“Design like You Give a Damn,” Locally, Around the World (Portfolio)

“Giving a damn” is an important philosophy for designing in a world with environmental and social turmoil. “Design like You Give a Damn,” a book edited by Architecture for Humanity (AFH), a (501)(c)(3) charitable organization, features architectural responses to humanitarian crisis. The work is on point with the philosophy of socially conscious design, and it presents more than 80 contemporary solutions to such urgent needs as basic shelter, healthcare, education and access to clean water, energy and sanitation. Architecture for Humanity was started in 1999 when co-founder, Cameron Sinclair had the idea to challenge architects to discover better solutions for refugees returning to their destroyed Kosovo homes after the war. The “AFH Challenge” encouraged as many design solutions as possible, especially those from architects close to the Kosovo region, to secure the best option to solve their housing problem (http://artkrush.com/90654). The Open Architecture Challenge has since become a way of collecting more solutions than problems, usually by at least 100 fold, while giving architects around the world an opportunity to respond to great need. The Mississippi program, for example, offers Hurricane Katrina-ravaged people an opportunity to rebuild on their Biloxi property with the assistance of committed architects, engineers and design professionals. The nonprofit believes that “the physical design of our homes, neighborhoods, and communities shapes every aspect of our lives.”

One billion people live in abject poverty, four billion live in fragile but growing economies, and one in seven people live in slum settlements or refugee camps. Architecture for Humanity is established on the concept that “where resources and expertise are scarce, innovative, sustainable and collaborative design can make a difference.” This pioneering organization only accepts projects that demonstrate a commitment to environmentally-sensitive design. Local labor and materials are used whenever feasible, and some projects also include green elements such as solar and rainwater collection. Projects are evaluated based on their potential impact to the number of building beneficiaries it ultimately serves, and preference is given to buildings adhering to LEED (Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design at http://www.usgbc.org/) standards.

Sustainability extends to the way buildings are not only designed and engineered but also constructed by AFH. In Biloxi, where Hurricane Katrina ripped apart houses with walls of water, some people displaced from their homes are still living in tiny, one-room, Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) trailers. The non-profit has helped people here by sponsoring construction of a number of fully-funded demonstration homes built on stilts above flood waters, while simultaneously incorporating a number of design features that withstand hurricane-force winds. To begin the Mississippi program, AFH invited established and national firms to create home proposals that meet disaster-mitigation challenges.

All AFH projects must demonstrate a strong partnership with local community groups such as affordable housing advocates, women’s groups or food banks, and partiality is given to projects that can demonstrate involvement by a broad array of community members, to include engaging locally-based design teams. Project partners must demonstrate their ability to secure building sites, which includes obtaining proof of land title. Proposals must show need, must be able to access design services and must include a strong community design component that engages the future occupants in all stages of the design process. Preference is also given to proposals that include community member training in design and construction best practices.

For 2008 the Challenge is located in three communities on three different continents: Nepal, Kenya and Ecuador. Nepal’s tele-medical center project, to be found in one of the country’s least developed areas, the Accham District, is particularly important because only one in 200 births occurs in a hospital. In addition, the AIDS epidemic is spreading due to extreme poverty and unavailable medical treatment. One doctor serves a quarter of a million people in this and the Doti District. Here the challenge was to enable families in a remote rural area to access healthcare from the world’s top physicians and other medical professionals by building a clinic with Internet access.

The facility will utilize sustainable and/or local building materials, as well as local labor, taking into account the site’s remote nature and the costs associated with transporting materials. Earthquakes, epidemics, fires, landslides and debris flow, floods, hailstorms, thunderbolts, and windstorms are challenges specific to this area. Forty percent of the clinic’s space will be open to the public to be used as a community computer lab and training facility. The remaining 60 percent will provide medical services such as obstetric and nursing training, tele-medicine exchanges and X-ray interpretation via overseas medical professionals, patient consultation and offices to manage medical files, as well as a pharmaceutical supplies ordering area. The site area is two acres; total facilities footprint is 175 square meters; and total occupancy will be forty.

