Design Ethics in Disasters

Design Ethics in Disasters

A long time friend and colleague, Tim Culvahouse, is an Editor in Chief of ArcCA, a quarterly journal of AIA California. After I had talked to him about the latest findings on my research and interviewing him about his thoughts on architectural contributions to Hurricane Katrina, Tim asked me in return to contribute my thoughts to a discussion about “Ethics and Etiquette”.

Source: AIA.org

It always comes to a surprise that ethics still remains an optional discourse for many schools of architecture around the world, just as often as sustainability is caught out to be a token gesture in many design projects today. The topic of ethics is entangled with Socratic contradictions that generate one question after another; and, because it seldom offers tangible, actionable solutions, the topic makes the vast majority of the architectural profession glaze over, or worse, assume that they are already ethical both in their decision-making and conduct.

Photo © Richard Misrach

from his book of post-Katrina graffiti images, Destroy This Memory

My penchant for architectural ethics has led me to spend the past three years at the University of Auckland and the University of California, Berkeley, asking the question, “What is the ethical role of architects in humanitarian endeavors?”—with particular interest in the various roles the design professions play in the context of disasters. The research looks at the ethical roles and attitudes of architects who are currently active in the field in humanitarian endeavors. With more than half of the world’s population now living in cities, the ethics of designing for the disenfranchised is a double-edged sword: the industry proponents call it Architecture for Humanity (via Cameron Sinclair), and its skeptics call it New Imperialism (via David Harvey). However, when the repercussions of any action (and sometimes inaction) involve human lives, the issue becomes even more laden with ethical questions.

Internationally, the humanitarian aid industry is replete with examples of more or less inappropriate solutions to housing and their cookie-cutter approach to post-disaster reconstruction that have become a vicious cycle for many agencies. Opportunities to build back better have often been missed due to pressures of “Time Compression,” inhibiting sustainable recovery.

Having just returned from Bati Byen, the Rebuilding Centre in Port-au-Prince, Haiti, I am very optimistic about the role the professionals—architects, planners, urban designers, engineers—could play in facilitating the various agents of recovery (such as local neighborhood groups, the government, other local and global agencies) to build back better. Despite my as-of-yet deficient understanding on how professional ethics, humanitarian ethics, indigenous ethics, and personal ethics are present in the post-disaster context, it is obvious that they sometimes compete, contradict, and complement, yet necessarily coexist with each other. The art of asking the right questions, perhaps, has never been more important for ethics in disasters. It is something to be considered for an increasingly global practice of architects honing their design etiquette for foreign sites.

The humanitarian architect

The humanitarian architect

This is an article I co-wrote with Professor Andrew Barrie when we hosted Cameron Sinclair in 2011 as the International Architect in Residence at The University of Auckland School of Architecture and Planning. We hosted Cameron over 2 weeks split into 3 trips to circumvent his global-trotting mission to make world a more habitable place for everyone. He inspired everybody he met, and converted many budding architects in his presence to follow the paths to become architectural humanitarians.

Source: Architecture Now

Co-founder and CEO (“Chief Eternal Optimist”) of Architecture for Humanity, Sinclair has been appointed as the University of Auckland School of Architecture and Planning’s international architect-in-residence for 2011.

Self-dubbed “ambassador for architects” Cameron Sinclair feels more at home in the company of politicians at the World Economic Forum than behind a desk in his office at Architecture for Humanity’s San Francisco headquarters.

Sinclair co-founded Architecture for Humanity (AfH) in 1999 as a charitable organisation that seeks architectural solutions for humanitarian crises and provides design services to communities in need. Over the last three years, AfH has doubled in size every six months and now employs over one hundred people – it is now one of the world’s most active disasterreconstruction organisations, with current projects in Haiti, Chile, Japan, Pakistan, New Orleans and, now, Christchurch. AfH’s Auckland chapter was one of the first local organisations to launch global fundraising efforts for Christchurch. The group, led by a small team in Auckland, has so far raised about thirty thousand dollars, mostly from individual donors giving modest donations of five to ten dollars via social networking platforms.

