Project Documentation
Displacement: a mass of women’s refugee stories conveyed through one
tutors
course
location
A hometown, a ruin in a mountain range, a capital city in Eastern Europe and a current home in Bergen
years
2024
Introduction
- Materializing recollections and experiences of place, raising consciousness about our profession’s potential to engage with aspects of fleeing and belonging.
Our diploma emerges from the personal experience of a woman who was forced to flee her home and land. What was it like to live and be in temporary, at-risk environments? What sacrifices were made? And what were the reasons and consequences of leaving?
Through conducting a 1:1 interview, we followed her journey from peril to physical safety.
The project is located in four places chosen from fundamental moments in her life: where she grew up, a ruin in a mountain range, a capital city in Eastern Europe and her current home in Bergen.
Listening to her story, we felt a warm feeling filling our bodies, which made us aware of the potential such close encounters have, both for the storyteller and the listener. The meeting we had with her became fundamental to our approach and led the project to take an intimate and personal path, where we, with our perspective and immersion, joined the journey. An important aspect of our project is to enter others’ perspectives and situations and to find a genuine and credible way of displaying compassion.
Based on our work, we believe countries and societies are in need of more compassionate and hospitable accommodation for migrating women. We intend to use architecture as a tool of communication and enlightenment on this pressing issue that involves and impacts all societies.
We believe that the work we have done through the diploma has guided us to the beginning of an approach, not to an end. By narrating a story of fleeing, we seek to raise awareness and create space for coming closer to ways of approaching, working with, and representing the topic. Also part of the ambition is the conviction that by understanding individuals’ histories and memories of places, we are closer to making a future and a society where all are accounted for.
Through recollecting and reminiscing about places refugee women have moved through, the project aims to raise consciousness about our profession’s potential to engage with aspects of fleeing and displacement. It aims to serve as a foundation for how we can understand each other better.
