The Shelter Movie

Shelter | Written by Lee Schneider

This article originally appeared in The Huffington Post.

Detroit neighborhoods are blooming. We know this from films like Urbanized, and Urban Roots, both of which celebrate community gardens in Detroit and recently screened at the San Francisco Green Film Festival. But neighborhoods in Detroit are also blooming with an urban art renaissance. Just look at TAP, which stands for The Alley Project.

In 2004, The Alley Project wasn’t a project. It was just an alley with four garages. Community residents let local graffiti artists work on stuff there, but people were worried about vandalism and safety. Slowly, however, a community started to form around the young artists and some of the older residents. “They’ve adopted each other,” Erik Howard told me in an interview. Erik is the director of Young Nation, a youth and community development non-profit. He has helped guide TAP from a local hangout into a vital resource.

“The larger community might target vandalism as a problem, but the graffiti artists are also part of the solution. Problems are not just problems. They are also solutions that are waiting to be found. The youth’s assets are they are driven, passionate and interested in art.”
– Erik Howard

This is a smart way to see community: looking at problems to provide hints for solutions. This is even smarter: Looking at the assets a community might provide and leveraging that social capital. TAP didn’t mushroom up magically, although there was a strong community base for it to begin with. But it evolved in a partnership of design. Architects and students working Dan Pitera’s Detroit Collaborative Design Center (DCDC) at the university of Detroit Mercy School of Architecture met with community members. “We would go out to the school and the studio,” Erik told me, “and give the thumbs up or thumbs down” to DCDC’s plans. “Architects were learning about community and the community was learning about architecture.” After a series of design studios, DCDC proposed a master plan. Architecture is not thrown at you, as Erik, said. It’s really a process.

These thoughts might seem obvious, but architecture wasn’t always so. If you examine the model, say, of Frank Lloyd Wright, architecture was something that was brought down to clients from on high; in the process, the architect’s brilliance permeated everything he or she touched, from landscaping, to the art on the wall, to the furniture. But now architecture is becoming more of a conversation, and projects like TAP would never be adopted by communities without that dialogue. “Good design speaks to activities and people. Then those get translated into design solutions,” Erik said. “The best design is built around people.”

Look at needs as a to-do list and community assets as a toolbox.
–Erik Howard

Erik says that TAP has always encouraged inter-generational relationships – the artists are learning from the neighborhood elders and the elders have come to appreciate the passion and dedication of the young artists. Stereotypes are being broken down, art is being created, and a neighborhood is reconnecting with itself.  

TAP show that you can enhance placemaking with participatory design. The latest projects at TAP include a two-month residency for an artist named Katie Craig. She will be working on a solo show at TAP. Watch for it on the TAP Facebook page.

Photo credits: youngnation.us

Shelter | Written by Anya Vo

Internationally, natural disaster is inevitably one of the leading causes of homelessness. Countrys struck most recently by disaster like Haiti and Japan have hundreds of thousands living in camps in substandard conditions, and even more getting by without any shelter at all. Realizing the problems that exist internationally, it was all the more shocking when I learned that the city of Los Angeles, a city  practicially untouched by natural disaster, hosts the highest number of homeless people in the United States, according to the Institute for the Study of Homelessness and Poverty at the Weingart Center.

Home For Good has created a plan to put an end to this problem by 2016.  According to their blueprint it is actually 40% less expensive to provide permanent housing for the homeless than to let them live on the streets. The reason?  Because of the percentage  - and expense - of homeless who cycle through the jail and hospital systems.  Home for Good has come up with a four-step process, which aims to effectively reduce the amount of homeless in Los Angeles County.

Firstly, they want to identify the homeless, both by name and reason for why they have come to live on the streets  Second, by doing this Los Angeles Homeless Services Authority can further understand and strategize how to help prevent future homelessness. Third, from this assessment Home For Good wants to create 12,500 units of permanent housing and effectively move the homeless into these units over the next couple years. Their statistics say that 88% of homeless housed through Housing First stay off the streets permanently. With those kinds of results it is no wonder that Home For Good has the power to really put an end to these people’s suffering.

