Shelter is a documentary film about architects, designers and engineers who are using good design to address the shelter needs of survivors of natural disasters. Our blog contributors tell stories about shelter issues worldwide.
It was a whirlwind trip to Haiti last month. Then I got right off the plane and right into editing. We’re preparing to show two short sequences from our Haiti production days at the Architecture and the City Festival in San Francisco. I just finished the edit, and the outputs, burned a few DVDs and am taking some time to write this.
I want to take a moment to thank Tom Fisher, Trevor Miller and James Lutz at the College of Design: University of Minnesota. We are collaborating with this great team of folks on a virtual exchange program involving architecture students. The College of Design team’s collective vision made the Haiti production trip possible. More on that below …
The Haiti I saw was a mixture of destruction and hope, of stagnation and powerful forces moving the rebuilding effort. I met dedicated people working hard to change everything – not just getting the rebuilding going, but also examining how we build, how we work with communities, and how we teach all of this so that I can be used elsewhere, not just in Haiti. I’m looking forward to introducing you to some of these forces of nature in the film: Yves Francois, who left an architecture career in New York to return to Haiti, where he was born, to build schools, and Alex Duquella, dean of architecture at a university in Haiti that was completely destroyed by the earthquake. He is rebuilding it using his own designs and a palpable force of will. I met students of architecture who were articulate, motivated, and passionate about their country. We attended a planning meeting at the Haiti office of Architecture for Humanity and I was astounded at the number of projects they are managing.
Travel is full of disconnects. One day I’m in a Comfort Inn outside the Miami airport waiting for a flight, then next day I’m in a hotel in Petionville that is far nicer than the Comfort Inn.There was often a disconnect while driving along in an air conditioned vehicle, the radio playing beautiful Haitian pop music, and looking out side and seeing settlement after settlement, thousands of displaced people. And all that more than a year after the earthquake. Here’s what it looked like as we drove a road near Port au Prince called La Piste.
I’ve posted a lot of images of the trip on Flickr, and some show the (small) Haiti production team in action – a driver, me, and Michelle Marrion, who was Haiti coordinating producer and also camera operator. I think what we captured will show a powerful optimism and spirit – I look forward to posting the sequences here soon.
For now, we’re happy to be preparing to show an early cut of Shelter sequences at the Architecture and the City Festival. Richard Neill and I helped curate the film series for the festival. Every Wednesday night from now till the end of September, there will be great movies. The first night, Wednesday September 7, will feature Shelter as a work in progress and also the great film Citizen Architect: Samuel Mockbee and the Spirit of the Rural Studio. Richard and I will lead a panel discussion about designing for good to start things off. Other nights feature Malls R Us, Unfinished Spaces, Urbanized from Gary Hustwit, and a film about Rem Koolhaus.
Thanks to all who helped us make these production days a reality. The College of Design: University of Minnesota provided major funding for this production segment. Thanks to Raymond West Liden of Liden, Nestle, Soled and Associates, who provided generous funding for this production. And a big thanks to all our friends who donated to Shelter on IndieGoGo or through the San Francisco Film Society’s Fiscal Sponsorship program.
Peter Kellett’s article “Constructing informal places” reminds me most of the motive of the Shelter Blog.
In this article, Kellett describes a place as an environment through which one marks their settlement on their own “independent of external controls or professional advice.” Secondly, Kellett explains that construction and occupation occur concurrently and third, that these places are zones of dynamic change with extremely creative progressions based on materials available. A self made home holds a sense of pride, self esteem, achievement, and independence in that there is no landlord or contractor dictating how a person should be living in the given space.
Image of Dharavi from Planetizen via Flickr user Mumbai Magic
Now, a home that is found within the confines of a cardboard box or under a banana leaf may seem to anyone living in the better part of the first world as a punishment in and of itself, but for people that have had to live in these conditions it becomes a blessing in disguise. Evidence of such can be seen in slum cities such as Dharavi, India where the residents have freedom to build up their “property” as much as they like, save there being someone willing to purchase the “land” above them, or opening a store in the front half of their toolbox home, without having to be concerned with purchasing an office or store strictly for this purpose.
