Humanitarian Design

Humanitarian Design: Firm Programs

Mon, 19 Mar 2012 00:00:00 -0400

Photo © David Wakely Photography One of HOK’s many pro bono projects was an office for the Taproot Foundation, a nonprofit based in San Francisco. The 1% program of Public Architecture now counts over 1,000 firms among its ranks. Although dominated by architecture firms, the program welcomes design practices of all types to pledge a minimum of one percent of their billable hours to pro bono services. Public Architecture now estimates that program’s firm pledges constitute on the order of $38 million in donated services annually. For information: www.theonepercent.org Perkins+Will Social Responsibility Initiative, launched in 2008, is a firm-wide service

Humanitarian Design: Networks

Mon, 19 Mar 2012 00:00:00 -0400

Photo ' Matt Flynn / Smithsonian Institution The Design Other 90 Network is a membership and project database maintained by the Cooper-Hewitt, National Design Museum. It stems from two major exhibitions organized by the institution. Architects/Designers/Planners for Social Responsibility (ADPSR) is a national membership organization with several local chapters, which, since 1981, has sought to link design with environmental protection, ecological building, peace, and social justice causes. Its flagship program is New Village Press, the first book and media publisher dedicated to community design and development. For information: www.adpsr.org The Association for Community Design is membership-based network of independent and

Humanitarian Design: Nonprofit Firms and Organizations

Mon, 19 Mar 2012 00:00:00 -0400

Architecture for Humanity is helping rebuild schools in Haiti.

Humanitarian Design: University Programs

Mon, 19 Mar 2012 00:00:00 -0400

Photo courtesy Studio 804 Studio 804, a design-build program in the architecture school at the University of Kansas, has completed a number of impressive projects, including the 5.4.7 Arts Center in Greensburg, Kansas. BaSiC Initiative is a collaboration of faculty and students from Portland State University and the University of Texas at Austin, which deploys students to work on community-based projects around the world. For information: www.basicinitiative.org The Building Project at Yale University, now in its fifth decade, partners first-year graduate students with nonprofit housing organizations, including Common Ground and Habitat for Humanity. For information: www.architecture.yale.edu/ The Carl Small Town

Humanitarian Design: Awards

Mon, 19 Mar 2012 00:00:00 -0400

Photo courtesy Hsieh Ying-Chun, Rural Architecture Studio and Atelier 3 Taiwanese architect Hsieh Ying-Chun won the 2011 Curry Stone Design Prize. The Berkeley Prize, now in its fourteenth year, is a multipart design and writing competition focused on the social art of architecture. The Berkeley Prize is open to undergraduate students worldwide, though it’s focused largely on architecture students. Multiple awards are given, with the annual purse totaling $12,500. Deadline for submissions is each fall. For information: www.berkeleyprize.org The Core77 Design Awards program, now in its second year, has several “progressive project” categories, including “service” and “social impact”; pro bono

Humanitarian Design: Events

Mon, 19 Mar 2012 00:00:00 -0400

Photo courtesy Design Corps The Public Interest Design Institute is a two-day training program coordinated by Design Corps. A recent session at Yale drew speakers such as Anna Heringer and Michael Murphy. The ACD National Conference is held annually by the Associaton for Community Design. The next conference will take place June 7-10, 2012, in Salt Lake City, Utah. Theme and registration details have yet to be announced. For information: www.communitydesign.org/events The Design Access Summit is a new convention being launched by Public Architecture, aimed at design, government, nonprofit, and philanthropic leaders. It seeks to highlight the role that design

Humanitarian Design: Fellowships

Mon, 19 Mar 2012 00:00:00 -0400

Photo © Iwan Baan The Global Health Corps offers fellowships for designers to work in Rwanda with MASS Design Group, on projects like its Butaro Hospital and evolving master plan (pictured). AmeriCorps, including its VISTA component, is America’s domestic service program that deploys college graduates to fight poverty in low-income communities. The AmeriCorps website sometimes promotes opportunities specifically for architects and designers, with “architectural planning” as an advanced search option. AmeriCorps members receive a modest living allowance, prorated for location (averaging approximately $15,000 annually), plus health insurance, and some programs provide housing assistance. AmeriCorps members who complete one term of

