Architecture Beyond Borders : Provisional Lessons Learned from the Developing World

Architects Without Borders, Architecture for Humanity, and similar groupsattest to the growing desires of professional architects and their academiccounterparts to produce positive change in the developing world. These wellintentionedefforts often employ environmental and economic sustainabledesign methodologies to provide more humane conditions in the regions ofapplication. The most effective projects engage community participation indecision-making (Arnstein 1969; Choguill 1996), and display an intimateknowledge of site and context to generate successful outcomes (Mang andReed, 2012; Van der Ryn and Cowan, 1996). However, encouraging participationand developing a nuanced understanding of site and context isdifficult during an era of global practice, when intense project schedules,remote locations, and limited budgets make it difficult to fully comprehendthe complex social and environmental relationships that characterizea particular site and culture, or to predict the unintended repercussions ofactions on sites located across cultures.As more of our working and communications processes migrate to digitaland networked channels, the barriers to long distance service are diminished.How might a new generation of well-intentioned professionals andstudents engage remote places and cultures in issues of design and sustainability?The paper proposes a provisional methodology to utilize synchronouscommunication tools with design methods to produce understandingof social and material site conditions and context over the course of projectsset in the developing world. The paper responds to challenges encounteredin a recent developing world design studio offered at the University ofBritish Columbia School of Architecture and Landscape Architecture. Themethodology developed here could be embraced by western universities anddesign firms undertaking projects in the developing world and addresses thefollowing areas:• Approaches for operating from a distant design studio with incompleteknowledge of site conditions and local context• The role of adaptable design approaches and responsive decisionmakingcapable of responding to the different uses of the project• The role of frameworks for others to complete versus finished designsThis method has the potential to enable Western Universities and architecturefirms to develop effective sustainable designs calibrated to local socialand environmental conditions.

Volume Editors
Martha Thorne & Xavier Costa

ISBN
978-0-935502-83-1