HUMANITARIAN, BY DESIGN?

Humanitarian, by Design? Le design au cœur de l’humanitaire explores the objects commonly used in humanitarian action – such as first-aid kits, tents, prostheses, maps and makeshift shelters – and asks what they reveal about the lives of those who rely on them. The exhibition examines how design – whether improvised, institutional or repurposed – shapes life in situations of crisis, displacement or extreme precarity. From hacked plastics to architectures of waiting, and from personal stories to crisis imagery, it sheds light on fragile and often invisible practices designed for purposes of endurance, resistance and hope.

The exhibition was developed through a collaboration between HEAD – Genève, the Geneva Graduate Institute, the University of Copenhagen, the EPFL EssentialTech Centre and the International Red Cross and Red Crescent Museum.

Humanitarian, by Design? is structured around three interconnected perspectives:

• Objects examines the things that accompany humanitarian action — from standardized kits to improvised tools — revealing how design choices influence care, survival, and daily life.
• Spaces looks at the environments shaped by humanitarian interventions: camps, waiting areas, settlements, and infrastructures where people live through uncertainty, and where design can both support and constrain human experience.
• Imaginaries explores the images, technologies, and narratives through which crises are represented – and invites us to question how these representations shape our understanding of humanitarian action.

This exhibition was developed in collaboration with the research project The Future of Humanitarian Design (HUD), which brings together researchers, designers, engineers, and humanitarian practitioners to explore how design and new technologies can contribute to improving humanitarian responses.

OBJECTS

From medical kits and prosthetics to tents, water containers, blankets, tools, and digital devices, humanitarian action relies on countless objects that accompany everyday life in situations of crisis. Circulating through humanitarian operations, these items are present in moments of emergency as well as recovery. They can support care and resilience, but they can also be associated with constraint, exclusion, or even violence, shaping how aid is delivered and how humanitarian interventions are experienced.

Far from being neutral, these objects are designed. Their production involves networks of designers, engineers, humanitarian organisations, companies, donors, and the local actors who use them. Their form, materials, and contents reflect choices about whose needs are prioritised, who participates in their design, and how humanitarian responses are organised. Humanitarian objects therefore embody practical solutions but also dilemmas.

Kits offer a clear example of this dynamic. Prepared in advance and ready for immediate use, they allow organisations to respond efficiently in difficult conditions. By assembling selected instruments, materials, and protocols, kits make humanitarian operations faster and more mobile while standardising how assistance is delivered. What is included determines what kinds of care can be provided; what is absent may remain beyond reach.

At the same time, humanitarian objects rarely remain fixed. They evolve through experience in the field, technological innovation, and the improvisations of those who use them. People affected by crises often adapt or repurpose these objects — transforming tents into shops, containers into furniture, or tools into unexpected devices. These practices reveal forms of creativity and resilience that extend beyond the intentions of designers.

This section brings together selected examples, including Red Cross kits from the Museum’s collections and beyond that are part of the installation focusing on kits as well as prostheses developed by EPFL-Essential Tech.

SPACES

Spaces, like objects, play a defining role in situations of crisis. Humanitarian environments take many forms: refugee camps organised in urgency, detention centres deliberately planned, or informal settlements that emerge when people occupy spaces never meant for habitation.

Yet humanitarian space is not only shaped through architecture or infrastructure. It is also produced through representation. Maps, plans, photographs, scans, and models make these environments visible and measurable, influencing how crises are understood and managed.

No space is neutral. Humanitarian environments can support care and protection, but they can also organise control, exclusion, or surveillance. They structure how bodies move, gather, wait, and inhabit uncertain conditions.

Time is inseparable from these spatial forms. Some environments are defined by waiting, where daily life unfolds in a suspended present. Others evolve gradually as people adapt, rebuild, and transform the spaces around them.

This section explores these dynamics through a series of projects combining maps, films, scans, and archival materials. Together, they reveal how humanitarian spaces are continuously produced – through design, negotiation, and everyday practices – and how they shape the possibilities for life in situations of crisis.

IMAGINARIES

Humanitarian action does not only transform objects and spaces; it also shapes how crises are imagined and represented. Photographs, maps, films, data visualisations, and digital environments influence how distant events become visible and how humanitarian responses are understood.

In contexts marked by urgency, displacement, and scarcity, these representations play a powerful role. They can mobilize attention, generate empathy, and help imagine possible futures after disruption. At the same time, they also raise important questions: who produces these images, whose stories are told, and whose experiences remain unseen?

Today, digital technologies are transforming humanitarian imaginaries. Social media, mapping systems, and immersive environments create new forms of visibility and participation. People affected by crises can document their own lives and circulate images globally. Yet these same systems are shaped by platforms, infrastructures, and algorithms that influence what becomes visible and what remains hidden.

The objects presented in this section reveal how humanitarian imaginaries are produced in practice. They range from video games and social media representations of humanitarian crisis to objects produced by inhabitants of prisons and refugee camps that gesture at a different future and express both constraint and hope. They remind us that imagination is not abstract. It is material, situated, and shaped by unequal access to technologies and resources.

By examining historical archives, contemporary digital environments and hand-crafted imaginaries, this section invites you to reflect on how humanitarian crises are represented – and how these imaginaries influence the ways we understand suffering, care, and possible futures.