Bibliographic Essay

Mobile Opportunity: Designing for Humanity through Mobile Initiatives

Alexandria Besharat

According to Design Like You Give a Damn, “one in seven people in the world are living a slum or refugee camp”.   Sometimes these informal cities do not have access to clean water or proper sanitation.  Some families live on less than two American dollars a day. (Architecture for Humanity 2006)  

Image 1.1 Typlical home in Khayelitsha South Africa Source: Brenda Nkuna/WCN http://westcapenews.com/?p=776.jpg

Socially Conscious Design

Design Like You Give a Damn is a book that focuses on social ethics in architecture.  It looks at how architects and designers need to design for those who cannot afford it.  It is important to focus on cultures that do not have the means to have shelter, water, and health care like people do in the developed world.  Not just in undeveloped nations do architects need to focus their efforts but in emergency relief.  Architects need to use their knowledge to help those who need it not just those who can afford it.  Designing for social change should not be a deterrent from good design but a chance to explore new innovative ideas. (Architecture for Humanity 2006)

Technology innovations allows for new opportunities in socially conscious design.  In Kate Stohr’s 100 Years of Humanitarian Design, she explains not just the existance of humanitarian design but the evolution of design and technology.  The Dymaxion House by Buckmister Fuller was an example of innovative thinking in the past.  The Dymaxion house embodied the idea of sustainablilty in resources and lifestyle that could be implemented.  This house is a home that is low cost and able to be sent anywhere. Buckminster Fuller’s technology with the geodensic dome as well dymaxion home was the stable of technology and sustainablity in the history of architecture.  (Architecture for Humanity 2006)

Examples in Design Like You Give a Damn that show that mobile architecture has started to become an effective strategy to change social issues.  The Mobile Health Clinic allows by Architecture for Humanity allows for immediate service and also gives back as a community center.  (Architecture for Humanity 2006)

Micro Finance

Architecture designed for these cultures have program that are needed like health services, shelter and community functions.   One major element that separates the developed world from the undeveloped world is a type of banking that works for their needs.  Mohammad Yunus invented micro financing which accomplishes just that.  Micro financing is a banking opportunity for small loans to be given in these cultures that people use to start small businesses.  Yunus wrote about his story in ­Banker to the Poor.   This book goes through the story of how the first bank, Grameen Bank, was started and the culture of the process of how it works.  (Yunus 1999)

One focus that this book has was women’s role in micro finance.  Micro finance is needed in cultures that treat women very differently that developed countries.  Some places where they rarely looked at in an authoritative figure and cannot do anything without their husband.  Some women are in positions where husbands are not there or they are not trustworthy.  Grameen Bank allows for these women to succeed on their own and create a life for themselves.  How women have been treated in their society made them trustworthy for loans.  Women eventually run these banks, they become the loan officers to new women.  Micro finance does not just help poverty levels but role of women in society.   Not all loans are women but majority of them are.  (Yunus 1999)

The Microfinance Handbook explains the process that a micro financing bank has to go through to succeed.  Starting with the cultural factors like site, people and existing financial situation, it sets up steps to understand the process.  (Ledgerwood 1998) 

Image 1.2 Understanding the Country Context (Ledgerwood 1998)

It lays out the fundamentals of micro financing while understanding the type of client and also focusing on making a successful bank.  It teaches how understand the qualities of a client and to make a successful investment.  This investment includes teaching clients about credit, insurance, savings and loan payments.  The book sets up different approaches (image 1.3) to micro financing. (Ledgerwood 1998)

Image 1.3 Minimalist and Integrated Approaches to Microfinance (Ledgerwood 1998)

Understanding the system framework is important but also understanding how to evaluate the bank is important to making it successful.  The Handbook explains how to gauge the process and how to adjust where the bank needs to.  (Ledgerwood 1998)

Mobile, Flexible and Light Architecture

 Having a socially conscious programmatic intervention is a piece to creating a space that actually gives back and helps the community it is put in.  Featherweights is a book by Oliver Herwig that explores ideas of mobile, flexible and light architecture.  (Herwig 2003)

He looks at specific archtiects that contributed to light arcitecture and at techtonics of numerous case studies.   Along with Kate Stohr in ­Design Like You Give a Damn, Buckminster Fuller plays a big role in light archtiecture and his creation of the geodesic dome.  The dome according to Stohr allowed for quick emergency facilities.  The idea a quick structure allows for the ability for change in an emergency.  (Architecture for Humanity 2006)  Herwig focused on the spacial quality of the dome, geometry and spans.   The Dymaxion house and Fuller’s idea of the 4D plays a role in idea of placing a building anywhere and being sustainable. (Herwig 2003)

