During a recent trip to the Philippines, I had the great pleasure to encounter some amazing people working within the fields of social innovation and development. One of these people, Aisa Mijeno, is a female entrepreneur and engineer whose first hand experience living with an indigenous tribe in the Philippines led her to identify a serious social problem and then create a business to solve it.

Like in so many other areas of the world, there is a lack of efficient light sources in regions without electricity in the Philippines. Aisa teamed up with her brother Raphael, and together they developed SALt (Sustainable Alternative Lighting). Below, Aisa shares the story behind founding SALt, the challenges of finding the right investors, and learnings from developing a product from idea to launch.

Founder Aisa Mijeno with the SALt light

Core77: Tell us a bit about your background. What lead you to the path you are on right now?

Aisa Mijeno: I am a part-time engineering instructor and have been teaching for almost 6 years now, but before that I used to work for Greenpeace Philippines. There I learned so many thing about the effects of climate change. Ever since then I’ve been dreaming of creating something that would somehow help minimize carbon footprints, but didn’t have enough time to really ideate due to numerous campaigns I was involved in.

This one experience though, made me realize something. When I was still working for Greenpeace we made this case study.

And what was that?

A few of the common things we noticed in marginalized island communities are the staple supplies of salt, water and rice. Almost all of the household we have been stationed in consist of these common elements in their homes. I just hadn’t figured out what type of application I should create out of it, until I did a personal immersion with the tribe in the northern Philippines.

Buscalan, Kalinga, the Philippines

The foster family who let me stay in their home for almost a month is literally living on top of a mountain. These families do not have access to electricity. They use fuel-based lamps as their main source of lighting. There I learned that people had to go down the mountain and continue on their journey to the nearest town about 30km away on foot because they do not have the financial capacity to ride public transportation just to get kerosene for lamps.

And even before that, we have also studied and made observations with the living conditions, developing the correlation between geographical location, status quo and the use of fuel-based lamps, we have come up with a hypothetical conclusion that the practice of using such light sources had been passed on from generations. Thus, these people never deviated from using fuel-based lamps. The method of refilling kerosene in lamps (according to a native southwest of the Philippines) brings about emotional security despite its many cases of fire accidents caused by tipped over lamps and candles.

Why did you decide on focusing on this issue?

The link and conceptualisation of the lamp is very personal and deep because I experienced the hardship first hand. I connected the dots between salt and water and the act of filling liquid into the lamp and made an application so important it may affect the country’s economy.

These encouraged me to develop a lighting system that runs on the very basic items seen on every household—water and salt, or for the islanders—seawater.

How did you develop this idea into a product?

Ever since the realization of an application based on saltwater as the main catalyst, I have been working on it in my university lab. The influence of making it into a product actually happened after Ideaspace, a local incubator, went to our university to held a competition in which we were selected. This incubator made us realise that turning it into a product and building a startup would be the best path for our innovation and we will be able to help more people with it.

Why did you find it so important to create a light source to begin with?

There are over 7,000 island in the Philippines, most of these islands do not have access to electricity, and kerosene had become a commodity to households in marginalized communities without electricity. In places like these, all activities usually end before the sun sets and people are unproductive at night—children cannot do their homework. After going to class, these children have to help their parents earn money in the afternoon until the sun sets so the only time they could do their school work is at night.

We also wanted to decrease fire accidents by replacing kerosene and candles as the main source of lighting. We found out that kerosene lamps are dangerous to children’s health. When I was in Oriental Mindoro, most of the Mangyan kids were afflicted with lung disease and this might be a cause of kerosene lamp’s black carbon.

Now that you have developed a lamp, what sort of response do you get from people you have developed it for?

We haven’t launched the product yet. We plan to launch it before the year ends of first quarter next year but so far we are overwhelmed with positive response.

Have you been out and worked together with the people living in these sort of conditions?

We reached out to a few barangays (villages) who expressed their willingness to become one of the beneficiaries of the lamp.

What our business model looks like is we will partner with NGOs, foundations and local government units to purchase the lamp from us and distribute it to communities they are supporting.

But we also handpick communities to receive certain lamp units. That will come from the retail sale—similar to TOMS’ model of one for one. So for every lamp you buy, we give one lamp to a family who needs it.

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What was the process from idea to product?

Being a hardware startup is hard as what most people involved in product development say, and yes, it is really very challenging. One thing is you need to raise more capital.

Finding investors in the Philippines willing to take risks is very challenging.

Aisa and Raphael Mijeno at Ideaspace Manila

A couple of other startups and VCs we’ve met during our international excursion told us that we shouldn’t get anxious to set a higher value of the startup. That’s the tendency of most SEA startups compared to startups in the US and Europe.

How did you solve this little, but important, obstacle?

We were able to overcome this by really screening out willing investors who would give value to what we do. Fortunately, we found one and their contribution to the process is really very huge. They are a local manufacturer—100% Filipino owned.

It’s easy to find investors, but hard to find ones who are willing to go all the way with your startup. You have to find someone who shares the same vision, morals, intent, and someone who can contribute to really developing your product, not just contribute and give you capital and funding.

What has been your most important lesson throughout this process?

Important lesson: follow your gut instinct and never second guess yourself. Never decide on things when you are filled with emotions, sleep on it and let emotions pass. Have the grit to keep on pushing forward no matter what the hurdle is. Be optimistic at all times, but still know when to give up.

You mentioned that you were seeking a solution that minimizes the carbon footprint. Do you feel like you have reached this goal with SALt?

I guess I can say I did my best and am doing everything to make it happen. The only time I feel that I will have achieved the goal when people finally use the lamp and make it a staple item, and seeing the effects of using our product to hopefully make their lives a little better.

Is anything you would like the reader to know about SALt, the Philippines or yourself?

I guess I just want to say that there are so many remarkable and creative people in rural Philippines. Their resilience, no matter their condition in life, motivates me to overcome all hurdles. We just need to give these people the chance at life through education by providing them the basic things: the means to provide food to their family, clean water and light.

Follow SALt on Facebook, Twitter  and Instagram, or contact the SALt team directly via info@salt.ph

Projects pop-up on peoples radars in various ways. Sometimes information about a person or project comes from many different sources all at once. This was the case for Mandy Lau and her award-winning project, Reach & Match. The project helps visually impaired and autistic children develop their senses, social skills and literacy.

In 2012, Reach & Match was a Student Notable in the Social Impact category for the Core77 Design Awards. In under three years, Reach & Match is now a full-fledged product available for purchase. Core77 spoke with Mandy about bringing a product from idea to market, some of the biggest challenges for designers working in special education and what’s next for this learning tool.

Core77: Tell me a bit about the thoughts that brought you to decided on creating Reach & Match?

Mandy Lau: I have always been very interested in social design and creating effective solutions through design. For my bachelor degree in Product Engineering, I developed a few projects for people with physical limitations as well as blind and vision-impaired people. I also enjoy my other work in art therapy with children and adults with special needs. During my postgraduate research in Industrial Design, I started looking into braille literacy and blindness.

What made you decide to focus your attention on this specific subject?

I found braille to be an incredibly efficient and beautiful system for writing—it’s also an essential skill for developing blind people’s career opportunities and independence. Due to the global decline of braille literacy, I wanted to create a design which helps young blind children learn braille in an interesting way. However, through my primary and secondary research, I observed vision-impaired children often struggling with problems such as cognitive, motor and social barriers. After generating a lot of concepts, I selected a design which can empower children with special needs in a fun and friendly way. It is inclusive and creates a bridge between children with and without special needs. Through well-designed exercises, activities and games, care takers such as teachers, therapists and parents can easily use the product for children with varying abilities.

Reach & Match is now out on the market. What sort of response are you getting from the children and their caretakers?

We received very encouraging feedback from local and overseas clients—organizations, schools, pre-school centers and clinics. Most of our users are specialists such as occupational therapists, mobility instructors and educators who provide training for children. They are applying Reach & Match at their group activities and early intervention programs. Reach & Match will also be used in the degree program for Special Education at a local university. We are really excited to share its applications with future teachers!

We are delighted to know that children enjoy Reach & Match games and its tactile challenges. The children are stimulated by touching the tactile textures with their bare feet and other body parts. They learn to distinguish the difference between sounds. Children also share and communicate with their peers. The creativity and flexibility of the design is double-sided and you can create different 2D and 3D configurations to elicit a ‘wow’ effect when children play together. And I am always surprised by how blind children interpret and understand the ideas of Reach & Match by touching and hearing. You can check out our Facebook page to learn more about how children interact with the program!