The final step indicates an overarching theme for Home For Good’s plan, that is getting the message out and getting everyone involved who can help.  Even I didn’t know the magnitude of homeless crisis that existed within the city I live in, so it is only safe to assume that there are countless other people out there who need to be made aware of the current crisis at hand.  Homelessness is a problem of the world, for both first and third world countries, but by spreading awareness Home For Good is showing that it can be fixed.

For full access and information on this plan to end homelessness please have a look at this PDF.

[Editor's note:  This blog was originally posted to ReportingonHealth.org, and appears with the permission of its editor, Michelle Levander. For more on Dr. Kaufman's trip to Haiti, go to ReportingonHealth.org, an online community that is a project of the USC Annenberg School of Journalism.]

By Francine Kaufman, M.D.

We have left Haiti, but in many ways Haiti has not left us.

It is hard to describe the effect that an experience like working in Haiti has on you. Most of the time you feel overwhelmed with the enormity of the problems encountered by the average Haitian, let alone a child living in Haiti with diabetes.

Your senses vacillate between being assaulted by sights of the tent cities still dotting the landscape, and rubble and sewage admixed with piles of garbage overflowing in rivulets, to being soothed by the beauty of a mountain resort with wild orchids and ginger plants. And at all times you marvel at how the doctors you meet – particularly Nancy and Philippe Larco and 81-year-old Rene Charles – navigate a system that would drown you in a matter of minutes if you were left alone.

Through FHADIMAC, the Haitian Diabetes Association they founded and continue to support decades later, the Larco-Charleses have been a valuable members of the worldwide diabetes community, advancing care for Haitians with diabetes, performing diabetes screenings to confirm that soon Haiti will be facing a diabetes epidemic, and working with Life for a Child and Insulin for Life nonprofit organizations to assure the children in Haiti have insulin and glucose strips to stay alive.

And in the midst of this, somehow you find yourself at their side – and accompanied by Merith Basey from AYUDA and Evelyne Fleury-Milfort, your ultimate role models for giving in Haiti – running the first diabetes camp ever in the county. You visit a clinic that is a joint effort between Israelis and Haitians outside Port au Prince and realize that the challenges of the overcrowded, barely functional capital city are magnified in the countryside.

Patients are lined up outside waiting their turn to be seen; some you can help and others you cannot, an appalling concept to those of us who rely on scans and labs and state-of-the-art therapies. Instead, you imagine the dismal outcomes these people face as you gaze into suffering eyes. From a breast mass likely already metastasized, to a diabetic foot ulcer likely never to heal, to a woman pregnant again and desperate because she can’t care for the children she already has, the hardworking Israeli and Haitian health care providers do what they can in a system so constrained and minimal.

On our last day in Haiti, we lectured to 40 pediatricians at the Haitian Pediatric Society. In the main medical society building with only one barely functioning toilet and filled with 20- to 30-year-old books on the shelves, we tried to teach these eager doctors the signs and symptoms of diabetes in the young to improve the near 85% mortality rate at onset.

If they don’t recognize diabetes, start IV fluids, give insulin, and reverse the severe metabolic disturbances of uncontrolled diabetes as soon as it is diagnosed, there is no chance these kids will survive. And if they do, and Nancy Larco enrolls them in Life For a Child and they receive the outdated treatment for diabetes that remains relegated to the developing world, then children will survive but not with health and a future. Don’t we owe them more than that?

So we have dreamed up some plans – plans to advance the care offered to children in Haiti to bring it a few small steps closer to what we offer in developed countries, and if we are lucky, plans to help start a microbusiness – perhaps beading diabetes utility bags – made by Haitian people touched by diabetes and sold to people with diabetes around the world. After all, doesn’t that diagnosis make us somehow all aligned, all connected and all concerned for each other?

