As former residents of the destroyed city of Mosul, Iraq fight to rebuild after being liberated from ISIS/ISIL, architects are coming together to create some sorely needed temporary shelters and facilities for them. An open international ideas contest organized by Archstorming has already yielded some innovative proposals, including quick-deploying protective frameworks to support fabric tents, a flexible and easily expandable scaffolding city, and a stunning new “Tower of Babel” inspired by the Biblical passage Genesis 11, which reads ?Then they said: ?Come, let us build ourselves a city, with a tower that reaches to the heavens.??

Mosul has suffered catastrophic damage since 2014, when ISIS chose the city?s Al-Nuri Grand Mosque as the place where they would declare the Islamic Caliphate. But as the conflict winds down and the streets grow quieter, residents are slowly moving back in, with thousands more expected to arrive soon enough. With so much of the city in ruins, the people who once thrived in Mosul now find themselves feeling like refugees in their own home. The Mosul Postwar Camp competition sought infrastructure that could shelter all the people who wished to return while their residences were being rebuilt. Archstorming has divided refugees? needs into two categories: “Urgent Humanitarian Aid,” which can reunite families and provide them with basic assistance and living spaces along the Tigris River, and the “City Reintegration Zo...