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Text from the cover of Håvard Breivik-Khan's doctoral thesis: TOWARDS AN ARCHITECTURE OF NON-EXCEPTIONAL HUMANITARIAN SPACES (2025)
This doctoral thesis examines the architecture and urbanism of places used for displacement management and contingency planning. Current policy and practice concerning emergency reception promote limited engagement with long-term plans for communities receiving new arrivals, and domestic contingency planning is delinked from urban planning, though the two domains intersect in critical ways. The thesis asks: What are the spatial intersections between international and local governance in contingency planning and displacement management? How can these intersections contribute to frameworks for evolving understandings of displacement? And how can these frameworks be used in policies for spatially integrated emergency and daily uses? To address these questions, I investigate the localized spatial manifestations of global displacement management policy, the site selection process, and the mediation of the contested spaces these decisions may produce. Cases include Norway’s reception architecture shaped by the Cold War and urban securitization, and Romania’s earthquake contingency planning, which intersects with hosting refugees from Ukraine. The thesis challenges the mono-functional and time-limited displacement management practice known as humanitarian exceptionalism.
Read and download the thesis here
Articles that are part of the PhD thesis:
Non-exceptional humanitarian spaces: the emergency reception of Ukrainian refugees as contingency planning for domestic mass displacement in Romania published in City, Territory and Architecture, June 2025
Abstract
Current policy and practice on shelter and settlements solutions in global displacement management promote limited engagement with long-term plans for the built environment of host communities receiving new arrivals. The prevailing thinking in global displacement management of any emergency as exceptional, impacts the ability of host communities to co-use and repurpose emergency architecture for domestic contingency planning purposes and everyday functions in parallel or later. To research these missed interactions, I explore the potential of spatial and programmatic overlaps between two emergency reception domains separated by international and national governance mandates. I look to Romania, a country that is simultaneously providing humanitarian assistance to refugees from Ukraine while preparing for domestic mass displacement in the imminent event of a major earthquake. The case of Romania was explored in-situ while I as an architect, alternated between three professional roles at different times: the ‘humanitarian site planning expert’, ‘the academic researcher’, and ‘the educator. With this as my empirical foundation, I discuss imaginative and speculative research and design-projects that explore the duality of everyday life and a state of emergency in Romania’s capital, Bucharest, and use this as a framework for expanding the concept of ‘humanitarian space’ built on 'non-exceptionalism'.
The Mountain Hall and the Smart Club: The Architecture of Emergency Reception in Norwegian Cities published in Wellbeing, Space and Society, April 2024
Abstract
Contemporary contingency planning is largely delinked from urban planning. However, the two domains intersect in critical ways. Contingency planning frames conditions for displaced persons in emergency situations but also affects the design of everyday urban spaces. Thus, the spatial output of emergency preparedness can encourage wellbeing and placemaking in both emergency and non-emergency situations. This article explores the built environments of contingency planning in Norwegian cities, paying particular attention to emergency reception.
Furthermore, this article outlines the relationship between the policies of reception in displacement management and the spatial policies of placemaking. A study of Norwegian contingency planning history shows that the former evacuation shelter typology is being replaced by the more loosely defined concept of places of protection, similar to the retrofitted spaces commonly used as asylum centres. Newspaper clippings and document reviews are used to study two emergency reception structures: a Cold War multipurpose mountain hall close to the Norway–Russia border and a transformed 1970s warehouse near Oslo that currently houses the Norwegian national arrival facility for asylum-seekers. Comparing these two cases outlines the interaction between displacement management, contingency planning, and urban planning and contributes to conceptualising what we call contingency urbanism. We suggest that contingency urbanism can be useful in re-spatialising emergency architecture, re-linking contingency and urban planning, and pointing to placemaking opportunities in the duality of everyday life and a state of emergency.
The Concept of Place in Displacement Management published in Nordic Journal of Architectural Research, May 2022
Abstract
The concept of place increasingly appears in literature produced by and for actors of global displacement management relating to interventions concerning the built environment. Place, in this context, is presented as a concept appropriate for interventions in especially urban, non-camp settings. The introduction of so-called place-based approaches indicates that displacement management literature builds on existing conceptualizations of place found in the practice and theory of architecture and urbanism, as well as in other social science literature. A study of operational displacement management literature reveals that the varying conceptions of place apply place thinking to displacement management in particular ways. This analysis finds that diverse uses of place-related terminology and contested ideas of placemaking, contributes to a de-professionalization of design matters in displacement management. Nonetheless, it suggests that place can be a useful concept when combining technical site analyses with urbanism mapping methods in displacement management practice. The perspectives identified in this article seek to strengthen the existing yet tenuous links between competences within displacement management and architecture and urbanism. It is also meant to call attention to the social agency of displaced populations concerning built environment interventions.
To inquire about this article send an email to havard.breivik-khan@aho.no