The daughter of one of the Haitian pediatricians joined her mother for our lectures. She was a tall, attentive and well-groomed 22-year-old, who spent part of her life in Haiti and part in Boston. She just finished college in Boston and is trying to decide what she wants to do – likely public health – but where?  Will she come back to Haiti and continue the struggle from there, or try to change it from outside?  It seems that although many of the advantaged in Haiti have sent their children out of the country for school and for safety, many of these kids – including Nancy and Philippe’s – actually want to be back and to give back. They are Haiti’s future and must be supported and nurtured.

The most important thing we had reinforced from this trip is that it takes perseverance to make a real difference. We learned that, and so much more, from Carol and Mark Atkinson. After years and years, and trip after trip, they have incorporated Haiti into their psyche, with true understanding and true insight. What they have done is more than monumental, more than anything we have ever seen, and something that all of our colleagues need to know about. They have helped Haitians transform a corner of their own world – and stood by their side – but not taken over the command. I am sure there is a word for what Mark and Carol have done in every language, in every culture – and I am sure it underestimates it in each of them.

After Haiti, we flew to a meeting in Barcelona. Unfortunately for all with whom we talked, we harangued them about Haiti. We got a good cup of tea finally; we attended a great meeting, and had fun with colleagues from around the world. But our thinking, our perseverating about Haiti isn’t over yet.

Photo: Courtesy Dr. Francine Kaufman

Written by Madison Klinghoffer

Reconstruction of post-earthquake Japan has been slow and arduous, mostly due to uncertainty regarding the potential dangers and effects posed by the damaged nuclear reactors, namely the Fukishima reactor.  With Lee Schneider, director of Shelter, I interviewed Masayuki Fuchigami, a prominent Japanese architectural journalist residing in Tokyo, about the role architects are playing in the reconstruction of Japan, his particular role, and how the Design for Good movement manifests within a culture very distinct from our own. Mr. Fuchigami recently organized the 2^nd Young Architects Plaza, an exhibition of design-for-good projects created by Japanese architects who wanted to contribute good design to the relief effort.  It was well-received in the media. But will it result in more humanitarian design projects being built in Japan?

There is an irony here.  Fuchigami noted that the Design for Good movement as many define it—pro-bono design for disaster or impoverished areas—is not a prominent approach within Japan, but that many Japanese architects are active in its implementation abroad.  Shigeru Ban, for example, one of the most famous architects in the world, provides his expertise and leads projects in disaster-stricken areas all around the world, including Rwanda, China, Haiti, etc.

Within Japan, however, and especially after the March 11 earthquake and subsequent tsunami, this definition cannot quite apply.  Fuchigami told us that the government has not approached architects for their help nor expertise, and to a certain extent, is restricting their ability to aid in reconstruction.  It instead partners with large construction and engineering companies that have extensive design sections.  Fuchigami calls this a “very bad custom,” one in which produces “monotonous and tasteless” buildings, and homes that provide narrow living spaces, only exacerbating the mental and emotional instability of disaster victims.  Architects, on the other hand, want to design more “open and easier-living style houses.”

Unfortunately, the government is making this very difficult; instead, preferring quick action that ensures a speedy recovery and immediate relief.  Architecture, in its nature, takes time.  Architects “design in detail,” to produce something beautiful, intricate, and conducive to sustainable and “easy-living.”  Consequently, the government opts for immediacy rather than intricacy, and ends up with simple and mundane plans.  However, as we saw with New Orleans in the wake of Hurricane Katrina, the fastest response is not always the best.  FEMA sought a quick solution with temporary trailers to house the massive displaced populations.  This resulted in trailer parks with populations of up to 10,000, and where there was found, as the Huffington Post noted, “astounding rates of depression, anxiety and hopelessness.”  Nearly half of these trailer park residents reported “serious signs of emotional and behavioral distress” and a deep anxiety about the unsafe conditions.  Although immediate action is obviously necessary in the aftermath of a disaster, engaging specialists, like architects, whose expertise lends itself to avoiding these types of negative externalities could greatly reduce their severity.

