Humanitarian Design

RSS

Design-build educators talk pedagogy and real politick. AR: Adam, Andrew, and Dan, you’ve all inherited your programs. How have you dealt with that legacy, or shaped these studios in your image? Hopfner: This is my second year directing the Yale Building Project. I take the stance very strongly that I do not have authorship. I think there’s a danger in that, and I’m certainly not teaching to get my aesthetic agenda across. Photos courtesy Steve Badanes (top); © Susan Surface (above). Steve Badanes recommends that design-build studios take on small public spaces, such as the Garden Gathering Place his University

Design-build educators talk pedagogy and real politick. AR: What long-term effects have your design-build programs wrought on their communities? Are community members learning new construction skills, like the Navajos, for example? Photos © Timothy Hursley Thanks to the Rural Studio’s long-term engagement with the surrounding community, design-build participants’ works are getting bigger and affecting more people. Andrew Freear says the 40-acre Lion’s Park (top), Hale County Animal Shelter project (middle), and Hale County Hospital courtyard renovation (above) are emblematic of that sea change. Louis: What I’ve found, especially with the Rosie Joe House, is that it afforded her the opportunity

Architectural Record: What inspired you to take on relief work?

Almost three years after Hurricane Katrina pushed a 30-foot-high surge of water through East Biloxi, Mississippi, tall weeds grow along streets once lined with houses.

The Gulf Coast Community Design Studio provides a model for rebuilding after Katrina. “We’re not looking to make a sweetened vernacular,” Perkes explains. “If anything, we’re looking for something energetic or a bit more robust.” A striking butterfly roof allows the house for Le and Nghia Tran (opposite) to fit gracefully under mature trees and directs runoff to a cistern to water the garden. Working with students from Penn State University, as well as University of Texas, Austin professor Serge Palleroni and Bryan Bell of the Charlotte-based social-outreach organization Design Corps, the studio designed a fretwork of wooden braces to

Almost three years after Hurricane Katrina pushed a 30-foot-high surge of water through East Biloxi, Mississippi, tall weeds grow along streets once lined with houses. Biloxi’s casinos have been reconstructed, larger than their former selves.

Transit City Although Norway normally receives several thousand asylum seekers annually, this year the number of applications has increased to a projected 15,000. Currently, Code partner Henning Kaland explains, refugees are housed in rundown hotel rooms and report to one of approximately 200 asylum reception centers. Although refugees can attend language classes during their application period, “they are basically offered to do nothing for one to two years, waiting to get an answer from our well-developed bureaucracy. This can be a very frustrating period, when people feel insecure about what the future will hold.” Photo: © Benjamin Benschneider Bjarne Ringstad,

Guest editor of RECORD's October 2008 issue, David Sokol, speaks with San Diego architect Teddy Cruz about form, politics, and 'repositioning practice.' David Sokol: In this October’s “The Architect’s Hand” column, RECORD published two of your works. Border Postcard was realized in 2000. This mosaic of photographic fragments collected between Tijuana and San Diego represents how the urban infrastructure of San Diego is recycled into the fabric of Tijuana. A more recent artwork installed at this year’s Venice Biennale, Radicalizing the Local: 60 Miles of Trans-Border Urban Conflict, is a photographic cross-section of the border between these two cities highlighting

Guest editor of RECORD's October 2008 issue, David Sokol, speaks with San Diego architect Teddy Cruz about form, politics, and 'repositioning practice.' DS: How does inserting architecture at these margins manifest itself architecturally, or do you become a politician? TC: That fear of politics and social engineering has generated debate. I think ultimately that’s counter-productive. I feel that the only terrain that can be fertile for experimental architecture needs to be a terrain that is composed of the right sociopolitical and economic conditions. Image courtesy Estudio Teddy Cruz Teddy Cruz with Ana Aleman, Border Postcard: The Tijuana Workshop, 2000. I

Architects have embraced social responsibility longer than the media has acknowledged. In fact, an optimistic view of design’s ability to improve the world has defined great movements in the profession’s history. But only recently has activity in this field and attention from the press reached critical mass. This issue of record considers the flourishing of design with conscience—from isolated instances in the academy to an increasing trend in practice. Image courtesy Urban-Think Tank Urban-Think Tank is working on two vertical gyms for Venezuela’s barrios. Read a profile of the firm in our Humanitarian Design section. Why the explosion? “What may