anticipatory redress
reconstruction | strategic education by stanley c britton
shelter planning
vernacular profession hinterlands
Architects are often missing in action during tumultuous times. Building local architectural capacity is both an obligation and an opportunity for the profession from afar. down and dirty architectural practice
The aftermath of war , as with natural disaster, can be a time of great excitement. Battalions of aide workers hit the beaches. Swarms of parachute relief pallets speckle the sky. Richard Wagner’s Ride of the Valkyries pumps adrenalin. The gods of goodness champion grand and glorious interventions. Meanwhile, hinterlands cope alone.
Uganda In the lush savannah of northern Uganda a 20-year insurgency appears to be petering out. The terror of child soldiers of the Lord’s Resistance Army is on the wane. Hundreds of thousands of hesitant Acholi and Langi families are slowly leaving the refuge of internally displaced person camps. ‘Home’ awaits their return. For many second and third generation campers home is a fuzzy notion for which they are unprepared. Does resettlement imply land tenure, governance, income generation, medical services, nutrition, education and shelter? Recently NUeLINK, the Northern Uganda e-Link telecommunication initiative, was shelved when it became evident that the people with technical expertise had long ago sought their future in the safety of the cities. Who, then, would provide informed leadership in the rebuilding of bush communities? This is the problem: absence of local experts in reconstruction and re-building of shelter, infrastructure and community almost automatically means application to the outside world for help. Yet, ubiquitous clusters of round mud-block huts are unlikely to receive architectural, engineering and urbanism benefits, programmed and financed as international aide, unless they are in the more populous locations. In hinterland locations, entrepreneurial incentives may be required. Catalyst projects are a possibility: this is a capacity building lesson from NUeLINK. Ugandan-Canadian Florence Ocen is backing Chicks4Grannies, a new regional egg marketing business. The hope is that healthy chicken coops beget healthy hens and profits. Profits finance better shelter for grandmother-headed families. Profits also contribute to expanding the business, spinning off opportunities for shelter improvements throughout the neighbourhood and beyond. Needed : a little vocational training for a selected few in design and construction techniques. Outcome : a small sustainable design-and-build business.
Burma There is nastiness afoot in the thick vegetation that blankets the rugged highlands of east Burma – fifty years of civil war and a totalitarian government faces off against its ethnic nationalities. The Karen, Mon and Karenni are three. The Thailand frontier is a clutter of refugee camps. For the majority still living on ancestral lands life and livelihoods are stressed; sometimes entire thatch roofed villages must quite literally pull pole and relocate. Meandering cross-border Back Pack Health Worker Teams offer respite. Well-trained and well-educated, they are often called upon to advise on matters of environmental well being such as potable water and safe sanitation, in addition to health. Periodic workshops provide the teams with a forum for continuous learning. Not long ago I was invited to add the basics of village infrastructure and habitation to the workshop curriculum. Useful lessons, I thought, would include locating on high ‘strategic’ ground, ensuring more than one egress route for safety, directing sewage down to crops below, separating combustible buildings, building robustly, bracing buildings against winds, and so on. A well-illustrated pocket size aide-memoire was an envisioned pack- away. The absence of cash-in-hand kept me in Canada. In the meantime, I thought more about this project. Perhaps better value would be achieved by mentoring a couple of refugee technicians. Would it not be they who could best workshop the Back Pack Teams in language, culture and shared experience? Unlike costly fly-in expatriates like me, they would always be available to advise. The war drags on.
The clients, the architects and the builders: a child-headed family in a Ugandan Internally Displaced Persons camp. Shelter is but one component of an extensive strategy that includes business, local profits, micro-credit and sustainable construction techniques employing further members of the community.
12 On Site review 22: WAR
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