To be honest, I am pretty overwhelmed by the whole journey. As a designer, I desired to turn this great idea into a product. However, once I finished the design I realized that it was only the start of the journey; I had to learn everything in order to make the idea happen.

The biggest lesson I learned was to continuously push myself out of my comfort zone. I couldn’t work inside my room as a designer anymore, I needed to go out and talk to people—clients and potential partners. I had to learn other skills to make this idea happen, such as fund-raising, production, marketing and sales. Being the sole founder is not only difficult and lonely, but discipline is also extremely important. This was the quickest way to learn new skills as I had plenty of opportunities to address changes and solve problems each day.

What has been your greatest experience when working with children?

I learned the importance of testing and understanding the real needs of my clients. I start and end the design with the users—children. I observed their problems and created and tested the prototypes for them. Then, I modified and improved the design according to their feedback. So from beginning to end, I focused on how my users responded to the product.

I love working with children. They are genuine and honest with what they think about your design, how they like it or how much they want to play. It’s truly a great experience to work with children with different needs—through this process I’ve worked with children who are blind and vision impaired, hearing impaired, autistic, or facing physical and developmental delays. Every child is unique and every child learns in their own way. It’s inspiring to see their different reactions.

What is a problem that designers should be considering when designing for childhood development right now?

I support and love the idea of inclusive play, especially for children at a young age. It would be great to have a friendly platform for them to understand the differences among their peers and learn to respect and share.

Which stage are you at with Reach & Match right now?

Reach & Match is very new to the market and I definitely need to work hard on the marketing! Also, I have been putting a lot of time and effort into editing the activity manual to help users understand usage and applications. Hopefully, users will receive the latest version very soon!

What will be the next step?

I will focus on the products in local and overseas markets. I look forward to expanding it to the mainstream market, as the design itself is for all children. I believe there’s still a long way to go and I am excited to see more children benefit from Reach & Match. I also look forward to working on my new design ideas!

When I first started writing for this wonderful blog, the one you are on right now, I started off by writing about co-creative processes in relation to education and learning spaces. One of the offices that contacted me in relation to these articles was STL architects, a Spanish architecture studio based in Chicago. I arranged a Skype call with the two directors of the office, Luis Collado and Jose Luis de la Fuente, and we ended up talking for over an hour as shared our previous projects, work methods, processes and personal experiences.

In this interview you will be able to read about their way of working, the strategies when entering a project and their latest project, developing a 20-year master plan expansion for Wilbur Wright College in Chicago, which started working on in the beginning ofJjune this year.

Background Info

The Wilbur Wright College is one of seven Chicago City Colleges, designed by Bertrand Goldberg architect studio back in 1986, all of which are currently undergoing a major remodeling. At the moment, the college hosts students from the age of 18 and up. It is divided into three different programs:
– Credit programs
– Continuing education
– Adult education
Course offerings range from African American Studies to Zoology.

The goal for the central authority of the Chicago City Colleges is to create a 20-year master-plan expansion, while the end goal with the expansion plan for STL is to “create spaces that promote learning.”

A 20-year master-plan expansion

STL’s mission is to create a 20-year master plan expansion for Wright College, which includes taking the university through a major transformation from the inside of the organization to the outdoor lawns. One of these changes is transforming Wright College from being one of seven city colleges—which allow the students the possibility of studying almost anything between heaven and earth—to focusing on IT, making it the IT hub of the Chicago universities.

In order to be able to handle this big change, STL had to dig their teeth into more than just the exterior and interior of the building—they had to study the existing structure of the organization to get a true understanding of how to create, and be a part of, a lasting change.

Based on previous experience, STL had prepared themselves for a rather stubborn, and difficult-to-please client, similar to the ones they had encountered in the past. But to their great surprise, that wasn’t the case this time around. The client, which in this case consists of administrators, stakeholders, students and the central authority of City Colleges, completely broke this perception by giving STL loads of encouragement and support.

The STL Process

STL has throughout the years developed their way of working. As with so many architect studios and designers it is divided into:
1) Discovery
2) Analysis
3) Design

These three phases often overlap, and vary in length depending on the span of the project at hand.

The discovery phase consists of getting an overall view of the facilities, patterns of students, teachers and the surrounding community, as well as the organization structure, and this is where they are right now.

The work on the Wright College started in June, as soon as spring term came to a close, leaving the architects without the possibility to work with one section of the client group. This made things a bit harder when it came to figuring out the students patterns in how they use the spaces inside and outside of the walls. On the other hand, having the college campus all to themselves gave STL a chance to study the building itself more closely, letting them create their own view on the school and its possibilities and problem areas

Discovery

They started of the Discovery Phase by conducting 17 interviews, of about two hours each, with people from various parts of the organization and with students. These interviews, in combination with their own research of the space, have formed the basis for the rest of the research. One of the most important parts of the Discovery Phase is to collect as much relevant data as possible without judging or making conclusions. First you learn, learn, learn from the information collected, later you digest it and start asking the crucial questions such as What, Why, When and How?

It’s when you first step away from the information and look at it without judging and concluding that you can establish a true connection with it. This, in turn, will form the basis for the development of the project.

After going throughout the information gathered in the interviews, STL developed a survey with the sole purpose of understanding how students and teachers viewed the building, how they interacted with it and how they interacted with others using the facilities. These questions were very focused in order to get focused answers in turn, making it easier to turn them into statistics and other sort of information making it easier to identify problem areas and trends and create user profiles.

Some of the problems they identified during this section of the process were:
– A nonexistent organizational chart
– The lack of a social infrastructure
– The absence of informal social environments
– A nonexistent Wright College culture [physical and virtual]

These problems all have to be addressed in their own ways to create one coherent solution

Breaking down the hierarchy

As mentioned earlier, the survey is designed so that the respondent can’t give long in-depth answers, but rather short, focused answers making it easier to get a more coherent overview over the project. The questions are more about the ‘What?’ than the ‘Why?’ and ‘How?’ By asking ‘What?’ STL want to get a greater understanding of the building, organization and campus as a machine, of the relationship between the users and the machine and the relationship between the the community at large and the machine.

In order to be able to make a true transformation of the space, STL had to work both from the bottom up, and the work their way down from the top pyramid. This could only be done by breaking down the hierarchy and subsequently developing a completely new organizational chart based on STL’s research.

Creating a Wright College culture

Creating a new culture anywhere is a tricky task. There are so many pieces that have to fall into place to make it happen, and when the space itself doesn’t lend itself to social interaction, the change is even harder to generate.

The college was designed in such a way that it is hard to find your way around, where many of the spaces look exactly the same, which ultimately stifles human connectivity and togetherness. The space feels suitable only for passing through, rather than congregating and socializing. STL set out to solve this problem by asking how the users access the campus and learning spaces, where they feel comfortable, where they naturally gather and which spaces they find inviting.

Once STL can work through this problem, they can create the sort of spaces that they hop to create and establish the sort of culture that promotes learning and strong relations between users.

The future of learning spaces according to STL

Education has been developing way, way faster then the spaces where it takes place. It has gone from being a one-way street, where knowledge was simply transferred from teachers to students, to being multidirectional. In other words, the teacher’s role has changed and is more focused on guiding and facilitating students through the avalanche of information that is to be found across various media.

STL sees learning as an experience taking place in a theater, where the faculty and students are the actors and STL is the designer of the theatre itself. The learning experience is a part of a social infrastructure for which they are designing the stage. They see the spaces becoming more dynamic in their form, creating an environment that invites students to share and interact with one another in a more open and versatile atmosphere.

They predict that the structure of learning in school and doing homework at home, might be flipped on its head, such that more and more of the learning is done at home, while the school is the space where students go to help and talk with teachers and their peers as to solve the problems they encountered at home. Learning becoming home-learning and homework becomes school-work.

The spaces should invite students to learn from one another creating a collaborative experience, while the teachers curate the process of exploration and foster the relationships created between students, at the same time as they guide the students through their exploration of individual abilities.

As for how the spaces themselves will look, only time can tell. Only when the education sector is ready for the next step of creating new spaces in collaboration with innovative architects that STL will get to explore and showcase their vision in this domain.

It’s interesting how things sometimes end up in your lap—in this case, it was a bag belonging to a friend of a friend that ended up on my kitchen table, and things developed from there. Those of you who already have read a few of my interviews from this interview series know that I have a tendency to stumble upon people and things that catch my interest. Well, the bag on my kitchen table sparked my interest and led me on a quest to find out more about the woman behind the brand. Turns out, she’s been staying in Copenhagen for a few months. Lucky me!

Read on to learn how a woman born and raised in Australia ended up starting a bag brand in Guatemala.

Core77: What inspired you to start designing?

