Sustainable+Design

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** Cameron Sinclair on open-source architecture **
 * Video: **

I’m going to take you on a journey very quickly to explain the wish I’m going to have to take you somewhere which many people haven’t being and that’s around the world. When I was about 25 years old I started an organization to get architects and designers involved in humanitarian work, and not only responding to natural disasters, involving systemic issues.

We believe that where the resources and expertise are scarce, innovative, sustainable design and collaborative can really make a difference in people’s life. So this all began when I started my life as an architect or training as an architect and I was always interested in socially responsible design and how you can really make an impact.

But when I went to architecture school it seemed like I was the black sheep in the family, many architects seem to think that when you design, you design a jewel, and I felt that when you design, you either improve or you create a detriment to the community in which you are designing in. You are not just doing a building for the residents or the people that’s going to use it, but for a community as a whole.

And in 1990, we started by responding to the issue of the housing crisis for returning refugees in Kosovo, and I didn’t know what I was doing, like I said, mid 20s, and I’m the internet generation, so we started a website. We pull a call out there and, to my surprise, in a couple of months we had hundreds of entries from around the world.

That led to a number of prototypes being build and really experimenting with some ideas. Two years later we started doing a project on developing mobile health clinics in Africa, responding to the HIV/AIDS pandemic. That led to 550 entries from 53 countries. We also have designers from around the world that participate and we had an exhibit of work that followed that.

2004 was the tipping point for us. We started responding to natural disasters and getting involved in Iran and Bam, also following up on our work on Africa. Working within the United States, most people look at poverty and they see the face of a foreigner, but go live in Montana in the north plains on the reservations, or go down to Alabama or Mississippi, pre-Katrina, and I could have shown you places that have far worse conditions than many developing countries I’ve been to. So we got involved in and worked in inner cities and elsewhere. And then also I will go into some more projects.

2005 Mother Nature kicked our ass. I think we can pretty much assume that 2005 was a horrific year when it comes to natural disasters. And because of the internet, and because of connections to blogs and so forth, within literally hours of the tsunami, we were already raising funds, getting involved, working with people on the ground. We run form a couple of laptops in the first couple of days, I had 4000 emails from people needing help. So we began getting involved in projects there, and I’ll talk about some others.

And then of course, this year we have been responding to Katrina, as well of following up on our reconstruction works. So this is a brief overview:

In 2004, I really couldn’t manage the number of people who wanted to help, or the number of request that I was getting. It was all coming into my laptop and my cell phone, so we decided to embrace an open source model of business, that anyone, anywhere in the world, could start a local chapter, and they can get involved in local problems. Because I believed there is not such thing as Utopia, all problems are local, all solutions are local.

So that means that somebody that’s based in Mississippi, knows more than Mississippi than I do, so what happened is, we used some internet tools and we ended up having 40 chapters starting up, thousands of architects in 104 countries.

So in the past seven years, this isn’t just about nonprofit, what it showed me is that there’s a grassroots movement going on of socially responsible designers who really believed that this world has got a lot smaller, and that we have the opportunity to really getting involved in making change. So what you don’t know is that we’ve got these thousands of designers working around the world, connected basically by a website, and we have a staff of three.

By doing something, the fact that nobody told us we couldn’t do it, we did it. And so there’s something to be said about naiveté. So seven years later, we’ve developed so that we’ve got advocacy, instigation and implementation. We advocate for good design, not only through students workshops and lectures and public forums, op-eds, we have a book on humanitarian work, but also disaster mitigation and dealing with public policy, instigation, developing ideas with communities and NGOs doing open-source design competitions. Referring, matchmaking with communities, and then implementing, because when you invent its never a reality until its built. So it’s really important that if we are designing and trying to create a change, we build that change. Thn he shows a select number of projects.

Kosovo: open design competition. It was a transitional shelter that would last five to ten years that would be placed next to the land where the resident lived in, and that they would rebuilt their own home. It wasn’t about imposing an architecture on the community, it was giving them the tools and the spaces for them to do it.

Recycling materials from the old houses to built new ones. In Africa the idea was to get the doctors to the people, so they came up with the idea of mobile health clinics. Architecture its not just about solutions but about raising awareness.

Every one of these projects is sustainable. That’s not because I’m a tree-hugging green person, it’s because when you live on 4 dollars a day, you’re living on survival and you have to be sustainable. You have to know where your energy is coming from, you have to know where your resource its coming from. And you have to keep the maintenance down.

If we do nothing about the housing crisis that’s about to happen, in 20 years one in three people will live in an unplanned settlement or refugee camp. Look left, look right: one of you will be there. How do we improve the living standards of five billion people? With ten million solutions. So I wish to develop a community that actively embraces innovative and sustainable design to improve the living conditions for everyone.

1. What kind of problem(s) did Cameron want to solve?

He wanted to improve people’s life and help them to get through rough times. Like he said “We believe that where the resources and expertise are scarce, innovative, sustainable design and collaborative can really make a difference in people’s life.” And he had a really great philosophy “You are not just doing a building for the residents or the people that’s going to use it, but for a community as a whole.” So his great work started in 1990, when they helped in the issue of the housing crisis for returning refugees in Kosovo.

2. How did he face these problems?

He started a website to pull a call out there so other people could help out and, for his first website project, in a couple of months, they had hundreds of entries from around the world. That led to a number of prototypes being build and really experimenting with some ideas. Two years later they started doing a project on developing mobile health clinics in Africa, responding to the HIV/AIDS pandemic. That led to 550 entries from 53 countries. And also they have designers from around the world that participate and we had an exhibit of work that followed that.

3. Explain four of the architectural solutions presented by him

The solutions that he presented on the speech are projects that are completely sustainable. And that’s because, in his own words “when you live on 4 dollars a day, you’re living on survival and you have to be sustainable. You have to know where your energy is coming from, you have to know where your resource its coming from. And you have to keep the maintenance down. ”  Some of these projects are for example the one in Kosovo where he had to design a transitional shelter that would last five to ten years that would be placed next to the land where the resident lived in, and that they would rebuilt their own home. It wasn’t about imposing an architecture on the community, it was giving them the tools and the spaces for them to do it.   And in Africa the idea was to get the doctors to the people, so they came up with the idea of mobile health clinics. Architecture it’s not just about solutions but about raising awareness.

4. What is the meaning of open-source architecture to house the world?

According to him if we do nothing about the housing crisis that’s about to happen, in 20 years one in three people will live in an unplanned settlement or refugee camp. Look left, look right: one of you will be there. How do we improve the living standards of five billion people? With ten million solutions. So I wish to develop a community that actively embraces innovative and sustainable design to improve the living conditions for everyone

5. In your opinion, what is the most important message in this video?

The most important message for me is that architecture its not just about designing something beautiful, or a jewel like he said. Architecture its also a great instrument to help the people around the world, help them trough the rough times, all the natural disasters around the world.