Kindly share with your architect friends too. FN<br> <span class="gmail_quote"><br></span>The house that social networking built<br>By Elsa Wenzel, <a href="http://News.com">News.com</a><br>Published on ZDNet News: Jan 25, 2008 4:00:00 AM<br>
<br>Tags: Elsa Wenzel, Digital media, Social Networking, Web, Network,<br>Africa, Settlement, Advanced Micro Devices Inc., Laptop Computer, Open<br>Architecture Network, Sinclair, Now House, Web 2.0, Open Source,<br>Internet<br>
Forget about showy "starchitecture" from the likes of Frank Gehry.<br>Architect Cameron Sinclair sees the future of his field in the slums,<br>where the United Nations projects that one-third of the world's<br>
population will dwell by 2030.<br><br>Sinclair insists that nothing short of a design revolution is needed<br>to construct innovative housing solutions from the ground up. The Open<br>Architecture Network, a Web site he co-founded that applies the<br>
principles behind open-source software to the construction of the<br>material world, is working toward that sweeping global goal.<br><br>The project is an offshoot of Architecture for Humanity, founded in<br>1999 by Sinclair and his wife, Kate Stohr. The nonprofit has worked to<br>
provide affordable housing in the tsunami-trampled Indian Ocean region<br>and post-Hurricane Katrina U.S. Gulf Coast, as well as HIV clinics and<br>soccer fields in sub-Saharan Africa. Its call to arms serves as the<br>title of Architecture for Humanity's 2006 book Design Like You Give a<br>
Damn.<br><br>That cry reached influential ears in the tech world when, in 2006,<br>Sinclair won the coveted TED Prize, from whose spoils Sinclair and<br>others at Architecture for Humanity launched the Open Architecture<br>
Network last March. It enables designers anywhere to share blueprints<br>under Creative Commons licenses.<br><br>The network, which has more than 9,100 members, is currently hosting<br>the AMD Open Architecture Challenge, a design contest for technology<br>
centers in remote parts of Ecuador, Kenya, and Nepal. Behind the<br>contest is the overarching aim of AMD's 50x15 program to expand<br>Internet access to half of the world's population.<br><br>CNET <a href="http://News.com">News.com</a> caught up with Sinclair at his San Francisco office last<br>
week before he headed to Davos, Switzerland, to speak at the World<br>Economic Forum.<br><br>Q: How have things changed since the TED Prize?<br>Sinclair: What's interesting about the TED prize is, good and bad,<br>that everyone thinks that you're now loaded. Bono got it. Clinton got<br>
it. It doesn't bring money, but what it does bring is incredible<br>resources.<br><br>For instance, Sun Microsystems donated not just their services and<br>technology but also a team of engineers, super geeks, who built the<br>
back end of the Open Architecture Network. And also AMD provided us<br>with hosting.<br>Open Architecture Network<br><br>With this new technology, open source, and the Creative Commons, it<br>cleared the vision of what we were doing so we could explain to people<br>
why we used technology or what the role of the architect is.<br><br>What are some highlights from recent trips you've made? How was<br>Africa, what happened there?<br>Sinclair: We do a lot of work here in the Gulf Coast and also on<br>
Native American reservations. Internationally, the big thing has been<br>the Open Architecture Challenge. We have three sites on three<br>different continents and I've recently been to all three.<br><br>It's not just like you go in and look at land and then survey it. It's<br>
actually spending a lot of time with communities...We were in the<br>slums of Kenya prior to the election when it was very tense. We went<br>right to the heart of the Nakuru slum, which is fascinating because on<br>paper it just looked like any other settlement. They'd had a huge<br>
influx of Somali refugees, a recent, strong Muslim community, and it<br>was in the industrial area, so they were dealing with the effects of<br>post-industrial land, problems with drinking water.<br><br>What's possible with the Open Architecture Network that would not<br>
happen without the Internet?<br>Sinclair: Architecture for Humanity would not have existed without the<br>Internet. We've been very fortunate because our focus has been what<br>the Internet is supposed to do, which is the exchange of ideas and<br>
