When the earthquake hit Bam City, Iran a few days ago, the whole city fell down because it was made of ancient, unrepaired sand-brick. Today the Iranian government announced there may be as many as fifty thousand fatalities as a result.
A timely - maybe prescient - article about MIT (of course) and its bleeding-edge design program speaks about the very issue of designing modern buildings in third-world nations. One of the main points of the article is that the design program is not about making modern Western buildings, but rather to study local economies and the needs of local communities and then provide testable samples that fulfil these needs. A Model Village for the World explains,
Respect for a particular culture's traditions is at the core of Wampler's teachings. "When I go to countries, because I'm from MIT, sometimes they expect me to do high-rise, high-tech buildings," Wampler says. "They are surprised when I come and say, "You should be doing what you are already doing." For Wampler, a sense of community and economic opportunity should dictate the design of the buildings themselves.The example discussed in the article is a Turkish village-structure built to withstand the specific needs of the region: it is earthquake-proof, it helps create an abiding community of multiple family groups, it has space for traditional subsistence needs such as produce gardens in protected areas, it provides opportunity and space for small businesses (whether that be weaving and other traditional crafts to web services and publishing) and it is built to fit the landscape and the traditional architectural standards.
Now that Bam City is going to need massive rebuilding, almost from scratch - it is a sand castle the bullies have stomped, my ems and my henrys - this kind of approach is direly needed. If foreigners come in and throw down random buildings, it will not maintain local traditions and Bam City will not reform.
Now here's my question: will MIT work on Kansas? It is a public secret that bad architecture and community planning have completely fucked our countries' living space to the point that daily living is a misery in most areas. From Mexico to Canadia, traditional architectures were abandoned in the race to build a modernist world.
I say modernist because the designs were the wank-dreams of a handful of white men for whom the world was a playpen in which to build silly buildings out of blocks. In my home region of New England, stupid clone houses totally unsuited to actual life there has meant incredible wastes of energy and space and are generally eyesores. This is most buildings built after, say, 1950.
The rare genius who realises and builds the old-fashioned homes find they are remarkably suited for the weather and climate of the area. My parents insisted on building a saltbox, a traditional design with an eccentric roof that must be aligned to a certain direction. With open ends on the roof and other "archaic" forms, Saltboxes have none of the problems that every other style of house has in the inclement local environment.
Sealed modern houses rot and mold when hot moist air is trapped in the roof. People can suffer from fumes natural or unnatural, making them sick or killing them. Remember the radon issue? It isn't one if you have a house that interfaces with the outside air instead of sealing itself up hermetically like a tupperware.
My parents' house sucks up the sunlight during the winter; during the summer, the sun's rays hit only a tiny fraction of it. Thick walls keep the house appropriately cool or warm; a single stove, with Ben Franklin's patented design including soapstone siding to retain heat, can rapidly heat the inside to remarkable heat with only a tiny amount of wood.
I could continue, but I won't. Instead, I want to take this moment to wish that designed communities rejoin the modern world. I hate living without knowing the names of my neighbours; one of the reasons I picked my current housing was that it, unlike 95% or more of San Diego, was built around a grassy walkway lined with housefront gardens with garages under the rear houses (such as mine).
People can see each others' houses; break-ins do not happen in our courtyard because there are people everywhere. The animals play together. We are made to socialise and interact with others in our complex. This means we show a degree of support for each other I haven't seen since I was in college on an open hallway: you can have privacy but you are never left alone.
So MIT: make me some New England communities. There is so much we know about how people live well and lived in the past: take a page from their books and think before you build.
