SHELTER is in production

500 Words on Thursday | Written by Lee Schneider

Back from an action-packed two days of production in San Francisco on SHELTER. While the mind is willing at this hour, the typing fingers are weak. I’m going to give it a shot anyway, because I get to talk to a lot of visionaries while working on SHELTER. It’s always good to write about that. Seth Wachtel just returned from Haiti with stories to tell about tent cities that reached all the way to the airport.

He saw mothers praying over scraps of fabric that once clothed their children. The children are gone; the scraps were all they had.

Seth, the Director of the Architecture and Community Design Program at University of San Francisco, is working on building a medical center and other projects, and he saw signs of tremendous courage and optimism in Haiti.

After our interview with Seth, went to Kevin Rowell’s place. Kevin was living in Haiti for 11 months, since the earthquake, working with builders and community leaders to create sustainable shelter and building systems. Kevin works with Kleiwerks International and he told a moving story of Haitian community leaders who were puzzled (to put it politely) about why they received emergency relief housing that was made of metal — metal that gets hot enough in the Haitian climate to seem to cook the people inside. “I could build something better myself,” said one of the community leaders. Kevin has the great gift of listening to people, really hearing them, and then finding ways to create action from their feelings and ideas. Here’s a video from Kleiwerks that Kevin narrated.

First thing this morning we met architect, professor and author Eric Corey Freed. He’s a funny guy, with a snappy wit and sharp intellect, and therefore it’s no mystery why he’s sought after by corporations and others as a keynote speaker.

We had to look for a good filming location, moving the crew to avoid thumping air compressors, crying babies and distant train whistles, all the things show up as soon as we start the camera.

Eric told me stories about how he tours cities with local leaders who want to know why nobody comes to their downtown. The answer is simple: Those cities, and so many others, have done lots of things to take people away from the city: they’ve built freeways out of town and big box stores and neglected the human scale that breathes life into design. Good design changes everything. Eric made the connection between the foundational work being done in Haiti right now and how it will benefit our own cities. He brought into focus why the design-for-good movement is gaining power.

We wrapped out the day with informative interviews at Architecture for Humanity. Gretchen Mokry, a program manager there, got her arms around the array of projects that AfH has going all over the world, and Sandhya Naidu Janardhan, a program coordinator, gave us specifics about construction training and managerial programs AfH is pursuing in Haiti. AfH has been a good friend to us as we put SHELTER together. Another great friend to SHELTER is John Peterson of Public Architecture. He did an interview for us earlier this week, conducted by my colleague Richard Neill, and he was one of the guiding forces behind Public Architecture’s new book about the power of pro bono work.

Next? Putting this all together for our Sundance Institute application. We’re cutting the trailer next week. A big thank you to Joel Goodman, who will be providing music.

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