Housing solutions for refugees Worldwide displacement and refugee movements hit an all-time high in 2016 with 60 million people forced to leave their homes and seek asylum elsewhere. In Germany in particular, asylum claims reached a historic high with 442,000 first applications in 2015 – a 155% increase over the year before. Just at a time when Germany is facing its first home-made housing crisis since the re-unification, the influx of refugees puts authorities under further pressure. GRAFT co-founded Heimat2 with partners Comterra Care, Lepi Ventures, Bernstein Group and H.W. Pausch to provide dignified housing solutions for refugees in Germany that combine short and long term solutions from typical disaster relief programs. The objective is to build model residential villages that are socially inclusive and provide living environments of the best possible standard.Apart from long-term tasks, the immediate goal is to provide shelter and the perspective of a more permanent living situation.
“Our goal is not just to build dwelling places, but to create quality residential villages that are architecturally appealing and socially integrative”, says Wolfram Putz of GRAFT GmbH, founding member of Heimat2. “Looking at the urgent challenge, we now want to react fast and present solutions as soon as possible for accommodation within modular construction systems - with the best possible conditions for the inhabitants and residents”, explains Dr. Gerd Ellinghaus, also founding member of Heimat2. In close collaboration with well-known charity organizations, Heimat2 invented a holistic concept that offers excellent operators, communication on site and the opportunity to flexibly enlarge the residential villages or later re-use them for another purpose. The first building will be realized in 2016 in Berlin. Heimat2 is also working on other solutions on an international level.
