I went to a great lecture last night at Town Hall here in Seattle given by Cameron Sinclair, the funny, inspiring, inspired founder of Architecture for Humanity (and, full disclosure, an old acquaintance from my days in New York). He was in town to soft-sell/plug his new book, "Design Like You Give a Damn", which is a wonderful read. Basically, in highlighting the visionary work that Architecture for Humanity does, Cameron's book presents a bunch of examples of what true collaboration, passion, and just a little money can do to address one of the lowest-order needs in Maslow's Hierarchy: safe, functional housing.
[ BTW, Cameron's talk was in the basement of Town Hall, seeing as Governor Gregoire was occupying the big room upstairs, but in a twist that didn't go un-noticed by everyone our room was full-to-bursting with young people hearing about a not-for-profit that works much more swiftly and efficiently than national governments often do to repair local housing conditions after natural disasters and armed conflicts... while the Guv's appearance didn't seem to be exactly packing them in... ]
What's most fascinating about Cameron's vision - and his organization's approach - to me is the central principle of everything that they do: ego-free collaboration. It's at the heart of every project, goal, activity, and achievement that they pursue... and it was the thread that ran through Cameron's whole lecture last night. According to AfH, good housing design for developing, displaced, or underfunded communities emerges more efficiently and effectively from local citizens working collectively with smart, motivated people who can draw decently well -- as opposed to AIA-certified, big-name-on-the-cornerstone-sign "starchitects" whose focus is increasingly on what Sinclair called "expensive gems of design available only to governments and the extremely rich". He cited numerous examples - many highlighted in his book - to illustrate how budgets of as little as $10k, $20k, $50k have produced lasting, effective new construction community meeting places, clinics, learning centers, and most importantly permanent dwellings in the places that most desperately need them. [ Kosovo, sub-saharan Africa, Sri Lanka, Biloxi, to name just a few of the 100+ collaborative project sites that AfH has worked on over the past 8 years ]
Any technologists, marketers, or business people out there who have read this far may be wondering, "what does this post have to do with the usual themes of technology, marketing, and business that these guys usually post about?" So I'll wrap up my plug-by-post for AfH and Cameron's book by highlighting one of the most fascinating new initiatives that AfH has spearheaded: the Open Architecture Network. The idea is so simple, and so killer, that it is nothing less than an effort to turn the whole architecture profession on its head. Rather than individual, reclusive design geniuses sitting in rarefied offices turning out perfects gems of dwelling design at a glacial - and expensive - pace, Sinclair believes that a free-to-all, edit-whatever-you-want open source architecture design wiki on the Internet can turn out better design, more designs, and more practical solutions to the world's housing challenges for vastly less money in vastly less time. Pretty cool. Check it out -- AutoDesk, the leading CAD software solution for architecture design, has even lent their collaboration effort to provide the free Freewheel collaborative design webapp that powers the platform.
Kudos to AfH for tackling a gigantic problem one structure, one community, one family at a time. Is there any other way to change the world?
[ Oh yeah, and one other thing: AfH is probably one of the most effective practitioners of "cheap marketing via viral and social networking tools" that I have ever seen, for-profit or not-for-profit. They have a Facebook group that numbers in the thousands, Cameron uses LinkedIn like a champ to respectfully solicit help and support for resources to fill gaps on projects as they are taking shape, they have incorporated all the best viral-sharing tools like Delicious bookmarking etc. directly into their site, their email newsletters are kindly infrequent but always informative and useful, and more than 50% of their funds come in via volunteer-organized social events like school hot-chocolate sales and through small gifts from young people via the Web. Totally cool -- many, many lessons to be learned for even the biggest, most well-funded and sophisticated marketing teams and dot-orgs. ]
Keep it up Cameron and AfH - no small visions, right?
