Natural disasters: how can we improve?
Panel discussion with Martin Bell OBE, Dame Barbara Stocking (Oxfam GB) & Cameron Sinclair (Architecture for Humanity)
May 25, 2010
Royal Geographic Society, 1 Kensington Gore, London

A mixed and studious crowd gathered at the Royal Geographic Society last week, exuding a slightly nervous goodwill as we waited for latter-day saints Cameron Sinclair, of Architecture for Humanity, and Dame Barbara Stocking, of Oxfam GB, to be introduced.

Natural disasters have long and often been the cause of major political reform, international cooperation and the coming together of intellect and humanity. However, with events occurring at a larger scale and greater frequency than previously witnessed, the need to galvanize and channel our energies seems more urgent than ever.

Panel chair, fêted journalist and erstwhile MP Martin Bell OBE first met Cameron Sinclair while reporting on the violence in Kosovo in the early ’90s. Set up in 1999, AfH engages in building activities, supplied pro-bono by volunteers, in communities of need – defined not only by crises but also including those beleaguered by endemic or sustained poverty. A genuine fairytale of an organization, garnering adoration and disdain in (not quite) equal measure, AfH nonetheless prides itself on somewhere near 5,600 volunteers from over 83 cities, and cynicism notwithstanding, does some amazing reconstruction work.

Behind the cuddly organization and camera-friendly baby face, Sinclair exhibits jaws of steel, using military terminology abundantly; volunteers undertake a “tour of duty,” services are measured “on the ground” and in terms of strategy and impact, and not simply as aid packages to be “air-dropped in.”

Tugboat vs. Ocean Liner
Not for the first time, Sinclair pulled out his analogy of tugboat vs. ocean liner, in his demonstration of the agility of a NGO operating as a small, nebulous and peripatetic network. Perhaps this mentality is best demonstrated by the TED-funded Open Architecture Network, which utilizes open-source innovation to develop and host designs; in three short years of activity, the OAN shares thousands of design projects under creative commons licensing, from the prosaic to the outlandish, across the globe.

The flipside is that whilst tugboat AfH may well be more nimble and efficacious at community level, ocean-liner Oxfam, due to its size and longstanding relationships with organizations such as the UN, weighs in at the criticial stages of advocacy and government policy. Though the effects of grassroots activity can filter up and effect change, such change must be established at the level of national governance to become sustainable rather than spontaneous or sporadic.

Dame Stocking emphasized that protective measures need to be embedded in local governments and societies as well as at the national level; a predictable but no-less urgent agenda for action included pushing for climate change goals to be met, particularly in the cutting of greenhouse gas emissions, as agricultural societies are placed in greater jeopardy than ever. Governance at the national level needs to become more porous and engaged with disaster management, taking responsibility for aid management and crisis protocol, activating local and social networks; foremost though, year-round disaster risk reduction needs to be acknowledged and given much higher priority both by governments and humanitarian organizations such as Oxfam, though urgent appeal in the event of disaster is oftentimes a more emotive “call-to-arms.”

Media
Indeed, what happens when the media leaves? Media attention naturally drives up donations of resources and time – which need to be spread out over longer periods, rather than arrive in inefficient, erratic spikes. There is also a seeming public appetite for failure, and this is in a sense on the shoulders of NGOs and the media; too often a realistic timescale is not projected, leading to a sense of expectancy and the proliferation of misinformation. The need for commercially saleable news often supercedes deeper investigative journalism; either this reliance on AP-wire reporting must be reversed, or citizen journalism could step up. In fact, such use of social networking has benefited crisis areas in Kenya, Haiti and South East Asia, utilizing GPS technology to create more accurate geospatial maps of activity and need.

Sinclair conceded that the media should be welcomed to critiquing NGO activity where relevant – but they could also hold similar fire to private sector stakeholders or participants, for example the oil companies in the wake of the recent Gulf spill, which was practically unreported in the US mainstream media.

Stocking noted that aid agencies can also be very defensive with the management of information. Increased honesty would create a more fruitful relationship between the media, agencies and the public.

In punk-rock style, Sinclair cited Fred Cuny, whistleblower and humanitarian martyr who’s been missing in action since 1995, as a major influence. And he reminds us that with the increase of social networking, one cannot hide. Instead, the use of storytelling, not to manufacture truth, can expose a greater complexity of aid work than has been attempted. Recognizing the need to share failures, he pondered why donors expect NGOs to demonstrate a 100% success rate when even politicians need just over 50% – a seemingly whimsical thought, but particularly biting in the light of the United Kingdom’s currently “hung” parliament.

Architecture
Architects, surveyors and planners are often at a loss in terms of how to gear their practice towards aid. Firstly, architects can’t expect to get involved straight away – it’s one for the long haul. AfH are often the “last ones out,” and Sinclair states their key activity takes place between four months and four years after crisis events. The key is in balancing immediate humanitarian concerns with the potential for economic stability and recovery, towards long term solutions. For example, a crisis in housing in Haiti must not benefit the manufacturers of prefabricated housing in Iowa, whilst creating no jobs and making no use of indigenous skills and materials in Haiti. Architects operating in a humanitarian sphere needs must accept greater liability, looking at his projects less like an artwork but more like a business model, much in the same way as a developer.

No final delivery is worse than no response at all, so architects cannot afford to be prima donnas about designs; a degree of humility must be learned. Yet beauty need not be discarded for functionalism; what needs to be produced is not just a beautiful building aesthetically, but also in terms of equity; “building in beauty” at this level becomes crucial because of the maintenance and subsequent equity. This is an example of an aesthetic concern being reconfigured in terms of development and sustainability in economic terms.

