The Project

What Makes a Home shifts the focus from adversity and trauma to brief, intimate moments of joy, resilience, and creativity—moments where life can be about more than survival.

For the past decade, Better Shelter has been active in over 80 countries and has delivered housing to hundreds of thousands of people affected by conflict and disaster.

These shelters have become more than just structures providing a roof over someone’s head—they have come to represent an often-overlooked necessity of life in displacement: dignity.

To tell these stories, Better Shelter commissioned three photographers—Björn Wallander, Ci Demi and Ali Haj Suleiman.

Together, their images capture the complexities of displacement—grief and uncertainty, alongside moments of normalcy: cooking dinner while entertaining a toddler, or the domestic struggles of a partner’s hobby that’s taken up a bit too much space at home, or the ingenuity and care in which someone finds ways to personalise and decorate their shelter, making it something to be proud of—small but meaningful acts of resilience.

This project has been made possible thanks to the people who opened their homes and shared their stories, along with the support of our partner organisations: CARE International in Türkiye, SEEDS in India, UNHCR in Brazil and Chad, and the Watan Foundation in Syria.

An intimate look inside refugee shelters around the globe – Architectural Digest, 2024.10.14

Här är svenska bidragen på Venedig­biennalen – Arkitekten, 2025.04.10

With support from