Architecture for Humanity
A TED talk by Cameron Sinclair (2006) tells us how architects should serve more people. Cameron Sinclair argued that architecture should not be an exclusive service available only for the rich (those who can afford architectural consultancy service). Architecture should serve the humanity. The full video can be watched on TED website or below.
He started the presentation by talking about his training as an architect and his finding that in most of the case, architects are often treat their work as a "jewel". His belief that a design should be socially responsible and improve the community was an unusual one among his architecture student colleagues. He believed that an architecture should not only be designed for the people who are going to use it, it should also be designed for the community as a whole.
Following his passion in socially responsible design, Cameron started up a non profit organization to address a number of socially-related built environment issues: housing crisis in Kosovo, mobile clinics in Africa, and a number of post natural disasters reconstructions in different places of the world. This non-profit movement was founded as "Architecture for Humanity" together with Kate Stohr in 1999. His non-profit organization grew quickly and he started to struggle with handling rapidly increasing number of people who wanted to help and get involved. This led to the development of an open source-source model of business. This opened up opportunities for anyone in any part of the world to start their own local chapter of Architecture for Humanity. By 2013 when the co-founders decided to step down, Architecture for Humanity had more than 63 chapters around the world with thousands of architects involved.
Architecture for Humanity projects coverage as of 2011 (Architecture for Humanity)
The very first project of Architecture for Humanity was a design competition of a five-year transitional housing for returning refugees in Kosovo. According to UNHCR, 40-50% houses were destroyed because of the war. Two hundred designs from 30 countries were received. As an outcome, five entries were selected and prototypes were built. As the organization and the network of chapters grow, more and more projects were designed and built in different parts of the world including: Haiti, Africa, Japan, etc. In 2007, Open Architecture Network was established to host the these design competitions.
College Mixte Le Bon Berger, a sustrainable school in Haiti built by Architecture for Humanity (inhabitat.com)
Unfortunately, the headquarter of Architecture for Humanity was shut down in 2015. After 15 years of relentless effort in rallying the cause of humanitarian design and inspiring designers around the world, the charity organization filed a bankruptcy and laid off its employees. I was a sad and unfortunate story. The downfall of the organization was caused by financial problems. Lack of consistent source of funding failed to cope with growing number of projects. Mismanagement also contributed to the failure of sustaining the organization. Despite the financial collapse of its headquarter, the independent chapters and volunteers around the world continue their amazing work. Personally, what Cameron and his volunteers-army did has inspired me (and the world) a lot and their legacy is always forever remembered: Design Like You Give a Damn. Thanks for doing great things and we (the architects who share the same vision with you), in our power, will continue to do what you did.
References:
Architecture for Humanity 2012, Design like you give a damn [2]: Building change from the ground up, in A Deborah (ed.), Abrams Books, New York
<http://www.archdaily.com/591052/design-like-you-give-a-damn-the-legacy-of-architecture-for-humanity>