There is a micro economy located within each city block and there is no way of recreating such an environment in the common world as we know it.
This just goes to show that shelter and place are not only zones of physical comfort, psychological safety, and a separation from the outside world but rather how one manages to use the space.
Any space can become a place based on how one maneuvers through it, and through the rituals practiced within its confines.
A person can live in a cardboard box, or under a banana leaf, but as long as they can gain a ritualistic relationship with the space, they have the opportunity to create a place within the space (no assembly required). The feeling of a space within a cardboard box, a wooden shack, and a multistory mansion can easily be the same based only on a person’s ritualistic relationship with the space.
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Thanks to Lauren Matchison, lecturer at the University of Southern California and architect at Lauren Matchison, Architect for inviting her students to submit posts to the Shelter blog.
As I was filling out our mid-year report for the San Francisco Film Society I found myself thinking about milestones. Usually report cards like this make me nervous. I think I got a really good one in the fourth grade. The teacher commented, “Lee is our stronghold of scientific inquiry.” So as I opened the online form for SFFS my mind was racing. SFFS is our fiscal sponsor, and they are the entity that makes it possible for all of you to make tax-deductible donations to Shelter. I wondered if we had accomplished enough in the past six months?
Turns out I didn’t have to worry much. As I started to compile the report I could see a satisfying list of achievements for the film and its related projects. Here are a few of them.
We raised more than $5,000 on IndieGoGo in a “crowdsourced” funding campaign.
We doubled the size of our advisory board, adding great people in media, philanthropy, marketing and NGOs.
We have four grant requests pending, applied for three major ones and were invited to reapply to all of them in the next funding cycle (They were Sundance, California Council of the Humanities and the Tribeca Documentary Fund.)
We’re prepping six more grant applications that will be ready by the fall.
We spoke about Shelter at gatherings large and small, including at Architecture for Humanity in San Francisco, and to a class of architecture students at USC.
Many of those students volunteered to create blogs for Shelter, and the most recent one is posted here.
We’re planning a symposium at USC for the fall on the topic of ‘design for good.’
We’ve launched the ‘virtual exchange program’ that will allow architecture students in Haiti create videos about their hopes and dreams that will be shown to students in the schools we visit to speak about Shelter.
We’ve hired a production coordinator in Haiti who is helping us set up our filming days there.
We’ve hired a graphics company, fusioncreative.ca, to design a visual identity package for the film.
And, finally, we’re helping to curate a film festival about architecture for the Architecture and the City Festival in San Francisco this September. We’re planning to show a short work-in-progress version of Shelter there on September 7th.
Wow. Not a bad list, and I left out some of the blogs and media we’re working on now. Thanks for following along on our journey.
If you’d like to donate to the film, you can do that through the San Francisco Film Society. It’s a tax-deductible donation.
Our hearts reach out to the people of Haiti who are trying to pick up the pieces in the aftermath of the horrific earthquake. The country still has an incredibly long road ahead of them – first, in rescuing survivors and then providing them with safe, healthy and environmentally friendly shelters. Since Hurricane Katrina, a number of individuals and companies have worked to develop new and improved emergency relief structures. Read on to see the ones that could be put to use in Haiti.
Green Horizon Prefab Shelter
Green Horizon Prefab is environmentally friendly, made from recycled materials, outfitted with solar panels, greywater recycling, wired for utilities and made of prefabricated parts. The prefab can be easily shipped by attaching wheels to the bottom and carting via truck, or it can be placed in a shipping container. Manufacturing for the Green Horizon has already begun, but no word if they are far enough along to be utilized.
Folding Bamboo House
A simple yet elegant design, the Folding Bamboo House, designed by Ming Tang, is constructed from bamboo and recycled paper and can be cheaply manufactured. Tang designed the geometric folding structure after a7.9 earthquake hit central China. The structures can be folded into many different shapes, allowing a range of structures to be created.
