As part of the What Design Can Do “Refugee Challenge,” sponsored by the IKEA Foundation and the UN Refugee Agency, we proposed a series of “hacks” to expand the application of Better Shelter, an emergency shelter system deployed throughout crisis areas around the world. With a few creative modifications, our hacks transform Better Shelter into a range of placemaking spaces, like greenhouses, schools and playgrounds.

This proposal was conceived to provide displaced people awaiting asylum, estimated at 60 million people in 2017, with free temporary community spaces for playing, education, and social connection by making instructions available for re-purposing Better Shelter. Our playground equipment hack was installed at the Stedelijk Museum in their exhibition “Solution or Utopia? Design for Refugees,” in collaboration with Better Shelter and the IKEA Foundation.