Designs for emergencies. Maidan tent, an inflatable cloud in a refugee camp

It can not find peace. Buzzing around nervously in the 35-degree heat of the crowded tent, the fly, black and frantic, lands on a hot cheek, then on a dented frying pan and, finally, finds a way to escape. In Greece, on the border of Macedonia, the refugee camps are invisible cities populated by the disembarked, the repatriated and the relocated. Tent cities created as temporary solutions have turned into places of humanitarian emergency. According to the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees the number of refugees and migrants in Greece stood at more than 60,000 in May 2018. They live in tents and containers in the stifling heat and frigid cold.

“Them, us – all of us are migrants. That’s why living conditions need to be flexible and fluid,” says the architect Bonaventura Visconti di Modrone. He is as impassioned as only young people with high hopes can be. Born in Milan in 1986, he has a degree in architecture from the IUAV in Venice and a master’s degree from the School of Architecture in Aarhus, Denmark. After that, at age 27, he left for Haiti where he built a multifunctional complex for street children.

In 2015 he went to the Idomeni refugee camp on the Greek-Macedonian border. In 2018 he founded the architecture office ABVM. There, together with Leo Bettini Oberkalmsteiner, he leads the group of volunteers who last May inaugurated the Maidan tent in the Greek refugee camp of Ritsona.
The Greek chapter of the International Organisation for Migration (a member of the United Nations system) helped with obtaining permits and building the concrete platform. Arup Community Engagement donated money and engineering expertise – the Maiden tent is the result of teamwork. It also included a group of creatives: the graphic designer Giovanni Dufour, the architect Simon Kirchner, the psychiatrist Giuliano Limonta, the photographers Delfino Sisto Legnani and Marco Cappelletti, the event planner Clementina Grandi and the press officer Francesca Oddo. The “inflatable cloud”, as the refugees from the Ritsona camp call it, is located in a central position, similar to that of the public square of an urban settlement. “In fact, Maidan means piazza in Arabic,” says Visconti di Modrone. “The story started when I arrived in Greece two days after the makeshift camp in Idomeni started being evacuated by Greek authorities in 2016. Taking a look around, I saw that like me, many people had arrived there to do something, to listen to people's experiences, and lend a helping hand. I began to listen, to notice the ugliness the refugees were forced to live in, and I started to wonder. What happens after your primary needs are met? After you have a sandwich in one hand and a blanket in the other? I spent two years conducting studies, tests, going to look at places, interacting with the population of the camp, going to meetings with non-governmental organisations, with public and private institutions. I came to the understanding that there was a need for a place that would allow the community to come together.”

Five months after being built, the Maidan tent, which covers 200 square metres and has a capacity of 100 people, hosts activities aimed at sharing and socialising: the screening of films, the celebration of birthday parties, watching the World Cup on TV and observing the end of Ramadan. Soon it will shelter a fruit and vegetable market. "It can be a space where people receive medical and psychological care, it can be a playground, a place where people eat together, buy and sell goods, learn and teach, pray, convene, interact and exchange ideas,” says the humanitarian architect. “Our main objective is to make people who live in Europe understand the situation and raise awareness of a political issue that concerns everyone and is linked to the concept of community.”
The structure of the Maidan tent, circular in plan, is divided into eight sections, each of which has two concentric areas. It performs the task of offering some privacy, and also takes on the social and participatory role of a public square which, in the era of globalisation, is disappearing.
Regarding this last point, a collaboration with Bocconi University in Milan is underway to analyse and scientifically evaluate the impact of this new public place on the life of the residents of the camp.

Its 16-metre diameter is built using aluminium and steel to create a rigid structure. The fabric canopy is water, wind and fire resistant. The International Organisation for Migration inserted the prototype in the official development plan of the refugee camp, seeing the tent is quick to assemble and disassemble, transportable, durable and easy to maintain thanks to its standard and certified components.
“We needed to obtain many different types of approval, so we designed and adjusted various elements, and then waited for clearance regarding safety,” Visconti di Modrone continues. “Gradually, we optimised things. The original design, for example, was much smaller. After we had prepared the project, we had to talk to the UN head of mission. Everything had to be impeccable, comply with rules and regulations, and ready to face different types of emergency. Perhaps we ended up exaggerating and made too muscular an object.” Maidan can withstand winds of up to 110 kilometres per hour, when 90 would have sufficed.
“It became exactly what we hoped it would become, a typical ‘see you there’ kind of piazza. But you know what the most beautiful thing is?” Here, his eyes widen. “Seeing the reactions of the children, the workers and the non-governmental organisations.” Much time and effort were put into engaging with the community and listening. The population was involved, as was the help of a psychologist. Flyers in Arabic were distributed. “While at the beginning only 10 responded, in the end there were 120 answers. We collected their requests, which ranged from everyday items such as hair dryers and medicines, to the needs of habitation. Before the project was built, I had observed what the true needs were. I saw how the members of the community had created a shared shelter where they could meet. They had cut open a large unused tent. There was no air, no light and no division of the space. That type of tent was made for storage, not for humans. By contrast, ours is full of light and air, with separate spaces.”

There were differences in requests according to gender. Men wanted a place to smoke shisha, drink tea, play cards, sell cigarettes and play ping-pong. For the other half of the tent, women asked that the Maidan be split in two, with enclosed spaces, doors and areas to play with the children or cut their hair. They wished for a place that would give them the chance to recover, and regain the rituals of feminine expression. Conditions are border-line: no privacy and much filth. For women, the situation is particularly difficult. Today in Europe, according to Eurostat, of the almost 1.3 million asylum seekers, 32 per cent, meaning 415,000, are women. The ambition of the most virtuous camps is often to create a self-managed gynaeceum, a section reserved for women. Above all, this aims to meet the needs related to being female. In some camps in Northern Greece, thanks to the help of volunteers and associations, it is possible to find a hammam for newborns, a room where breast-feeding is encouraged, a space where sex education courses are organised, where underwear is distributed, where tampon use is taught. “Unfortunately, it was not possible to make two tents, because there was no more available space, but the idea remains,” says Visconti di Modrone. “Architecture can fulfil a great political objective: to really improve people's lives, influence their habits and have a positive effect on what those citizens will do one day.”