Unfortunately, because of the Japanese government’s unwillingness to engage architects, they forced to act on their own, to “do everything for themselves,” says Fuchigami, which can be very difficult and costly, especially for young designers.  As of yet, the majority of reconstruction work being done by architects is concentrated on the community outreach side—a common element of the design for good movement—holding symposiums, studying the conditions of the disaster areas, and meeting with disaster victims.

Fuchigami admits that he and many architects worry that “all of the construction of East Japan will be covered by [these] monotonous houses,” that there is a need for “power and innovative ideas,” primarily from young architects.  He notes that, “older architects have power.”  They have friends in the government and greater resources to be able to enter disaster areas privately.  Young architects do not.  That is why Fuchigami decided to hold an exhibition that highlighted the most prominent and up-and-coming young architects in Japan and their plans for reconstruction.

From his list of about 80 leading Japanese young architects, Fuchigami selected 8 architects, and asked them to submit  innovative models and drawings of earthquake and tsunami resistant structures, including homes, harbors, fishing villeges, etc.  Their models and drawings were exhibited in the center of Tokyo.  Garnering much media attention, the exhibition attracted viewers across the political spectrum, including a previous member of the House of Representatives.  Impressed by what he saw, he asked Fuchigami to speak to the House members to educate them about reconstruction and in hopes of gathering support for these ideas, and possibly the necessary resources to ensure their implementation.  Fuchigami and three of his exhibited architects, whose designs he deemed particularly innovative and future-oriented, lectured to a large audience.  However, months later, they have yet to receive a response.

Although the lecture before the House failed to gather any sort of implementation assistance, Fuchigami still sees it as a success, for his exhibition, and for the future of Japanese reconstruction.  He asserts that, “we left something in their minds,” that this project is the only of its kind, and its popularity is spreading throughout Japan.  More and more students are holding symposiums and the exhibition is being moved to Sendai, an area destroyed by the tsunami.

When asked why he decided to develop this exhibition, Fuchigami stated that he wanted to take “positive action” to help his disaster-stricken country and its victims.  When the earthquake first happened, he immediately began to help, donating money to relief organizations and sending out emails and helping to gather relief materials to send to the disaster areas.  These, however, he viewed as “too passive.”  He wanted to do something to actively aid his fellow citizens, and thus the exhibition idea was born.

Although architects are finding it difficult to implement their plans, projects like these are slowly but surely affecting reconstruction in Japan, and are continuously garnering more influence and support.  Keiichiro Sako, one of the architects in the exhibition, has created and exhibited a futuristic but practical project which is composed of 12 huge concrete structures called “Sky Village”. Each Sky Village has over 100 houses on the 15m high roof that can survive tsunami. His idea is so unique and popular that many TV programs introduced it, and  one of the cities in Tohoku District shows keen interest in its realization.  As immediate relief efforts slow, architects have a greater chance to fill the missing niche, and ensure a sustainable, efficient, and beautiful reconstruction of a devastated Japan.

Now that 10 months have passed since March 11, many architects went into Tohoku District and started designing homes, community centers, housings, etc. by negotiating with devastated cities, towns, and villages.

Buildings don’t move much (except in earthquakes), but professions can radically change.

There’s a fascinating debate going on about the changes in the professions of architecture and design.  Writing in Salon, Scott Timberg has noticed that creating wildly-expensive ego-driven buildings is not such a great career choice these days.  But there is another way to make a living in design, and in architecture, and that is by designing for the ‘other 99%’ – all those people who have not received the benefits of good design. Tom Fisher, Dean of Architecture at the College of Design at the University of Minnesota, writes in Metropolismag.com about the rise of humanitarian design as a real profession.  He talks about the power and purpose of organizations like Architecture for Humanity, Project H, the Seed Network and the Mass Design Group.

In Public Interest Design, John Cary contrasts the two views.  What are your thoughts?

This article, written by Lee Schneider, originally appeared in The Huffington Post.