Athena Maroulis: I’ve always loved colors, patterns and dressing up since I was a kid. My mother is an architect and both of my parents have travelled a lot and have an appreciation for art. Our house was full of paintings, art deco furniture (my dad’s obsessed), African jewelry, millinery ribbons (my great grandmother was well known hat-maker) and exotic fabrics amongst other things. I think that growing up in this kind of environment makes you conscious of shapes, colors, textures and how things are put together.

Other than that, I have been sewing since I was around 13 and learned how to make garments. From there, I placed top 10 in the state in my final year textiles and design and knew I wanted to have my own fashion business. It seems that design has been in my life from an early age.

Being exposed to items from so many different cultures most have triggered your imagination on many levels. Do you remember any particular piece that you found extra interesting?

It’s hard to pinpoint one piece specifically. I have a huge appreciation for structured lines and symmetry and I think it’s due to the art deco buffet table, drink cabinet and side board that we had in our home. However, I think my favorite thing (now and forever) has been dressing up, so I’ve probably spent countless hours fossicking through and trying on the fabulous pieces in my great grandmother’s old costume jewellery box. There are the most amazing chintzy, glitzy, rhinestone encrusted statement jewellery pieces in there. I still find them so fascinating and beautiful.

You now design and produce your own bag brand called Athinaeum. What brought this about?

After I quit my job at an advertising agency, I had been traveling for many months in South America and was heading north. I had missed my onward ticket to Spain after enjoying Carnival in Brazil. Alone in Panama, I had the flu and was at a loose end, not knowing what to do. I was thinking of heading north to the States but wanted to go through Central America. After a weird series of serendipitous events, I accidentally ended up with a plane ticket to Guatemala.

It hadn’t been part of my plan to fly there, but I changed my mind when I heard about a yoga and meditation retreat there. I decided that it was what I needed to gather my thoughts, recharge and figure out my next steps. After completing the course, which included a week of silence, I felt tranquil, healthy and inspired.

All around me were these amazing textiles and I knew I wanted to evolve them into something beautiful and functional, to be treasured by a Western market. The idea evolved and over the next eight months I developed, prototyped and produced my first collection. I’ve always known I wanted to create something wearable and I’ve always loved sewing and designing, but I had found the fast fashion cycle quite scary. It was so gratifying to find a creative outlet which is both sustainable and beautiful.

What is it with the cycle of fashion that you want to avoid? And how do you do so?

The cycle of fashion and the constant craving for newness is something that’s unfortunately programmed into society. It has been around since after World War II, when the focus shifted from long-lasting quality towards planned obsolescence (or things designed to have a short life-span). Having said that, fashion trends have evolved since clothing was invented because people’s tastes changed and evolved naturally.

We are now realizing that we do not have infinite resources. From a design and manufacturing perspective, this means that we need to go back to a system of making and buying things that will last longer and also explore how to repurpose existing materials. I think that fast fashion brands will not disappear anytime soon, but if we, as consumers, choose beautifully designed things, that are better quality we won’t have to replace things as quickly and we will keep them for longer. If we buy fewer things that last longer, we can minimize how much ends up in landfill.

Athinaeum started as I saw people repurposing these beautiful Mayan handwoven textiles into things like handbags and other accessories. Unfortunately the products were poorly made and would fall apart after a couple of wears. I really spent a lot of time and effort to find great leather craftsmen and source quality zippers so that the handbag itself would last. I now have friends who have Athinaeum handbags from the first collection released in December 2011 and they rejoice at how many bottles of wine they have carried, how many countries they accompanied them to and how they still look great and they still love wearing their bags. I also tried to create a design that was very practical yet simple so that it could be versatile and beautiful silhouette to showcase the stunning handwoven textiles. Sometimes I say that I try to make things that people will want to pass on to their children—I really hope that I can make things that are both high quality and beautiful enough that they will want to.

When developing the handbags, how was your process in regards to the craftsmen?

I worked really closely with the leather craftsmen when creating my original collection. I knew the rough styles of the bags that I wanted to make, but sometimes working with leather is really different to sewing or patternmaking with cloth, which is what I’m familiar with. There are a lot of shortcuts you can make with leather, which is great.

I really worked closely with them to develop prototypes and from there we went on and I chose different leather colors to complement each textile. Because they are indigenous Mayans, it really helps because they know how the abstract motiffs should be positioned and what is the focal point of each cloth. This really helps because it can be hard to see what’s the best part of the fabric and I trust them to cut up and trim these beautiful fabrics and get the best out of each piece. It’s still a very collaborative process and I mark up each cloth ensuring they know which parts to use for what. It’s nice to trust them because essentially they are helping me to highlight and showcase the best of each textile, kind of like framing an artwork.

What sort of relationship do you have with the women creating the Mayan fabrics that you use?

From time to time, I have the honor of meeting the women who make each textile, but there are so many textiles and so many amazing women who have put hours into each piece. They are true artists—besides skilfully weaving each textile, they select the wild color palettes and the design and embellishments. The textiles are from many different regions which I try to include in the style names of each piece so that you can google and even look up the region.

I also work closely with a few women who trade and buy the textiles and then sell them for the ladies who live in small remote communities. The Mayan women I work with are strong, kind and humble. They have taught me a lot about family, culture and the secrets behind the symbology and techniques of the weavings and why they are significant to each region.

What sort of impact would you like your business to have on the local community?

After 36 years of civil war in Guatemala, which only ended in 1996, the country has been stuck in political, social and economic disarray for many years. In some ways, the poverty of some areas of regional Guatemala has served to preserve their ancient customs and traditions. However, there is much to be done to build the country and it’s really starting to progress in many ways.

I work closely with a family-owned workshop and I ensure that they all earn a wage that ensures a good standard of living for them and their families. Aside from that, I try and do as much possible with Athinaeum in Guatemala in order to feed the profits back into this country. For instance, all of my tags and labels are made there as well. Lastly, I also have the Athinaeum re-usable cloth carry bags (made in Guatemalan mills) made with a social enterprise called Mercado Global who work to empower women in Guatemala to create their own micro-businesses.

That sounds really interesting. When it comes to the micro-businesses, is there anyone in particular that has caught your attention?

The girl who made the cloth bags is called Isabel and she worked on them with her sister. Her story is pretty amazing. She started her micro-business a couple of years back and before that she used to work in Guatemala City and back to make tortillas to sell on the street for very measly wages. She has 12 siblings and didn’t go to school past the sixth grade. She’s now able to send six of her younger siblings to school and is the leader of a women’s cooperative that sews and works on an ongoing basis with Mercado Global. She’s a really warm and sweet girl who has the heart of a lion! Her story is not uncommon though and there are plenty of inspirational artisans living in rural Guatemala.

What’s next for you?

It’s a really exciting time for me because there are so many question marks. I’ve just had my first child who is an awesome little dude. I’m living in Copenhagen and Athinaeum is based in Sydney. My partner and I are heading back to Sydney to spend a couple of months there at the end of the year to check in on things and suss out opportunities there. Afterwards, we’re going to spend a month in the Philippines to see what kind of opportunities are there for both of us. I’ve always hoped that Athinaeum would be a global adventure so let’s see what 2015 brings!

We are looking forward to see where things are heading, and what you will present to us next. But before you head off on new adventures, can you give us some Do’s and Don’ts when it comes to working with design and production in countries that are not our own?

Ha! I could write a novel on this subject. I guess I’ll firstly say that it is important to spend as much time [at a production site] as possible to get to know the people. Understand the way that they do things and make sure everybody is aware of your expectations; you must be aware of their expectations too. People who are from a third-world country that has had a lot of instability or conflict can sometimes be distrustful and used to different levels of quality to what you are used to.

Be kind and understanding of one another, but be sure not to get swindled. It’s really useful to know the language and if you don’t, ensure you have a trustworthy translator so that everything is crystal clear and it helps if they have a good ‘production vocabulary.’ You can also be super sure that you’ve been understood by clearly drawing your ideas and instructions, make hand gestures and do anything else to make sure you’re understood.

Founded by Ian Hall, Arkitrek works to the create socially and environmentally sustainable buildings in Malaysia. I have been following them for several years now, just looking for a reason to contact them other than to just say “Hi! I like what you do. Keep up the good work,” and now I have one, so here we go.

Core77: Can you give us a short outline to what Arkitrek is about?

Ian Hall: We are architects and we’re motivated use design to solve environmental problems. Problems, like resource consumption, pollution and energy use. To solve these problems usually involves working with people, so we are highly socially minded in the way that we work, but I’m a nature lover foremost and love of wild places and nature is what inspires me

What lead you to start Arkitrek?

