Ground Rules in Humanitarian Design


Book Description

Delve deep into the complex issues surrounding humanitarian design Ground Rules in Humanitarian Design establishes essential foundations for thinking about humanitarian design and its role in global change. Outlining a vital framework for designing for impoverished and disaster-stricken communities, this informative guide explores the integration of culture, art, architecture, economy, ecology, health, and education. Experts on land, health, water, housing, education, and planning weigh in with best practices and critical considerations during the design process, and discussion of the environmental considerations and local materials/skills will broaden your understanding of this nuanced specialty. Richly illustrated, this guide combines graphic documentation of projects, maps, and data-tracking developments from Asia, Africa, and the Americas to underscore the complexities of this emerging and evolving field. The ambition to provide humanitarian architecture for areas in acute need is driving design innovation worldwide among both practitioners and educators. This book provides an indispensable resource for those engaged in the search for the sustainable inclusion of cultural code and compassion as a technology for design innovation. Learn how to approach the problem of humanitarian design Understand the cultural factors that play into development Develop a new framework for planning post-disaster design See how humanitarian design is pushing the industry forward While still in college, students are being given the opportunity to directly participate in programmes that provide vital facilities for communities abroad. While these international initiatives remain largely ad hoc, this book provides parameters for engagement and establishes best practices for approaching these projects with a global perspective. With expert insight and practical strategies on the ground, Ground Rules in Humanitarian Design is an essential resource for architects at any level.




Ground Rules in Humanitarian Design


Book Description

Delve deep into the complex issues surrounding humanitarian design Ground Rules in Humanitarian Design establishes essential foundations for thinking about humanitarian design and its role in global change. Outlining a vital framework for designing for impoverished and disaster-stricken communities, this informative guide explores the integration of culture, art, architecture, economy, ecology, health, and education. Experts on land, health, water, housing, education, and planning weigh in with best practices and critical considerations during the design process, and discussion of the environmental considerations and local materials/skills will broaden your understanding of this nuanced specialty. Richly illustrated, this guide combines graphic documentation of projects, maps, and data-tracking developments from Asia, Africa, and the Americas to underscore the complexities of this emerging and evolving field. The ambition to provide humanitarian architecture for areas in acute need is driving design innovation worldwide among both practitioners and educators. This book provides an indispensable resource for those engaged in the search for the sustainable inclusion of cultural code and compassion as a technology for design innovation. Learn how to approach the problem of humanitarian design Understand the cultural factors that play into development Develop a new framework for planning post-disaster design See how humanitarian design is pushing the industry forward While still in college, students are being given the opportunity to directly participate in programmes that provide vital facilities for communities abroad. While these international initiatives remain largely ad hoc, this book provides parameters for engagement and establishes best practices for approaching these projects with a global perspective. With expert insight and practical strategies on the ground, Ground Rules in Humanitarian Design is an essential resource for architects at any level.




Design, Displacement, Migration


Book Description

Design, Displacement, Migration: Spatial and Material Histories gathers a collection of scholarly and creative voices—spanning design, art, and architectural history; design studies; curation; poetry; activism; and social sciences––to interrogate the intersections of design and displacement. The contributors foreground objects, spaces, visual, and material practices and consider design’s role in the empire, the state, and various colonizing regimes in controlling the mass movement of people, things, and ideas across borders, as well as in social acts that resist forced mobility and immobility, or enact new possibilities. By consciously surfacing echoes, rhymes, and dissonances among varied histories, this volume highlights local specificity while also accounting for the vectors of displacement and design across borders and histories. Design, Displacement, Migration: Spatial and Material Histories shows displacement to be a lens for understanding space and materiality and vice versa, particularly within the context of modernity and colonialism. This book will be of interest to scholars working in design history, design studies, architectural history, art history, urban studies, and migration studies.




Humanitarian Engineering


Book Description

Humanitarian Engineering reviews the development of engineering as a distinct profession and of the humanitarian movement as a special socio-political practice. Having noted that the two developments were situated in the same geographical and historical space -- that is, in Europe and North America beginning in the 1700s -- the book argues for a mutual influence and synthesis that has previously been lacking. In this spirit, the first of two central chapters describes humanitarian engineering as the artful drawing on science to direct the resources of nature with active compassion to meet the basic needs of all -- especially the powerless, poor, or otherwise marginalized. A second central chapter then considers strategies for education in humanitarian engineering so conceived. Two final chapters consider challenges and implications. Table of Contents: Engineering / Humanitarianism / Humanitarian Engineering / Humanitarian Engineering Education / Challenges / Conclusion: Humanizing Technology




