Architecte/Archéologue

Architect/Archaeologist

CNRS / Ifpo – Amman, Jordanie

Personal pages: Ifpo, Academia

Biography 

Thibaud Fournet is an architect and an archaeologist at the CNRS currently based at the Ifpo in Amman. His work mainly focuses on architecture and urbanism in the Antique Mediterranean world, specifically in the Greco-Roman Near East (Syria, Lebanon, Jordan, and Egypt). During archaeological excavations in remoted regions of Central Asia, he worked on traditional forms of habitat of Uyghur and Baloch peoples, respectively in the regions of the Keriya Valley (China) and of Turbat (Pakistan).
The study of traditional habitat in the arid region of the Keriya Valley have highlighted the development processes designed in a constraining environment (regarding material, climate and remoteness), that are of great resemblance with solutions developed in refugee camps, such as the agglutinated composition of the houses, crafted according to family transformations.

Research project

To complete, confirm and illustrate data collected (in terms of dwelling strategies and housing evolutions) through interviews conducted by Kamel Doraï and Géraldine Chatelard with Syrian refugees, Pauline Piraud-Fournet and Thibaud Fournet survey habitat and its organization in some neighbourhoods of Zaatari camp and village, drawing upon ethnographic and archaeological methods. With such approach, every step of the development of habitat can be documented and retraced, from the tent given to each family at their entry of the camp to the constitution of makeshift housing and of a neighbourhood life. The study of these processes helps identifying and understanding the strategies implemented: allocation of functions and uses amid constraining spaces, nature and origins of the different forms of spaces that are reproduced, reinterpretation of traditional structures in emergency context…

Keywords

contemporary archaeology, dwelling strategies, space management, habitat, refugee camps