Architecture and integration: promoting transcultural connectivity through a widespread project for refugees in berlin

Since the beginning of the “refugee crisis”, Germany has been invested with socio-demographic changes that are likely to transform the future society. With the arrival of around one million refugees, integration is now the main challenge for the German society. Children are the future of any society. Investing on their development translates in citizens capable of coexisting in diversity. The project presented in this paper, developed for the IDeA Contest (New York, 2017), Place and Displacement. Integrating Refugee Populations within Cities, arose from the interdisciplinary collaboration between sociologists and architects, and moved the interest of the Haus der Kulturen der Welt, in Berlin. The concept at its bases is the idea of “transculturalism”, a socio-cultural perspective that overcomes boundaries between individual communities in favour of a larger community, able to coexists in its diversity. The project is rooted in the interaction between architecture and public space as an instrument of exchange. It physically takes shape in the Little House of Cultures through the use of modular temporary structures. This travelling museum aims at spreading transculturalism by displaying children’s creativity throughout the cosmopolitan environment of the city of Berlin. Thus, the Little House of Cultures becomes an opportunity for integration rooted in the city. The project primarily involves the city through the collaboration of institutions operating in the urban context (schools, libraries, associations), and then it becomes architecture and active urban space itself. The public space is returned to the city with its historical role of meeting and aggregation. As an instrument of social cohesion, the Little House of Cultures becomes a place of hospitality, a transcultural space where to grow relationality and protection. The research behind this project has been carried out in 2017 through fieldwork, ethnography, and semi-structures interviews with practitioners, experts and refugee communities in Berlin.