Sinclair and Stocking both underlined the importance of utilizing both indigenous and donor skill sets – squeezing not just money or even donations-in-kind but crucially, knowledge. Like the sunken-eyed Bob Geldof at LiveAid (go study pop history, those of you too young to remember), the perkier Sinclair exhibits a hunger for extracting the maximum from those who approach his organization, but unlike Geldof, they don’t just want you to “give us your f***ing money” – they want your mind too, which, in these times, is all to the good.

N.B.  Hat-tip to Cameron, the guys at AfH and particularly to Susi J Platt & Purnima McCutcheon, designers of the Yodakandiya Community Complex, briefly discussed during the RGS event, it was also shortlisted for the Aga Khan Award 2010 on the same day, and deservedly so.

Shumi Bose is an architectural writer and researcher. She lives in London.

As with all review and opinion pieces posted on Urban Omnibus, the views expressed are those of the author only and do not reflect the position of Urban Omnibus editorial staff or the Architectural League of New York. Images via 21st Century Challenges.

West Harlem Piers Park
Linking Riverside Park, which begins at 72nd Street, to Riverbank State Park, from 135th to 145th Streets, the West Harlem Piers Park is the last jigsaw piece in a now unbroken strip of publicly accessible waterfront running all the way up from Battery Park. A safe, continuous and dedicated bicycle path now extends along the west side of Manhattan, allowing a no-dismount ride from the Battery all the way to Dyckman up at 200th Street – a bright feather to the city’s cap, or bike helmet.

Over ten years in the making, the West Harlem Piers Park has been the laborious fruit of many stakeholders and the subject of discussion at every level of government. The site exists where several different neighborhood initiatives intersect: the West Harlem rezoning, the 125th BID westward expansion and Columbia University’s Manhattanville expansion. The complex consultation process brought in many parties, evidenced by the long succession of assemblymen and community leaders who took the stage to thank their colleagues. Congressman Charles B Rangel, who procured federal funds (including still-to-come stimulus dollars), and Assemblyman Herman “Danny” Farrell reminisced about the ferry to the Palisades Entertainment Park in New Jersey and trolley cars which rattled into the area when the West Harlem Pier was still functioning (indeed there were plans to rebuild the pier as an additional stop on the Manhattan Circle Line). Others grimly recollected the site’s seedier and more dangerous recent history: the milk bottles of the erstwhile Borden Milk Factory gave way to crack vials, broken glass and prostitution during the recession of the seventies. Today the park has been transformed into a highly usable and attractive addition to Harlem’s public spaces. Hope Knight from the Upper Manhattan Empowerment Zone, and Pam Jones from Community Board 9 both spoke of the site’s proximity to 125th Street, a major east-west connector, and of the ongoing developments planned for the area as being strategic to the park’s popularity.

W Architecture & Landscape Architecture and Archipelago Architecture and Landscape Architecture, who design exclusively for New York City, worked with the EDC to come up with a design for the space on this rather awkwardly shaped sinew of land. Several narrow lawn areas are neatly dissected by north-south pedestrian and bike paths; the southern end of the park has an ample number of benches and reclining areas, facing the water or the green spaces within the park. A triangular void in the decking separates the lawns from a pier-like strip of walkway running parallel to the park over the water, and increases the feeling of proximity to the river as it sparkles and spits underfoot. The strip allows fishermen – who have been provided with cleaning tables – and spectators of the growing kayaking community to be closer to the river whilst being undisturbed by the park’s other users. The park has also been landscaped to allow for small performance spaces, as demonstrated during the park’s inaugural ceremony by the company of the Dance Theatre of Harlem and the Patience Higgins Trio of jazz musicians.

Local artist Nari Ward was brought into the mix by Percent For Art, which ensures that one percent of public project funding is given over to the arts on site. His three metallic sculptures, derived from the shapes of fishing hooks, punctuate the lawns of the Piers park, while a walkway on the sidewalk edge of the park attempts to weave in spatial memories from the local community and from the history of the site.

Marine Transfer Station at 135th Street
Now relatively benign on the northern fringe of the Piers Park, until 2001 the Marine Transfer Station at 135th Street received 95 truckloads of garbage every day, all of which was largely transported by barge to Freshkills Landfill in Staten Island; the air pollution caused by the garbage and idling trucks exacerbated the locality’s already high asthma rate. The protests against seeming environmental racism gained weight as the negative effects to air quality were compounded by the local bus depot and the North River Waste Treatment Plant just behind the MTS, which processes sewage from all of West Manhattan, as well as the Riverdale area of the Bronx.

Two parties who are highly concerned in contesting the future of the 28,000 square foot space of the defunct Transfer Station are WEACT and Community Board 9, both of whom have been fundamental in the collaboration to develop the park so far. While WEACT, headed by the Jane Jacobs Medalist Peggy Shepard, sees the structure as playing host to further leisure activities such as kayaking, boat trips and a visitor center, Community Board 9 suggests that the creation of local green jobs is of paramount importance and so proposes long-term aquaculture and hydroponic agriculture projects, as well as promoting tourism and cultural activities. Having promised never to reopen the MTS for waste disposal, the Mayor’s office has commissioned WEACT to organize a broad-based steering committee and community-based charrette process that would work to find the best possible use.

We want to hear from designers about precedents and lessons learned from relevant experiences elsewhere, and from users and stakeholders about what they think should be considered too – let us know in the comments section below, and stay tuned to Urban Omnibus for updates. Though the park looks set to become a much-loved spot over the summer months, the MTS will remain ‘hot’ for some time yet.


As with all review and opinion pieces posted on Urban Omnibus, the views expressed are those of the author only and do not reflect the position of Urban Omnibus editorial staff or the Architectural League of New York.

Shumi Bose is an architectural writer and researcher. She is currently working between London and New York, and lives in Brooklyn.