In Transit is a design studio, founded in 2016 at the Oslo School of Architecture and Design for architecture and urbanism students from all over the world, that is devoted to collaborative knowledge production on the subjects of displacement, urbanization, and space. The studio explores mobility and migration in the age of urbanization, proposing local, spatial, and site-specific solutions. The aim of the studio is to develop a variety of residential forms that consider different lengths of stay, models of ownership, cultural backgrounds, and immigration statuses, promoting social infrastructure through easily accessible common and public spaces.

UNFINISHED ATHENS 

David Kelly, Athens, Greece, 2016

This project investigates the possibility of inhabiting abandoned concrete structures, rehabilitating the scars of economic collapse to provide homes to unhoused Greeks and to refugees. There are an estimated three hundred thousand empty, unfinished, or abandoned structures in Athens alone, relics of the 2007–08 financial crisis. Housing refugees in these structures is an opportunity to reinvigorate the communal and economic situations within struggling communities at a microscale.

STRUCTURES FOR CURRENT AND POTENTIAL CITIZENS OF THESSALONIKI

Kaja Strand Ellingsen, Thessaloniki, Greece, 2018

This plan proposes a strategy for resettling refugees currently living in temporary camps outside the northern Greek city of Thessaloniki by moving them into the city center, providing opportunities for employment and cultural integration and supporting and revitalizing a neighborhood in need of upgrading. There are a large number of decaying and vacant buildings in Xirokrini, a multicultural neighborhood in western Thessaloniki. Their empty ground floors and the other unused spaces in the neighborhood present an opportunity to be transformed into common structures for current and future citizens. This project proposes a scalable urban and structural strategy that rethinks public spaces by opening up the ground floors of all the buildings in the neighborhood.

GROWING TøYEN

Kevin Benny Kuriakose, Victor Carpintero Ferran, and Heini Hiukka, Oslo, Norway, 2016

Many reception centers for asylum seekers are located in remote areas, secluded from their surroundings and far from urban centers, commercial offerings, and public life. Growing Tøyen—an urban strategy for a neighborhood in Oslo—proposes a different kind of reception facility, with a design that ensures a high degree of livability while maintaining the capacity to accommodate many people with short notice. It was important that the design combine temporary and permanent housing for new arrivals with interventions that would be attractive for the entire Tøyen neighborhood. The project incorporates the needs of the existing population, with safe public spaces and low-threshold recreational and cultural offerings.

ENTREPRENEURSHIP HUB FOR ALL

Ingrid Hove Viljoen and Olav Bog Vikane, Thessaloniki, Greece, 2018

The markets of Thessaloniki are key to the identity of the city: they are where local residents, tourists, and newcomers meet, exchanging goods and sharing ideas. The 2007–09 global financial crisis devastated these local markets along with the Greek economy, and many booths remain empty and unused. This project involves the design of a new type of marketplace: an entrepreneurship hub. This distribution and production center combines workspaces with residential apartments, creating a platform where everyone in the community, including new arrivals, may build new skills, acquire knowledge, and produce and participate in the economy.