Camps

Sacramento. Fresno. Nashville. Olympia. These cities have seen a recent surge in tent cities filled with people who are recently jobless and newly evicted from their homes and apartments. Photographs of these camps are reminiscent of the camps created after Hurricane Katrina, as well as pictures from Kenya, Rowanda, and Sudan, where refugees cluster to avoid violence. What may feel more of a stretch is the similarities these camps share with GTMO, as well as a son or daughter’s band camp.

What could prove to be the most compelling architectural phenomena of the early 21st-Century, camp spaces, have been comprehensively explored by Charlie Hailey. Hailey, a professor in the School of Architecture at the University of Florida, wrote Camps: A Guide to 21st-Century Space. This book examines camps of all types and asks the fundamental question, “What is a camp?” This book is designed to look like a well-worn guidebook, something essential kept on a car dashboard, faded and a little dusty, the jacket fallen off. Beyond the aesthetics of the book’s design, within these pages one will find a treasure trove of camp types divided by purpose.

Originally designed as temporary shelters, camps are becoming a part of our built environment, far outlasting their original intent and design. Hailey considers the political, economic, and cultural consequences of these architectural anomalies, revealing questions of identity, residency, saftey, and mobility. Camp spaces register the struggles, emergencies, and possibilities of global existence as no other space does.