Haha. Long story…

One thing led to another. I always knew that I did not want to follow a ‘conventional’ architecture career. After completing my Part III and getting solid commercial experience, I decided to look for alternatives and I joined an expedition with Raleigh International to Borneo. They asked me to lead a team of young volunteers to do a feasibility study for a jungle research station in Borneo. That was a dream job. I swapped designing shiny urban hotels and started work on primitive huts in the jungle. I joke that ‘the people I worked with were primitive too': gap year students mostly. The Raleigh ethos is empowering young people by giving them responsibility for delivering project work in challenging places. After some initial resistance, I embraced this philosophy.

After my Raleigh expedition in 2004, I volunteered to work for The Sabah Foundation, Raleigh’s local partner in Sabah, Borneo. The Sabah Foundation manages three rainforest conservation areas and I went on to volunteer for them as an architect, designing jungle camps, staff quarters and research facilities on and off for two years.

I funded this with contract work in London. Six months in London would fund four months in Sabah. During this time, I met the people who would become my first paying clients in Sabah. That’s how Arkitrek started.

The name, Arkitrek, was coined by my mate Andy Lo. Andy is a Londoner whose parents are from Sabah. We worked together in London and he came out to visit his family in Sabah and then joined me for a month long design and trekking stint in Sabah’s Maliau Basin Conservation Area.

I worked in the most awesome and wild and beautiful places.

What was the main foundation when you started Arkitrek?

During that time with Sabah Foundation I was very concerned with two questions:
1. Should we build anything here? [in this wild and beautiful place]
2. If we do build, what kind of building is appropriate?

A little later, when I was no longer supported by high paying London contract work a third question came into play…
3. How can I keep saying yes to designing small buildings in beautiful places for worthy clients, who can’t pay professional fees?

I think that my ‘ground pillars’ are those three questions.

And what were your answers to these questions?

Hahaha… I’m still figuring it out, but I can try to tell you roughly where I am at with the answers.

1. Should we build anything here? We ask ourselves this question with every project. In particular we ask “Is this a ‘worthy’ client/project?” or “What problem is the client themselves trying to solve?”

For example, if the client says, “I want to develop a small and spectacular part of a national park so that it is accessible to local people, so that those local people can see what treasures we have and that in the future those local people might fight to protect those treasures,” then I would say “Yes, that is a problem worth solving and a building is appropriate.”

2. If we do build, what kind of building is appropriate? This is probably the question that will take the longest to figure out…. I know that it has a lot to do with materials. Knowing how all of your building materials are produced and where they come from and who benefits down the supply chain. That’s why I love using locally produced woven bamboo for cladding panels. Using local timber is more complicated [to figure out whether you’re doing good or harm] and using steel and concrete is another even tougher question…

This question is also about energy and waste. I’ve got much more into shit than most architects should, I believe. Maybe because I like toilet humor—just ask any of my long-suffering colleagues and interns!

It’s also about design, particularly passive design and its about procurement—who builds the building and what is the architects’ relationship with them? This question is about looking good. As a student I rebelled against the ‘magazine’ aesthetic: how the prime objective of any architect seemed to be to design something that would appear in a glossy architecture magazine. Now I can see that the so-called ‘money shot’ photo of a building can help to advertise the dreams of the client and attract people to join them to help with whatever problem they are trying to solve. How the building itself is the tangible tip of an iceberg of people and skills and endeavors.

3. How can I keep saying yes to designing small buildings in beautiful places for worthy clients, who can’t pay professional fees? The answer to this question comes from my Raleigh experience. Empower young people by giving them the responsibility to deliver those projects.

The first two questions truly address whether it’s even justifiable to build in some of the spaces that you are working in. What steps you take to ensure that the project you are working on has a minimal impact on the area, while honoring its surroundings?

To ‘honor the space,’ the positioning of the building on the site is the key. You have to ask if it is appropriate on this site to have an ‘object building’, or if you should make the site the object?’

In other words, does the building dominate the site or is it an unobtrusive and pretty wallflower? The next step would be to work out what connection, physical and visual does the building need to the landscape? Finally, apply passive design principles.

Do you work with the local communities? If so, how?

I will answer two angles to this question: ‘how do we engage with local communities and how do we sustain community projects financially?’

Yes, we work with lots of local communities. It’s not easy. During my Raleigh time, in addition to the rainforest research station project, I also designed and built a community kindergarten [my first community design/build project].

We have five community projects on site at various stages now. Three are under a tourism operator, one under a corporate CSR programme and one purely under Arkitrek. None of them pay any professional fee and all of them involve students. The one under the CSR program is our recently completed Tagal Hut which was done by an Arkitrek design/build program engaging students from Malaysia, UK, Italy and India. In this case, we partnered with a very professional CSR manager for a large company. The building is only a key stage in a long programme of rural development, in this case community management of freshwater fish stocks for local consumption and sale plus domestic tourism (visitors paying to feed the fish). The key to working with communities is to either have a very credible community organisation, a good NGO/CSR partner or [be prepared for the long haul] to take on the NGO role ourself [more on the latter later].

We have also adapted and developed protocols for working with communities. I consider these as our terms of appointment, but these type of terms are not taught at architecture school. The terms are based on: clear expression of need, FPIC (free prior and informed consent) for how we will work.

When working with the community what sort of processes and methods do you use?

Again, we’re still learning but this is roughly where we are at: We have to ask, does the community really need a building or are they just looking for the next hand-out? In most cases, the community is receiving free design services and the building cost itself may be funded by outside sources. It’s easy for them to say, ‘Yes we want it’ simply because they’re not paying. It comes back to that question ‘What problem is the client [community] trying to solve?’ can a building help? With the Tagal Hut, the problem was how to take care of natural resources (fish, and by extension the river) and create lasting benefits for the community. In this case we had a credible CSR partner who was taking care of developing the human resources in the long term, so yes, a building was necessary, appropriate and potentially very beneficial.

Next we have to agree some terms. We may work for free but there may be things that we want to get out of it. Similarly the community may not pay cash but they may pay in-kind.
We run most community projects as an educational design/build program. Our students pay for Arkitrek to set up and facilitate the project and we want them to get a positive learning experience out of it. The community must help us deliver this in exchange for a design and a building.

The community may not pay cash [for design and construction] but they can provide [reciprocal] services free-of charge. If the building is to be community-owned and will help generate benefits for the community in the long term, then it is reasonable to ask them to contribute say, skilled labor and homestays and catering (for our students).

We agree to all of this in an MOU before starting. This is essential because the community [and us and our partners!] invariably try to change the terms as we go along.

The biggest challenge we have is dealing with payment for skilled labor. The Tagal Hut we agreed that nobody in the community was receiving cash for labor and we maintained a hard line on this. This project was one of our most successful in terms of community engagement and community pride and ownership of the finished building. On another project, we were inconsistent with who got paid and who did not and we failed to explain our inconsistencies. Consequently we got very little engagement.

What would you say are the most important key elements for a project to succeed?

– There has to be a clear need for a building and it has to be clear how the community will benefit from that building (and the design and construction process).
– There has to be clear and fair terms of engagement and these have to be strictly adhered to.
– The community must be continually informed (about design, materials, labour decisions etc) and give their consent.
– There must be transparency, particularly about money.

Arkitrek works a lot with natural materials, but what is your approach to sustainability when it comes to re-use of other materials than wood?

Honestly, we’ve not dealt with this question significantly but where we have I look at the re-use of materials from two points of view: re-using materials in their original shape/form and using new materials made from recycled raw material.

For an architect, I would argue that the most significant way of using materials in their original shape/form is to adapt an existing building, or where the whole building cannot be reused, at least reuse the foundation or significant elements. To do this successfully requires design, so that’s why architects can really make a difference. On the recently completed Bornean Sun Bear Conservation Centre, we reused all existing foundations. The structural engineer did not want to because of risk of differential movement. We asked whether we could design for differential movement? They said yes and we did. We also reclaimed and reused much of the steelwork for bear cages. The contractor told us that it would be cheaper/easier to use virgin steel. We asked why, he said due to extra labor of working with reclaimed bits and pieces. We decided to design every bit that that could be done with reclaimed steel so that it could be costed. The extra cost was tiny, proportional to the contract, the client agreed and so we did it.

Individual architects, I believe, have less control over new materials from waste because this is dependent on suppliers being able to develop new, potentially market-disruptive products. For example, we could try to influence the adoption of ‘green concrete’ that uses binders derived from industrial waste, but this will be a long and difficult battle due to the lobbying power of the Malaysian cement industry. This type of battle needs to be fought from the top down. We are grassroots, working from the bottom up. What individual architects can do, though, with a supportive client, is look for opportunities to build a demonstration project so that the top-down fighters have some evidence that what they are fighting for is practical.