Reaction Housing Emergency Shelters
These shelters, designed by Michael Daniel, are designed to be quickly deployed and (because they are flat packed) many can be shipped to the disaster area at one time. Easily assembled in minutes without any tools or machinery, the Reaction Housing unit can house up to 4 people and is wired for utilities.
The buBble House
This shelter is made out of a lightweight plastic skin that is put on over an aluminum frame. Clothing, fabrics, grass or other materials can be inserted into the skin to create insulation, and it also includes hookups for water and utilities. Minimalist in design, this prototype has a lot of potential to be easily manufactured and deployed.
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Thanks to Lauren Matchison, lecturer at University of Southern California and architect at Lauren Matchison, Architect for inviting her students to submit posts to the Shelter blog.
As reconstruction is underway to aid a devastated Japan, we must look at the long-term effects of this tragedy, and identify the “lessons learned” for not only architects and designers, but for relief efforts and implementation as well.
Some effects of the March earthquake were unforeseen. Urayasu, the location of Disneyland Japan, literally began to sink into the ocean due to a process called liquefaction, seen in this video, in which the violent shaking of the Earth’s crust forces tightly packed sand particles to shift apart and allow water to seep in. Water began to instantly rise in Urayasu and other parts of Japan causing entire structures to seep into the thick mud which remained for days after the earthquake. Architects therefore must find new and innovative ways to combat this process when rebuilding Japan.
As for sustainable reconstruction efforts, Rachel Minnery, chair of the American Institute of Architects Disaster Assistance Task Force, advocates community involvement, or a “bottom up” approach that will engage those most affected in problem-solving. “Architects and planners can facilitate and lead design workshops…that illicit ideas and input from communities whereby they develop a unique vision that reflects them and provides direction for their [re]newing community.” On the other hand, engineers and planners must also take this opportunity to learn how structures perform in a disaster such as this in order to “inform the next evolution of the building code” that will inevitable arise after this eye-opening tragedy.
Minnery points out that one of the most significant lessons learned is that “Japan was THE role model in regards to [earthquake] preparedness and mitigation.” For such a severe catastrophe to strike a country that is not only consciously aware of the “hazardous risks in their environment” and therefore makes choices in where to live accordingly, but is also structurally and politically extremely prepared for natural disasters is a huge wake up call to the rest of the world.
With scientists increasingly predicting stronger storms in the near future, countries, including the United States, must begin to reevaluate the sustainability of their structures against stronger and more violent disasters, as well as the efficiency and readiness of their relief and reconstruction strategies.
On March 11, 2001 an 8.9 magnitude earthquake struck off the coast of Japan, prompting massive tsunamis, up to 23 feet high, that devastated the northeastern coast and triggered the worst nuclear disaster since Chernobyl. With approximately 500,000 Japanese citizens either displaced or evacuated, officials are scrambling to distribute sufficient food and water, and to provide adequate shelter, as thousands are forced into school gymnasiums and any remaining structures to escape the devastation and turmoil outside.
Within days of the tragedy, architecture organizations across the globe began to mobilize to bring relief to the Japanese people—if only to afford them some much-needed privacy in the midst of cramped and chaotic public shelters. The Voluntary Architects Network is helping to supply a knockdown cardboard partition system, designed by Shigeru Ban, to the gymnasiums housing refugees, and the American Institute of Architects has already reached out to their Japanese counterparts to offer any assistance in their relief efforts.
Other organizations are spearheading fundraising campaigns to finance current and future efforts in Japan. Architecture for Humanity, although actively mobilizing teams in Tokyo, Osaka, and Kyoto, has put forth a timeline for their reconstruction plan. The first “transitional” phase, which they have already begun, will last four months and will focus on raising funds and providing initial assessments, while continuing to coordinate with Japanese architects and professional building associations. They have a fundraising goal of $200,000. The second “reconstruction” phase, will take place during the next two years in which AFH will engage in small-scale projects for local organizations in which they believe they can have the most success.
