Haiti 2010, refuge camps outside Port-au-Prince, after the January earthquake.

(Photo: Delmas Stadium camp in Port-au-Prince, Haiti. Olivier Laban Mattel/AFP/Getty Images )

Inside this refuge camp, as in many post-disaster emergency settlements, territorial mechanisms are reduced to its most basic level and reflect an extreme need for privacy and security among its occupants. Depth sequences, measured from the collectively used outdoor space till the (relatively) intimate part of the tent, are reduced to its minimum values. Here, as opposed to many high class residential scenarios, no disproportional ways of delimiting territories are detected, even if in this case of daily chaos and danger, security might be a real issue…
It made me wonder, where is the line between territorial delimitation as a basic human need and mechanisms as a part of decadent marketing strategies of a never ending social upgrade?

(Photo: Giannina Urmeneta Ottiker (http://www.guo.be/guo.html), Frontenac Court, Florida, USA)