The Building 4Humanity Design Competition’s (B4H-DC) Taiwan Prize is looking for architectural designs that contribute toward the social inclusion of Syrian war refugees into the Turkish border city of Reyhanli, according to the competition’s Web site.
The competition, organized by Taiwan’s Alliance of Architectural Modernity, Shih Chien University’s Department of Architecture, and other architectural organizations from Germany and Portugal, has begun accepting submissions for designs, the Web site says.
Reyhanli’s refugee camp accommodates nearly 120,000 Syrians, it says.
The B4H-DC challenges students and professional architects to propose “radical, but applicable design ideas for transitional shelters,” for a site of about 25,000m2 in the southwestern outskirts of Reyhanli, the Web site says.
The design should include an indoor floor area of 5,000m2 for 400 Syrian settlers to live in and should consider including facilities to provide food, healthcare, first aid and indoor leisure activities for the wounded, elderly, war widows and orphans, it says.
Professional applicants’ designs must include a social and intercultural service center for Turks and Syrians to promote cultural exchanges between the two groups of people.
The intercultural service center should engage Syrians in the social, economic and cultural aspects of Reyhanli, and build resilience in the community, the Web site says.
The B4H-DC is offering US$3,000 and US$5,000 as the top prizes for the student and professional categories respectively.
The deadline for submissions is Oct. 10 and the award ceremony is to be held on Nov. 22 in Taipei.
REFUGEE SHELTER
Reyhanli, near Turkey’s border with Syria and began providing shelter for Syrian refugees in 2011.
In 2013, 52 people were killed in Reyhanli due to car bombings that the Turkish government said were carried out by militants backed by Syria’s government.
Two Syrian ballistic missiles targeting rebel positions in Idlib instead landed on vacant plots in the city’s outskirts.
‘URGENT NEED’
Chiu Chen-yu (裘振宇), a B4H-DC competition director and an assistant professor of architecture at Bilkent University in Turkey, said that the Reyhanli-based Syrians are in urgent need of secure accommodation.
“The Syrian civil war has entered its eighth year, but there are no decent architects building decent shelters for the refugees,” Chiu said. “Not even a single building.”
Chiu has taken his team to measure and photograph the competition’s design site, which is several kilometers away from the Turkey-Syria border.
The B4H-DC achieves humanitarian aid through architecture and can save people, he said.
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