IAFD & Stichting Queer Minds explore how to create safe spaces together

Le Refuge is a shelter for young LGBTIQA+ people who feel unwelcome, unseen, or without a place to call home. A space shaped by care, where safety is continually practiced.

Our process opened by sitting down with the coordinators and participants, sharing an informal conversation about the space and how they feel about it. Sitting down and sharing a meal together allowed us to understand how the space is lived, felt and perceived.

We placed a suggestion box as a way to listen to the visions, needs and desires of the community. This exchange led to our research question: How can design become a space for multiple ways of being at once?

Guided by Hand to Hand, a concept of mutual support, responsiveness and shared shaping, we propose a flexible spatial system composed not of fixed divisions but adaptable elements that support rest, expression, connection and care. Gestures, textures and tools that shift with the needs of those who inhabit them. We focus on three elements: the floor, the wall and the ceiling.

Side by Side

To be positioned next to someone or something; to exist together in parallel; to move, act, or stand together in solidarity.

To understand the lived identities within the refuge, we held an identity workshop where participants explored their sense of self through portrait making. These collective portraits do not represent individuals alone, but the layered identity of the space itself. From shape to shape, the wall assembles itself as you arrive, creating a first encounter that reveals identity as something we build collectively. Each form holds presence, emphasising the relational act of seeing and being seen. Side by Side presents the expressive diversity of identities within Le Refuge, giving visitors a sense of the community that shapes this environment.

Piece by Piece

To be made through gradual fragments; forming in small, deliberate steps; each part building upon the last until a whole emerges, slowly revealing its shape of becoming.

As a response to the desire for more privacy combined with a livelier atmosphere, we patched together a modular curtain system, allowing plurality to emerge from the space. Each panel drifts across the ceiling, creating pockets of space that shift as you move. Made with intention, the textile carries an inviting energy and allows a fluid reconfiguration. Piece by Piece transforms the office-like environment into a shifting, playful space, where boundaries are flexible. Anyone can explore, adapt, and shape how they move through the room.

Layer by Layer

To progress or build one layer, stage or element at a time; suggesting each new layer depends on the one before it, creating depth, structure or understanding through accumulation.

Realising the need for low informal seating, we envisioned a shared space that could be rearranged to suit different needs. The traditional rug is reimagined, not just a static surface, but a modular tool for seating and spatial composition, inviting daydreams and offering a soft anchor for moments of pause and imagination.

Each element is built one upon another, 120 sheets of dead stock-felt, perforated and aligned around two metal rods, then held by magnetic stoppers. Layer by layer, form emerges while letting movement and gestures becoming part of the unfolding space.

Aleksandra Kojro, Oliver Tippl, Emily Vassallo Medici