information not for financial gain but for social gain.<br><br>On my laptop were about 2,000 projects--cool, innovative stuff that<br>could change the world--and they just sat on my laptop. Someone said,<br>"Why don't you just put them on a server somewhere?" Originally, the<br>
network was going to be a repository of proven ideas. But as we began<br>building it with the engineers, we realized here was an opportunity to<br>create a project management system so that designers could implement<br>projects on a really cost-effective basis.<br>
<br>Our FedEx bills have dropped massively. We don't send anything; it's<br>all on the network. Our overhead is less than 8 percent and the rest<br>goes into the construction and design of the buildings.<br><br>It's not just a bunch of gray-haired white guys in academic<br>
institutions. We're talking about architects on the network<br>representing 104 nations, so if you're looking for an Afghan<br>architect, chances are they're on the network. It enables localized<br>innovation with a top-down approach.<br>
<br>When you travel, how do you show people the site?<br>Sinclair: I put it on my laptop, but the big question is connectivity.<br>Only 20 percent of the world is online. In Africa and South America<br>it's much, much less, 6 percent in South America and like 3 percent in<br>
Africa.<br>There's 1.6 billion people living in areas that are going to be<br>flooded as a result of global warming. Most of these are in unplanned<br>settlements. That's a lot of work to be done.<br><br>I keep telling people, most of the planet that's not online doesn't<br>
want to go to Facebook. They don't want to see the streaming Britney<br>Spears court date or Steve Jobs live. Seriously, what they want to do<br>is look at the tools that improve their lives.<br><br>When you talk about tools people in the developing world have that we<br>
don't, "leapfrogging" technologies, what are some that look really<br>cool?<br>Sinclair: There are two in South Africa that I really love. One is the<br>Hippo (water) roller (a barrel-shaped container designed to transport<br>
water in rural areas where water has traditionally had to be carried<br>laboriously atop the head). The real genius, and it sounds kind of<br>silly--as well as rolling it, it also flattens the road.<br><br>The other one I actually used a couple of years ago when there was a<br>
blackout in New York City. I had a Freeplay wind-up radio. There was a<br>crowd of 50 people around me listening to the news. I had my coffee<br>and my radio cranked up, sitting on the street corner in New York, and<br>people were like, "Where did you get that?" And I'm like, "Africa."<br>
<br>In terms of housing, a lot of it is about using simple materials,<br>bamboo and rice bale construction, an advancement of straw bale--using<br>interesting materials such as hemp and also hybrid materials.<br><br>What designs look really fresh to you? And how much of what the<br>
network deals with might be considered sustainable design?<br>Sinclair: A couple are dealing with informal settlements, housing in<br>the margins. How do you create dignified housing where there's no<br>land?<br><br>Someone's working on a $700 house. The Now House is a World War II<br>
retrofitted home that's carbon-neutral...There's a spinach-powered<br>house, there's a grow-your-own clinic, a clinic you eat. All of these<br>projects have to be sustainable.<br><br>Let's talk about the geeks, the tech community. What kind of feedback<br>
do you get from them?<br>Sinclair: What's been really great is that we have folks at Sun and<br>AMD, engineers who are calling us and saying, "Hey, I want to work on<br>this." The Open Architecture Network has been in beta right now for<br>
the last year. Over the next year we're looking to add a whole bunch<br>of resources, materials, and libraries. Tech people are saying, "Hey,<br>I'm looking to develop a carbon calculator."<br><br>We're working with Autodesk Freewheel, the first Web application that<br>
allows you to see CAD drawings rendered live, working to integrate it<br>within the next few months so you can run Web meetings and comment on<br>the drawings live.<br><br>What do you think about the Web 2.0 trend?<br>Sinclair: It's a label. The people who make the most money will make<br>
the Web 2.0 apps that appeal to the most people--but on the fringes<br>there are people that can actually do some amazing stuff of a<br>collaborative nature.<br><br>We're still waiting for Web 2.0 to catch up to the way we work on a<br>