Another aspect of the 2008 Challenge is the “50 by 15” initiative to bring affordable Internet access to one half of the world’s population by 2015. All three of these challenge projects incorporate this aspect, as in Nairobi, Kenya with SIDAREC (Slums Information Development & Resource Centers). This organization is helping to alleviate poverty in one of the biggest slums in Nairobi, which contains one-quarter of a million people living in desolation. The plan also includes turning an open lot into a place where people can come for education, safety, healthcare and life-skills. SIDAREC clearly recognizes that today’s youth is a vast untapped resource whose future depends upon the ability to gain these inherent rights. The organization’s proposed media lab and library will offer a place to teach computer skills, including web and graphic design, while also offering recording facilities for the youth radio station and a place to research, play games and study. And, of course, challenge participants employ sustainable and/or local building material and use local labor to realize their design.

In Ecuador, a project even more unusual is innovating ways of life; a chocolate factory is being planned to help save the rain forest. Here within the Amazon Basin, the plant used to make chocolate, cacao, is grown organically among the hard wood forests. Giving the indigenous chocolate producers and artisans, the Kallarni Association, the opportunity to make their business more lucrative could, ideally, allow them to conserve their land. As an added benefit, this business is good for the environment because the cacao plant is grown only on sites with a wide diversity of plants, thus facilitating biodiversity. Also, only 10-15 percent of each family’s land is used for growing crops while the rest is left preserved in its natural state. The new factory will improve and increase production, which will allow the Killarni Association to export chocolate to first-world countries, while the newly acquired Internet access will assist in expanding the business and bring profits back into the villages. This self-sustaining project is being done by the local people, for the local people.

The land will be purchased in the capital city of Quito as a six or seven hectares (about 13 acres) plot abutting a road to another relatively large town, Tenna. The challenge is to design a main complex with a chocolate production factory, a tourist visitor center, and a fair trade exchange/research center, plus a model/prototype for three satellite technology hubs to be set off the main site in remote and semi-rural villages. The Killarni Association is requesting the facilities be designed and constructed per LEED Gold standards in order to reduce energy, water and resource use, which will minimize the cost of maintenance and production. However, since limited funds restrict AFH from participating in the actual certification process, the project will not be seeking LEED certification nor will it actually obtain a facility LEED rating.

Part of a previous year’s AFH Challenge, Tanzania’s Impuli Center of Excellence is a health facility designed to provide both medicinal care and to create a new generation of medical professionals. Currently, the Impuli villagers must travel two kilometers by ox cart and then by bicycle in order to reach the nearest hospital in the Tanzanian capital of Dar es Salaam. However, when the river floods during the rainy season, it is impossible to cross safely. Therefore the village mortality rate is actually compounded by simple transportation, which does make the village easy to accept as an AFH candidate. As is the practice, the combination medical center, training center and secondary school is being built by local labor, using local materials, in addition to the use of renewable technologies for solar and rainwater collection. Community support via land donation and income generation are manifesting in order to make this dream a reality. In addition, people in surrounding areas can benefit from the building’s uses, as communities anywhere in the developing world can benefit by means of free access to the structure’s construction documents, plans and designs.

AFH is growing not only in number of designers, but also in number of chapters around the world. Over 2600 designers meet regularly to discuss and participate in their design projects. And, at least 40 local chapters have sprung up in places such as Auckland, New Zealand, and all over the United States, usually helping their town of origin, but also taking on projects elsewhere, such as the United Kingdom chapter’s work with a Brewerville, Liberia school. Local chapters take many forms depending on the chapter size and its location, with each one operating and engaging autonomously in its own projects and activities.

From an Afghanistan earthquake emergency shelter to a children’s merry-go-round that pumps water into a water tower (covered with public health and HIV/AIDS awareness posters and with paid advertising to maintain the pump), the list of pioneering AFH and “Design like You Give a Damn” completed projects goes on and on. Humanitarian needs in the world continue to form an unwritten to-do list. Thanks to AFH’s open architecture network and those reaching for the most sustainable answers to today’s challenges, the list of well-designed humanitarian solutions can form even faster.

To get involved with Architecture for Humanity, visit their website at www.architectureforhumanity.org/get_involved. Sign up for the AFH newsletter while there; it contains the latest information on volunteer and job opportunities, as well as upcoming competitions. In addition, it also follows the progress of projects and offers interesting links and news.