Image 1.4 R. Buckminster Fuler with an early model of his Dymaxion House, Buckminster Fuller Institute  (Architecture for Humanity 2006)

Herwig looks at the tectonics of lightweight construction.  From Richard Roger’s Millennium dome and quality of material in different membranes.  Herwig takes light architecture and finds all possible meaning and gives examples throughout architecture.   One section is on ‘Modern Nomads’, which focus on the option of mobility in architecture.  It is not necessarily physically light but light when it comes to connecting with the earth.  This also connects back the 4D of Fuller and the idea of sustainable living.  (Herwig 2003)

Mobility is shown by case studies in the books Mobile and More Mobile.  Edited both by Jennifer Siegal they both bring new information to the concept of architecture being mobile.  Mobile sets up the original argument of comparing stationary and mobile architecture.  By using case studies with different parameters of what being siteless or universal is.  Mobile has a focus on the idea of moving events.  These events are for socially conscious programs and how their organization and mobility promotes the organization hosting the event.  This book promotes the idea of a built form to surpass the restrictions of site, weather and geography.  (Codrescu, Kronenburg and Siegal 2002) (Stewart, Mitchell and Siegal 2008)

More Mobile focuses on the understanding of the effects of the ability to be mobile.  This means looking at sustainability and also the opportunity of flexibility.  Stewart looks at Shigero Bans ability to design temporary theaters and emergency homes out of materials, like cardboard, that allow for disassembly and reuse.  (Stewart, Mitchell and Siegal 2008)

More Mobile promotes the idea of home and what are the qualities of home.  According to Stewart, “home is where you are” and where you are could be anywhere. Taking technology of the digital world and mixing it with the ability to move around the world.  This book hold future plans the mobile architecture can allow for people to see and be a part of the world.  (Stewart, Mitchell and Siegal 2008)

Using the main idea of designing for those in need sets up for combination of micro financing and mobility to be a solution.  The ability to have a quick set up does not just allow the process of micro finance to be adapted quickly but it allows for money and labor to be saved.  The quick availability of a mobile structure can allow for quick response to poverty and other social issues.  The design strategies in for mentioned books are techniques that architects need to focus on so they can be implemented where needed.  These are strategies that can give people the tools to help themselves.  Design Like You Give a Damn sets up for a change in the focus of architecture to those in need, not just those who can afford it.  (Architecture for Humanity 2006)

Bibliography

Architecture for Humanity. Design Like You Give a Damn: Architectural Responses to Humanitarian. New York: Distributed Art Publishers, 2006.

Codrescu, Andrei, Robert Kronenburg, and Jennifer Siegal. Mobile: The Art of Portable Architecture. Hong Kong: Princeton Architectural Press, 2002.

Herwig, Oliver. Featherweights: Light, Mobile and Floating Architecture. Munich: Prestel, 2003.

Ledgerwood, Joanna. Other World Bank : Microfinance Handbook : An Institutional and Financial Perspective. Washington D.C.: World Bank Publications, 1998.

Stewart, Jude, William J Mitchell, and Jennifer Siegal. More Mobile: Portable Architecture for Today. New York: Princeton Architectural Press, 2008.

Yunus, Muhammad. Banker to the Poor: Micro-lending and the battle against world poverty. New York: PublicAffairs, 1999.

organization of ideas

Boston Site Pictures

Taken from across the canal from the Marine Industrial Parks

Land Change 1995-present (unused)

Thesis Update - Abstract, Program, Site

Mobile Opportunity Center: Changing Lives through Mobile Initiatives

Thesis Abstract

How can a deployable architecture and socially conscious design create change?

Majority of developing countries are currently living in conditions that a typical American could not imagine.  Families cannot to move out of because of poverty; they live on less than two American dollars a day.  To borrow money, means to borrow money from loan sharks at impossible interest rates, so the cycle never ends.  Currently there is an opportunity of bringing financial independence to these areas through micro financing.  This allows people to get small loans to start their own business at low interest rates.  This creates the opportunity for families to start their own lives on their own terms.  In order for this to happen, a facility needs to be available.  The facility is more than a ‘bank’.  It represents an opportunity, safety, and independence.  It will act as a space for community and for financial empowerment.  How could a piece of architecture be functional in changing the financial situation and also represent hope for developing nations?  Micro financing can be implemented in any city, rural area or war torn town.  Taking that concept of being able to be put anywhere, being site-less, something deployable would be the best solution.  Deployable architecture is progressive and allows for new ideas to be implemented.  Having a prototype of a building that is acts as a symbol and also allows for its ideas and function to be used and be adopted.  After the program is adopted and stable, it is time for a separate permanent structure that represents something that the people created.  The deployable architecture would move on to another city or town and the cycle continues.  As the building moves, micro financing spreads, and little by little families develop. 

