Here's a stove I made the other day. It can heat water even in 30 degree weather in December.
Tuesday, December 8, 2009
parabolic solar stove
Here's a stove I made the other day. It can heat water even in 30 degree weather in December.
Monday, December 7, 2009
Professor Sergio Palleroni
This is the second lecture I have recently attended on design and innovation for the third world. The first was by Dr. Paul Polak on November 12, and I wrote about it earlier.
On Thursday, December 3rd I went to a talk by Sergio Palleroni at Mercy Corps headquarters here in Portland. He's an architect, professor, and fellow at the Center for Sustainable Practices and Processes at Portland State University. His bio on Wikipedia covers a number of years working with the UN, World Bank and other organizations world wide in development programs. He's taught at several universities including the U. of Washington and U. of Texas at Austin and written a number of articles on development. He is a founder of Basic Initiatives, an organization that sends students to underdeveloped areas around the world for intensive work helping to design and build projects in local communities. The students often are in architectural and engineering programs so the emphasis of their work is in design and functionality. They have a strong interest in environmental issues and that is a large part of their design effort as well, including the use of recycled and reusable materials and conservation.
The students typically spend several months working in the communities, helping to design and develop the projects. The process is collaborative, what Professor Palleroni calls “envisioning”, where the community members describe what they want and interact with the students and instructors to design it. He says that the normal power structure in the community is often hierarchical, with the government and authorities on the top and the disenfranchised community members on the bottom. His method is participatory instead and all interested groups including parents, neighbors and local people can all contribute. This can take some time as ideas are presented and discussed and modified. The process is completely transparent with final decisions being made by consensus.
One example he gave was of a school they built in a squatter community in Mexico. What started out as a request for some ideas over a number of years became a model school with modern design features and a strong environmental focus. It features natural lighting, solar heating and cooling and water conservation and recycling. It now includes a kitchen with a solar cooker to make meals for the students and a community center and community gardens. The people also wanted a wedding chapel so that they could have proper ceremonies and that is there as well.
Professor Palleroni gave other examples of their projects around the world, including work in Taiwan and Nepal. They also worked in New Orleans after Katrina helping to develop hurricane resistant housing that met building codes. He says that he always designs things that meet local codes and standards so that others in the future can use his ideas to do the same thing. They also developed industries using recycled lumber from the flooded houses to make furniture.
He has a tradition of looking at the situation around him, in this case Portland, Oregon. He noted that Portland has some of the oldest schools in the country, including 59 according to him that need complete replacement or rebuilding. He is starting a process to involve local communities in Portland to adopt their neighborhood school and start working to improve or rebuild them. He says the first step will be “visioning” where people talk about what they would like their local schools to be like. It will be interesting to see what impact his ideas have here in Portland.
One thing I don't like about my own work is that the groups I have been working with don't have much say in the planning and preparation of their projects. Basically, someone else decides what will be done and plans the work so that we just show up with our money and work for a few days. The projects are designed to be quick and cheap, what we can afford and what can be accomplished in the short time we have. I rarely have a sense of a long term plan in the work. How much community input or ideas are included is not very clear.
Some people like that schedule however. They often don't have a lot of spare time, perhaps taking vacation to participate. They also like the hands on aspect of working hard on a short term project they can complete in one visit. Hard physical work is also a way to demonstrate their personal commitment. They can then return home with a clear conscience and perhaps participate in some other project somewhere else the next time.
To be fair, some groups and leaders have developed their own long term relationships with the communities they serve. Roger Capps group spent over 10 years working at Tultitlan in Mexico and managed to build a school and a community center there over that time. The friendships they developed over the years helped them to make the more long term commitments necessary to complete that project. Other leaders, while taking new groups each time, often have their own relationships with local community members. Even still though, I often find the short term nature of the work personally dissatisfying.
It would be gratifying to some time to just visit in a community and talk to people about their ideas, their problems and their aspirations, “visioning” with them. Up to now most of the planning and scheduling for our trips is done in advance, here in the States. Our time is already committed, sometimes by other people before we ever arrive, and any talking or visiting sort of goes against the schedule. For some “hands on” type of people this schedule would be a frustrating waste of time, but it would be very satisfying to me. It would also give me a better sense of the true interests of the people of the community, and if future projects, short or long term, developed because of this I'd feel better thinking that they came from what people wanted and not just what we could get done in a week.
