Work 02: NYMORIA — The Moria Camp Project (Lesvos Island, Greece)
Analysis and design of contested landscapes
Norwegian University of Life Sciences — NMBU
For the studio project at hand, we chose migration as a guiding subject, the Greek island of Lesvos as the location for analytical fieldwork, and a processing centre for asylum seekers and other migrants in Moria as study and design case. The Moria Camp, constituted by disused military barracks transformed into one of the variously-named reception and identification centres in Southern Europe, made the headlines, because for years yet it is hopelessly overcrowded, and its Greek governor resigned in 2019—tired, and despaired.
In our professional role as spatial designers and landscape architects, on no account coming as aid workers, we approach the intricate situation in Moria by bringing the raw figures to our mind. In April 2020, an estimated 21,000 people were insufficiently sheltered by shipping containers, tents, and makeshift structures, while the existent facilities had been laid out for 3,000 people only. The amply documented squalid living conditions in the camp, repeatedly criticized by humanitarian organizations, don’t come as a surprise. Thousands of people live in makeshift tents of plastic sheeting in an olive grove dubbed ‘the jungle’, beyond the official camp area. Our core assignment is the elementary but complex meddling with the collective design of an adequate reception and identification centre structure, inclusive effectual facilities for everyone in the centre (camp), to make humane living conditions possible.
Our project constitutes a suggestion for political climate change towards humanity and solidarity.