You’ve heard about the “99%,” but there’s a “90%” you should also know about. They are the 90% of people on Earth who usually do not have access to design services, because designers mostly have focused on just 10% of the world’s population. Now that’s changing, as powerfully illustrated in an exhibit at the United Nations in New York, presented by the Smithsonian’s Cooper-Hewitt National Design Museum. The exhibit shows, both in person and online, that design can and must address the world’s most critical issues.

Worldwide, close to one billion people live in slums, and that number is expected to double by 2030. When you’re facing a problem like that, your solutions better be innovative. The exhibit, called “Design with the other 90%: Cities” shows the way. The museum’s curator of responsible design, Cynthia Smith, recently showed me around. For two years she traveled to sixteen different cities, gathering the materials for the exhibition. I learned about some inspiring people she encountered, like a young architect named Mohammed Rezwan.

Rezwan grew up in the northern part of Bangladesh, where there is annual flooding that’s getting worse and worse. He decided that he didn’t want to design buildings that were going to be under water in his lifetime. As Cynthia told me, he started to work with local boat builders to modify traditional bamboo craft with solar panels, computers, video conferencing, cell phone and internet access. He’s created a fleet of 50 boats that can serve as libraries, floating schools and health clinics. All over the world, people are being pushed out of rural areas by global warming and human conflict, but Rezwan’s 50 lifeboats can help communities stay intact. His journey is the subject of a new film called Easy Like Water. The director, Glenn Baker, is taking that film to Sundance.

I’m particularly interested in online collaboration, and the exhibit has a functioning example in the Map Kibera project. When you look at an official map of, say, Africa, informal settlements, otherwise known as slums, can appear as blank spots because nobody has mapped them. Without a map, a slum is easier to ignore or dismiss. On the other hand, “mapping helps people document,” Cynthia told me. “They can go to the local authorities and say, look, this is what we have and this is what we need.”

Consider Kibera, one of the largest informal settlements in eastern Africa. It’s about two thirds the size of New York’s Central Park, and has an estimated population of 250,000. Until it was mapped, you’d never know that this area contained more than 200 schools, from the preschool level to academies, that were created both by residents and by NGOs. The Kibera map, which is online, shows zones that are safe and those that can be dangerous. It’s built on the Ushahidi platform, which means that people can text in information to update a map and even post geo-located videos.

Here’s one more brilliant idea from the exhibition that is changing the conversation among architects and designers. It’s called “incremental housing.” Architects design and build the most expensive parts of an apartment, like the structure, the roof, bathrooms and kitchen, and then leave the rest open for residents to fill in. This flips the usual depreciation model for public housing. Usually it loses value over time, but in one example Cynthia showed me, the building framework cost $20,000 to make, residents added improvements valued at $2,000, and the end result was an apartment that appreciated in value to $50,000. “I think that good design has always incorporated the client in the conversation,” Cynthia said. “User centered design is empathetic. Until you begin to understand somebody else’s needs you can’t really come up with a solution that meets those needs.”

The “Design With the Other 90%: Cities” exhibit lives in an online version where you can interact with its powerful ideas and contribute a few of your own to the Other 90 Network.

You can hear Cynthia Smith’s guided walk through with me on the be global podcast.

Photo credits: Bang Bua Canal by ACHR, incremental housing before and after by Elemental.

 

Written by Glenn Baker, director of Easy Like Water

[Editor's note:  Glenn got in touch with the Shelter project after he came across Lee Schneider's Huffington Post blog and be global podcast about the Design With the Other 90%: CITIES exhibit. The subject of Glenn's film, Easy Like Water, has a prominent position in the exhibit.  Glenn is on his way to Sundance and sent in this report. ]

I’m heading off to the Sundance Film Festival Jan. 20 to pitch my film-in-progress, Easy Like Water, to broadcasters.  The film is almost ready – we’ve got an early rough cut — and I’m excited to get this story out about an ingenious sustainable design solution and its creator.