The Laura A. Parsons Building

Fri, 16 Mar 2012 12:30:00 -0400

Photo © Alexander Severin/Razummedia 'We maximized the use of cost-neutral elements'light, form, color, and proportion'to make every dollar count,' says WASA/Studio A senior partner Jack Esterson about the 30,000-square-foot facility for men struggling with substance abuse. On the first two floors, which house support services such as counseling, vocational training, and medical care, a frosted-glass facade lets in daylight but preserves privacy. The top three floors of bedrooms establish a hierarchy of progression for clients'if they stick to the treatment, they move from shared rooms on lower floors to private rooms on upper floors with better views. Residents maintain a

Lions Park Playscape by Rural Studio

goncharj@bnpmedia.com (Joann Gonchar, FAIA) — Fri, 16 Mar 2012 12:30:00 -0400

The design-build studio's latest intervention at Lions Park in Greensboro, Alabama, replaces a much-vandalized playground and is the fifth element designed and constructed at Lions Park by Rural Studio students.

Star Apartments

goncharj@bnpmedia.com (Joann Gonchar, FAIA) — Fri, 16 Mar 2012 12:30:00 -0400

Image courtesy Michael Maltzan Architecture Michael Maltzan Architecture's third project for the Skid Row Housing Trust will connect to its urban context in a variety of ways. For example, the now-under-construction 95,000-square-foot building will incorporate an existing one-story structure slated to house shops and support services for both residents and the larger community. Above this podium, prefabricated apartments will be stacked to define recreational spaces and courtyards, making it the first modularly constructed, multiunit residential building in Los Angeles. ARCHITECT: Michael Maltzan Architecture BUDGET: $19.3 million CONTEXT: When completed in 2013, Star will add 102 apartments to the approximately 1,300

The Windcatcher House

Fri, 16 Mar 2012 12:30:00 -0400

A 'windcatcher' is a centuries-old Persian technology featuring a tower that takes advantage of natural ventilation by capturing and cooling air. Hank Louis, founder of DesignBuildBLUFF, the University of Utah/University of Colorado, Denver design-build studio, recognized the merits of this simple solution for a recently completed Navajo family home. The house features a tower made of compressed earth bricks with four openings around the top. As the wind blows through the slits, wet blankets (moistened by a drip line) chill the air that then circulates around the home. The National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) helped the students engineer the tower,

Windsor Super Market

Fri, 16 Mar 2012 12:30:00 -0400

In 2010, Emily Pilloton and Matthew Miller moved their nonprofit design enterprise, Project H, from San Francisco to Bertie County, North Carolina, to engage in a bold experiment in community development.

Disaster Recovery Plan

goncharj@bnpmedia.com (Joann Gonchar, FAIA) — Fri, 16 Mar 2012 12:30:00 -0400

Image courtesy BNIM The twister that pummeled Tuscaloosa on April 27, 2011, killed more than 50 people and left a trail of destruction a mile wide and more than five miles long. The city's plan for rebuilding calls for neighborhoodscaled commercial centers, improvements to several city parks, and the construction of new municipal facilities like police and fire stations. The scheme also includes a recreation trail that doubles as storm-water-management infrastructure. This greenway dubbed the 'Citywalk,' follows the scar left by the tornado, preserving it as a 'path of remembrance and recovery,' explains Stephen Hardy, BNIM associate principal. ARCHITECT: BNIM

East Bay Center for the Performing Arts

Fri, 16 Mar 2012 12:30:00 -0400

In the early 1920s, Adolph and Elisabeth Winters, recent German 'migr's, hired a little-known San Francisco architect, Albert W. Cornelius, to design a center for ballroom dancing, concerts, and the occasional boxing match, in downtown Richmond, California. The Beaux-Arts structure became known as the Winters Building and, over the years, housed retail space and a bank. But by 1973, when the East Bay Center for the Performing Arts took up residence in part of the building, much of it had fallen into disrepair: Its roofs leaked, its ceilings were low, and the first level's stalwart concrete face gave it the

East Oakland Sports Center

goncharj@bnpmedia.com (Joann Gonchar, FAIA) — Fri, 16 Mar 2012 12:30:00 -0400

Photo © David Wakely A city-commissioned, 25,000-square-foot community sports center aiming for LEED Silver (top) takes its stylistic cues from a nearby shipping company's unadorned HQ. Sustainable materials and features (solar-thermal panels, rainwater-collecting bioswales, a solar-heat-gain-reducing brise soleil) prove green can be fun while providing a haven for kids and the elderly. ARCHITECT: ELS Architecture and Urban Design BUDGET: $20 million CONTEXT: In a neighborhood notorious for drug- and gang-related activity, the building allows respite and recreation on a site once proposed for a sports center for San Francisco's unsuccessful 2012 Olympics bid. People Client: City of Oakland Architect: ELS

