Door Rima Sabina Aouf
Visitors to Dutch Design Week are invited to consider how the country houses its asylum seekers in a pavilion by De Wachtkamer, a local organisation aiming to improve their living conditions through design. Located in the Ketelhuisplein square of Eindhoven's Strijp-S creative district, the pavilion bears the same name as the organisation: De Wachtkamer or The Waiting Room. It showcases the group's first intervention: a plywood cabin system designed to fit over existing bunk beds in the Netherlands' emergency refugee shelters to give the people living there more privacy and dignity.
The Waiting Room pavilion is on show at Dutch Design Week. Fotography by Sofie Lembrechts
At the same time, the organisation hopes it will show how easy and inexpensive it can be to give asylum seekers a compassionate and humane reception in Europe.
De Wachtkamer was started by social designer Nanne Wytze Brouwer and architect Anneloes de Koff, who told Dezeen that they had "wanted to do something concrete" to make everyday life better for refugees.
Currently, asylum seekers arriving in the Netherlands are meant to be housed in special centres called AZCs, but because these are over capacity, about half of the 70,000 people entitled to the accommodation are instead living in makeshift shelters set up in locations such as vacant offices and military facilities.