‘Existing is an act of resistance’: the Syrian refugees creating design from displacement

An installation at the Venice Architecture Biennale shows how camp residents have transformed the raw materials of aid to preserve their heritage and culture

When the world's largest Syrian refugee camp started to overflow in 2013 it was so big it had become Jordan's fourth-largest city. The camp, Za'atari, housed a staggering 150,000 people, and the influx of new arrivals meant that another camp had to be built a few kilometres away.

Za'atari had been plagued by design flaws that were linked to violence and disorder, so when Azraq opened in 2014 as a model camp" for the region it was heralded as a chance to rectify those problems. But it wasn't as simple as that.