Architects and designers typically engage with disaster relief efforts reactively, responding to competitions and briefs sponsored by governments, NGOs and other aid agencies . This short-circuits the potential for designers to lend their expertise earlier in the process, helping to define what should be designed and when, rather than simply how. What if architects were to engage with crisis relief more proactively, identifying urgent issues that designers are well-positioned to address? This process could recast the role of the designer, opening new territories for design engagement, and delivering more holistic, effective design interventions.
This blog documents a multi-phase initiative by PennDesign exploring the potential role of the architect/designer in contributing to the positive transformation of a traumatized region after a natural or man-made crisis. In its pilot year, the course sequence—Design for Delivery: Strategies and Constructs for Post-Disaster Haiti —focused on the aftermath of the January 2010 earthquake in Haiti which wrought catastrophic physical damage and disconnected social, political and economic networks .
In the Fall 2010 research seminar and Spring 2011 studio, architecture, planning and landscape students analyzed the political, social and economic context of Haiti, and distilled a set of strategic design positions, or urgencies, based on their research. The course sequence positioned architects as strategists operating within a network of experts and stakeholders for the deployment of innovative design approaches. Readings, films, guest lectures and discussions framed an inclusive view of the earthquake as an interruption in a long history of political unrest , international aid efforts and economic isolation. Seminar students developed a catalog of research organized around cross-cutting topics—food, water, control, land, environment, information, money and mobility—and a publication documenting 11 DESIGN URGENCIES FOR HAITI. Five studio teams are working to take this research further, developing infrastructural interventions related to RAVINES, PINS, CAMPS, FRAMES, and RUBBLE.
