studio chahar
Color My Home
2019 to present. Architecture and education. In collaboration with Rania Qawasma.
Color My Home is a community-based educational architectural design program that takes participants on a journey to trace, dream and imagine their personal concepts of home. It narrates the story of our lost homes through architectural making and poetry.
Displacement in the form of diaspora causes the loss of one’s most intimate and safe space, the house, and this loss leads to individual and collective identity crisis.
According to the UN Refugee Agency (UNHCR), “an unprecedented 68.5 million people around the world have been forced from home.” Backlash against these vulnerable communities prevents them from creating a new home and feeds divisiveness between people. It is on us all to find innovative ways to include the underrepresented.
Color My Home workshops guide recently immigrated children to re-imagine the architecture they inhabited and left behind and to build architectural collages of what they recall. Participants also write poems about their homes and turn their memories into tangible artwork. The visuals and poetry help share experiences that might be difficult for children to express between languages.
Credits