Issue – how architecture and economics work together to help poverty

History – micro financing, developing nations

Intervention Idea – deployable, movable banking social center

Effect – families starting their own business and establishing their own financial freedom

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Intervention – deployable, symbol

Program – safe, micro financing center

Location – anywhere…urban, rural, war torn

Tectonics – …Materials - …

Definitions:

socially conscious design

deployable

micro financing

Program Ideas

The issue that I am tackling with the use of architecture is poverty.  This is creating a relationship of a financial concept that is used everywhere with architecture and design.  Using a micro financing as a function, gives me a basis of my program.  There would be three parts of my intervention.  One part is a movable structure that can be transferred from city to city, implementing micro financing.  The deployable architecture needs a home base, a headquarters.  This headquarters will be located in Boston with its main function is to house the facilities to build the prototype.  The movable architecture from there is moved to its first location.  At its first location it turns into a semi-permanent structure, to be there for as long it is needed to be adapted, anywhere for 6 to 24 months.  After establishing a temporary, movable structure, a permanent building would take over to continue the process that was already started. 

The deployable architecture needs to work as two things, a microfinance center and a community space.  Looking at how micro financing works, basic programmatic pieces are a meeting hall with classroom-like characteristics, and offices.  The community space had both interior and exterior programmatic elements.  A computer/technology room would work with both the community and the center.  The meeting hall should be able to open up to the outside for specific events.  There is a need for educational hubs.  These hubs could work off the technology room and have an interior/ exterior relationship to allow for numerous types of seminars.  The creation of an opportunity like micro financing means defying the loan sharks that rule the slums and potential opportunity for someone to start over, and develop their own business.  This structure is to give opportunity to those who never had it.

Site

The Opportunity Center has two objectives when it comes to site.  The two parts of the program require a site in a major city with the ability to ship the center.  Boston being a harbor city is perfect for the headquarters.  The site I chose is in Boston is South Boston.  The site’s main attraction is the harbor/shipping aspect.  The site also offers that it borders a residential neighborhood.  This gives the freedom of giving a space to the neighborhood. The site is large enough to have shipping, offices and a public realm.

The Opportunity Center is almost site-less.  The mobility allows it to go almost anywhere.  The typologies of potential sites are an urban environment, rural town and a war torn state in developing nations.   An urban site consists of small dense residences and finding a small open area that is easy to get to.  A rural area is more difficult.  The site should be located as central as possible.  A lot of rural areas do not have a center, this could act as a potential for an area.  The war torn are works similar to an urban area because where a lot of the physical damage happened in more populated areas.  Picking a site with significance to a specific event promotes the idea of this building also as a symbol of opportunity and change.

Potential Sites

The reason for the site in Boston is because of adjacencies to the water (Shipyards) and neighborhood (South Boston).  The scale of these two uses are completely different and allows for flexibility for a public space relating to the neighborhood and a larger scale for the warehouse to build the mobile architecture. 

Thesis update!

Mobility: Changing Lives through Mobile Initiatives

Thesis Abstract

How can a deployable, repeatable architecture create change in lives of people?

Majority of third world countries are currently living in conditions that a typical American could not imagine.  Families cannot to move out of because of poverty; they live on less than two American dollars a day.  To borrow money, means to borrow money from loan sharks at impossible interest rates, so the cycle never ends.  Currently there is an opportunity of bringing capitalism to these areas through micro financing.  This allows people to get small loans to start their own business at low interest rates and have the opportunity to start their own lives on their own terms.  In order for this to happen, a facility needs to be available.  The facility is more than a bank.  It represents an opportunity, safety, and independence.  How could a piece of architecture be functional in changing the financial situation and also represent hope for third world slums?  Micro financing can be implemented in any city.  Taking that concept of being able to be put anywhere, something deployable would be the best solution.  The reason for deployable architecture is because it allows for a progressive, new idea to be implemented.  Having a prototype of a building that is visually different allows for ideas to be acknowledged and adopted.  After the program is adopted and stable, it is time for a separate permanent structure that represents something that the people created.  The deployable architecture would move on to another city and the cycle continues.  As the building moves, micro financing spreads, and little by little families develop. 

