This project was designed in response to the architectural competition brief by The ARK and was a multi-disciplinary collaboration between the MSc Project Management for Creative Practitioners and the MArch Architecture students. The main purpose of the project was to re-think the international borders and use architecture as a tool to bring in fresh ideas and reform these borders into bridges of opportunity and prosperity between nations, cultures, and languages.

Members of the team* hailed from different professional domains and possessed T-shaped skills. By using the agile Scrum framework, design thinking and principles of autonomy and transparency, the team were able to come together, despite the challenges posed by COVID-19, and collaborate successfully on the project.

The outcome was to transform the Calais – Dover border by solving the issues refugees and asylum seekers face by creating a haven and a long term, permanent community for any individual seeking refuge in Calais, France. What sets this project idea apart is it will remain a permanent feature to support and house refugees for years to come and will try to be as sustainable and self-sustained as possible by using solar panels for electricity, vegetable, and fruit gardens for produce and a borehole water pump to solve the issues of water scarcity.

*Team members: Mehak Verma, Emily Sowerby, Cherry Wong, Maryam Al-Qadi, Jack Jefferson, Lin Yingzi, Dominique de Barros