The purpose of the research has been to look at refugee’s camps from the architectural point of view in order to understand spatial organization of the camps, as well as the relationship between camps and the “real city”. Architectural design in this context is influencing integration of people inside a city. Refugee’s camps in most cases start as an informal and temporary settlement that in few years is growing up and becoming a new district; often unfortunately a slum. Slums are considered as a “problem”, they generate a negative perception of the urban environment and public safety, lowering the value of properties. Kofi Annan, in the UN-Habitat’s report said that: “the locus of global poverty is moving to the city, a process now recognized as the “urbanization of poverty”.
The present paper aims to investigate needs of people who are escaping from emergency situations and who are living in slums in order to plan an integration and re-connection of two different realities that still are living in the same space. Researchers from different disciplines have been working on the subject of formal camps (ETH Studio Basel, 2013). However, informal camps remain not well developed yet. How do they evolve? Do they become permanent with time? What is their spatial organization? What kind of buildings is situated there and what kind of functions are missing? What is the relationship between the camp, the district, the city, and the local community? The field research has been conducted in two informal refugee’s camps around Antalya, Turkey, which are inhabited by around 200 inhabitants. The employed methodology included site analyses, interviews with inhabitants, surveys, analyses of typologies, functions, needs of inhabitants, as well as their previous and current housing situation.
