Women Led Community Center

The community center was intended to serve primarily as a refuge for women, a place especially needed in one of the largest refugee camps in the world. The existing center was destroyed in a major fire in February 2020 during the covid pandemic. MTA was appointed to design the new center. The project began with a workshop with the beneficiaries, who developed a program revealing that a garden was an aspiration for all. In order to make this possible within the confines of the refugee camps, the building was designed to have two floors. Within the camps, building is highly regulated and only temporary materials, such as bamboo, are allowed for construction with shallow foundations. Khudi Bari’s structural system was used for this purpose, standing on a flat building foundation. The center provides consulting rooms, counseling rooms, offices, kitchen, bathroom and toilet, childcare with breastfeeding room and rest rooms for women. However, it also provided a meeting room for men, as there was no place within the camps that allowed men a space for learning.