Joplin High School

goncharj@bnpmedia.com (Joann Gonchar, FAIA) — Fri, 16 Mar 2012 12:30:00 -0400

After a deadly tornado tore through Joplin, Missouri last year on May 22, leveling the town’s high school, district officials pledged to be ready for the regularly scheduled start of the academic year—less than three months away.

Lo Barnechea

Fri, 16 Mar 2012 12:30:00 -0400

Long-term residents of an informal community in danger of being priced out of a district of metropolitan Santiago are able to stay near schools and jobs owing to the construction of subsidized housing.

Nueva Esperanza School

Fri, 16 Mar 2012 12:30:00 -0400

The Nueva Esperanza School, which was completed in 2009, attempts to live up to its name'new hope in Spanish'by providing a much-needed one-room schoolhouse for a coastal Ecuadorian community. Simple materials (including locally sourced wood, dried palm fronds, and a minimum of purchased hardware) went into the 387-square-foot thatched-roof building, designed by David Barrag'n and Pascual Gangotena of Quito-based al bordE arquitectos, who were commissioned by one of the school's teachers, and donated their services. Construction was a team effort: Members of the community assisted a team of volunteers and al bordE staffers to finish the building's hexagonal base, walls,

Shiroles Rural School

Fri, 16 Mar 2012 12:30:00 -0400

In the low-income, banana-farming community of Shiroles, 140 miles southeast of San Jos', infrastructure and basic amenities are sparse: Before San Jos'based architects Elisa Marin and Manfred Barboza helped establish the Shiroles Rural School in 2009, the closest school was 12 miles away. Government assistance, too, was minimal. Instead, 'we had a lot of support from the community,' says 27-year-old Marin. This support came in both matter and might: parents and other members of the community donated manual labor and building material'timber from the surrounding forest and corrugated metal from a small store about an hour away. The most recent

Fernando Botero Library Park

Fri, 16 Mar 2012 12:30:00 -0400

Cool and urbane, the Fernando Botero Library Park stands sentry on the hillside of San Cristóbal, a rough-edged “urban village” on Medellín’s western fringes. The city’s sixth library-park, it is one of the newest additions to the public building program here, which has garnered worldwide attention in recent years. “It is a difficult topography,” says G Ateliers Architecture’s Orlando Garcia of the mountainous terrain dotted by informal brick construction, “so we wanted to do a simple yet powerful building.” Referring to the constraints of time, budget, and the local workforce’s ability, Garcia notes, “We worked with the reality of our

Jardín Infantil Pajarito La Aurora

Fri, 16 Mar 2012 12:30:00 -0400

Starting in 2006, residents of Moravia, a community living atop a mountain of garbage in Medell'n, were relocated to new public housing in Pajarito, a hillside neighborhood on the city's fringes, accessible by the new Metrocable line. Medell'n-based Planb arquitectos and Ctrl G partnered in a public competition to create this daycare center for 300 of Pajarito's children. Deformed hexagon modules allowed for easy rotation and organizational flexibility of classrooms. The team linked the board-formed concrete volumes in a ring and connected them with an exterior corridor, rendering terraces and cloistered areas for play. The roofs fold to mimic the

Learning and Innovation Network

Fri, 16 Mar 2012 12:30:00 -0400

'We wanted the construction to be very straightforward since, for many people, this would be their first encounter with technology,' notes Mexico City architect Iv'n Hern'ndez Quintela of his community tech hubs. To create classrooms, information centers, and cafeterias, modular units are inserted into existing community centers. Hern'ndez says the units were inspired by 'cimbras,' the makeshift scaffolding found at local construction sites. For example, two-by-fours form the structure for a classroom's polycarbonate walls (left). Now, 72 of Hern'ndez's computer centers are open around the city, offering classes to all ages for about 15 cents each. ARCHITECT: Ludens (Iv'n Hern'ndez