Easy Like Water is a one-hour documentary film about an innovative Bangladeshi architect who is building floating schools, equipped with solar-powered internet, in his flood-prone riverine community.

Flooding – increasingly destructive and unpredictable – destroys more than 300 schools a year here.  Bangladesh is a real-life “Waterworld,” and Mohammed Rezwan is the country’s Noah. “If the children cannot come to school, I thought the school should go to them,” he explains.

With a concept that is elegant and homegrown, Rezwan’s organization, Shidhulai Swanirvar Sangstha, is helping his community adapt to the new climate reality – and cultivating the next generation of problem-solvers.

I grew up in South Asia, and always felt Bangladesh got short shrift when it was labeled a “basket case.”  So Easy Like Water is also the story of my personal quest to replace that label with a more nuanced portrait that depicts the developing world as a cauldron of ideas and energy – and Bangladesh as a place where the world may turn for guidance when it finds water lapping at its doorstep. “It will not be only Bangladesh that goes underwater,” asserts Nobel laureate climatologist Atiq Rahman. “New York will go underwater; London will go underwater. Tokyo will go underwater.  The question is: are we going to be wise enough to act now?”

Using “environmental Jujitsu,” Rezwan has harnessed the water to connect his community. But can this soft-spoken local hero overcome both flooding and global indifference? Easy Like Water shows the human face of the unfolding climate disaster – and tells the inspiring story of a bold innovator who is building a future that floats.

The film provides an entrée to exploring America’s biggest “head in the sand” issue –the immediacy of global warming. Through that schema it weaves together a host of related areas: design for good, climate change as a human rights crisis, girl’s education, sustainable agriculture, empowerment of the rural poor, and yes, even tigers.

Oh, and the title?  In Bangla, “Panir moto shohoj” means “no problem” or “piece o’ cake” – literally “easy like water.”

Learn more and watch the trailer at: www.easylikewater.com

Glenn Baker is an award-winning filmmaker with more than 30 documentaries broadcast on PBS. He produced and directed “STAND UP: Muslim American Comics Come of Age” for the PBS series “America at a Crossroads.” Baker grew up in India, Turkey, Pakistan, the Philippines, and Tunisia, an experience that informs his approach to making media that reflects diverse viewpoints and promotes dialogue.  

Photos courtesy Glenn Baker.

Shelter | Written by Lee Schneider

I’m thrilled to announce the debut of Shelter: connect, the educational outreach initiative of the Shelter documentary.

Shelter: connect creates a virtual bridge between cultures, enabling design students in the U.S. to connect with communities in the developing world, sharing innovative design ideas to address urgent shelter needs. It is driven by a series of workshops Richard Neill and I will be leading.

A key player in the Shelter: connect initiative is our new hire – outreach coordinator Caroline Markowitz. Caroline is a recent Princeton University graduate. While at Princeton, she majored in history with a minor in environmental studies and was a four-year member of the varsity lacrosse team. She wrote her senior thesis about the World Bank funded Narmada Dam Project in India and the role of environmental and humanitarian NGOs and organizations in persuading the Bank to halt funding due to poor environmental and resettlement regulations.

To develop and launch the Shelter: connect initiative, Caroline is working with Caitlin Boyle, founder and president of film.sprout.  Film.sprout is a consulting and booking agency that helps documentaries achieve broader social impact. Caitlin developed and ran audience outreach on celebrated documentaries like King Corn, Pray the Devil Back to Hell, The End of the Line, A Small Act and Bag It. It’s wonderful to have her expert advice and guidance as we build out the Shelter: connect initiative. Caitlin is a pro who is respected throughout the industry.

Coming in January, look for some major design changes to this blog to accomodate the goals of Shelter: connect.  If you’re interested in learning more about the program, get in touch with Caroline in our San Francisco office.

Shelter: connect was piloted this past fall at the University of Minnesota’s College of Design and we look forward to launching it, and a short video about it, early next year.

 

The Virtual Exchange Program got off to an energetic start yesterday at the University of Minnesota College of Design. Richard Neill and I traveled to the campus to run a workshop with architecture professor James Lutz.

