On Design Advocacy in the Rohingya Refugee Camp / John Wagner and Nadyeli Quiroz

“Designers must design the conditions that enable things to be created.”

John Wagner and Nadyeli Quiroz, recent graduates of the Harvard Graduate School of Design, first became involved in the Kutupalong refugee camp as a part of an option studio led by prominent architect Anna Heringer. They continued their engagement in the camp even after their studio ended – marking the beginning of a research project that critically looks at spaces of migration as well as a practice that promotes a new kind of design advocacy.

John David Wagner works at the convergence of public space, design, and human rights. He received an M.Arch, with Distinction, from Harvard Graduate School of Design, and was a 2020 Irving Innovation Fellow. John is currently an instructor at Wentworth Institute of Technology and a post-graduate fellow at Lakshmi Mittal and Family South Asia Institute where his research focuses on the design and production of social spaces in refugee camps.

Nadyeli Quiroz is an Architect and Landscape Architect with two master’s degrees from Harvard Graduate School of Design. Currently, she is a Research Affiliate at the Lakshmi Mittal and Family South Asia Institute and the 2020 Landscape Architecture Foundation Olmsted Scholar. Her ongoing research studies urban form in its intersection to territorial ecologies on spaces of movement and displacement. She is also an adjunct professor at Wentworth Institute of Technology.

To check out their work on forced migration: www.beyondencampment.com

And their professional practice: https://www.instagram.com/off_co_de/