Enes Osmani’s Belgrade refugee integration project looks at how architecture can support people arriving in a city, while also helping local communities share space more confidently.
The useful part of the project is its civic focus. It is not only about shelter. It asks how gardens, services, housing and public programmes can reduce separation between refugees and residents.
Project overview
The original project focuses on the refugee crisis in Belgrade, Serbia. Enes proposes a series of five interventions across the city, each intended to help refugees access support while creating contact points with local communities.
The interventions include community gardens, multipurpose centres for language classes and training, affordable housing ideas and partnerships with local organisations.
Why the project is useful to study
- It treats refugee support as an urban question, not only a shelter question.
- It connects social integration with sustainable design decisions.
- It gives local residents and refugees shared spaces rather than separate worlds.
- It uses community feedback as part of the design process.
Portfolio lesson
If you include a social-impact project in a portfolio, make the mechanism clear. Say who the project helps, what the intervention changes and how the architecture supports daily life.
Showcase a socially focused architecture project
Architecture Social can feature student projects that deal with community, displacement, public space or civic infrastructure when the design evidence is clear.
- Explain the user group without flattening people into statistics.
- Show the design intervention, not only the social aim.
- Include diagrams, images or process work that prove how the idea works.
- Make the project readable for tutors, practices and future collaborators.
Architecture Social view
Stephen’s recruiter view is that socially driven projects are strongest when they balance empathy with clarity. Practices need to see judgement, spatial thinking and a realistic understanding of how people use the proposal.
Next step
Explore more Architecture Social projects, read the portfolio guide, or submit your own project.
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