day-to-day basis...We use all that stuff, Google Apps, Google Earth.<br>What's nice is we actually e-mail the people who make Google Apps<br>every time we see something wrong.<br><br>So do the Google people get back to you?<br>
Sinclair: Yeah, really rapidly. It's amazing. For the 3D modeling and<br>2D conception drawings, we are their key constituency. If they had to<br>go to a for-profit it would be very costly to develop their R&D. What<br>
does SketchUp or Autodesk look like in an emerging market? Well, we're<br>doing it.<br><br>We'd say, what is the computing power it takes to do this? We ask<br>bizarre questions because most of the clients we have are using<br>
low-power thin clients, things like that.<br><br>What do you think about efforts such as One Laptop Per Child?<br>Sinclair: I want to hack it, I want to break it. I want to turn it<br>into one laptop per innovation. If you gave me one, I'd take it to the<br>
streets of Kenya or India and I'd give them to the most innovative<br>people working in the slums, the guy who's making flip-flops out of<br>recycled plastic bottles. Then you just install some sort of CAD<br>program on there and teach them how to use it so their innovations<br>
could be shared. What's the power of improving their living standards<br>if you've got that going on?<br><br>Maybe version 2.0 should have the tagline "It's not just for kids" or<br>"One Laptop Per Adult."<br>
<br>How will big environmental changes--in terms of global warming,<br>ecological and manmade disasters, even the high price of<br>energy--affect your work?<br>Sinclair: Someone was joking that I'm the luckiest architect on the<br>
planet because there's no shortage of clients. There's 1.6 billion<br>people living in areas that are going to be flooded as a result of<br>global warming. Most of these are in unplanned settlements. That's a<br>
lot of work to be done.<br><br>Can I make a $1,000 house? Can I make solar power affordable for<br>someone in the slums of Angola? Is it feasible, and if it is, how can<br>you make it aesthetically beautiful? It's convincing the heads of<br>
corporations who fund these initiatives but are saying, "Take the<br>design out." We've kind of bucked that trend and proven you actually<br>do have to design something that's beautiful.<br><br>What's the bad side of an open-source community?<br>
Sinclair: The biggest challenge is that we're in the business of<br>constructing things, so there's a health and safety aspect. If it's<br>completely open source and someone takes a design and another design<br>
and doesn't follow the legal information included in the design, then<br>what are the ramifications of doing that?<br><br>Can you see this model working for other fields?<br>Sinclair: Industrial design is an obvious one. And what if you had<br>
cancer researchers collaborating in an open-source manner and didn't<br>have competitive studies? Instead of billions of dollars wasted, maybe<br>you'll cure cancer...Or education, figuring out open-source<br>curriculums so you're getting multipronged history.<br>
<br>Do you ever talk with people in other fields who are interested in<br>something like the Open Architecture Network?<br>Sinclair: I've talked to a lot of doctors who do AIDS-related projects<br>in Africa. It's their biggest challenge trying to share information<br>
with each other.<br><br>When you say "open source," the people who make money from it get<br>worried, so there's a lot riding against open principles. But Linux<br>and Drupal can do it. That's the beauty of the world we live in. You<br>
don't need one big giant to control everything.<br><br>Is the site still just in English?<br>Sinclair: It's a big problem. We just need to find volunteer<br>translators. Really important are Chinese, Hindi, Swahili--right there<br>
I've just named 3 billion people, half the planet.<br><br>Do you run into resistance when you travel?<br>Sinclair: We've had death threats, all sorts of things because we were<br>shaking up the apple cart, trying to make people more self-sufficient.<br>
<br>Death threats coming from...?<br>Sinclair: All over the place. We've done some gender violence<br>projects, whether it be pimps in Calcutta or bandits or people who are<br>controlling corrupt officials, they're going to be upset. We're an<br>
easy target seen as protecting or giving empowerment to a community<br>that has been disenfranchised for many years.<br><br>We don't believe in making placards. It's a waste of wood. We'd rather<br>build houses.<br>
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