Private architects, as well, are getting involved to help speed up relief efforts. John Pawson, a British architect who spent many years in Tokyo, is offering a “Ribbon for Japan” download on his website, and suggests a 1 euro donation to the Red Cross. Others are offering their expertise—numerous professors of environmental and earthquake engineering at the University of California Los Angeles have released their contact information to relief organizations to make themselves available to give guidance and advice on how to rebuild a safer Japan.
Jesus Herrera is a third year student at USC, majoring in Public Policy, Management, and Planning and minoring in Architecture. As he grew up in Inglewood, CA, he learned how difficult it is for people of low socioeconomic status to own a house and to maintain a healthy community. For those reasons, he is interested in becoming an Urban Planner to help design and develop better cities and/or communities for people of low socioeconomic status.
This information is taken directly from theBeyond Shelter website and the reason I believe this information is important is because this agency defines how to end some cases of homelessness.
Beyond Shelter believes in providing more than just a physical shelter. They help incoming families by trying to get them into a house of their own again and by helping families plan out what needs to be done to get them back into permanent housing. They understand that shelter is important, but also emphasize that just by giving people a shelter their problem of homelessness will not be solved. Moreover, this agency reminds me of Dignity Village because it educates the people who come to get help and relies on community involvement with the people there.
[Editor's Note: Here is what Beyond Shelter has to say about ending and preventing family homelessness. For more information about Beyond Shelter, please visit their website.]
Homelessness is one of our nation’s most serious social problems. While it is often the result of interwoven systemic and personal problems, the primary cause of homelessness among families is the growing gap between housing costs and income. The emergency shelter system is able to accommodate only a small fraction of the growing number of homeless families in need. Families are forced to live in their cars, in garages, in other places unfit for human habitation or to move from place to place with their children, staying intermittently with friends and families. Even a short period of homelessness can lead to depression, mental illness and child neglect, yet increasing numbers of families are homeless for months and sometimes years. Emergency shelters are unable to provide the intensive long-term assistance which homeless families require in order to stabilize their lives. While transitional housing programs do provide such assistance, families are more responsive to service interventions from a stable, permanent housing base.
According to the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, we are now experiencing a period when worst-case housing needs are at an all-time high. While some communities are beginning to see reductions in chronic homelessness, in many communities family homelessness is exploding and families with children are the fastest growing segment of the homeless population. Many experts attribute the increase in the number of homeless families to a combination of the following factors:
Welfare reform
High rates of domestic violence
Declining purchasing power of low-wage jobs
Decrease in availability of affordable family housing
Responses to Date
For most of the past two decades, public and private solutions to homelessness have focused on providing homeless families with emergency shelter and/or transitional housing. While such programs may provide vital access to services for families in crisis, they often fail to address the long-term needs of homeless families. Families need help in finding affordable housing, negotiating leases and developing the skills to stay housed.
Housing First Methodology
“Housing first” or rapid re-housing as it is also known, is an alternative to the current system of emergency shelter/transitional housing, which tends to prolong the length of time that families remain homeless. The methodology is premised on the belief that vulnerable and at-risk homeless families are more responsive to interventions and social services support after they are in their own housing, rather than while living in temporary/transitional facilities or housing programs. With permanent housing, these families can begin to regain the self-confidence and control over their lives they lost when they became homeless.
For over 20 years, the housing first methodology has proven to be a practical means to ending and preventing family homelessness. The methodology is currently being adapted by organizations throughout the United States through Beyond Shelter’s Institute for Research, Training and Technical Assistance and the National Alliance to End Homelessness’ Housing First Network
It is is easy for citizens living in developed countries to take sanitation for granted. In the United States, citizens do not spend much time thinking about waste. They don’t need to. The United States has one of the most developed waste sanitation systems in the world.
Waste is deposited into a toilet. It is flushed, and it disappears, taken care of by towns, cities, municipalities, counties, and their employees, the very employees who are probably looked at with pity, and maybe even a bit of disgust.
The latter is not a savory topic of conversation, nor does it make people comfortable. It’s not a cause celebree among international aid and development groups. It certainly doesn’t inspire massive, celebrity-backed concerts. Fortunately, Sustainable Organic Integrated Livelihood, or SOIL, doesn’t let this deter them. The organization is currently devising means to tackle the problem of waste sanitation in post-earthquake Haiti. Inefficient waste disposal poses enormous challenges for the Haitian population.
