Wired Science

As an architectural designer in New York, Cameron Sinclair has worked with his share of corporate clients. But, as Head Of Architecture For Humanity, he has a much different customer base as refugees of war, victims of disaster and the world’s poor.

Now, with his Open Architecture Network, Sinclair is trying to connect smart designs with the people who need the most. Adam Rogers talks to him for tonight’s Chat.

Adam Rogers: Describe for me what the Open Architecture Network actually is and what it’s supposed to do?

Cameron Sinclair: The Network is a system to allow architects and designers and innovators to share solutions amongst each other. Also to allow communities to find solutions to implement based on systemic issues and post-disaster reconstruction.

Adam: So, like in practice, it’s a web site you go to or its meetings…

Cameron: No, there’s no office, it’s all on line and essentially, it’s like having a virtual architecture firm but the client are for communities in need. And so the sole purpose is based on social good and not financial good. We have about 7,000 members around the world right now. They share projects and they also project manage projects in the field. So, it could be in Chechnya. It could be in Afghanistan. It could be in Peru.

Adam: I guess it strikes me that as architects increasingly work with digital tools to do their designing, that it gets increasingly easier to put all that stuff on line for other people to use too, right?

Cameron: Absolutely. After the ‘90s, every architectural firm went digital. And with the inception of things like Google Sketch Up, which is a free CAD program anyone can use, that anyone has the tools to basically become an architect. 

Adam: That must be great for the certified architects then.

Cameron:  But if it’s just the design, you know you can have a nine year old that comes up with an amazing solution. We actually had a design that came from rural China and they didn’t have the money to send it to us. So they used digital cameras and they took photos of the blackboard.

Adam: Right.

Cameron: Now they’re posted on the network. Right? So, you know anyone can use this network.

Adam: The organization edited a book of a lot of these projects “Design Like You Give A Damn”,

Cameron: Right.

Adam:  And there are a few that I was really struck by, that kind of cleverness. Do you have some favorites that you can tell us about?

Cameron:  I actually love all those projects in the book but there’re some that are higher moment and the reasoning behind those, those solutions are things that you would not normally think about. The Massai Tribe in Kenya, for instance, traditionally their housing technology was designed primarily by the women of the community. So that 100% women architects and engineers are on this team and they had used cow dung for the roof.

Adam: Right.

Cameron:  And they simply made a simple change using ferro cement and as a result, they can collect enough rain water to irrigate the new land and also to provide clean sanitation for their kids and families.

Adam: So, you do a cement roof. How much lighter is that?

Cameron: It’s much lighter and it’s much more malleable. It’s actually very, very characteristic of the original cow dung roofs. So, the esthetic isn’t a great leap. You know that’s what scares people with architecture, is that you suddenly go from having traditional architecture to a glass box.

Adam: Right, something that’s coated with titanium.

Cameron: Right. The reality is they look at the problems on the ground. Many of our architects live in the villages and towns where they’re working.

Adam:  The one that I loved was by the designer Khalili. It’s an Iranian refugee camp, right, that you’re talking about? The design is sort of an inverted coil like clay pot.

Cameron: Not Khalili from Khalas. It’s an amazing invention. Nader was actually a consultant from NASA many years ago and they asked him to come up with housing for Mars, human habitation, a crazy, crazy project. And he realized that you can take lunar dust and you can fill up sand bags or plastic polypropylene bags and then with essentially a connector piece, which is barbed wire, you can create rings of these bags…

Adam:  So they fill a long sausage basically.

Cameron:  You fill a long sausage and you put a line of barbed wire and put another one in and eventually you create a dome. Then you put adobe around it and you can’t tell the difference but funny enough, Nader realized you could build these structures for less than a UN winter tent, right?

Adam:  Wow.

Cameron: So now that changes the whole game. That you’re using soil that’s on the existing land, that the people who are in the refugee camp or who are displaced can be hired to build it. So that you’re keeping the funding within that community and secondly you’ve got a permanent structure for the same cost as a refugee’s tent…

Adam:  You know the brilliance of it too is the logistical genius of that you don’t actually have to send a 1,000 pound structure that you built on the site but you just send these polypropylene bags and use the dirt, right?

Cameron: Yes, right, essentially it’s right there. It’s those sorts of solutions that I really like but you know they also come from institutions. The UN has just introduced, for the first time in twenty-five years, a new tent and it’s amazing.

Adam: What’s it like, what’s it made out of, how does it work?

Cameron:  The to start with, an old tent was made out of canvas that would rot in 6 months and it would take four people to carry to the area. Then because of the tie ropes, you would have to have a large surface area per tent.

Adam:  Oh, just a kind of guide wire, stabilizing tent.

Cameron:  Yes. This new design, it was designed by a consultant of the UNACR, who created the…

Adam:  This is the refugee committee…

Cameron:  Refugee, yes. The UN Refugee Group created a barrel-vaulted design that can be essentially put on the back of a bike, picked up by one person. They go out in the field. It pops open like a pop tent and interestingly enough the designer himself said that the thing that he loved the most, the best innovation and it took him six years for this innovation to be approved was a flap. A flap for privacy because…

Adam: Inside you’re talking about?

Cameron:  Inside, that allows other cultures to use this because you’re dealing with, let’s say a Muslim culture where there needs to be a level of privacy. You’ve got families all together. You could have twenty, you know ten, fifteen, twenty people in the tent. Before that we didn’t even think about the idea that there needs to be a level of privacy for religious and cultural reasons. It is simpler solutions like that that are important.

Adam: Another of the projects in the book is the grip clip. How does a grip clip work?

Cameron:  The grip clip is very simple. It’s an ingenious idea. Essentially, it’s a connector piece. The architecture in the connector is that you can take two structural elements and they can be any material, any found material. It could be bamboo. It could be rubble from destroyed buildings you can basically clip them together with this double side, this double clip. And then the top layer connects a membrane structure. Essentially you could create a geodesic dome out of any found material for eight dollars and to give you an example with the Kashmir earthquake. It is a little known fact most plastic tents are made in Pakistan.

Adam: Okay.

Cameron: When the Kashmir earthquake happened because of the series of natural disasters that we faced that year from the Tsunami to Katrina and so forth, they ran out of tents.

Adam:  Wow.

Cameron:  As a result, many people in the foothills and the mountains of Kashmir died because they simply couldn’t have basic shelter. There’s an interesting photo in “Design Like You Give A Damn”, of Pakistani refugees who’d torn down advertising and was using advertising hording to turn into tents. When you’re at that level of desperation an eight dollar house makes a lot of sense.

Adam: Right. Cameron, thanks a lot, I appreciate it.

Cameron:  Thank you so much.

Adam:  Interesting stuff.