The international architect-in-residence program was established in 2010 to allow students the opportunity to interact with a globally significant architect to achieve an in-depth understanding of his or her approach and underlying ideas. Sinclair, whose schedule parallels that of US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton in terms of miles logged in the air, is teaching his unique design approach to fourth-year architecture students, and has presented public lectures in Auckland and Christchurch. Sinclair’s studio is part of a School of Architecture and Planning project that is working to help develop the vision and ideas required for the rebuilding of Christchurch – it involves the entire student body of its third- and fourth-year courses (around two hundred students) for the four months of the current semester.

During his visit, Sinclair made a lasting impression both at the University of Auckland and among the Christchurch community with AfH’s mantra: “Follow your heart, break the rules, get it built.” On the subject of rebuilding Christchurch, Sinclair has expressed his concern over the lack of transparency in the process of demolishing heritage buildings, as well as a general absence of assertiveness by local leadership. Having worked closely with governments in other post-disaster regions, Sinclair observed that Christchurch needs a “benevolent dictator” or a “whipping boy” – someone who can take responsibility (or blame!) but get essential things done in order to move forward. Sinclair’s radical but refreshing views reflect’s AfH’s youthful dynamism – the organisation’s supporters are typically students and young professionals under thirty years of age.

AfH’s local project partner in Christchurch is Unlimited Paenga Tawhiti School (UPT), which lost its Cashel Street learning hubs in the February earthquake. The design of new facilities for UPT is one of the Christchurch studio projects being undertaken by University of Auckland students (others include visions for housing, public buildings, community centres, commercial areas, and urban designs for several parts of the city). The design and research work produced by the students under Sinclair’s direction will serve the dual purpose of laying the groundwork for UPT to develop ideas for reintegrating its facilities into the new Christchurch, as the wounds of the reverberant aftershocks begin to heal, but also to become a resource for AfH’s next intervention: an international design ideas competition to generate concepts for what Christchurch could look like if education became the driver for its redevelopment. The competition will be hosted by Open Architecture Network – an online project management platform – and was launched on 4 September 2011, the anniversary of the Darfield earthquake.

Making Research More Accessible

How many people today would volunteer to sit down and read a 100,000 word dissertation about something they know completely nothing about?

One of the objectives for beyond architecture for humanity is to make academic research about architecture for humanity more accessible to the architecturally illiterate. Don’t take me wrong. I wasn’t suggesting that anyone who doesn’t possess a degree in architecture to have a subpar design intelligence than those who do; it’s more that as designers, we have somehow forgotten how to communicate effectively with real people in the process of becoming certified designers. To take the metaphor a bit further, if we can’t grow past the safe domains of esoteric academic verbosity, which are more often filled with self-indulgent, ego-boosting, albeit delusional reassurances of peers who, deep-down, know as well as you do, that you are just full of crap and spend your tea time constructing these artificial walls of made-up words – half of which never made it to merriam-webster dictionary – in the hope that no-one else outside of your discipline would ever find out about it.

One saving grace for our discipline, however, is that we are gifted in expressing ourselves through a means which naturally lends itself to a fairly universal interpretation – visual communication. For me, it’s infographics.

I’ve already made a pledge to do this via ifwerantheworld. What would you do if you ran the world?

Redefining Architecture for Humanity: A Bite-sized Introduction

In the post-disaster context, if emergency relief operators belong to the ‘giving a man a fish’ school of thought, and planners and policy makers follow a ‘teaching a man to fish’ approach, then architecture is the bridge between the two. Foucault argues that “technology must be social before it is technical” (Foucault, 2003), and, indeed, the experience of aid agencies has proven that best solutions often lie within the existing community. Rather than quietly waiting for commissions from clients or government authorities, architects, Bell argues, can “play an active role in responding to the social challenges we face in the world” (Bell 2008, 15). Architects naturally lend themselves to being community facilitators within post-disaster contexts, or as “skilled understanders enabling people to work out their problems” (Ward 1996, 17). Architects have a social responsibility to reach out and proactively seek solutions in communities. With resources becoming increasingly scarce, there is a pressing need to build back better at every opportunity, with one critical element in mind: the humanity.

When more than half of the world’s population live in cities, designing for the disenfranchised is an ethical double-edged sword: its proponents call it Architecture for Humanity, while skeptics call it New Imperialism. The history of humanitarian aid is littered with socially inappropriate housing solutions and cookie-cutter approaches to post-disaster reconstruction. Despite efforts to the contrary, opportunities to “build back better” get lost amongst perceived difficulties of providing housing beyond the bare minimum. By presupposing design as the first signal of human intention (McDonough, 1993), this research paper asks: what is the ethical position of the architect in humanitarian endeavours?

