—from the onset of creating these spaces, while situating the term *spatial* here within the historical narrative of the Palestinian camp as a concept of space (refugee camp); and actual materiality of space (tent to concrete); and the resulting established camp-assemblage emanating from a culture of making space inside a regulated and protracted space of refuge. What emerged was a clear demonstration of the impact of a protraction of refuge over space, whereby refugees reappropriated the architectural physicality of the camp over the span of 70 years through producing space that challenged the United Nations' imposed parameters and standards.1 These standards formed a rigid, grid-like layout of allocated refugee-family plots, beyond which one is not allowed to build space. In addition, the refugees had to adhere to host government policies and restrictions on building materials and heights.2

The Palestinian refugees realized their inevitable protraction early on, and thus opted to build up their spaces by transgressing the aforementioned delineated lines, employing what I call acts of *spatial violation*. These acts, considered an official violation inside the camp by the UN and the

<sup>1</sup> In the early 1950s, UNRWA (United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East) began replacing all refugee tents with pre-fabricated shelters made out of various materials, including zinc sheets, wooden sheets, and corrugated metal roofs. Please see https://www.unrwa.org/content/replacing-tents-fabricated-shelters, (Misselwitz and Hanafi 2010; Abreek-Zubiedat 2014; Abourahme 2014).

<sup>2</sup> See for example Organizing the Procedures of the Department of Palestinian Affairs Relating to Housing and Construction in Refugee Camps and Displaced Persons and Granting Access to Vacant Lands within these Camps for Housing and Public Benefit Projects for the Service Committees and Civil Society Organizations in the Camps (Department of Palestinian Affairs 2012).

host government (Sanyal 2014), are nonetheless tolerated, and have enabled the refugees to construct a *Palestinian Scale*, in physical, architectural terms, which proved to be detrimental as it reached a spatial threshold over a protracted refuge, deemed threatening by the host governments. This new scale, beyond UN and host country parameters3, provided a camp tissue unequivocal to the refugee, yet inaccessible to the host government security apparatuses. This new spatial condition prompted these host governments to adopt modes of spatial intervention meant to fragment and resize the camp's scale, through opening new wide streets that divide the camp into smaller accessible areas (Achilli 2015, p. 271), or, in some more violent cases, through the complete destruction of the camp, of which Nahr al-Bared camp in Lebanon was the most recent case in 2007 (Hassan and Hanafi 2010).

The diagram below showcases, through mapping, the evolution of the Palestinian camp's architecture, demonstrated through the progression of acts of *spatial violation* inside the camp.
