The first half of the decade saw warfare escalate all the way from the Maghreb, to the Middle East, into Europe, thus positioning the issue of displaced people in the centre of public discourse once again. The Greek islands neighbouring the Turkish coast aquire particularities of a war front, an extension of the warzone of sorts, through human bodies and stories that arrive on their shores. Europe
turns a blind eye and responds with an increasingly militarized management of its borders, while the division between its core and its periphery becomes all the more acute. Surveillance, prevention through buffer zones and under-equipped rescue operations are the ordre du jour, with western governments anxious to assure themselves and their subjects that they are far from its reach. It is not rare that they don't. 2 billion miles were travelled in 2015 alone. Design within -and for- this crisis, then, becomes a social necessity. Established between London, Athens and Lesvos island in December 2015, the Embassy for the Displaced is a design-based collective that operates both on the field and from afar. It serves as a design-for-survival laboratory, a visual archive of the refugees' journey and an institution on the side of the Displaced. A land for the land-less.
