Hi, it's NPR's Book of the Day. I'm Andrew Limbaugh. Today's interview is with Azra Akshamya. She's an artist and architectural historian, and she co-edited a book titled Design to Live, Everyday Inventions from a refugee camp. It looks at different innovations made by people living inside a refugee camp in Jordan.

And in this interview with NPR Scott Simon, Akshamya uses this phrase multiple times.

She says people living in these camps use these designs to carve out a form of life. They

carve out a way of living. It's such a simple but telling way of describing what it takes to live in one of these camps

and still dream of something better.

Here's the interview.

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There are now more than 80 million refugees around the world, according to the United Nations.

Many who live in refugee camps where conditions can be cramped and mean and pitiable.

But if you go through design to live, everyday inventions from a refugee camp, a new book and Arabic and English from the MIT press,

you can see the ingenuity and spirit inside the Osrak refugee camp in Jordan and marvel and be inspired. Syrian refugees

living there and creating gardens, ovens, baby swings, and chess sets, people living and in a way

thriving.

Azra Akshamya is one of the editors of the book.

She's an artist and architectural historian and founding director of the MIT Future Heritage Lab.

She joins us now.

Thanks so much for being with us.

Thank you for having me, Scott.

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