Nasma Alsshutfa (Interior Architecture, 2024) wins Archiprix 2025 with her graduation project 'I am grateful (?)'. Archiprix 2025 presents the most promising graduation projects from Dutch design schools in the fields of architecture, urban planning, interior and landscape architecture.
This year's edition focuses on 'Rethink and Repair' - a call to the design world to question existing systems and to focus on the importance of care, empathy and repair.
The jury about Nasma's work:
"The jury is deeply moved by the project and believes it highlights the failure of the Dutch refugee reception system. The jury describes the installation as painful and poignant but also appreciates the poetic layer that allows room for viewers’ imagination and emotions. The strength of the project lies in its storytelling, which is employed both visually and auditorily. Using headphones, visitors can hear the designer recount her experiences during the asylum process. This project compels the design discipline to explore and reflect on how it can contribute to systemic change, especially given increasing failure of the asylum system. More broadly, the designer questions the role of interior architecture within the current system, revealing that design has little to no place within the existing spatial structures of asylum seekers’ centers."
Nasma about her work:
"During my two-year asylum journey in the Netherlands, I was forced to move between five different refugee centres. In this installation, I have reconstructed one room of each of the five camps:
Ter Apel,
Wassenaar,
Luttelgeest
Wageningen,
and Amsterdam.
I am grateful (?)
A Journey to a Legal Refugee Status in the Netherlands!
Behind the walls of the refugee centers lies another dimension, a place that doesn’t look like the Netherlands. You might think that the route is the hardest part of any refugee's journey, but unfortunately, the journey continues even within the country of arrival— in this case, the Netherlands. The struggle persists within the confines of the Dutch refugee centers. Arriving in the Netherlands should mark the end of the story, where everyone can live happily ever after. But the reality is that another journey, not much better than the previous one, has just begun.
In this project, I am trying to depict the struggles refugees face in the Dutch refugee centers. I aim to create spaces that reflect the emotions experienced within them. How do these spaces change over endless waiting? How do they reflect various emotions? How do they embody the psychological state of their inhabitants? What do spaces represent if they identify a system of repetition?
Through recreating spaces based on various scenarios and experiences—both my own and those of many others in camps across the Netherlands—I strive to shed light on the ongoing journey refugees face even after reaching their destination. This project is an exploration of the intersection between physical space and emotional experience, an attempt to make tangible the often-invisible struggles of those seeking safety and longing for a new beginning."
