Rethinking Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs: The Role of Aesthetics in Refugee Shelter Working Paper

Dr. Devora Neumark and Stephanie Acker

May 2024 (Working Paper 2024/16)

European University Institute, Robert Schuman Centre for Advanced Studies,
Migration Policy Centre

A collaborative project between refugees in Azraq Refugee Camp in Jordan and the MIT Future Heritage Lab reimagined what refugee shelter could look like, incorporating historical and cultural aesthetics and design. Interior of reimagined shelter, Azraq, Jordan.

Photo: Dino Rowan, 2021

Summary

Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs has profoundly influenced humanitarian shelter responses to forced migration, yet this working paper demonstrated that its linear progression, individual focus, and universal application are fundamentally misaligned with refugee shelter contexts. Most critically, Maslow’s widely used framework completely overlooks aesthetics as a dimension of wellbeing. Drawing on mixed-methods research including Dr. Neumark’s participatory studies with over 200 displaced individuals, desk research across 30+ countries, and community dialogues in Palestinian refugee camps, this paper argued that beauty in the built environment is not a luxury but a necessary condition for life. Aesthetics support mental health, enable cultural identity expression, facilitate intergenerational trauma healing, and strengthen community resilience. The paper examined successful case studies from Yugoslavia, Iraq, Jordan, and Palestine, addressed implementation challenges including resource constraints and political resistance, and concluded with policy considerations for integrating aesthetics into shelter design through community-based approaches, advocacy and communication, funding and planning mechanisms, and professional training and evaluation systems.

Key Takeaways

Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs, while foundational in humanitarian response, is poorly suited to refugee shelter contexts due to its linear progression assumption (needs must be met sequentially), individual rather than collective focus, universal rather than culturally adaptive approach, and complete exclusion of aesthetics from the original framework.
Neuroaesthetics research demonstrates that design with deliberate intention to incorporate beauty is imperative to human psychological wellbeing, with positive effects on learning, social behaviour, and emotional wellness. The built environment directly shapes mood, cognitive functioning, behaviour, and mental health of shelter occupants.
Evidence from over 30 countries shows refugees with varied legal statuses consistently invest concerted effort in beautifying living spaces through painting walls, hanging pictures, creating gardens, and daily rituals like burning incense and serving tea in decorative porcelain, transforming temporary accommodations into personalised semblances of home even in the harshest conditions.
Beautification serves three critical individual-level functions: exerting agency when control is otherwise stripped away, integrating past homes with present realities through tangible bridges of memory and hope, and healing trauma. Dr. Neumark’s research with over 200 displaced individuals found that when children participate in beautification alongside family and can imagine past homes through shared stories, these acts heal intergenerational trauma and preserve identity.
At the community level, beautification fosters hope by providing visual representation of a brighter future, builds social capital through culturally specific rituals of hospitality and celebration, and serves as a form of resistance and resilience that fortifies communities against displacement challenges, contributing to all dimensions of community resilience including psychological wellbeing, social capital, family bonds, economic recovery, physical environment, and governance.

Implications for Practitioners

Community-based co-design: Shelter design must be based on local priorities and build on local capacities through mechanisms that actively engage residents, including community design committees, participatory workshops, mapping and visualisation tools, and capacity-building programmes that position refugees as active participants rather than passive recipients.
Long-term and evolving shelter approaches: Refugee shelters should be designed as long-term, evolving environments rather than short-term emergency solutions, recognising that displacement is often protracted (averaging 17 years in camps) and requires spaces that support dignity, cultural expression, and everyday life beyond mere survival.
Policy and planning standards: Shelter standards, camp management protocols, and settlement design guidelines should mandate provisions for personalisation and aesthetic expression. Policies restricting modifications to living spaces should be reviewed and revised to enable participatory design processes that empower refugees as co-creators of their built environment.
Livelihoods integration: Aesthetic interventions, such as the Jeddah Camp example where residents were trained and hired to beautify shelters, can serve as pathways to livelihoods and empowerment through skills training, job creation, and community-led art and design initiatives, simultaneously improving shelter quality and economic opportunity.
Training and measurement: Professional training for architects, urban planners, and humanitarian workers should integrate aesthetics beyond conventional “basic needs” understanding. Monitoring, evaluation, and learning systems should measure dignity, cultural expression, mental wellbeing, and spatial satisfaction alongside physical safety, with dedicated research to validate beautification as a measurable indicator of refugee self-reliance.