If you would mention one project that has influenced you a bit extra, which one would that be, and why?

Above, I mentioned that there is one community project where Arkitrek has taken on an NGO role. This is the Bio-cultural Heritage Centre in Ulu Papar. On one hand, this project has been a disaster, but on the other hand, it has been an education from which fantastic things are coming.

It was a disaster because I did not tightly control our student design/build team. Consequently they designed and started building a building that was much bigger than they could finish in the duration of their program. Arkitrek was left holding the baby, with no more income coming from the student parents!

The other disaster was the community engagement that I mentioned above. Due to our inconsistency in payments to the community, we did not get the support from the community that we needed to get the building finished in a timely manner.

Of course no one is going to abandon a baby so we continued to plough in resources to try to get the building finished (on design/builds we not only do the design but the construction management too). Six months after the student design/build team had gone home, the building was still nowhere near finished. It would be melodramatic to say that this project might bankrupt the company, but it felt like that a times.

The final disaster was that the NGO that introduced us to the community stopped their program of training community bio-cultural researchers. We knew this would happen but we did not plan for it. The NGO left some highly skilled and motivated community members but they did not leave a credible community organization or body with whom we could work.

The fantastic thing that happened was three intern architects: Filzah, Tom and Nadhira, who rose to the challenge. They managed to get the building practically complete but more significantly, they wrote and tested a workshop program, christened Build.ca.tion, that would both create sustainable income for the build and provide on-going skills training and income for a fledgling community committee. Filzah and Nadhira are now negotiating with corporate and government sponsors and recruiting participants for Build.ca.tion programmes.

In building the Bio-cultural Heritage Centre, Arkitrek has become the NGO. We have turned the design and construction process itself, into the means of funding the building. We have retrospectively justified the raison d’etre of the building and will work with this community for at least another year, if not longer. If you ask me now whether this building was necessary at the start, I would say no. But it is now.

If you got to ask someone who’s been working in the same area of architecture as yourself, what would that question be?

What prevented you from giving up?

And lastly, let us in on some Do’s and Don’ts for people who are interested in working with these sort of projects

Do let your passion motivate you
Do surround yourself with good people
Do have a supportive partner

Don’t compromise your values
Don’t sell yourself short

Over the past few years, since I’ve started researching education, learning spaces and social education projects, my network has expanded exponentially. This was to be expected, considering how much time I’ve spent on various platforms trying to find out what is going on out there. Another thing that was expected was to see just how small the education circle really is. Everyone knows everyone in one way or another, or is just one degree removed from them.

In the beginning of my research, when I had just started my master studies at Aarhus Architecture School, I got in contact with Rosan Boschand her work at Vittra School at Telefonplan in Stockholm, Sweden. This is where I first got into contact with Jannie Jeppesen, then headmaster of Vittra Skolan, now head of of Rebel Learners.

An unexpected meeting on the subway

Rebel Learners is a new initiative created by Rektorsakademin Utveckling (RAU), who also arranges SETT, Scandinavia’s biggest education conference, and are the creators behind the podcast Skolsnack (School Chat) and Learning Narratives, a new game developed to build future learning environments.

The short version is that Rebel Learners is a course for teacher-students developed by teacher-students to upgrade and gain knowledge that they feel that they are not learning at their current institutions.

Rebel Learners came about after Fredrik Svensson, former principal and now CEO for RAU, met a former student of his on the subway in Stockholm. She told him that she was studying to become a teacher, but that she wasn’t satisfied with the education she was receiving from the university. None of her teachers were actively working outside of the university world, which left her feeling that they were lacking the sort of practical knowledge that she was going to need when she started working.

Sweden has a lot of challenges ahead: Amongst others, the country will be 40,000 teachers short of its needs by 2020; in Stockholm alone, the amount of students will increase from 60,000 to 90,000 Moreover, people who decide to study to become a teacher often are looked upon as if they only chose their field of studies due to lack of any other decision.

Instead of complaining and whining about obstacles, RAU decided to do something about it, they created Rebel Learners as a way to bring a positive and professional voice to the discussion about education as well as to support and lift teacher students, and active teachers, with the help of a vast network of professionals and partners as well as courses, seminars and other events.

Co-creating an Plan of Action

In order to be able to pinpoint what was truly needed to lift this task, RAU gathered 12 teacher-students and together they created a game plan and a draft for what was to become a week long summer camp that took place in June 2014. From here on, there will be two seminars per semester and one summer camp each year.

When working together, they identified the three main subject that the teacher-students felt were the ones of most value, and that they felt they didn’t get enough knowledge about throughout their education. These three core problems were to become the main headlines for the summer course.

1) Leadership
2) Core Values
3) Digitalization in theory and practice

The next step was to figure out how to get the knowledge they felt they were lacking and to get other teacher students involved. In order to do this, they decided to create a four-day summer camp, tackling these three core subjects as well as laying a basic action plan for the fall of 2014 and spring of 2015. The summer camp ended up comprising 60 teacher students from various parts of Sweden, four leaders and nine experts.

It was important for the teacher-students that they would get tools, methods and processes that they could use in practice, and that they were introduced to these by people who were actively using them in the classroom on a weekly basis. The dream team that made it happen:
– Ann-Marie Korling (one of Sweden’s most famous teachers) – Language and the importance of using communication as to build good relations
– Frida Monsen – How the role of the teacher has changed
– Helena Kvarnsell – Work smart
– Jonas Monsen – Normcritical pedagogy
– Karin Nygard – Programming for younger children
– Marit Sahlstrom – Web-based learning for students sitting at home
– Markus Bergenord (Digitalista) Working with pre-school children using both worlds (digital and physical)
– Niklas Svensson – Relation and reality-based learning
– Pernilla Glaser – Reflection exercises

The students were tasked with applying the three core subjects in a discussion about teacher education, schools and Rebel Learners. By the end of the week the groups had produced a large numbers of movies, articles and other material relevant to the subject.

They Are Someone?

Word about Rebel Learners is spreading like wildfire both inside and outside the borders of Sweden. As I mentioned before, Rebel Learners currently consists of 60 students and four leaders, but this will change in 2015 when 100 more students and 14 leaders will join the original 64 Rebels. Other than that, various municipalities within Sweden are looking to become a part of the organization, and a second chapter will open in the south of Sweden in order to accommodate the demand for becoming a part of Rebel Learners.

When talking to Jannie Jeppesen, Ante Runquist was taking part of a workshop in Brazil regarding the future of learning and a municipality in Canada has been showing interest in the initiative.

As for where this will lead, only time can tell; naturally, it remains to be seen what sort of impact the Rebels will have on the future of our education system, how we view teachers and what role they will have in the future. But one thing is for certain: Instead of passing the buck on a problem, going “Why doesn’t Someone do Something about that?,” they have decided to be that Someone who does Something. All we can do is support teachers and teachers students as much as we possibly can. After all, being a teacher, and a good one of the sort, is one of the most important professions in our society.

Open Air Neighborhood (OAN) started off as a collaboration between KaosPilot Theis Reibke and architect Louise Heeboell, back in 2011. At first, the idea was simply to develop “Building Playgrounds” through co-creative processes with the users, as a way to develop the city itself. They applied for and received grants from both the EU and RealDania, and started working on the project. After meeting Ellen O’Gara at a conference in 2012, the project has since been a collaboration between Heeboell and O’Gara.

The main focus for OAN has always been on creating a strong connection with the users by making them a vital part of the processes. Here they share some insights into what made them decide to work together, what brought them onto the path of co-creative processes and what they have learned throughout the various projects

Core77: Let’s start off with a little bit of history about each of you.

Ellen O’Gara: Architecture seemed like an interesting thing to study because it combined books and creativity. I liked that combination and I still do. While I studied I really liked that everyone could participate in a discussion on architecture because it is something that is relevant for all. And in some ways we are all experts.

Louise Heeboell: I was both creative and good at math and physics. Good at drawing. I thought I was going to be an engineer. But I figured that the mix of engineering and being creative was being an architect. Besides from that, I had no clue, what being an architect was about. I’m happy about my choice now. Years before Open Air Neighborhood, I worked as a ‘normal’ architect. But I found that there was a conflict in the way architects work and the way the city develops. I had been looking for a way to work differently, open and with the users as a central part of the development—and still be an architect.

Louise, why was this so important to you?

Because I found that the urban space that was built as a direct result of the architects drawings had no life. (And I’d been drawing some myself, so I felt bad about it!) I was interested in finding out what created the places in the city that are filled with life and where people liked to stay.

