Muse Ummm
TEAM: Jana Alaraj, Palestinian, University of Applied Arts Vienna
A Temporary Collective Memory
Refugee camps have been perceived as transitory, temporary and emergency spaces, a notion challenged by the fact that camp residents spend an average of 20 years inside camp borders. Creating a gap between life inside and outside the camp. As a result influencing refugee generation’s collective memory, values and loss of identity.
Muse-Ummm is unsettled museum located in Zaatari refugee camp in Jordan. It aims to create spaces in which new trajectories of the future can be conceived in refugee camps, by proposing simple structures and using duplicate and rotate method to build the museum multifunctional and nomadic spaces. Through design as action, refugees are able to physically affect the space contributing to the socio-spatial development of their temporary reality.
These temporary intervention spaces create opportunities to constantly engage and be active as one walks throughout the camp. They aim to value stories, memories and identity, enhance creative forms of non formal education, leave space for though and participation and connect the camp to the outside world and other refugee camps worldwide.
Muse-Ummm in this context is a particularly powerful tool as it does not aim to impose its strategy on the individuals but rather creates impact by facilitating the qualified choices of the community to establish more sustainable alternatives to their socio-spatial needs.