Objects of Migration

The phenomenon of migration during the current war leads to the movement of people between places and spaces – an inevitable shared fate of humanity across the globe. According to various estimates, violent conflicts, poverty, climate crises, natural disasters, and human hope for better lives will drive about a billion people to migrate in the coming decade and move around the world. Case study analyses tracing migration journeys reveal global spatial and architectural aspects of migration through the classification and interpretation of fundamental concepts and the mapping of types. The case study Ohana conducted reconstructs the migration journey of his grandmother, Gila Ohana, from Morocco to Israel. Analyzing her journey maps the spaces and objects that defined her movement from the home in Marrakech to the home in Kiryat Gat as a biography of migration reflecting a generational gap in the perception of home. The first part of the journey, the realistic one, is constructed from her memory, archival materials, and historical documents, tracing the architectural spaces she passed through. It goes beyond empirical truth, occurring at the threshold between memory and imagination, between facts and narrative. The second part of the journey involves the design of three fantastic migration spaces, where the architectural structures are built from construction elements from Ohana's grandmother's journey and are integrated into his own possible migration journey: the first – a planned dream, a floating structure in the middle of the sea; the second – a residential building adjacent to an abandoned hotel in Berlin; the third – a family home near the Gaza Strip.