The research draws on the architectural discourse from across the humanities – sociology, anthropology, planning, politics, and development studies –to argue that socially responsible design is an essential element of humanitarian aid. A transdisciplinary approach—which combines interdisciplinarity with a participatory approach—promises a sustainable alternative to the conventional model characterised by authoritarian, top-down measures. Specifically, in exploring the ethical role of the architect in humanitarian endeavours, the research: 1) expands the architectural pedagogy by identifying architectural and design opportunities in the humanitarian aid sector, 2) reconciles the challenges of humanitarian design practice through interdisciplinary research, 3) analyses some of the assumptions held by aid agencies about the perceived complexities and resources involved in housing beyond shelter.

This paper seeks to raise questions about the ethics of designing in a complex society marred by disasters. In doing so, this paper begins to unravel some of the apparently mysterious delays and frustrations recurrent in post-disaster reconstruction, and identifies gaps in both skills and knowledge that the architectural profession could seek to bridge. The architectural profession needs a social paradigm shift in the way architects practice design, so that instead of being reactive, architects can become intelligently proactive.

References:

Bell, B., & Wakeford, K. eds. Expanding Architecture : design as activism, (New York: Metropolis Books, 2008).

Burgess, P. G, The Role of the Architect in Society, (Pittsburgh, PA: Carnegie-Mellon University, 1983).

Foucault, Michel, Society Must be Defended: Lectures at the College de France, 1975-76, (London: Penguin, 2003).

McDonough, W, Design, Ecology, Ethics and the Making of Things: Centennial Sermon on the 100th Anniversary of the Cathedral of St. John the Divine, (New York City, 1993).

Ward, Colin, Talking to Architects: Ten Lectures, (London: Freedom Press, 1996).

Ethics Approval!

Best news so far!!! I guess it means this is for real…

Re: Application for Ethics Approval (Our Ref. XXXX /XXXX)

The Committee met on 20-October-2010 and considered the application for ethics approval for your project titled ”Architecture for Humanity: Towards a Transdisciplinary Design of the Built Environment within Post-disaster Relief and Development”.

Ethics approval was given for a period of three years.

And then…

It’s time for me to hit the hibernation button on this blog to digest everything that’s happened on my journey so far, but more importantly to start working on the research I’m supposed to be doing. But Einstein couldn’t have put it any better when he said: if we knew what we were doing, we wouldn’t call it research!

A country of a thousand faces…

It’s day 21 in India, and with just 3 more days of sojourn left in Ahmedabad before embarking on another long 36-hour journey back to Auckland, I thought I’d be productive and take a moment to recap the conference, which was an absolute blast! Besides, when I return I will be on hiatus from doing any other writing than for my research report which is due on September 1^st, let alone any time to reflect on the adventures of this place.

So far I’ve had 3 very distinctive experiences of India in as many number of weeks: first, a voyeuristic western packaged tour through Delhi-Agra-Jaipur ‘golden’ triangle, at the end of which I was monumented-out for the rest of the journey; followed by an epic adrenaline-pumping adventure of two rather naïve 26 year-old architectrices through northern India; and finally the I-Rec conference, which brought about this trip in the first place. I don’t think I could have planned this trip any better than I have, in the sense that I couldn’t ask for a better experience, more perfect companions and all the serendipitous events that ensued due to the latter. After the first couple of weeks, the novelty of being in a new environment had worn off to some extent and I went into the conference feeling mellow and ready to absorb everything without being distracted by the lures of tourist traps along the way. I couldn’t have been more wrong in that this past week was just as intense and dramatic as the previous two, and so incredibly stimulating that I’m on a different kind of a high right now.

The conference was attended by about 70 or so people, around 25 of whom were from outside India. Regan described I-Rec as being somewhat of a middle ground between the Shelter Centre, which is predominately practitioners domain, and the CIB, which is entirely academic in nature. It was a pretty neat, diverse group of practitioners, academics, students and researchers who I got to know pretty quickly since there weren’t too many of us and most of the I-Rec members gave a presentation so I was able to put their research topics to the faces. I’m still terrible with names so I didn’t quite get to more than a handful of names even on our last day!