Ellen, what brought you onto the path of co-creative processes?

Ellen: I studied at the school of architecture in Copenhagen. At the beginning of every year we went abroad for two weeks to do field work. In Sarajevo, Porto, Lisbon, … Here we were free to find something that interested us. I would walk around and talk to people. Ask them what was important to them. This would always lead to something interesting. A topic would emerge, a need, a potential. I would gather all the information I could, measurements, conversations… the rest of the year, I and all the other students would develop each our project. I find this way of working very interesting. Looking at the needs and the resources and developing a program from that. It results in some very interesting synergies and very relevant programs. It is bottom-up development.

Of course you can’t always just wander around and hope to run into something interesting when a developer wants something built but it is an approach I find very valuable. So what I mean to say is that my education has very directly led me to what I am working on today.

So, when did you two start collaborating?

Ellen: We met at a conference in august of 2012 hosted by the city. We each presented projects we had worked on for the previous months. It was clear that we had the same interests and some of the same ambitions for urban planning. The conference was about a project called Skab din By. Very interesting and experimental project by the municipality.

Louise: After that, we had a coffee and I think I asked if Ellen wanted to take part in the talk, that Open Air Neighborhood was going to give at the Think Space conference in September that year.

Ellen: Yes, and from then we started building OAN together. By January, we were working full time. Doing projects for the city and housing organizations.

During the Think Space conference you each presented a project. What were these projects about?

Ellen & Louise: We presented several projects where you could see that we had some common ideas for how to develop differently, our approach to urban planning and the process by which the city is and should be made. These ideas were about including the users in developing their own urban spaces. We were both very interested in processes where the citizens take a more central part of the development, and we both had experienced first hand that this kind of process can have some good social benefits.

What were your first projects working together in OAN?

Ellen & Louise: I think it was Gribskov Boerneby, wasn’t it? And the second part of SolvangCenteret. Gribskov was a workshop we did. It lasted a few hours and was interesting. Solvangcentret was a project that lasted about a week. It was the second phase of a project Louise did the summer before we met. Solvangcenteret was building the furniture for an abandoned mall in a social housing area together with the local kids. It was about engaging the locals in developing physical and social ‘things’ together as a whole.

Ellen: During the summer, we have renewed the courtyard of the mall, also together with the citizens. The idea for the second phase was to finish the things that had not been finished. But when we spoke with people there, we realized that that plan was not relevant anymore. So we had a talk about what else could be done. Some of the adults already hosted a weekly dinner that they thought could be more public. So the plan became to build tables, benches and a food cart so it would be easier to host the weekly dinner in the shopping center. We ended the week by doing the dinner. Some of the locals made food, kids decorated the court and we used the furniture.

After we left, the project the locals took initiative to contact the owner of the shopping center and asked for permission to use a kitchen for the dinners. This shows that the people who took part were in some ways empowered to act. To take matters into their own hands. This has been a central focus in our work

Louise: The interesting thing about that project was also that it hasn’t been troubled by vandalism, even though that area is usually has this problem. So we found that including the youth really helps to prevent vandalism. The housing association has starting including the youth as a normal part of their practice for preventing vandalism now.

Throughout the time you have been working with OAN, what have you learned about developing processes?

Ellen & Louise: There is a lot of wasted effort. The system is built to be fair and I guess it is but it is also so highly regulated that the regulations sometimes prevents good initiatives. That is quite unfortunate. Luckily the city of Copenhagen is testing new ways of developing. We’ve been following some of the projects. They have some brave attempts of doing things differently. Skab din By was an attempt from the city to test ideas.

Co-creative processes look different from project to project, but they normally have a basic overall structure. Can you tell us a bit about OAN’s basic process design?

Ellen & Louise: We’ve developed a process tool that we call Demokratisk Byudvikling—a method toolkit. This tool is based on our experience from the projects we have done during the last two years. It consists of two models: the DNA model and the 4D model. The DNA model is a tool to get an overview of the project’s ingredients and potential. This is the initial step where we determine who will be involved and what knowledge needs to be developed, and then a potential process. It’s a circular process.

Then we use the 4D model: Discover, Dream, Design, Deliver. It’s different from projects to project which ‘D’ we start with, and how many loops we take. It’s an iterative process in which we make use of the method prototyping. I think this is probably the thing that a lot of people associate us with. It is a method where you move quickly from idea to physical product. We’ve used it a lot when testing ideas. It is good to build an idea in 1:1. It forces you to be very specific and when it is there other people can see and use it. Thereby they will be able to give a more qualified response. It is also fun and a method that can be quite attractive to people who couldn’t care less about a citizen meeting. Speaking in big terms you could say that cities are prototypes. They are always being rebuilt and learn new things that can make them better.

When looking back at your various projects, which one would you say is the most successful one in terms of learning experience for OAN?

Ellen: I really like Vinterbyen. It is a project that includes a bit of everything. It started with us wondering why nobody focuses on urban life in winter time. There is so much focus on urban life during summer and by far most of the architectural renderings are of summer days. But once it gets cold and dark we hurry indoors. This lack of attention on cities during winter led us to developed the concept of Vinterbyen. We’ve gotten so much positive feedback on the project and everyone we talk to completely understands the idea. We’ve done a series of projects under the name of Vinterbyen and I like the whole process behind developing them. We saw a need; researched it; collaborated with a diverse group of partners on developing ideas; tested the ideas; and derived knowledge from them. This knowledge has been shared through lectures and articles. Each project under Vinterbyen leads to the next project. Developing the business plan is also very interesting.

Louise: I think both the Hørgården Nærgenbrugsstation and the Citylife on parking places are interesting in that manner. I think the Citylife on parking places (also called the ITS, or Intelligent Traffic Systems) has some of it all—figuring out the DNA and the creative process of the discovering, dreaming, designing and delivering. We learned a lot though the process—the interviews, the testing, more interviews. I hope it leads to a whole new way of managing parking places in Copenhagen. I also think that working with strategic planning in relation to our work has been interesting. E.g. in the work we did with the strategy of opening up the Hørgården social housing area. And Nærheden, planning a new city.

All good things come to an end, and you have decided to go in different directions. What lead to this decision?

Ellen & Louise: It seems like a good time to move on. We recently finished our process tool and with that, we feel that we tied a knot on something we wanted to explore together. That being done, we both have new directions we want to explore…

What will be you next step?

Louise: I’m starting a new company called IntraCity. I’ll work with ideas and strategies in the urban space, moving rapidly from idea to action. I teamed up with my boyfriend, actually. He’s also an architect, and a master builder. Throughout the work with Open Air Neighborhood, I’ve been very interested in the work with both strategy and innovation, and the combination in relation to the urban space. That will be my path. Working with prototyping has been so good and interesting. That will still be a central part of my work.

Ellen: My company is Platant. It is a continuation of the work that I have done in OAN but with a greater focus on a few things. I am interested in exploring how to measure the social sustainability of all these interesting projects that are going on in the public realm. And how this can lead to new ways of public/private collaborations.

Can you give me your personal Do’s and Don’ts when it comes to working with co-creative projects?

Don’t
– Don’t work with assholes! (No don’t write that.) But seriously that is a very important lesson.
– Don’t get into those development projects that want to seem like they want to listen to people, when the actually don’t. When you open up the process to people, you have to do it for real. All the way.

Do:
– Follow your instinct about people.
– Test it. You’ll get surprised. And learn so much. And you’ll find that the project suddenly jumps miles ahead. Even though it was only a prototype.
– Collaborate with people, companies and organizations who inspire you
– Share ideas
– Prototype again and again
– Document your findings
– Understand ‘idea’ as a verb!
– Be respectful to everyone. Respect their position and what they bring to the project. And be open and friendly. (It sounds very simple, but is very important)

A few months ago, I was contacted by an organization called Women Engineers Pakistan, which introduces girls to the field of engineering and technology. Just reading the name made me curious. For those of you who don’t know, I’m an architect, and I come from a family full of engineers and tech-heads. In other words, my choice of becoming an architect has never, at any point of my life, ever been questioned. I went to a technical high school in Uppsala, Sweden, always with the support of mom and dad, brothers and sister, my grandmother, aunts, uncle and most of all my wonderful grandfather. With 26 boys and 5 girls in my class, the male-to-female ratio was rather high, but my knowledge and competence was never questioned by anyone of the male gender. Not by teachers, nor by fellow students.

