Buildings don’t move much, (except in earthquakes) but professions can radically change.
There’s a fascinating debate going on about the changes in the professions of architecture and design. Writing in Salon, Scott Timberg has noticed that creating wildly-expensive ego-driven buildings is not such a great career choice these days. But there is another way to make a living in design, and in architecture, and that is by designing for the ‘other 99%’ – all those people who have not received the benefits of good design. Tom Fisher, Dean of Architecture at the College of Design at the University of Minnesota, writes in Metropolismag.com about the rise of humanitarian design as a real profession. He talks about the power and purpose of organizations like Architecture for Humanity, Project H, the Seed Network and the Mass Design Group.
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.
What are you looking for? People are searching Google for “oil spill in gulf of mexico.” St. Louis, MO is the world’s epicenter for people typing in “how to find a boyfriend.” The number one city searching for “sex” is Delhi, India. The number one city searching for “peace” – Edmonton, Canada.
I’m going to follow the high (Canadian) road and try some Google searches before hoisting a cold drink and paddling a kayak into the Labor Day sunset. Here are my results, not all of them real.
Normally this Google search returns an administration that is wrongheadedly driven to job generation by building more roads, more airports and increasing our dependency on fossil fuels. That’s my read on Laura Tyson’s recent New York Times op-ed piece.
But when I did this Google search, I got something that didn’t suck. My search returned a president who delivers on his promise to build a green infrastructure for America, with solar and wind power. His administration helps move us away from oil, cars and bad mortgages and into something smarter – new online technologies and training and a green economy.
This returns yoga studios that offer classes by donation, like YogaCo and Yogis Anonymous, in Santa Monica. You simply pay what you think the class is worth. Your class is not some recurring charge on your credit card, or a health-club membership, or some other obligation like changing the oil in your car. The health club, credit card model of yoga doesn’t teach us as much about ourselves. As Max Strom writes in A Life Worth Breathing, we can’t use the methods we commonly employ in business and commerce to learn about ourselves. It’s like using a hammer to brush your teeth. Money needs to change hands for yoga classes, but just in a different way.
This search returns links about Bruce Lipton, a biologist who is leading a re-examination of Darwinian evolutionary theory. He spoke at a great event that I attended this week. Bruce says that Darwin’s concept of evolution, the “survival of the fittest,” has led humanity into competition and war. He thinks evolution is really about “survival of the fittingest” – successful species are those that adapt, fit in with nature and play well with other species. If we understand this in time, and stop killing the planet, Mother Nature might not need to cast us out of her garden.
This returns a link to this video, which is coffee porn for the overcaffinated engineer mind. The search does not return any links to Starbucks, which has a good health plan for its employees but teaches them to make an indifferent espresso, a great tragedy for dopamine delivery.
