A Quench for Soccer

Shelter | Written by Caroline Markowitz 

You would not think that harvesting rainwater and soccer would go together. But that’s all that architects and social entrepreneurs, Jane Harrison and David Turnbull, could think about during the 2007 Homeless World Cup in Copenhagen. This event, founded by Mel Young of Big Issue fame, is unique in that it’s the only international organized soccer competition for homeless people.

It just so happened that Jane Harrison and David Turbull, co-founders of ATOPIA Research, were in Copenhagen, participating in the Metropolis Biennale organized by Copenhagen International Theatre. Taking advantage of this opportunity to participate in the Homeless World Cup Event, Jane and David were stunned when they realized how much rainwater could be harvested from the 16 meters by 22 meters street-soccer sized pitch. Street soccer, a game played with four players on each team, is literally the game of the streets and informal settlements. Engrossed in the energetic and community oriented feel of the Homeless World Cup, Jane and David staged a game with soccer players from the African teams to share the seeds of the idea.

Why not combine street soccer with mass community rainwater harvesting? Putting the two together would mobilize a community commitment to the project, thought Jane. “Soccer and water was very logical,” Jane explained “and at a very basic level it made tremendous sense to bring those together.” From this, PITCH: Africa was born.

PITCH_Africa game at the Homeless World Cup

Let me rewind the story a little and tell you what ATOPIA Research is and what it does. In 2007 Jane Harrison, a faculty member at the Princeton University School of Architecture, and David Turnbull, a professor of architecture at Columbia University, the Cooper Union and University of Bath in the UK, founded ATOPIA Research. As Jane explained over the phone, ATOPIA Research is a non-profit innovation and development organization that uses architecture and architectural thinking to inventively address tough environmental and social problems in the developing world, including projects in the United States. The organization develops projects and ventures that actively educate and aid in the transformation of poverty-stricken communities around the world.

“We are not motivated by the idealism of being good citizens and ‘doing good’ – we prefer to leave the moralizing out of the picture. Too much aid is delivered under a patronizing cloak,” says Jane, “Genuine transformation requires intelligent, innovative integration of all types of knowledge and expertise, and a great deal of humility. Both bottom up and top down initiatives are insufficient alone to address the scale of the challenges and need to be integrated. Our work is about really coming to understand how the interrelation of social dynamics, environmental predicaments, community needs, and economic viability can produce real, positive change. It is precisely in the regions of the world where constraints are the most extreme, that real innovation is possible.  The West will come to realize that it needs these innovations as well.”

PITCH Africa launch, Los Angeles 2010, Soccer World Cup

And so, PITCH: Africa, which became a non-profit venture in its own right earlier this year – carries as its motto: “One soccer pitch creates…one million liters of water one school one clinic one market one meeting place,” explains it all.

Why Africa?

According to PITCH Intern, Dana McKinney (Princeton ’11), PITCH_Africa involves building a porous street soccer pitch and placing 32 shipping containers underneath the field to collect rainwater. Using end-of-life shipping containers, vast numbers of which are discarded in Sub Saharan Africa to construct the water tank, may be ingenious but it is only one of the methods used in PITCH, explained Jane. Construction materials and methodology are always decided on a location-by-location basis and depends on what makes greatest economic sense and what will be of greatest value to the community. Thus, as Jane explains, they are still figuring out the most intelligent approach.

“The thing about rainwater harvesting,” said Jane, “is that it is powerful and potentially liberating for communities that will never have access to the luxury of large scale piped and centralized water systems. Groundwater extraction through borehole drilling can be a very short sighted and unsustainable enterprise in many regions, and prone to failure given that borehole maintenance requires technical expertise not available to most communities. Boreholes are by no means a catch all solution.” Rainwater harvesting can be done anywhere that it rains and where water is needed. The technology can be understood, learned, and taken on board by the community.

