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 is about more than just survival.

Home is our safest place. It’s where we build our lives and hold our most tender memories. When we are forced to flee, that sense of safety is torn away.

When we founded Better Shelter, 40 million people were displaced. Now, a decade later, that number has tripled: over 120 million people are without a secure home. For many, their shelter is both temporary and long-term at once.

With the creative project What Makes a Home, we explore, through different forms of media, how displaced people, through resilience and resourcefulness, transform temporary shelters into lasting homes.

At the 19th Venice Biennale of Architecture, we unveil our installation, Wireframe of Life, offering a closer look at the structure of the shelter itself and how it evolves through everyday craftsmanship and the beauty of building with what is available.

Using local traditions passed down through generations and a mix of materials like bamboo, fabric, tarpaulin, and wood, people on the move construct their homes, often without any external support. Our shelter frames are designed to be built quickly after a disaster and can be adapted over time. They offer a starting point that evolves into something people make their own.

When we return to our shelters months or years later, they are often unrecognisable from what they first looked like: they’ve evolved into homes, shops, cinemas, temples, and even honeymoon suites.

Despite our ongoing R&D, time has shown that the people who have become the best at improving our shelters are those who live in them. They teach us how to make them better, by growing vines for shade, raising floors to protect from floods, or plastering walls with homemade mixtures for insulation.

Every version of our shelter carries the knowledge and creativity of all those who’ve lived in it.

A global, collective, and ongoing effort.

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

With support from