Humanitarian Design

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With a series of projects in Bangladesh, Anna Heringer has turned modest resources and traditional materials into architecture that is both vigorously contemporary and attuned to local social forces. . Years before she became an architect, Anna Heringer traveled to Bangladesh as a young volunteer with Dipshikha, a nongovernment organization dedicated to rural development. “I got to know Bangladesh by spending a year studying its agricultural ways, its schools, and the health issues facing its people,” recalls the German-born architect, who has since built a series of small projects in the village of Rudrapur. Photos © Team Rudrapur Anna Heringer’s

RECORD invites designers to redefine the refugee experience. Despite the best efforts of global capital and the Internet to erase boundaries between countries, citizenship—and its attendant rights—still is defined by geography. The world’s 10 million refugees, then, occupy intermediate places where everything from basic services to a sense of dignity is defined by design. Since these schemes rarely transcend the minimal requisites of survival, we asked three architects to imagine enlightened alternatives to the tent cities and training centers that tend to dot the refugee landscape today, either in the architects’ own neighborhoods or abroad. Each of these participants has

RECORD invites designers to redefine the refugee experience. PHOOEY Architects Flemington Youth Center In October 2007, Australia’s then minister of immigration, Kevin Andrews, admitted that the government had altered its refugee policy in response to the impression that Africans, and particularly Sudanese asylum-seekers, had trouble assimilating with the culture. In the wake of the murder of Sudanese refugee Liep Gony, Andrews said, “I have been concerned that some groups don’t seem to be settling and adjusting into the Australian way of life as quickly as we would hope, and therefore it makes sense to put the extra money into slow[ing]

RECORD invites designers to redefine the refugee experience. Deborah Gans and DenIse Hoffman Brandt Dadaab Urban Plan “The refugee camps of today are the cities of tomorrow,” says New York–based architect Deborah Gans, who, with landscape architect Denise Hoffman Brandt, proposes reconfiguring Dadaab, Kenya, to better accommodate its three refugee settlements. Dadaab proves Gans’s point. The region around this arid town near the Somalia border, which ballooned to 200,000 people during Ethiopian military actions in Somalia in 2006, has housed the Dagahaley, Hagadera, and Ifo camps for more than 30 years. More recently, the trio of camps counted 135,000 inhabitants,

Following two decades of prison and exile, Luyanda Mpahlwa is now a founding partner in the award-winning South African firm MMA Architects. He spent two decades in prison and in exile, but Luyanda Mpahlwa is now a partner in a thriving architectural practice. MMA Architects—his Cape Town, South Africa, firm—has gained international recognition for projects both at home and abroad. The firm’s work on an innovative housing project in the impoverished Mitchell’s Plain Township has just been honored with the Curry Stone Design Prize, a $100,000 humanitarian award established this year to pay tribute to designers tackling the needs of

Flemington Youth Center In October 2007, Australia’s then minister of immigration, Kevin Andrews, admitted that the government had altered its refugee policy in response to the impression that Africans, and particularly Sudanese asylum-seekers, had trouble assimilating with the culture. In the wake of the murder of Sudanese refugee Liep Gony, Andrews said, “I have been concerned that some groups don’t seem to be settling and adjusting into the Australian way of life as quickly as we would hope, and therefore it makes sense to put the extra money into slow[ing] down the rate of intake from countries such as Sudan.”

Design-build educators talk pedagogy and real politick. Since the inauguration of the Yale Building Project in 1967, bolstered by Samuel Mockbee’s Rural Studio work through the 1990s, design-build workshops have flowered in universities throughout the U.S. From the start, student-run design-build conflated with community action, and as a result these real-world classrooms have produced landmark examples of socially responsible architecture. This academic phenomenon continues to achieve practical solutions that inspire the design community at large and produce young activists as well as knowledgeable architects. Recently, we invited several leading professors to join us in a telephone roundtable to discuss the

Design-build educators talk pedagogy and real politick. Architectural Record: Steve, I’ve heard that you think design-build studios should operate under the radar rather than speak with the press.  Steve Badanes: I might have said it once, but I think everybody is here for a reason. We’re in constant fundraising mode. And any media attention helps us gain credibility with our schools, which are always questioning what we do, and with the profession in general. Photos © Michael Moran Instead of taking on one of its usual city-based clients, in 2006 The Design Workshop, a program of Parsons The New School

Design-build educators talk pedagogy and real politick. AR: Deciding whether students should participate in design-build earlier or later in their academic careers makes me wonder, more generally, Do any of you consciously try to differentiate your design-build studio from one of your colleague’s? Lewis: We respond not to other design-build programs but to local conditions—the constraints, obligations, possibilities, and opportunities that exist. Inevitably you learn from the other programs to find out what works and what hasn’t. But the internal logistics of, say, trying to build in New York City helps shape the identity of the program. Geography and institution

Design-build educators talk pedagogy and real politick.