Thresholds of Homecoming
An appropriable house for Romani Settlement Deponija
W.D. Lijkendijk (TU Delft - Architecture and the Built Environment)
Jorge Mejia Hernandez – Mentor (TU Delft - Situated Architecture)
P.H.M. Jennen – Mentor (TU Delft - Design of Constrution)
A. Staničić – Mentor (TU Delft - Situated Architecture)
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Abstract
Deponija Settlement is a Romani settlement that gradually grew on an old landfill site along the Danube and near the city center of Belgrade, Serbia. Large developments on this plot of land would be expensive because of the required extensive soil preparations. This creates the opportunity for the more than hundred families to stay on this plot of land. However, since the landfill is never properly sealed, the polluted ground creates dangerous living circumstances.
Even though the settlement doesn’t look like a place to feel at home, the organization of the settlement can also be observed as having an alternate logic in which these people in particular feel home. In investigating that the act of homecoming takes place at the threshold, the transition from one space to another, it appeared that this notion connects well to the way the Romani live. The transition between private and public seems to be very gradual.
Looking at this way of living as well as aiming for a living situation which can sustain changing family compositions, a house for several families has been designed which is centered around the movement through spaces. A system of thresholds creates spaces which are freely applicable. The quality of the house is the simplicity of the system which allows these thresholds to be taken away, created, or changed. In this way the house gives freedom to its residents to more and more appropriate it, for through time it can increasingly become a place they can call home.