Container Housing

Fri, 16 Mar 2012 12:30:00 -0400

The residents of Shigeru Ban’s Container Temporary Housing in Onagawa used to call themselves the unluckiest people in town. For starters, the Miyagi Prefecture town of 10,000 was all but destroyed on March 11, when 3,800 of its 4,500 houses sustained significant damage or were demolished outright. Then they lost the lottery for temporary housing, leaving them no choice but to remain even longer in the town’s gymnasium-turned-evacuation-center. But after moving into Ban’s buildings, finished in November, this crowd feels it is the luckiest. Though the end product proved to be worth the wait, Ban’s housing seemed to be a

Interim Housing for Rikuzentakata

Fri, 16 Mar 2012 12:30:00 -0400

Having received the green light from the Iwate Prefectural government to erect 60 units of temporary housing for Rikuzentakata, a seaside town of 24,000 that lost 48 percent of its homes, Sumita Jutaku Sangyo, a timber construction company based in the blighted prefecture, tapped Tokyo-based architects Masayuki Harada and Daisuke Sugawara to develop a scheme for the new homes on the appointed site—a hilly inland campground designed for recreational vehicles. Located inland in Sumita-cho, a town that survived the disaster relatively unscathed, the campsite’s individual berths were equipped with utility hookups, and seemed an ideal place for interim housing. But

Japan Post Disaster

Fri, 16 Mar 2012 12:30:00 -0400

One year after the catastrophic earthquake and tsunami, Japan is making progress toward rebuilding its devastated east coast, assisted by local architects and construction professionals eager to help—but there is still a long way to go. On March 11, 2011, a 9.0-magnitude earthquake struck Japan’s eastern Sanriku coast, triggering an enormous tidal wave that left 310,000 people homeless, 23,000 dead or missing, and a cluster of unstable nuclear reactors. Today the debris is largely cleared, roads are open, railways are back in operation, and more than half of the damaged seaports are functioning again. And there is more good news.

Kamaishi City Proposal

Fri, 16 Mar 2012 12:30:00 -0400

An advisor to the Kamaishi city government, Tokyo-based architect Toyo Ito has proposed a reconstruction scheme incorporating both built and landscape elements. Bordering the coast, the plan features berms, green belts, and sloped building sites for housing, intended to mitigate future flooding or tidal waves, while a “Fisherman’s Wharf” area and seaside park is planned to reinvigorate the city’s commercial center. ARCHITECT: Toyo Ito & Associates, Architects. BUDGET: N/A. CONTEXT: Located on the Iwate Prefecture coast, Kamaishi City was heavily damaged on March 11. Though local citizens are keen to resurrect their town as before, the government envisions rebuilding on

Shizugawa Banya

Fri, 16 Mar 2012 12:30:00 -0400

Yasushi Takeuchi, a professor of architecture at Miyagi University in Sendai, was at school when the earthquake hit. In an instant, electricity and cell phones died. Two hours later, the land lines went. With nowhere to go, some 40 students flocked to the campus, blankets and food in hand. For two days they hunkered down in its generator-powered buildings. During that time, the plight of one budding architect’s family prompted the teacher to take action. His protégé’s father, an oyster fisherman, lost everything—dwelling, boats, workplace—when the tsunami washed away his coastal hometown of Shizugawa. “I asked him what he needed,”

Mirebalais Hospital

Fri, 16 Mar 2012 12:30:00 -0400

L’Ecole de Choix isn’t the only new project in town. Just up the road, a 180,000-square-foot hospital designed partly pro bono by Chicago-based Nicholas Clark Architects is slated to open this summer.

College Mixte Le Bon Berger by Architecture for Humanity

Fri, 16 Mar 2012 12:30:00 -0400

Situated on Haiti’s west coast in the town of Montrouis, the College Mixte Le Bon Berger was forced to demolish its two preexisting, structurally unsound buildings following the 2010 earthquake.

Bathhouse

Fri, 16 Mar 2012 12:30:00 -0400

This project, funded in part by Keio University’s Environmental Innovators Program, includes an integrated community meeting place and bathhouse, set for spring completion. The compact building will house separate baths and changing rooms for men and women, plus a boiler room and multipurpose space. Due to the lack of supplies and skilled labor, architect Hiroto Kobayashi, a professor at the university, and his students devised a clever construction system using interlocking plywood panels, which can be easily assembled by the team itself with simple hand tools. ARCHITECT: Hiroto Kobayashi, Keio University. BUDGET: N/A. CONTEXT: When the public bath (On-sen) was