SOIL, led by Stanford graduate Dr. Sasha Kramer, is a “non-profit organization dedicated to protecting soil resources, empowering communities, and transforming wastes into resources in Haiti.” SOIL’s mission is straightforward. Human waste is collected, composted, and recycled, and resulting soil is used for agriculture and reforestation.
SOIL’s aims are lofty. Though waste collection and composting, the team seeks to “improve public health, increase household income and agricultural production, mitigate environmental degradation, and provide low-cost sanitation for rural communities.”
SOIL kicked off with the construction of 200 ecological public toilets in Internally Displaced Persons (IDP) camps. The organization has since moved into the arena of installing the toilets in private homes. At a recent talk at Stanford, Dr. Kramer expanded on SOIL’s goals.
“Instead of focusing on very high outputs, we must focus on developing a sustainable business model that can be passed onto the private sector. We are moving away from public toilets and moving into household toilets. It’s very challenging to maintain public toilets.”
The SOIL waste collection and compost system works as follows: the specially built, ecological toilets separate liquid and solid wastes. The waste is then collected from a 15-gallon drum collection system that sits under the toilet, and is taken off-site for composting. The waste must compost for a year before it can serve as usable fertilizer.
The team has, understandably, encountered challenges. In October 2010, at the height of the cholera outbreak, the team worked to ensure the composting was foolproof. There was also the problem of the chickens; as it turns out, chickens are attracted to waste compost, and were laying their eggs at the compost sites. The team had to then cover with compost with chicken wire. Dr. Kramer anticipated these challenges, and sticks to a refreshing philosophy in an effort to identify kinks:
“One thing I’ve realized is really important is, when you’re advocating a new technology, to try it out yourself.”
Currently, SOIL derives monthly income from compost sales and from private toilet collection. The monthly income helps further SOIL’s goal of using poop- yes, poop- to take deforested hillsides and turn them into agricultural land that can start feeding people. According to SOIL’s official statistics, “only 16% of rural Haitians and 50% of those in cities have access to adequate sanitation facilities, by far the lowest coverage in the Western Hemisphere…at the same time, agricultural output is low due to poor soil fertility, soil erosion and lack of fertilizers.”
Dr. Kramer seeks to move SOIL out of the emergency approach to a more long-term, developmental approach, in an effort to address the incredible- and criminally neglected- challenge waste disposal presents. As the world’s population continues to increase and as cities continue to grow, effective sanitation is necessary. Shelter- and good design- does not start and end with a roof, a door, a floor, or walls. It’s much greater than the sum of its parts.
Budding architect Michael Boyd grew up in D.C., but found his perspective on architecture shaped by Hurricane Katrina. When the storm hit New Orleans, Boyd moved down to the city to help out family there and began working as a carpenter. Following a move back to D.C. and four years spent renovating homes, he came to realize he took joy in, and had a talent for, conceptualizing drawings. Boyd has strong opinions on the state of American architecture, post-Katrina building, and disaster relief- and he fortunately isn’t afraid to express them. The differing and diverse architectural opinions of future architects and designers will continue to steer the dynamic world of A&D, and keep the debate lively. Below, we feature the second interview in our “New Faces of Architecture and Design” series.
Home renovation by Michael Boyd
I think that much of the criticism of American architecture is not so much a criticism of the actual architecture at a micro-scale but rather a criticism of macro-scale development patterns that are more the result of economic and social factors than architectural choices. That is not to say that I do not find the architecture of the typical suburban parachute house offensive- it is- but it also is less a product of an architect than the product of a developer, and for the most part a developer’s concern is driven by economics, not design.
I also think that while there is much to criticize about “suburban sprawl,” it is not necessary fair or useful to directly compare this relatively unique American pattern of development to other countries, because the direct comparison often ignores larger cultural, economic and social factors. For better or worse America is not Europe. There are political, historical, economic, legal and population density differences that have led to differences in development. I think we recognize that much the post- WWII development in America has been unsustainable and I think that we are beginning to see a shift to a more sustainable pattern of development, or at least a desire to move in that direction.
