mitti - an identity, an emotion

The soil is not the dead, inert, and simple thing often referred to as ‘dirt’, it is a chronicle of all lives that ever existed on the planet. From the struggle of survival of the early man, to the leisure of the modern world, soil has shaped us and we have shaped soil-as society after society has risen. The word ‘soil’ has different translations at different locations, but everywhere it confides to a sense of belonging and being a part of an ancestral existence. The word, more than its materialistic value, holds the significance of one’s identity and takes one back to where they started. As a driver of an architectural brief, the word tends to establish a way of living that sustains individual identities and inherited memories. Based in a Syrian refugee camp of Al Za’atari in Jordan, the project aims to revive the identities of people who were forced to abandon everything that they identified themselves with and had to seek asylum in another barren location.  With soil, as the material suggests, the project will mould itself with, by and for the people to bring back what has been lost.