Small is Beautiful
"So much . . . food, water, plastic bottles were brought into disaster areas – there was so much waste . . . but no construction materials. So, we used chicken feathers, washed them in sea water, ground them and mixed them in cement to hold down plastic bottles to build schools. . . Flat glass is so expensive, so we used gin bottles to build windows that refracted light inside.”
Asia Society’s own Game Changer, Illac Diaz described these grassroots adaptations originating from the local communities after Super Typhoon Haiyan ripped through the Philippines in 2013. “Cement, steel and glass in a storm-ridden island is not an option,” he stated. “The question was, how can we change from cement, steel and glass? How can we help the people left behind on islands that do not get aid?”
Following a hands-on, standing room-only workshop where Diaz led participants to build their own “Liters of Light @ Night,” panel members came together in a thought-provoking discussion around innovative processes, community empowerment, small-scale design ideas, informal communities and organic cities.
Patrick Condon, Chair of Urban Design and Professor of Landscape Architecture at the University of British Columbia soberingly described how money has increasingly gravitated towards the rich in a fantastic “collapse of capital in the hands of the few.” Global GNP has also been on a steady downward trend; and the world’s population is converging around ever-sprawling cities. The effects of climate change, rapid urbanization and the growth of slums, lack of upward mobility for most; and downsized financial aspirations portended for Condon a world where cities will increasingly converge around shantytowns and informal communities like those found in Third World societies. Neither the “forty-story towers with hydroponic tomatoes growing on roof tops,” nor “large scale urban plans” and “massive infrastructure,” therefore, were the answers.
Hiromi Tabei, Program Coordinator for Architecture of Humanity emphasized the need for architects to actively engage their client communities by asking questions, listening and understanding what their actual needs are. Mary Comerio, Professor of the Department of Architecture, College of Environmental Design, at the University of California, Berkeley, suggested that architects must “deploy themselves” rather than sit behind desks, and immerse themselves in the communities where they design and build.
For Condon, among the cities of Calgary, Canada; Suzhou, China; and Medellin, Colombia, the most sustainable and resilient model for the future can be found in the poor communities of Medellin. Construction is done affordably and cheaply with locally-sourced materials; and the average cost of construction in Medellin is US$10/sq. ft. The future of resilient and sustainable urbanization is not large-scale, top-down planning of the Global North, but rather organic cities, exhibiting an entrepreneurial and bottom-up energy more clearly evident in poor, and often more resilient, informal communities. As Illac Diaz noted, the “genius of the poor” holds many lessons for the rest of the world.
***If you missed the event but are interested in viewing, stay tuned! The video of the event will be available on this website soon.***
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