On the mappingrefugeespaces.com website, created by Nerea Amor6s Elorduy to present research for her 2018 doctoral dissertation at the Bartlett, there is one visually powerful map, among many others, that locates long-term refugee camps in the geological formation of the East African Eift. The Catalan architect's involvement with this part of the world began more than a dozen years ago. Historically a place of conflict, the Great Lakes region, and the Albertine Rift valley in particular, are a fascinating laboratory for the disciplines of architecture, landscape and urbanism. As Jean-Pierre Chretien wrote in 2003, this fracture in the Earth's crust is 'a crucial region for research ... because the tragedies of its present are very much a function of the political manipulation of its past'. This is useful to keep in mind when reading Amoros Elorduy's work. While her most recent endeavours are authored as part of Creative Assemblages, the firm she established in Kampala in 2019, they follow on from her initial involvement with Africa Xos Mira ('Africa is looking at us'). She joined the Barcelona-based NGO on completing her architectural studies in 2009, in her desire to give orphans in the northern and western Tigray region of Ethiopia access to education and other basic services.
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