Hearing about an organization like this and its origins was inspiring, and it takes more then a bit of willpower and skin on the nose (Swedish expression) to start something as groundbreaking and controversial in a country where female students are told that they should reconsider their choice to study engineering and start studying something more suitable for women…

In this interview, I’ve had the great pleasure of talking directly with Ramla Quershi, the co-founder of Women Engineers Pakistan. She recently moved to the U.S. to study engineering on a full Fullbright scholarship. So even though she’s busy with the big move and getting her bearings, she set aside some time for this interview. I hope you get as inspired by reading this as I did from writing it.

Core77: Tell us a bit about the organisation and the thoughts behind it.

Ramla Quershi: The organization is a budding startup, which looks to increase participation from Pakistani women in Pakistan in engineering. Women have always been by and large in domestic and agricultural jobs in Pakistan, and their participation in science and technology has been minimal. We realize that women make over half the Pakistani population and we’re working to prevent that potential talent for technical prowess from going to waste. We’re working with young girls at high schools to encourage them towards science and math

When did you start working on getting Women Engineers Pakistan up and running?

It started with a Facebook page last August. But it’s wasn’t until six months ago that we started working as an organization.

Why did you decide on starting WEP?

Throughout my engineering degree, I felt a nagging lack of women in this field. We were often discouraged by our professors that engineering is a ‘big boy’ area. It was disheartening to realize that there weren’t many role models set out for us. So I created this organization to give women engineers a platform to represent themselves.

When the professors talked about it being a “big boy” profession, how did your fellow male students react to those sort of comments?

My fellow males knew that I was good at my studies, so they would often turn up for a group study option and ask me to explain things to them. So they had found out that the women in their class were just as good (some even better) engineers. Barring a few, many were courteous and encouraging. However, there were some ‘go make a sandwich’ sort of comments—but not many.

There must have been many ideas/incentives to make it go from an concept into reality, what were they?

Oh yes, there were. Initially it was just a Facebook page, but then it started getting attention, and I realized that I had hit a niche. We were contacted by the U.S. Embassy through the Facebook page for meeting with a NASA engineer coming to Pakistan. And i thought, ‘Oh wow, not much representation for the women in engineering crowd.’

Being contacted by the U.S. Embassy and meeting an engineer from NASA is a rather big deal, what did you talk about?

So the NASA engineer was a very encouraging lady. She told us about the unmanned mission to Mars that she had been working on. She told us about the pressing need for women to participate in engineering. We also discussed the prospects for Pakistani women engineers in future.

What was the most inspiring part of her visit for you personally?

The fact that she had a focused goal, and that she kept working on it for so long to finally achieve it.

In which sections of your life are you implementing this philosophy?

In every part of it—work, education, personal life. I’ve realized that nothing worthwhile comes easy, you have to work tirelessly to achieve it. Which is why I have started a focused approach for the growth of my organization, Women Engineers Pakistan.

What are the plans for WEP in the near future?

That we start from school levels, then college and then target workplaces. I have learned that this change that I want cannot be brought about in just a couple of months. It wil take years, maybe decades, to set back this gender gap. And we’re going one step at a time.

Do you already have partner schools that wants to implement WEP into their curriculum?

No, not yet. The schooling system in Pakistan hasn’t changed much over the years. Devising the curriculum is much easier than actually implementing it. I have received both good and bad feedback from schools in Pakistan. The Gov’t Girls High school in Lahore has been most encouraging and have shown a lot of interest in the cause of promoting science and technology. I have gone to that school a couple of times and WEP will arrange a science competition for them next Spring term. However, curriculum changes are a huge challenge.

What is the biggest challenge when it comes to the curriculum?

This curriculum was set even before my parents went to school. So the education department is hesitant in changing it now. So I need help from the international community to set up a well-rounded curriculum with a special focus on the female audience to it.

Is WEP getting any help from bigger organizations as to make this happen?

For curriculum changes? No. But we’re getting a lot of help from organizations to set up events, set up promotion desks etc. The Mehran University of Engineering & Technology is one such example. They invited us over for sessions, they invited us as a guest speaker to seminars like Opportunity Deck for Women in Engineering, they have really helped us in spreading the cause.

You just got a scholarship as to study over in the U.S., tell us a bit about this.

Yes, I got a Fulbright scholarship to the U.S. It is a fully-funded one that enables me to do my best in education and at the same time be a part of creating a better impact in society. Fulbright scholarships are not easy to get, so there are a lot of expectations associated with the grantee once he or she scores one. I realize this is a golden opportunity for me to take my initiative for women engineers to the next level, forge contacts, raise internships, meet and invite new people to promote the cause, and I am trying to make the most of it.

What will you be studying?

I will be in U.S. for two years studying Structural Engineering with a focus on Performance-based design for earthquakes and other hazards.

Who runs WEP while you’re in the US?

I was hoping you would come to this. I have recruited Campus Ambassadors in major Engineering Universities in Pakistan. The role of these ambassadors is to carry forwad my work while I’m here. They will go to government schools for girls, they will go to colleges, they will arrange conferences in universities. I make the announcement for the selected candidates next week when session starts in Pakistan. Also, supervision is undertaken by Abdul Hadee Janjua, our co-founder. Rafay Qureshi keeps important contacts such as yourself in the loop. Ms. Sidra Kaleem works in Abu Dhabi for us, and she’s already doing a phenomenal job at representation for WEP at coferences there. She is trying to build a job market for Pakistani women engineers in the UAE.

Meanwhile, I am in constant virtual contact with everybody. Google hangouts, Skype and Facebook/Twitter are important in today’s digital age.

Is there anything else you wish i come to regarding questions..? ;-)

Yes. I am calling for international help here. We need growth. We need role models. We need jobs. Women in Pakistan are extremely talented. They are intelligent entities who are willful of changing the world for better. I call for global opportunities for these people. If someone feels they can help us in the tiniest possible way, let them not stay back. From science books to science fairs, anything and everything is welcome.

Do you have any Do’s and Don’t’s for girls and ladies who want to work within the field of technology and engineering?

Do:
– Step up
– Always be in learning mode
– Women generally are better multi taskers. Put this quality to good use.
– Repeat 1–3 daily.

Don’t:
– Give up.
– Settle for just anything. The world is huge. And anything will be yours if you keep trying your best
– Be scared of math/physics. Learn things the way you like, but maths is easy once you rid yourself of the fear of it.
– Think engineering is only for boys. An engineer uses his/her mind. So can you.

What do you mean by “Repeat 1-3 daily”?

That they should step up for a new thing daily. Enginerring is an art form in a logical format. Until women start putting their ideas into it, engineering will lack the diversity it needs.

Learn morning about Women Engineers Pakistan at their website, WomenEngineers.pk, Twitter (@women_engrs_pk) and Facebook.

Cansu Akarsu is one of those people who you can’t help but notice when she enters a room: Her bubbly and positive energy more than makes up for her small stature. I met her during the INDEX: Design Awards a few years back, and have had the great pleasure of seeing her grow as a designer with her many socially conscious projects. Her résumé includes projects such as Happy Baby Carrier, Pad Back andSoap Shish. She moved from Copenhagen to Stavanger, Norway, this year and is now working at Laerdal Global Health.

Tell us a bit about your background?

Cansu Akarsu: I was born and raised in Istanbul, Turkey. I studied at an American high school called Robert College in Turkey, followed by studies at Istanbul Technical University (ITU),
which lead to an exchange semester at TUDelft, Netherlands, and a year as an exchange student at Korea Advanced Institute of Science & Tech.

What led you to study design?

At the international school, I had a chance to chose courses more focused on my various interests, which gave me a chance to study and experiment with web design and graphic design. I was very lucky, my school was very good in this way. They also conduct various personality test as to help you understand where you fit on the job market, and how you can direct your studies in that direction.

If you think about your closest family and friends, have they influenced you in any way?

If you ask my mom, my ‘design genes’ came from my father’s side :). They fell in love at the university as my dad helped my mom with her technical drawing courses. So far, I am the only industrial designer in my family of engineers. What fascinates me most about design is the human aspect—that we focus more on the everyday behaviors of people than technical solutions to products.

For the last few years, you have been working with socially conscious design. How did you get started with that?

There were many small events to lead to this decision. One of them being a trip to the eastern part of Turkey that I took with my class at ITU. I had traveled a lot to different countries, but i had never visited cities outside of Istanbul, and I thought that they were going to be more or less on the same level when it came to the standards that I knew growing up. I was surprised and shocked to see the lack of resources that existed in my own country. This inspired me to see what sort of impact that I, as designer, could have on peoples’ everyday lives. I understood that I could do something to help the development of my country and the world as a whole and that was really exciting for me. This is one of the reasons why I decided to participate in OpenIDEO. Here I attended the design challenges, and it was one of the places where I found that design skills could be used to address worlds’ biggest problems.