Aid by Design


Book Description

Humanitarian architecture – or the 'architecture of aid' – has seen phenomenal growth worldwide over the last decade, as architects have responded to an increasingly urgent need to connect socially responsible design to ongoing efforts in humanitarian aid. Whether providing ground-breaking designs for post-disaster shelter, or as part of wider economic development programmes (for example school-building in the developing world) – it is clear that architects have a vital role to play, delivering innovative design solutions for humanitarian relief and aid programmes. But how successful are these solutions? In the rush to offer a simplified toolkit, the complex challenges and long-term consequences of humanitarian architecture are often overlooked and under-examined. Aid by Design explores these questions. Beginning with an accessible introduction for architects to the field of development, it examines how architectural aid projects link to the processes of international humanitarian and development aid. It engages with the funders, designers, and users of today's aid-built interventions through a range of global case studies – including schools, hospitals, and emergency and low-cost housing – and reviews the architectural ambitions of each work alongside its ethical, social and economic consequences. By considering the real-world practicalities of culture, economy and development policy, the aim is to allow architects to better understand the successes, failures, and challenges of aid architecture and produce more workable, sustainable solutions for a better world. Case study practices include: Arup; Elemental; Open Architecture Collaborative (Architecture for Humanity); and Shigeru Ban, while case study locations range from Africa to South East Asia to Latin America.




Design for Empowerment


Book Description







Humanitarian Needs Assessment (Bulk Pack X 20): The Good Enough Guide


Book Description

What assistance do disaster-affected communities need? This book guides humanitarian field staff in answering this vital question during the early days and weeks following a disaster, when timely and competent assessment is crucial for enabling informed decision making. Needs assessment is essential for program planning, monitoring and evaluation. In an emergency response, however, a quick and simple approach to needs assessment may be the only practical possibility--in other words, it needs to be "good enough". This guide does not explain every activity needed to carry out an assessment, but it describes the assessment process and provides a step-by-step guide through the process. It also contains a number of tools and resources that may be helpful when planning or carrying out humanitarian needs assessments. This guide is essential reading for field staff carrying out assessments after a humanitarian crisis; it should also be read by humanitarian policy makers, students, lecturers and researchers.




Humanitarian Action and Ethics


Book Description

From natural disaster areas to conflict zones, humanitarian workers today find themselves operating in diverse and difficult environments. While humanitarian work has always presented unique ethical challenges, such efforts are now further complicated by the impact of globalization, the escalating refugee crisis, and mounting criticisms of established humanitarian practice. Featuring contributions from humanitarian practitioners, health professionals, and social and political scientists, this book explores the question of ethics in modern humanitarian work, drawing on the lived experience of humanitarian workers themselves. Its essential case studies cover humanitarian work in countries ranging from Haiti and South Sudan to Syria and Iraq, and address issues such as gender based violence, migration, and the growing phenomenon of ‘volunteer tourism’. Together, these contributions offer new perspectives on humanitarian ethics, as well as insight into how such ethical considerations might inform more effective approaches to humanitarian work.




Humanitarian Architecture


Book Description

Never has the demand been so urgent for architects to respond to the design and planning challenges of rebuilding post-disaster sites and cities. In 2011, more people were displaced by natural disasters (42 million) than by wars and armed conflicts. And yet the number of architects equipped to deal with rebuilding the aftermath of these floods, fires, earthquake, typhoons and tsunamis is chronically short. This book documents and analyses the expanding role for architects in designing projects for communities after the event of a natural disaster. The fifteen case studies featured in the body of the book illustrate how architects can use spatial sensibility and integrated problem-solving skills to help alleviate both human and natural disasters. The cases include: Lizzie Babister - Department of International Development, UK. Shigeru Ban - Winner of The Pritzker Architecture Prize 2014, Shigeru Ban Architects and Voluntary Architects’ Network, Japan. Eric Cesal – Disaster Reconstruction and Resiliency Studio and Architecture for Humanity, Japan. Hsieh Ying Chun – Atelier 3, Taiwan. Nathaniel Corum - Education Outreach and Architecture for Humanity, USA. Sandra D’Urzo - Shelter and Settlements and International Federation of the Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies, Switzerland. Brett Moore - World Vision International, Australia. Michael Murphy - MASS Design Group, USA. David Perkes - Gulf Coast Community Design Studio, USA. Paul Pholeros - Healthabitat, Australia. Patama Roonrakwit - Community Architects for Shelter and Environment, Thailand. Graham Saunders - International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies, Switzerland. Kirtee Shah - Ahmedabad Study Action Group, India. Maggie Stephenson - UN-HABITAT, Haiti. Anna Wachtmeister - Catholic Organisation for Relief and Redevelopment Aid, the Netherlands. The interviews and supporting essays show built environment professionals collaborating with post-disaster communities as facilitators, collaborators and negotiators of land, space and shelter, rather than as ‘save the world’ modernists, as often portrayed in the design media. The goal is social and physical reconstruction, as a collaborative process involving a damaged community and its local culture, environment and economy; not just shelter ‘projects’ that ‘build’ houses but leave no economic footprint or longer-term community infrastructure. What defines and unites the architects interviewed for Humanitarian Architecture is their collective belief that through a consultative process of spatial problem solving, the design profession can contribute in a significant way to the complex post-disaster challenge of rebuilding a city and its community.