What does “socially conscious design” mean to you?
Good Architectural design needs to be “conscious” of just about everything. It seems to me that the trick is balancing all of the disparate things that one needs to be conscious of in the correct proportions for any given project. To that end, it is the duty of the architect to not only serve their client but also explain to their client the broader impact of their decisions. To not be cognizant of the fact that building has an effect on both the natural environment and the socio-cultural environment would be negligent. That being said, the perfect cannot become the enemy of the good. Every project has a broad set of stakeholders, some with more legal or economic sway than others, and architects need to be cognizant of various people or groups that will be affected by the change in the built environment and work to minimize negative impacts while maximizing positive impacts. Not everyone is going to be satisfied by every decision made. It is impossible. I think a better credo to follow would be “don’t be stupid” or “strive to minimize harm” because the reality is that property will be developed and the developer is doing it for a profit. If architects put perfection before practical considerations the people with the money to actually build buildings will simply remove architects from the process. The result is then not consciously designed with any consideration other than profit in the equation.
You have family in NOLA and spent a year there following the storm. What do you consider some of the most successful and least successful post-Katrina architectural projects?
I find the most frustrating aspect of some of the post-Katrina architectural projects to be just how architecturally focused some of them appear to be. The problem in New Orleans is not that there is a lack of “architecture” but that there is a lack of housing and particularly affordable housing. New Orleans was and is an architecturally unique city by American standards, with a housing style that had developed over time to the needs of the city. Certainly any effort to help is important, but in a time of need it is more important to actually fill the needs of the population. Efforts to reinvent the wheel through “design” are really just a waste of resources. Given the total destruction there was and is an opportunity to practice a better and more responsible architecture, but the pressing need is putting people back in houses and rebuilding a community, not design. To that extent the rebuilding of New Orleans should embrace sustainability and modern building techniques but should balance that against the ease and speed of construction and the plain hard economics of affordable housing.
I like Make it Right’s approach in that they are actually putting up houses that are both environmental friendly and in the correct vernacular. I think an opportunity was missed with the Katrina Cottages designed by Andres Duany and sold by Lowes. In my mind these straight forward, easy to build, affordable designs should have been more fully embraced and utilized. They are literally so straight forward in design and construction that community teams, with little or no building experience, could have been trained to put them up quickly. This would have led to a community run effort to rebuild that was self-sustainable and provided economic opportunities while at the same time filling the housing need.
What would you like to see change in the field of post-disaster relief and recovery?
I think the most important thing to remember and embrace in post-disaster relief is the need KISS, Keep It Simple Stupid. The need is clear: there is a lack of adequate shelter, and the design process should be driven by that need above all else. Thus architects should look around to see what worked and what didn’t work, see what is natively available and what construction skills are present, and design in a way that effectively utilizes the opportunities and materials at hand. The opportunity to advance “design” is present, but it isn’t the pressing issue. I also feel that the hand of God approach is not really sustainable. Handing out shelters without training a community how to provide for themselves moving forward is inefficient and ultimately not sustainable. Thus, any effort to advance the base of knowledge in construction is important.
If you could meet one living architect right now, who would it be?
That is a tough question; I could run off a string of dead architects I would have loved to have met. I think that in terms of a body built work and an approach to that work I would really love to meet San Francisco-based David Baker. That is not to say that I love all of his work, but I am truly impressed by his approach to affordable housing and his ability to get it built. If the question, however, were purely about design style I would go with Richard Meier.
We are grateful for the assistance and generosity of the San Francisco Film Society, fusioncreative.ca, Blick Art Materials, Panasonic Broadcast, Zipcar and Wildfire Promotions.
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I want to take a moment to thank Tom Fisher, Trevor Miller and James Lutz at the College of Design: University of Minnesota. We are collaborating with this great team of folks on a virtual exchange program involving architecture students. The College of Design team’s collective vision made the Haiti production trip possible. More on that below …
