Contemporary design focuses on several areas related to everyday life. Such areas are: health, environment, technology, reuse, economy, education, services, information, communication, retail etc.

 

My personal interest is in providing the unprivileged parts of population with social services in order to improve their every day life. A part of these unprivileged people is that of immigrants and refugees.

 

Greece is the first fit in number of immigration in Europe. Because of procurement policy, which Greece also follows, but without judging it’s correctness and reasonableness, the promotion of immigrants in third countries of the EU is impossible and leads to a growing accumulation – refugees in our country. We intent to give a temporary solution to this problem, by creating immigration centers.

 

The thesis’ subject is the designing of a building that provides housing, food, medical care and psychological support, education and entertainment for children-refugees, who constitute only a small group of all immigrants.

 

In Thessaloniki there are several abandoned ex-military buildings that could provide this group of people with a dissent shelter. At the same time this action could help governmental property from turning to ruins.The proposed building is located in the east end of the city where the environment and the climate are of exceptional quality. It is near the seaside with open space areas and a build environment of human scale. The construction is still quite good and minor changes have to be done as far as the functional and the aesthetic parts are conserved.The users will be young children from 4-16 years old and they will live there for a short period of time. Shelter, food, entertainment and communication are the main issues to be fulfilled.

 

The construction shouldn’t be an expensive one in order the state to meet the needs of as many as possible numbers of users. Therefore the materials used are proposed to be recycled (such as pallets and wood saved from factories). The scale should be related of the anthropometrics of the specific group.The functions of the specific building were chosen to be: 12 room for the children-refugees, 2 classrooms, 2 playrooms, a playground, a library, a restaurant, a room with PCs, a kitchen, a doctor’s office and a reception.

 

My inspiration is based on the construction and design such as Shigeru Ban’s houses for Rwanda refugees and other similar projects ( houses for Tsunami victims). The design of the facade and the study of the colors were inspired by coastline houses in Bergen in order to provide with a pleasant outcome.

 

My intention was to show the meanings of safety, hope, support, and happiness through the manipulation of forms and design.