down to the bare minimum, ready to be torn down at a moment’s notice. Interiors, however, are heavily decorated with carpets and cloth, which can be easily packed up and moved. There are neither paved streets nor (physically) networked infrastructure (such as sewage systems, electricity grids, or streetlights or landlines). Everything is movable, foldable, transportable or disposable. Electricity is provided by car batteries and individual hand-held solar panels. Phone service is solely mobile and cellular, as are lights. Fresh water is provided from individual jerry cans and metal containers, which are placed in front of each tent. Beyond the obvious rationale that the refugees are not willing to invest in an area that is not their home, and the possible lack of funds for more durable solutions, these construction techniques are intended to represent and visually express temporality. The camps are built in the architectural language of “interim-solution.” They adopt the canon of the intermediate, and are meant to signify the transitional. This broadcasts the message that the living conditions are not permanent. The temporary has become both architectural style and agent within the Saharan political conflict. The Sahrawi refugee camps expose planning dilemmas within the contexts of people in-flight and humanitarian aid. Borne out of a situation of conflict and tragedy, the camps have allowed the Sahrawi to organize their lives in a radically new way: ushering in processes of general emancipation, education and connectivity. Yet, the camps are also one reason why the underlying conflict and the Moroccan occupation of the Western Sahara remains unsolved. Because the Sahrawi live outside of immediate-conflict areas, and because they are settled in reasonable living conditions, there is little international attention paid to reconciling warring factions. Now that the crisis has been dealt with on humanitarian and architectural levels, it does not need to be addressed on political ones. Compared to other refugee camps, the Sahrawi camps in the borderland between Western Sahara and Algeria offer a new concept of refugee camps not only as technical solutions for fleeing people in situations of conflict, but also as social spaces of exchange and emancipation (previously, most Sahrawis were illiterate, yet
many are educated today). None of the refugee camps were constructed with support from UNHCR, and that organization remains uninvolved in their management. In fact, the camps are largely self-administered. The camps forced a nation—but also gave it the possibility—to radically reinvent itself, and to take certain aspects of its destiny into its own hands. Not just warehouses for people in flight, the camps function as cities: they offer political, cultural and economic life to their residents, but they are also ready to be quickly dismantled should the opportunity arise. crisis
Borders
Stephen Graham INterviewed by Gavin BrowninG
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