What is the Virtual Exchange Program?

During this active production time for Shelter we are meeting architects and engineers all over the world who are designing for good. We also meet people everywhere who would benefit from good design. We started to think about how to bring them all together…

The Virtual Exchange Program (vXp) is an open source forum for sharing design expertise and knowledge. It fosters dialogue among architecture, design and engineering students and people in developing nations and elsewhere who would benefit from an exchange of ideas.

I’ve spoken with architecture and design deans and professors at Pratt, Parsons, USC and other schools. Uniformly, the sentiment from them is that it’s often not practical to travel design, architecture and engineering students around the world to connect with faraway people. Although travel programs can be costly, worldwide dialogue about design is necessary.  (vXp) fills the need for design sharing and distribution with a new take on international study.

Since we make media for a living, we can create engaging videos that share humanitarian design projects in storytelling form.

What makes this different is that we burst beyond traditional methods of communicating design, architecture and engineering projects by using video and audio. We open an online communication channel for people needing life-saving design solutions. They are heard by the best and brightest students who are in a position to answer the call and create those designs. Media is the ‘virtual’ part of the exchange.  The dialogue (vXp) creates can lead to actual people getting on actual planes. But at this stage of the project, opening the dialogue is what counts. Look at a prototype video that I just finished editing from our Haiti production.

Here’s the plan. Wherever we go to film Shelter, we find architecture, engineering and design students in developing regions of the world, or in disaster recovery areas, and ask them to voice their needs for humanitarian design. We record them and make a short video. Then, guided by architecture, design and engineering professors, we show the videos to students here and ask them to respond with viable projects – projects that resonate with the needs expressed.

Yesterday in Minnesota we piloted an early version of (vXp) in a workshop we conducted at the invitation of Thomas Fisher, professor of architecture and dean of the College of Design, and James Lutz, the professor of architecture mentioned above. Jim led a group of graduate architecture students to Haiti last March.

We split the workshop between exploring design for good projects that we’ve filmed and talking about process of making short videos to promote, explain and propagate student projects.

While on campus, I interviewed Tom Fisher, who is a big picture thinker in architecture, design and policy. I will post some clips of that interview soon, but for now, have a look at Tom’s blogs on the Huffington Post.

We’re looking forward to bringing (vXp) to other colleges and universities.

Follow Lee Schneider on Twitter.  Shelter is on Facebook.

Shelter | Written by Lee Schneider

Hope comes designed in amazing packages. I experienced a little of that hope this morning at USC, where I was giving a talk about Shelter on the theme of ‘designing for a culture.’ The freshmen architecture students liked the Shelter clips I played. Nobody napped during the talk. (Hey, students can be a tough crowd.)  I focused on two questions:  Why does design matter?  And also, when you design, who is really your client?  

After filming in Haiti this summer, a conceptual driver for the film took shape.

Designing for good might begin as a lofty principle, but on the ground and in country, it’s really about designing for a culture.

As we film Shelter around the world, I am seeing how architects, engineers and designers who listen to their clients and take time to connect with the culture they’re working in  – these are the people who do successful projects.  Those who are willing to adopt a visionary approach to the importance of design – these are the folks who prosper.Design matters. An example?  Steve Jobs.  Apple. When I asked the crowd of nearly 200 who had anything made by Apple, all hands went up. Apple has not only designed for a culture, Steve Jobs also created a culture.

To show how an architect or designer’s connection with clients can lead to unexpected alliances, I screened a piece of short media about EDAR, a portable structure in use in cities like Los Angeles and Phoenix, and also a short film Richard Neill and I made for the Architecture and the City Festival.

My favorite part of the morning came as some students were being honored for their creativity and achievement. The video projects they created captured the exuberance and freshness you can find in an architecture class.  Have a look at one of my favorites:

Many thanks to Lauren Matchison and Kara Bartelt, who invited me to speak at Architecture 114 – Architecture:  Culture and Community.

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