PROJECT EARTH 2: STARGATE MELILLA

STARGATE MELILLA Introduction Regions in Central Africa and the Middle East has been having internal conflicts for generations ; war, political instabilities, diseases. These particular issues has affected the economy and safety of the people, especially in the war torn countries. Surviving inhabitants fleeing the country looking for better opportunity, safety and liveability , especially on the neighbouring countries and continents.

Focusing on the context of Africa, Boko Haram has been dominating the Central Africa especially Nigeria. Citizens of multi religious backgrounds has been fleeing all over, mainly focusing towards Europe via the Straits of Gibraltar and Melilla.

Acting as the crossroad, which is also happen to be a piece of Europe, the city of Melilla has been getting influx of refugees from the Sub Saharan Africa Region, due to the protection given under European Union Law. Site Settlement is proposed at the Mediterranean Sea by the coast of Melilla. The idea is issued due to the scarcity of land and the projection towards the future, where density of the population is increasing.

As per meeting the need for settlement for locals and the refugees, an aqua based city is formed at the sea to perform the standard basic needs and self sustain, while the sea of Melilla provides a fertile zone for emergence of a new city.

Principles of Planning The main overall idea in the concept of planning is to integrate the refugee program with the overall city design. Each refugee will play a certain role in terms of the community living and overall city planning. Each unit will be vegetation ready, attached to a single community of 80 people with livestock area for them sustain and act as basis for survival.

4 communities will be placed within a central communal area, attached to a block with a sector with a central aquaculture zone for internal needs. These particular blocks will attach to form a sector, whereby the facilities are placed to cater the refugees. Nuclei concept of arrangement is used to ensure equal distribution of routes throughout the city. The sectors are arranged in with a spine to control malleable nature of the floating city.

Vitality is insured via the direct access from communal areas to the refugee camps, from each block to the main primary road and adjacent blocks, from the residential to agricultural, business and refugee aids, and healthcare. Important nodes are placed along the spinal lines accordingly to their respective functionality.

Camp Planning The settlement is structured accordingly to the phases that a refugee face: Resettlement , Restructuring and Establishment, and translated into zonings of the city. First sector furthest to the sea is the main area settlement for new refugee arrivals. Basic needs are focused towards the needs for safety and food.

The blocks within the sector comes with only basic communal spaces that is to ensure and sustain the needs for basic survival: Each modular unit comes with ready vegetation for the refugees to eat. 16 units form a community with communal area for livestocks for food source. Arrangement of each community will form a block, where each community carries distinctive traits and specialties for trade to occur.

Conclusion A key aim of this project is to allow informal interactions between the inhabitants and surrounding to perform natural economic growth which contributes for their sustainability and the local context. In doing so, we have attended not only the physical structures, but the diversity of the spaces and vitality of the activities within. Without a stronger commitment to spatial governances, its hard to ensure dignity and sense of ownership in the camps works flawlessly.