On Thursday, December 3rd I went to a talk by Sergio Palleroni at Mercy Corps headquarters here in Portland. He's an architect, professor, and fellow at the Center for Sustainable Practices and Processes at Portland State University. His bio on Wikipedia covers a number of years working with the UN, World Bank and other organizations world wide in development programs. He's taught at several universities including the U. of Washington and U. of Texas at Austin and written a number of articles on development. He is a founder of Basic Initiatives, an organization that sends students to underdeveloped areas around the world for intensive work helping to design and build projects in local communities. The students often are in architectural and engineering programs so the emphasis of their work is in design and functionality. They have a strong interest in environmental issues and that is a large part of their design effort as well, including the use of recycled and reusable materials and conservation.
The students typically spend several months working in the communities, helping to design and develop the projects. The process is collaborative, what Professor Palleroni calls “envisioning”, where the community members describe what they want and interact with the students and instructors to design it. He says that the normal power structure in the community is often hierarchical, with the government and authorities on the top and the disenfranchised community members on the bottom. His method is participatory instead and all interested groups including parents, neighbors and local people can all contribute. This can take some time as ideas are presented and discussed and modified. The process is completely transparent with final decisions being made by consensus.
One example he gave was of a school they built in a squatter community in Mexico. What started out as a request for some ideas over a number of years became a model school with modern design features and a strong environmental focus. It features natural lighting, solar heating and cooling and water conservation and recycling. It now includes a kitchen with a solar cooker to make meals for the students and a community center and community gardens. The people also wanted a wedding chapel so that they could have proper ceremonies and that is there as well.
Professor Palleroni gave other examples of their projects around the world, including work in Taiwan and Nepal. They also worked in New Orleans after Katrina helping to develop hurricane resistant housing that met building codes. He says that he always designs things that meet local codes and standards so that others in the future can use his ideas to do the same thing. They also developed industries using recycled lumber from the flooded houses to make furniture.
He has a tradition of looking at the situation around him, in this case Portland, Oregon. He noted that Portland has some of the oldest schools in the country, including 59 according to him that need complete replacement or rebuilding. He is starting a process to involve local communities in Portland to adopt their neighborhood school and start working to improve or rebuild them. He says the first step will be “visioning” where people talk about what they would like their local schools to be like. It will be interesting to see what impact his ideas have here in Portland.
One thing I don't like about my own work is that the groups I have been working with don't have much say in the planning and preparation of their projects. Basically, someone else decides what will be done and plans the work so that we just show up with our money and work for a few days. The projects are designed to be quick and cheap, what we can afford and what can be accomplished in the short time we have. I rarely have a sense of a long term plan in the work. How much community input or ideas are included is not very clear.
Some people like that schedule however. They often don't have a lot of spare time, perhaps taking vacation to participate. They also like the hands on aspect of working hard on a short term project they can complete in one visit. Hard physical work is also a way to demonstrate their personal commitment. They can then return home with a clear conscience and perhaps participate in some other project somewhere else the next time.
To be fair, some groups and leaders have developed their own long term relationships with the communities they serve. Roger Capps group spent over 10 years working at Tultitlan in Mexico and managed to build a school and a community center there over that time. The friendships they developed over the years helped them to make the more long term commitments necessary to complete that project. Other leaders, while taking new groups each time, often have their own relationships with local community members. Even still though, I often find the short term nature of the work personally dissatisfying.
It would be gratifying to some time to just visit in a community and talk to people about their ideas, their problems and their aspirations, “visioning” with them. Up to now most of the planning and scheduling for our trips is done in advance, here in the States. Our time is already committed, sometimes by other people before we ever arrive, and any talking or visiting sort of goes against the schedule. For some “hands on” type of people this schedule would be a frustrating waste of time, but it would be very satisfying to me. It would also give me a better sense of the true interests of the people of the community, and if future projects, short or long term, developed because of this I'd feel better thinking that they came from what people wanted and not just what we could get done in a week.
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