FOURTEEN WALLS - A TEMPORARY REFUGIUM
The stress people feel when forced to live without privacy can’t be underestimated. In situations where people have been forced out of their home and country, and must be sheltered elsewhere en-masse, claiming a personal space is more difficult, yet the need to do so is more essential. Dismantling the barriers that make refugee journeys such an ordeal is important, but some walls are necessary: the walls that protect a person’s dignity.
fourteenwalls offers individuals a temporary refuge, providing private, visually and acoustically protected, rooms for small groups of 2, 3 or 4 people. Made from simple materials familiar to most people, such as corrugated cardboard, velcro bands and string, all fire-retardant and recyclable, the walls come flat-packed and are designed to be assembled using simple folding techniques, by just two people, without tools or fuss.
fourteenwalls provides a simple container for the self, a neutral place of retreat amenable to personalisation: each white wall invites you to pen a drawing or put up photos, different door hangings allow you a choice of colour. The walls are designed to be assembled by the residents themselves, reinforcing their personal claim on these spaces and affirming their right to be and to choose. Elegant and cheap, fourteenwalls are surprisingly robust and can endure repeated re-assembly.
Where status is uncertain, having some sense of boundaries, of a safe space, becomes all the more vital. The temporary nature of fourteenwalls intimates that things will change; you will move on – but until then you have a room of your own.
Priya Basil
Your Own 14 Walls: A Temporary Refugium /
Die eigenen 14 Wände: Ein Refugium auf Zeit
a project by / Ein Projekt von
www.wirmachendas. jetzt
A prototype which provides private, acoustically protected rooms for people forced to live in emergency quarters. It consists of 12, 14 or modules of folded cardboard, cable binders, rope and fabric, all of which have been classified as B1-Fire-retardant. It can be carried, assembled and adapted easily without the use of tools, by the people who occupy them. The whole system arrives in complete in a flat pack, can be taken by the people to their new abode and costs a fraction of those currently used. If it is no longer needed it can be stored flat or recycled with paper waste. A room of 7.50m2 can be assembled in less than 45 minutes and costs less than €350
It has been shown in the Haus der Kulturen der Welt, The Austrian Parliament, Schloss Glienicke and is currently in discussion for deployment on a large scale nationwide.
http://www.fourteenwalls.org