“PITCH_Africa is about learning to conserve in a socially dynamic way. When using renewable resources to organize your community, you’re not relying on resources that don’t exist. Rainfall could supply a huge percentage of water needed,” explained Jane. If all runs smoothly, they will break ground in January and hopefully complete PITCH_Africa by 2013. The town of Liakipia, in Kenya, is fortunate enough to be the first place a project like this will be built in Africa, although ventures are being developed in Nigeria, Madagascar and Senegal, as well as early discussions with communities in eight other countries including South Africa. According to Jane, Kenya “is the best place to start with rainwater harvesting. They really understand just how much their survival depends on it.” Jane’s reasons include: irregular rainfall is increasingly a problem, groundwater supplies are hugely problematic, drought in Somalia is causing refugees to move to Kenya, and they’re already having to dig phenomenally deep wells to harvest water, which is contaminated with fluoride. “The mentality about water is remarkably similar to that of oil,” said Jane, “The problem with fresh water resources, as with oil, is that they are often millennial old and non-replenishable.”

Jane, David and their team have been working with a school in Liakipia. The children, according to Jane, are trilingual and fully numerate by second grade, despite very, very basic facilities. “It’s quite humbling,” explained Jane, “For instance, the children right now are going to be working on incorporating a drama part in their curriculum. The children are working on a play about why you filter rainwater and will be performing it in the community to share their understanding with their families and elders.” Not only are Jane and David empowering the children to teach the community about the upcoming project, but she and her team are also building a relationship within the African scientific community and the African media. Dr. Wole Soboyejo, professor of engineering at Princeton University and technical advisor to ATOPIA Research said, “You have to think holistically about energy, water, and the well-being of the people. Keep them motivated to think of their own solutions.”

The Worldwide Importance of Water

Jane’s concerns about water extend past Africa, circling back to the United States. Jane explained that lessons learned in the developing world must be studied and applied to the western world; natural resources are limited, but Jane asked, “Why do we have such a wasteful attitude to water resources in the US, it is as if we have all decided to agree that the freshwater supply is never ending?” One response that ATOPIA has is to extend the PITCH project to the United States through the PITCH_USA initiative. PITCH_USA, using the technology patented for PITCH_Africa, has been designed for Street Soccer but adapts itself remarkably easily to Basketball and Volleyball. The focus on using the unifying energy of sport as a catalyst for community rainwater harvesting remains, but a secondary focus on food and nutrition, issues now crucial in America, is added. The Star-Spangled Sports Pitch sits within a Star shaped Community Garden. Rather than utilizing the rainwater harvesting to help a community thrive, the rainwater will irrigate the garden, which will be a project for homeless children.

Plan diagram showing pitch and garden.

Studies show that once you have become homeless in society, your sense of time is drastically altered. Jane said, “Gardening programs are a potent way of teaching people how to understand the impact of investing in things over time. Furthermore, learning about nutrition on the back of sport is a lot more fun than being spoon-fed information.” The connection of place, where one can grow things, and time, tending those living things so that they will grow, may well help formerly homeless young people grow a more meaningful relationship with shelter. Jane and David have been collaborating with Lawrence Cann, Director of Development and External Affairs at H.E.L.P. USA; Founder, CEO at Street Soccer USA.

Wole Soboyejo and Jane Harrison exude passion; love for their work poured out in every word during our interviews. It was clear from the first words they spoke on Skype that heart drives PITCH_Africa. “First of all, we only develop projects in areas where we are contacted by communities,” said Jane, “We’re not trying to force this on people.” Both Wole and Jane believe that empowering the people in affected communities is the only way for a project to succeed. Jane continued, “It’s very important that we integrate all aspects, all the time. If the knowledge isn’t integrated or wanted in the community, we’ve satisfied our own interest but it doesn’t have a long-term impact.” It’s this kind of global approach that has spelled success for many in the developing world. Those who design for a culture, and who listen to those they design for, succeed.

Jane teaches her design students to crosscut. For her that means thinking about a project as cutting across different disciplines and communities.

 “A project is always one thing, but get your projects to at least three different things, not by adding on a room for this and that, but by making the same thing function in multiple ways. One set of resourcing having multiple positive effects.”

-Jane Harrison

Consistent with Jane’s teachings, PITCH_Africa is not only a soccer field, but also a rainwater harvester, community center, and place for learning. A place of assembly – an Agora, in the truest sense of the word. PITCH_USA can provide the same for communities in America.

To learn more about Jane’s work and PITCH_Africa go to www.pitch-africa.org. The site is under construction, but you can  click here to donate to PITCH:AFRICA. Funding for the development and testing of PITCH_Africa has been provided by the Annenberg Foundation. Watch a live demonstration on the PITCH here.