[p2p-research] p2p architecture for haiti

Thu Feb 4 17:29:38 CET 2010

Superb, Eric, as usual!!

On Thu, Feb 4, 2010 at 10:46 PM, Eric Hunting <erichunting at gmail.com> wrote:

> Cameron Sinclair is well known as one of the chief proponents of the new
> socially responsible architecture movement that has been sweeping across the
> design community over the past decade. It is no surprise to find he and
> Architecture for Humanity so immediately in the thick of the Haiti crisis,
> teaming with NGOs, developing a recovery plan, and putting people on the
> ground. In this recent article, originally from the Architecture for
> Humanity blog site, he offers a light overview of their reconstruction plan
> as its being developed and an interesting glimpse at the complex situation
> it must cope with.
>
> The breadth of practical recovery logistics knowledge AfH has gathered
> together is remarkable for such a still relatively young organization. And
> their community-focused approach is very significant. This is not the
> military-style short-term thinking that deals only in mass populations as is
> common to relief agencies but real long-term planning that actually
> recognizes communities as functional entities in the reconstruction process.
> But, perhaps owing to the very light overview approach of the article, there
> is a lot missing that this author would like to see. Though he describes
> their plan as open, there is no place on the AfH web site where we can
> publicly see the very important "Rebuilding 101 Manual" and "Earthquake
> Resistant Housing Manual" mentioned as key information for their program.
> Perhaps this may become available in the future. Haiti represents some big
> challenges in terms of applied building technology and it would have been
> interesting to learn more about the specific building methods they
> anticipate using.
>
> Haiti is extremely poor in natural resources and has long relied heavily on
> imported construction materials -which is one of the reasons so much housing
> was marginal to begin with given the long history of extreme poverty. Much
> of the landscape is quite denuded, topsoils are thin, and the usual earth
> compositions needed for the earthen building methods common to relief
> efforts today may not be available. So the choice of building technology and
> its relation to local industrial potential is key to the overall recovery
> strategy and its ability to rebuild economic infrastructures as well as
> houses. It would be interesting to learn more on their plans for dealing
> with this unique situation. Island nations are expected to become
> particularly vulnerable to natural disaster in the near future given the
> impacts of Global Warming and many share similar resources challenges.
>
> This author was thinking about this very topic recently, wondering what
> building technologies offered the most potential in Haiti for use of
> indigenous materials and the establishment of local industry to support
> them. If typical earthen construction methods -compressed earth block in
> particular- are not practical the options for low cost housing become
> extremely limited since so few other locally produced materials may be
> available. But there are some interesting -albeit perhaps a bit unusual-
> options.
>
> In collaboration with Micheal Bauwens or the P2P Foundation and Agatino
> Rizzo of City Left, this author recently worked on a transitional housing
> concept for the earthquake struck region of Abruzzo Italy based on the
> repurposing of shipping containers. (see
> http://www.presstletter.com/articolo.asp?articolo=2239) Like much of the
> Caribbean, Haiti may already have a small local industry for the repurposing
> of these containers -left-over from its very trade-dependent economy- for
> business and housing. Could this be built upon? We tend to think of
> cargotecture as something of a recent novelty but, in fact, these have been
> repurposed for housing in poorer nations for about as long as they're
> existed. No doubt, container structures are already in use to some degree in
> the current relief efforts, most likely in the role of transportable
> buildings brought by relief agencies themselves. But these expensive prefab
> structures would not be a practical basis of housing as they are in this
> context. What would be needed is a strategy for the reuse of containers as a
> raw material for a local industry. With our Abruzzo proposal, we suggested
> the development of a modular building system based on prefab -but not
> all-inclusive- elements that could be used in innumerable combinations as
> building blocks for structures collaboratively designed by communities
> themselves in peer-communication process. These basic buildings elements
> were infinitely customizable and reusable to accommodate local adaptation
> over the expected protracted recovery period.
>
> In Europe an already well established commercial container prefab industry
