Thesis 100dpi

PURIFYING THE
JOURNEY
A line is the purest form
of a journey between two
places, the shortest and
most refined passage between
them.
“A line is the shortest distance from one point to another’’ was how
Euclid defined this element more than 2200 years ago.
As a journey is an act of reaching one place from another, in geometry
a line is also connecting two points.
Having seen that the journey of refugees is full of places of congestion,
obstacles and sidetracks, the line of Refugium is taken as the purest
form of a journey between two places, wherever they are, because the
line lies equally with respect to all the points on itself.
Instead of creating numberless impermanent limbos (today’s refugee
camps) that are part of the journey anyway but paradoxically represent
a bottleneck, points of stagnation and congestion, we challenge
that way of approaching the ‘‘crisis’’, proposing an infinite state of flux.
‘‘A line is a dot that went for a walk’’
Paul Klee
110 REFUGIUM
Refugium itself knows no borders and removes from within everything
that potentially can lead to congestion. An all encompassing stripe
where movement is free. It circumnavigates the world , making every
part of itself accessible from any place on earth. It is a global movement
for a global ‘‘crisis’’ that is here to stay.
The solution is not to fence out the refugees out or trap them in their
home countries but to help them resettle in ways that benefit local
economies and urban environments.
shelter
/ˈʃɛltə/ -a place giving temporary protection from
bad weather or danger.
temporary resident
-a person who has permission to remain in on a
temporary basis (the main categories are students,
temporary workers and visitors).