Paper short abstract:

Since the mid-1980s, generations of refugees have sought refuge in the ramshackle Gaza Buildings, a multi-story hospital complex ruined during the civil war. The paper analyzes buildings as spatial archives of displacement, an example of emergency urbanism and housing refuges in urban heterotopia.

Paper long abstract:

Since the mid-1980s, generations of refugees have sought refuge in the ramshackle Gaza Buildings, a multi-story hospital complex built by the Palestinian Liberation Organization (PLO). Damaged during the civil war, the buildings have since turned urban heterotopia - squat, refuge and shelter - that otherwise blend in with the run-down Sabra-Shatila neighbourhood in Beirut's "misery belt". Forming part of a global landscape of insecure areas, the inhabitants are disconnected from majority society which can serve as a trope for the exclusion of generations of refugees that typifies the new domain of "urban refugees" now common throughout the Middle East. The paper charts the buildings' history and main characters: the lodgers, landlords, and gatekeepers who respectively lease, rent and control the dilapidated buildings' dark corridors, cramped flats and garbage-strewn stairways. By analysing the buildings as historical and spatial archives of displacement and an example of emergency urbanism whereby displaced people seek refuge in cities. The multi-story buildings can be read a vertical migration history where generations of refugees and migrants have escaped repeated conflict, displacement and destitution. Examining the decaying buildings' architectural history, hence, provides a temporal genealogy of reception, place making and emplacement that can inform the study of diasporic space and materiality.