Issue – how architecture and economics work together to help poverty

History – micro financing, slums

Intervention Idea – deployable, repeatable banking social center

Effect – families starting their own business and establishing their own capitol

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Intervention – deployable, foreign object

Program – safe, micro financing center

Location – anywhere…urban, rural, war torn

Tectonics – …Materials - …

Flexibility

First Iteration of Abstract: Flexibility: Architecture Adapting to Time and Change

A building has always been synonymous with being permanent.  Permanent does not mean timeless.  Being timeless means being used to your full advantage always.  Society is always evolving.  Today, we are changing at alarming rates.  People can update everything with a click of a mouse.  Why should the architecture we live in and around be any different?

The idea of flexibility in architecture means a building could potentially be timeless.  It is able to change with time.  It is using time to its advantage instead of making it the building’s death sentence.  Allowing a building to change or be flexible mean it can adopt to change.  Programmatically, looking at the way we plan spatially differently to create a successful space and looking at a buildings structure and boundaries (or lack of boundaries) and alter them to design a flexible building.

The scale of change can vary.  Allowing a whole building to change its purpose over a human’s lifetime verses it changing seasonally or changing hourly, can have an affect on experience.  Time based architecture can take full advantage of a site and be extremely efficient, economically, ecologically, and functionally.

Being able to change a building flexibility is the opposite of doing a full overhaul or gutting a building.  It means designing for change and when change occurs, it does not consume time and resources.  Using time-based architecture at an hourly or daily scale can be simple changes, like changing proportions, accessibility or connections, create new programmatic functions.  This brings concepts of having part permanent and part temporary structures to a building.  Creating a semi-permanent structure can allow for the possibilities of a flexible, timeless building.

soo a change of plans..

after doing more research, I have decided to change my topic.  here are my new idea map and visual abstract.  New written abstract soon to come, still trying to create something more specific.  


using time based architecture and flexibility of form to create series of experiences for numerous users.

First iteration

Thesis Abstract - the first attempt of many......

Perception of Color in Architecture 

Color in architecture magnitude has varied throughout history.  Color is not just the Benjamin Moore paint chosen; it is a variable in design that affects the quality of the designed space.  From cities to facades to an individual space, color affects experience.  Color is not a superficial element but a factor in design.

Certain colors have specific associations to everyday parts of our built environment.  From the red fire station to the color of the Southwest’s adobe homes, color is part of history.  Color has been used with specific agendas to create a conscious and or subconscious affect on people.  Color is tied to memory, emotions and consequently actions.  Understanding color allows for the opportunity to mold an experience.

Color in architecture can be determined by materiality.  The color and texture of a material creates depth to a space.  The way that light hits a material, it can highlight parts that potentially could have been overlooked.  Color is a factor, along with materiality and light, in creating that experience that evokes a reaction.

Color in architecture is not just materiality but in the opportunity color allows to play with perception.  The building façade of Museum Brandhorst in Munch, Germany plays with the use of scale.  During the precession to the building, the color of the façade creates a mental interaction for the viewer.  From afar the pastel panels blur together to have a simple coating over the pieced together volumes.  Up close, the panels start to pull apart, differentiating in color and creating a rhythm through the façade.  Color changed its appearance because of how it is viewed.

The implication of color is that it is not just an aesthetic property, but also an ability to create a sensory overload.  Color works with form, materials, and humanity to create a reaction, memory and experience. 

Visual Abstraction: process 2

For some reason my images are not always showing - hopefully I can fix it.... hmmmmm

This is the next iteration of combining interests of color, light and shadow, and informal cities

The connections are a stretch, but the general idea is using these design elements, architectural innovations and urban analysis to create something better in the worst scenerios.  This is a start of making these informal cities that started temporary to being permanent in hopes for it to become something better.  This is VERY broad, but its just the combination of my interests.

This is my idea map of my visual abstract with a few sources

Both are still a major work in process.  More iterations to create an idea, a question... a thesis.

Urban Tactics for Informal Cities

I was looking through some old work and lectures from my undergrad to help me figure out my potential thesis idea, this is pieces of a lecture by Professor Cowherd in my History of Architecture that really caught my interest then, and now.  

favela Soa Paolo - dynamic between the city and the informal city

small scale change

Medellin intervention - urban scale - 

Tactic: using the areas that remind people of the worst because of what happened there and putting public facilities (library, bridges etc) 

one of the architectural interventions - using design to create change

Visual Abstraction: process

In thesis prep II, our last assignment was to explore and represent an architectural term.  The current assignment is to create an idea map that helps explore options for thesis, techniques and work with composition. As a first basic run is my attempt at a simple display of color.  

For light and shadow, I used words and imaged to describe a path of potential ways to use light and shadow.  I derived the terms from my original image.

Spacial Investigation

My original collages for color and light & shadow

color: using pieces of photographs of Fenway Park to see the range of quality in green

Process

Final

light and shadow: a series of overlays to create a provocative image while 

Process

Final