“The power of the handmade shouldn’t be taken for granted,” said Michael Murphy, co-founder of MASS Design Group, a practice known for its humanitarian projects. Speaking at Architectural Record’s 19th Innovation Conference in New York last month, Murphy recalled that, after the 2010 Haiti earthquake, many proposals for shelters and clinics there involved prefabrication. “That made sense,” he said, “but the thing people needed were jobs.” His firm’s GHESKIO Cholera Treatment Center incorporated custom metalwork by Haitian artisans. “It’s not just about how we fabricate, but about how we fabricate with as many people as possible.”
Maximizing use of local labor is just one idea that was explored in the daylong conference built around the theme “Architecture and Making in the Post-Digital Age.”
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