> made this strategy quite logical but the heaviness and bulkiness of whole
> container modules is something of a liability where there is a lack of heavy
> equipment to transport and manipulate them. In the context of Haiti, this
> may limit this application to the very close proximity of the chief source
> of this raw material -port areas- though the availability of economical
> military-type modular Container-Lift-Transport units might make a big
> difference here. But can we go a step further in the notion of the container
> as raw material? Can we turn the material of the container into a more
> easily transported collection of parts as apposed to a whole unit module?
> Certainly, the variability in container structural composition within the
> unit module standards is an issue, but there are some interesting
> precedents. It's not uncommon in the Middle East and Africa to see container
> doors removed from containers and repurposed whole as gates for the common
> walled compound home designs using earthen construction. (anyone with recent
> military experience in the regions is probably very familiar with these) How
> else might we 'de-part' a container into reusable structural components?
> What is their architectural potential? What sort of building industry might
> one develop from this?
>
> Though container 'cast offs' may be relatively plentiful in a region so
> heavily reliant on marine trade, they are still not a truly indigenous
> material. What options might the region have for something that is more
> wholly locally produced? A couple of interesting possibilities have occurred
> to me. Though typical earthen construction techniques may not be practical
> given the nature of the local raw material, one interesting exception is the
> SuperAdobe technique developed by the late Nadir Khalili and the CalEarth
> organization. This technique is more indifferent to earth composition and
> can actually use sand as a building material. In Haiti there already exists
> an industry for the production of hessian bags for the coffee industry that
> could be turned to production of continuous tubing for SuperAdobe
> construction purposes. However, there is still a need for a cement binder
> for SuperAdobe and this is an imported material. But a promising alternative
> may be found in the cultivation of hemp production which would neatly
> produce both raw materials for the bag tubing and siliconized hemp chard
> which can be used to produce Isochanvre; a crude geopolymer cement and
> plaster alternative developed in France through reverse engineering of
> ancient Roman concretes. So there would seem to be potential here for a
> Haitian construction industry based completely on indigenous materials that
> builds upon already established industries. The chief catches with this
> notion are that there are still some issues with seismic resistance for
> SuperAdobe structures that may limit their individual scale and, unless
> someone has already experimented with this in the past, Isochanvre-based
> SuperAdobe is an untested material and there may not be a lot of time for
> its research.
>
> Hopefully, in the future Architecture for Humanity will share more
> information with the public as to the specific architecture they employ in
> their recovery plans and we can see what solutions they've arrived at for
> the unique Haitian situation. It will be interesting to see what they
> devise, given the great challenges.
>
> Eric Hunting
> erichunting at gmail.com
>
>
>
> On Feb 2, 2010, at 4:54 AM, Michel Bauwens wrote:
>
> >
> http://shareable.net/blog/cameron-sinclair-no-ownership-in-rebuilding-lives
> >
> > Dear Eric,
> >
> > I wonder if you could discuss this for the p2p blog, eventually
> rementioning our abbruzzo plan in the process?
> >
> > Michel
> >
> > --
> > Work: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dhurakij_Pundit_University - Think
> thank: http://www.asianforesightinstitute.org/index.php/eng/The-AFI
> >
> > P2P Foundation: http://p2pfoundation.net  -
> http://blog.p2pfoundation.net
> >
> > Connect: http://p2pfoundation.ning.com; Discuss:
> http://listcultures.org/mailman/listinfo/p2presearch_listcultures.org
> >
> > Updates: http://del.icio.us/mbauwens; http://friendfeed.com/mbauwens;
> http://twitter.com/mbauwens; http://www.facebook.com/mbauwens
> >
> >
> >
> >
>
>

-- 
Work: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dhurakij_Pundit_University - Think thank:
http://www.asianforesightinstitute.org/index.php/eng/The-AFI

P2P Foundation: http://p2pfoundation.net  - http://blog.p2pfoundation.net

Connect: http://p2pfoundation.ning.com; Discuss:
http://listcultures.org/mailman/listinfo/p2presearch_listcultures.org

Updates: http://del.icio.us/mbauwens; http://friendfeed.com/mbauwens;
http://twitter.com/mbauwens; http://www.facebook.com/mbauwens
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://listcultures.org/pipermail/p2presearch_listcultures.org/attachments/20100204/6fffcd5b/attachment.html>