This year’s I-Rec was different from previous ones and included 2 days of field trips in addition to 4 days of conferencing, which was a good balance, because the field trips were what made concepts stick and fired people up about the research they did. I’m not going to go into details of the papers that were presented since they’re soon going to be uploaded on the official website – yes, I-Rec is completely open source and good in that way – and no offense to anyone at the conference but I might fall asleep while trying to recount them. You can view my paper and PPT slides here <insert link>.

Participatory reconstruction and innovative technologies for post-disaster reconstruction was the main theme of the conference, and our host offered two field trips – one looking at heritage and conservation aspect of important monuments around Ahmedabad city, and one looking at three relocation sites around Kutch some 9 years after the 2001 Gujarat earthquake which destroyed 97% of their main city, Bhuj. I of course, being a novice researcher, opted for the second one, and Regan went to the first one so that we could compare notes later and strategically cover both sites between us.

Bhuj was some 80km away from Ahmedabad but it was a 6 hour drive due to the humpdy dumpdy road condition which I’m still trying to get used to. Our group met up at 4:30 in the morning to arrive at our first destination before the ground began to sizzle, and this is when I properly met Nandan – architect/professor from Chennai who gave a keynote speech the previous morning about his project of rebuilding 10,000 houses in Tamil Nadu after the boxing day tsunami – of course, he is now one of my favourite humanitarian heroes. I felt pretty bad about walking out on his presentation the day before! He sat next to me on the bus and we had the most random, esoteric discussion dealing with everything from evolution to reincarnation, climate change, politics, Jesus, Krishna, Buddha, Copernicus, Da Vinci, the golden proportion, some very convincing conspiracy theory about the cult that started the modern movement, life, death, and everything in between. I was quite impressed by Nandan’s gift of storytelling and I think he was surprised at my ability to decode many of his riddles he called ‘preposterous facts’. More surprisingly though, it turns out that he has strong connections to all the big shots in India as well as abroad – in fact, his buddy is Charles Correa, B. V. Doshi is his quasi-foster dad and his pen pal was Kenneth Frampton. Yet I was so surprised that he was so humble about his achievements and had already done work that’s at least three times what a very good architect would struggle to achieve in a lifetime. What was more surprising was that in 25 years of practice he had published nothing in his name but his first book was coming out in October.

Another observation I’ve made on this trip is just how political the disaster relief community is. I knew that politics exist everywhere but I had naively thought that the humanitarian sector would have less egotistical individuals than your average professional networks, but at the conference I got a strong sense of political tension and influential forces underlying many of the discussions and chai breaks. Many debates were held around the definition of what is meant by participatory design, and what qualifies for truly owner-driven reconstruction when there are so many complex issues involved such as donor’s desires, NGO’s agendas, economies of finance, culture and people, and of course, politics.

The reconstruction sites we visited were limited to those locations that received extensive NGO support, and the members of community that came out to talk to us were mostly Brahmans, which meant that we got a rose-tinted view of the reconstruction projects. Half of the time we didn’t know whether they were just happy to talk to foreigners or whether they were genuinely happy about how they were treated after the earthquake. It was also difficult to gauge a sense of heritage and tradition in a city that is touted to be known for its heritage, not only because 97% of the original city collapsed during the earthquake, but because the city got a completely new urban design makeover and road layout. Despite these concerns, I was impressed with the professionalism and fairness given for the greater good of all citizens after the earthquake. A lot of people at the conference were of course interested in seeing how the lessons from this particular disaster could be applied in Haiti.

Since then, I have been to: Sangath, Doshi’s office where he still practices but is now run by his son-in-law; acquired several invaluable publications about incremental housing for my research; met a French expat from Auroville who’s been here too long and spoke English like an Indian (it’s beyond hilarious); had dinner with all of them at Doshi’s son-in-law’s private residence; got lost a few times due to auto rickshaw drivers trying to get more miles (thus money out of it); got a ride on a back of a complete stranger’s motorbike; went to visit Gandhi Ashram; bought a few more kultas; went to see a Hindi movie; donated my blood to many of the local mosquitoes; went to McDonald’s; and just this morning I was asked politely by one of the girls at reception to pay the bill because I owe them too much… I guess all that this means is that I’ve been living at my hotel for too long!

As for now I’m planning on going back to Sangath tomorrow to try and meet Doshi himself and ask him to sign my book… and that’s about the only thing left on my itinerary before packing up to go home, sweet home.