Live Jacket

The European Migrant Crisis is a first of its kind in the digital age, technology has become a lifeline - which many refugees have deemed to be more essential than food or shelter. Refugees have and are using their mobile phones to communicate, navigate, socialize, and for digital scrapbooking. The live jacket responds to basic needs for refugees in Lesvos, Greece,while providing them with a digital platform. It can fold into various forms: a life jacket, a regular jacket, a sleeping unit, and also inflates along its seams into aggregated spaces. Friction and solar fabrics generate electricity, which is stored into a power source for devices. Technology is embedded into the clothing, transforming the jacket into an autonomous wifi shelter, electricity hub, and habitation node. The hexagonal zone of jacket is inflatable along the seams, performing as structure when the jacket is aggregated with others. They are connected to one another with zippers. Wi-fi becomes a catalyst for interaction between refugees and locals: a local Greek can walk up to a refugee in order to get connected. The aggregated spaces serve as social pop-up spaces for refugees and locals, shifting the ways public spaces are formed in Greece.