All those architecture and design students who feel trapped in their university courses and are starting to doubt about their academic formation, should watch two documentaries - "Enough White Teacups" and "Do More With Less".
The documentaries will be screened this week at the Architecture & Design Film Festival (ADFF; through 21st October) that kicked off yesterday in New York (check out the film schedule here). The two films prove that it is possible to create very innovative objects and buildings when you keep one main aim in mind - improving people's lives.
Directed by Michelle Bauer Carpenter, "Enough White Teacups" moves from two points, sustainability and design, and introduces the Danish non-profit award Index: Design to Improve Life, presenting some of the nominees and winners from the previous years.
Conceived in 2002, the award is open to a wide range of projects from medical devices to tools and safety equipment and architecture. Divided in five categories - body, home, work, play and learning, and community - the projects that it usually presents are based on principles of social, economic and ecological sustainability.
There is a lot to discover in "Enough White Teacups", from the Zipline, sky ambulances that fly medical supplies to remote areas in Africa, to Paperfuge, the world's fastest object operated by hand, essentially a hand-activated centrifuge based on the oldest toy in the world, a spinning gig, that allows to separate blood from parasites without using electricity.
Some of these designers and teams were inspired by personal life experiences: discovering more plastic than underwater life during a diving session prompted Boyan Slat to come up with Ocean Clean Up, a system that allows to gather plastic using the force of marine currents; losing dear ones to anti-human landmines in Afghanistan pushed brothers Massoud and Mahmud Hassani to transform a basic wind toy into a wind powered landmine cleaner, the Mine Kafon Ball, capable of detonating hidden explosives.
Observing instead the lives of people and their immediate needs, Alejandro Aravena and his team at Elemental came with the half house, low-income housing that are only half completed, the other half can be done by the residents on their own.
There's more to discover including the Peek Retina, a portable vision screening tool that can be attached to a smartphone; MamaNatalie, a birth and neonatal simulator; the consumer awareness book PIG 05049; What3Words, a system that turns GPS coordinates into three-word addresses to allow people to be tracked and found (it has so far helped ambulances, emergency teams, relief efforts and mail deliveries), and GreenWave, a responsible crop of kelp, mussel, oyster for food and pollution farming.
Fashion seems to be missing and that's disappointing, but this means that designers in this industry will have to work not on producing the umpteenth T-shirt (an interesting follow up to this documentary may be entitled "Enough White T-shirts" and be focused only on fashion...), but on coming up with more intriguing and sustainable products.
The old adage "low on resources high on resourcefulness" is behind the documentary "Hacer Mucho con Poco" (Do More With Less), directed by Chilean journalist Katerina Kliwadenko and Spanish architect Mario Novas.
This refreshing view of the architectural profession looks at several projects designed and made by young architectural firms and architects in Latin America.
While the projects are different they do have something in common as they try to bring a tangible change to a profession that has inexorably become linked to tenders and money, but doesn't often listen to the needs of real people and clients who may not have a lot of money to invest.
Alejandro Aravena's half house project also gets a mention in the documentary, but there's more to discover including the Casa en el Carrizal (Daniel Moreno + Sebastián Calero), the Casa en La Prosperina (Fábrica Nativa Arquitectura), the tourist Centro de Interpretación del Cacao (Taller Con Lo Que Hay 4 + ENSUSITIO Arquitectura), Torno Co.Lab (Rama Estudio), La Pesca Restaurant (Natura Futura) and Mirador en Quilotoa Shalalá (Jorge Javier Andrade Benítez + Javier Mera Luna + Daniel Moreno Flores).
The firms involved seem to be young and committed to tackling urban challenges in Latin America in their own way: getting away from corporate architecture, some of them choose to work only four days a week and have a longer weekend to keep creative and well-rested; others help clients to get a loan for their buildings or even give them the money to start the project.
All of them have a strong belief in working with local artisans and professionals, but also involve the entire local community or family members to keep costs low.
Another way to keep expenses contained is rediscovering and experimenting with local, natural or recycled materials such as adobe, bamboo, glass or wood from old factories and car tyres (using recycled elements allows these firms to avoid perpetuating the vices of the profession, such as employing only new materials).
One of the key points of the film remains showing how it is possible to build structures with very little money (the buildings created in the film go from $10,000 to $60,000, but there are also experimental structures that only cost $50 or $200) while finding alternative solutions to problems. The film also suggests that the crisis of the architectural discipline can be changed when architects become part of the community and help it building the structures.
Quite a few members of the communities interviewed in the film stated they didn't know anything about architecture or had never met an architect in their lives, but their perspective changed after they worked on specific projects and they developed an interest in the discipline.
The second part of the documentary focuses on education and on the fact that academia seems to have contributed to destroying the practice by forming the architect and deforming his role into that of a successful but passive figure.
The architects and students interviewed state that academia may provide you with the theory, but most graduates don't know how to build anything. The solution was bringing students to work on real projects and teaching them a hands-on approach they wouldn't get in an academic environment (this principle could be applied to fashion courses as well...). This allows them to take responsibility and earn how to work with different materials and techniques (one of the architects interviewed states they calculated that a year of monthly 4-day workshops can be compared to 5 years spent in a university...).
One of the interviewed students in the film came up with a studio with a blissful view over the mountains that he built as a university project together with members of his family.
The Escuela Nueva Esperanza by Ecuadorian firm Al Borde was instead a collaborative community effort inspired by a spaceship for what regards its shape, but made with local materials and levelled by local workers without any special instruments, but only taking into account the sea horizon.
The conclusion of the documentary is natural - architects shouldn't rely so much on waiting for money and funds from huge clients such as governments, but they should take things into their hands and become active players in developing their own projects also for small clients with limited budgets. In a nutshell "hacer" is the word and going beyond the surface of design to discover the genuine needs of people is the path towards the future.
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