Architecture for Humanity
Yesterday's StarTribute carried a story by Linda Mack about Cameron Sinclair, a visiting scholar in the University of Minnesota's College of Architecture and Landscape Architecture (CALA). In 1999, Sinclair and his partner Kate Stohr founded Architecture for Humanity, a "laptop-based nonprofit" that "has harnessed the expertise of 10,000 architects ... to help people in poverty and crisis."
Sinclair says "I want to improve the living standards of 5 billion people", but he recognizes that design - such as temporary housing for Kosovo refugees or earthquake victims in Pakistan - needs to take account of local needs and building materials.
An assignment given to his CALA class asked two second-year graduate students, David Vilkama and Mark Lescher, to design and then build a laundry shed
for Kathy Everad, a 70-something disabled woman living with her 17-year-old granddaughter in a Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) trailer. The shed had to cost less than $600 and be buildable in a few days."It's not sexy," said Sinclair. "She'll select the color of paint." But it allows her to do her own laundry rather than take a taxi to somewhere far away, and she can take in laundry for neighbors, as well, he said.
"She's using it," said Vilkama. "She did laundry for 15 hours straight after we finished."
The students learned as much from getting the 12-by-12-foot shed built as they did from designing it, he added."We now understand there's a lot more that goes into the project than just drawing it up: politics, building codes, finding materials, working with engineers and contractors -- and clients."
The story goes on to say, "While most architecture-school assignments involve a lofty project such as an art museum but no actual people, Sinclair is a stickler for clients. He had his students ride the Hiawatha light-rail train, get off at a stop, walk 200 feet and photograph and interview the first person they saw. 'That will be their client for the rest of the semester,' he said. 'They've never had a client before.'"
Working with real people with real needs determined by personal, particularized interaction, and satisfying those needs with innovative design: that's the embodiment of engaged scholarship and creative activity.
More information about Sinclair and a talk he's giving this evening is available here.