Precedents #2

39571 Project, DeLisle, Mississippi - SHoP Architects
http://www.dwell.com/peopleplaces/profiles/7501232.html






Deboer Recent Projects
http://deboerarchitects.com/

Bamboo!

I met with local DC architect Meghan Walsh, AIA, last Saturday after blindly contacting her when I saw her name in the Feminist Practices exhibit at the Kibel Gallery at school. Her board displayed work she has done with her organization Axis Mundi in Brazil. In the short meeting she gave me great recommendations about where to look for tectonic approaches to resolving my project.

Bamboo and eucaliptus are two materials with plenty of promise and here are some big names in the field of bamboo and alternative materials construction:

Johan Van Lengen - Tibarose
http://tibarose.com

Simon Velez and DeBoer Architects - Bamboo Thoughts
http://deboerarchitects.com/BambooThoughts.html

Martin Coto Gomez
http://www.bambuesworks.com/index.htm

New Bamboo By Marcelo Villegas, Benjamín Villegas Jiménez, Ximena Londoño, Jimmy Weiskopf, Villegas Asociados
Google Book Preview

Images from New Bamboo

Entitlement and Anarchy

“Bang for the buck” is at the core of all economic decisions. It is also at the core of economic and ethical philanthropic decisions. One maj or discussion has developed in the recent years among the upper crust of deep-pocketed intellectuals about the access to computer technology to the very poor in places such as Africa and South Asia. On one side were the money pumpers – the likes of Larry Ellison proposing that the cheaper the computer the more access to more people. The opposition from the idealists, head by Bill Gates, proposed that it was not enough to provide just any computer; the poor deserve the best that technology has to offer as well. It is hard to decide whether this debate is more analogous to a teenager buying a $500 first car to get on the road or the Seinfeld muffin top fiasco where the homeless demand the entire muffins be donated, not just the bottom halves.

In development plans for the poorer regions of the world the consensual approach has usually been aligned with the “better than nothing” ideology where the rich give what they can find and the poor get what they can grab. The standards of micro-lending have embraced this ideology, assuming that the bare minimum is enough to kick-start the small entrepreneur’s financial growth. Perhaps the strongest argument against Grameen Bank’s involvement in Bangladeshi development has been its haphazard distribution of land through small loan purchases. The incremental purchasing of lands moving away from the central cities of Bangladesh and other developing countries has been bla med for the rapid urban sprawl taking over rural areas. For countries whose populations are still in the transitional phase of rapid growth due to high birth rates and low death rates low density suburban development is not an efficient or sustainable pattern of development. There is a need for some level of master planning when it comes to providing people homes and ways of life through development. The implementation of an overseeing organization is ethically problematic though, since it conflicts with the idea of the small entrepreneur having full liberty about how to invest in business, land, and construction. In the general structure of micro-credit, the loan is not pending a particular direction in investment.

Argentine architect Victor Pelli presents a dilemma to begin his book, Habitar, Participar, Pertenecer – how does a designer balance the necessities of the individual with the satisfaction of social standards? He proposes no earth-shattering solution in his book other than reason and sensibility. He emphasizes the effectiveness of individualized attention, small-scale studies and projects, and the assumption that no one knows better than oneself what one needs. As a designer himself, he reminds the all too often omnipotent educated designers that they must provide a service to those in need, not indoctrinate them and force them into our idealizations of what their lives should be.

Google Earth Links

Here are some *.kml links straight into Google Earth to the areas that I am pursuing my work. Click on the city name to be taken to an aerial view of the area in Google Earth.

Bagé, Rio Grande do Sul, Brazil
City of about 100,000 inhabitants, a commercial hub for the pampas region less than an hour drive from the Uruguay border at Acegua.

Porto Alegre, Rio Grande do Sul, Brazil
Capital city of the state, metropolitan area of about 4 million. It is the fourth largest city in Brazil and the southernmost major city.

Site Presentation

Here is a slideshow of my site presentation for class. It by no means defines my site, but it should give a good overview of the region in which I plan on working.



View map of the pictures on GoogleMaps

Noman Kindergarten

This is a video of a school funded by the private hands of my friend's mother in a northern province of Bangladesh. I am posting this video to display a model of what private money well placed can produce.