As millions of people live without electricity, the provision of light
is a core concern for many developing countries. The Sierra portable
light mat was created by women weavers in the San Andreas region of the
Sierra Madre, Mexico as an illuminating rug powered by a combination of
LEDs, switches and rechargeable batteries. It is currently being tested
in Mexico and Australia.
Good Design & Architecture should be available for all economic classes. Looking beyond aesthetic standards, Alice Rawsthorn has published a brilliant article at The International Herald on humanitarian designers. She writes:
"That question always reminds me of the quote attributed to the bank
robber, Willie Sutton, when someone asked him why he robbed banks,"
said Paul Polak, president of International Development Enterprises, a
nonprofit organization that encourages innovation among poor farmers in
developing countries. "His answer was: 'Because that's where the money
is.' "
Fair enough. Designers are entitled to earn a living. But if you
flick back through design history, they haven't all focused on the
privileged minority. Think of R. Buckminster Fuller's emergency
housing, or the sustainable products devised by Victor Papanek for use
in developing countries. Their work has already had tremendous impact.
Fuller's geodesic domes have provided shelter for hundreds of thousands
of people in desperate circumstances; and Papanek is lauded as a
pioneer of socially responsible design. Yet both have been treated as
bit-part players in design history, as have other designers with
similar goals.
The Cooper-Hewitt, National Design Museum in New York is exploring
this phenomenon in "Design for the Other 90%," an exhibition opening
Friday. It is hard to think of a more important or inspiring issue for
a design museum to address right now. It is equally hard to imagine a
more appropriate venue than the Cooper-Hewitt, whose home is the
wisteria-clad Carnegie Mansion built on upper Fifth Avenue at the turn
of the 20th century by the robber baron, Andrew Carnegie. Having made a
fortune in the steel industry, Carnegie gave most of it away to endow
schools and libraries. This is the first time the Cooper-Hewitt has
devoted an exhibition to humanitarian design. "It's a call to action,"
Cynthia Smith, the show's curator, explained. "There's a big interest
among design students and design professionals in finding socially
responsible design solutions to the underpinnings of poverty."
"Design for the Other 90%" analyzes 30 humanitarian design projects,
all addressing basic needs in the areas of shelter, health, water,
education, energy and transport. As anyone who has dipped into the
quagmire of development knows, it is a ferociously political field with
diverse, often conflicting opinions. Humanitarian design is no
exception, but the Cooper-Hewitt hopes to skate around the schisms by
presenting a diverse range of approaches.
These are some highlights from the Cooper-Hewitt National Design Museum in New York show titled "Design for the Other 90%."
Intent on building free shelters for homeless people in Atlanta, a
group of Georgia Tech architecture students founded Mad Housers as a
voluntary project in 1987. Made from cheap, readily accessible
materials like lumber, silver sheet insulation and roll roofing, each
hut is prefabricated and can be installed in less than half a day. Used
in the U.S. and Canada, each hut has lockable doors for security, a
loft for sleeping and storage and a wood-burning stove for cooking and
heat.
Designed to turn any surface water into drinking water, the LifeStraw
was developed, and is now manufactured by Vestergaard Frandsen. Used in
Ghana, Nigeria, Pakistan and Uganda, it removes particles as small as
15 microns and helps to reduce the risk of infection by waterborne
diseases such as cholera, diarrhea, dysentery and typhoid.
During dry season, farmers can use this pump to extract groundwater for
their crops. Designed in 2006 by Gunnar Barnes of the Rangpur/Dinajpur
Rural Service in collaboration with International Development
Enterprises Nepal, it consists of two metal cylinders with pistons
operated by 'walking' on two treadles. The pump is made in small local
workshops and is used in Bangladesh, Cambodia, India, Myanmar, Nepal
and Zambia.
Invented in 1995 by the Nigerian engineer, Mohammed Bah Abba, to
preserve fresh food, the Pot-in-pot cooler consists of a small
earthenware pot nestling inside a larger one with wet sand filling the
space in between. As the water in the wet sand evaporates, it extracts
heat from contents of the inner pot thereby cooling them. The pot is
used in Burkina Faso, Cameroon, Chad, Eritrea, Ethiopia and Niger.
Aiming to transform the educational prospects of the world's poorest
children by producing a $100 laptop, One Laptop Per Child is a
not-profit initiative, led by Nicholas Negroponte of MIT Media Lab. The
result is the Xo1 laptop computer, manufactured by Quanta Computer and
developed by a design team, including Yves Béhar, fuseproject, Squid
Labs and Red Hat. Now being tested in Nigeria and Brazil, it is
scheduled for launch in September costing $150. As volume production
increases, the price should fall to the $100 target.
Transporting water is a time-consuming and cumbersome necessity for
many millions of people. Rather than lifting and carrying water,
containers, the Q-Drum was designed by P.J. and P.S. Hendrikse as a
cylindrical container that rolls along the ground with as much as 75
liters of water. It is used in a number of African countries including
Angola, Ethiopia, Ghana. Kenya, Namibia, South Africa and Tanzania.
Socially responsible design is a reality. Most of these inventions are simple and inventive. If there is a dream, there is a way! Let's keep dreaming without borders and learn how to providing the basic necessities to sustain life!
That's changing. Designers, like so many other people, have become
increasingly concerned about the plight of the needy majority, and many
of them are now using their skills to address it. Some do so by
devoting part of their time to voluntary work for nonprofit
organizations, like Architecture for Humanity or Engineers Without
Borders. Others have chosen to work full time in humanitarian or
sustainable design.