You have been living, studying and working in many different countries so far, what have lead you to do this?

It was always a part of the plan. Travel, travel, travel!

After studying in Delft, I went to Korea for what was supposed to be one semester, but i ended up staying for two. During my time there i got in contact with INDEX, who were arranging a summer camp called YONSEI-INDEX Design To Improve Life at Yonsei University. So instead of going back to Istanbul, I entered two of my projects in their competition for the INDEX: Design Award and got on a flight to Copenhagen. I brought my portfolio and networked like crazy at the various gatherings and events arranged by INDEX during the award week. Looking back, it’s hard for me to understand how I had the courage to do it. Kigge [Hvid, CEO at INDEX] encouraged and helped me a lot. I ended up getting an internship at DesignIt that started more or less immediately, so I never left Copenhagen.

One day, in the beginning of the internship, I received an e-mail from Kigge where she introduced me to the people who later were to fund the Happy Baby Carrier project in Uganda.

Tell us a bit about your role in Happy Baby Carrier, and how it all started.

As I said, Kigge introduced me via e-mail to the people who started Happy Baby. I got the mail the day before they had to leave, so we had to meet the same day. I was about to leave the country as well and had made plans for the evening, and even though Kigge had told me absolutely nothing about what they were all about in the mail, I just knew I had to meet them. So I canceled everything and arranged for a small dinner meeting with them. It ended up going later than expected—we were sitting talking about projects, possibilities and laughing through the entire evening. By the end of the meeting, I was asked to design a brief for the project, which I presented when they came back to Copenhagen a few months later.

I didn’t really know what i was doing, but I showed them the brief, the timeline and told them about the team that I needed for the project—a researcher, a product designer, a photographer and me as project manager—and to my surprise they said Yes.

For more info about the project, check the website happybabycarrier.org

Were you done with your studies by the time you started working on the Happy Baby project?

Well, no! Originally, the idea was that I was going to do it as a graduation project, but my university back in Istanbul didn’t agree with that. That was bad for them, but really good for me, seeing as I now got to do it as a full-time job, to build a great team and to work in the field in Uganda. I believe this arrangement led to a much better process as well as a better result.

Other than the finished product and fond memories, what did you take with you from this project?

So many things were going on at the same time and seeing that the process was so intense. One of my colleagues was an anthropologist, so I learned a lot about research. I had already prepared an interview guide for the workshop and we refined it together. During the process, we had to change some questions in order to get the answers we were looking for, as well as adding a some new ones and omitting others that weren’t relevant.

We asked them to describe how they carried the baby depending on age and size, and when they answered, I would start sketching it on the board and everyone loved that, so that became a reoccurring part of the workshop. Someone drawing was a fun point that we added on during the process.

For me personally, everything was so new, living in Uganda and being a project manager, but at the same time a tried to not be Cansu anymore and just be as objective as possible. I didn’t have a lot of free time to get into the culture the first time around, but the second time we stayed for four months, which was a lot of fun!

Was there anything that surprised you with the process or the project?

Oh, this is really hard to answer… at one point in the Design To Improve Life process, there is this part called “Kill your darling,” we had to use it. We had a prototype that worked perfectly, but it was hard to produce, and since one of our criteria was that it had to be easy to replicate, it was out of the question to continue with that model. It was necessary to ditch it, but it still hurt.

Many of the things that surprised me came after the process was done and we were visiting families that were using the carrier. Seeing that they had started to use it in a way which we hadn’t intended for a problem that we hadn’t considered in the process. If we would have known, we might have designed it differently. But it works, which is the main thing.

One of the other interesting things that comes with creating a successful product is all the things that you can’t predict when you first start, such as the new patterns created within a family structure. For example, when the father uses the baby carrier, the love and attachment to their children grows, the gap between the genders get smaller, and decreases domestic abuse.

What is your next step?

I want to move on to more challenging tasks. I love the field, so i’m continuing my path within this area. I just started working at Laerdal Global Health, where my focus will be to help save the lives of both mothers and children in the days after the birth. We are going to design products and programs to train midwives to do their job in a better job, and we are focused on a low-income setting.

I learned a lot in my old job, but here I have a bigger platform, I have a greater possibility to grow and to learn more within an organization that is as big as this one.

Lastly, do you have any ‘Dos’ and ‘Don’ts’ for people who are, or who want to work in the field of socially conscious design?

They are not specific to social innovation—they are valid for every field:

Do
– Socialize with the culture you are designing for
– Get your hands dirty; prototype
– Document each step of the design process
– Bring in multiple prototypes to get comparative feedback

Don’t
– Get defensive about your idea. When asking for feedback from users, designers should not defend the idea they have presented, but be open to as much critical feedback as possible.

Schools kill creativity. This simple message was the point of Sir Ken Robinson’s TED talk, now the most viewed of all time. Robinson challenges the way we view education in todays society, and highlights the fact that it hasn’t developed in the speed that it needs to, but is stuck in the old way of thinking.

The talk was released in 2006. And while much has changed since then (how many of you are now reading this on a smartphone or a tablet?), our schools have remained dully familiar. In the UK, things have arguably got worse, with unpopular figure Michael Gove damning progressive education as a ‘misplaced ideology’ and swinging the curriculum back towards good old traditional methods.

Four students at Royal College of Art in London have decided to do address this issue by developing a summer program where kids can enjoy thinking and learning in different ways. Project 42 is expressly intended for creative learners (ages 9–12) who really don’t fit into the framework of today’s educational institutions. The program will take place between July 28 and August 8 at the Royal College of Art. WhyProject 42? Well, according to the one the founders, Ed Tam:

The name is inspired by the book The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy. In the story, a supercomputer was tasked to find the ultimate answer to life, the universe and everything. Millennia had passed and the computer came back with the answer 42. But the people soon realized that it’s going to take a much bigger, more complex computer to arrive at the question. Project 42 was set up to help young people discover the power of the question.

The aim of the weeklong course is to bring out the fearless learner within each child by encouraging them to explore a question that interests them, and by starting with their strengths and working outwards. The theme for this year’s camp is London 2050, and under four themes—fashion, food, habitat and transport—children will be able to explore potential futures for the city through drawing, cooking, sewing, animating, storytelling, making and even coding.

The entire process will be available open-source: Project 42 will be documenting and sharing all of their experiences, methods and outcomes for others to adapt and use.

True to the principles of empathic design, the project has been developed organically, in collaboration with kids, parents, teachers and current experts in the field. Besides Sir Ken Robinson’s powerful talk, the project also bears the legacy of influential educational thinkers such as John Dewey and Lev Vygotsky. Other sources of inspiration include the Independent Project, Sugata Mitra and Logan LaPlante’s talk on Hackschooling.

I will be following the project and the team from London, which means that you’ll be able to read about the project as it unfolds. You can follow it here on Core77 and on Project 42’s own blog.

This is the third article in an ongoing series about working with kids by Copenhagen-based architect/designer/educator Moa Dickmark. Her last article was on the Future of Learning Environments.

There are a few things that one should think about when it comes to working on a project using co-creative processes. There are the basics, such as how you develop and structure them, and then there’s the small things that make the process go more smoothly. Sometimes these small things end up making a big difference, so I’m going to let you in on some of the ones that my colleague and I use more or less every time we are out working. Most (but not all) of them are applicable also when working with teachers, leaders, politicians etc.

The Necessities

Start the process with a few meetings with the headmaster and school leadership, where you can decide on a common goal and make sure that you are on the same page. A goal for a process can be something along the lines of:

Develop spaces that students and teachers feel comfortable in and that can be used in various ways depending on subject and the individual students needs.

Decide on a timeline, a budget, how many hours you will spend with the students per workshop and ask them to find a class with teachers that are open-minded and up for the project. No point in hitting your head against the wall with teachers who don’t want you to be there; the students will probably take on the sentiment of teacher and the process to reach the set goals will not be enjoyable for anyone.

Involvement

1.) Make sure that everyone involved in the project feels like they are truly a part of the project, and that they have an important role in the process and outcome.

When working with students, invite their parents for a meeting where you tell them about the project, tell them a bit about the basics of co-creative processes and what sort of things their kids are going to come home and ramble about. It’s really good to let them try what you are talking about, so let them do one of the exercise—i.e. a quick and dirty model-making session always bring out a lot of laughter—in order to provide a greater understanding of how fun it can be, and so they have something to talk about when their kid comes home from school.

This is also a good way to get them more involved—maybe one of the parents works at a warehouse and can arrange some sponsorship deal with the boss or something of the sort, or that some of them want to spend some of their free time helping out at one of the workshops. The more support you get from the parents, the better.

2.) Also make sure that people who are not directly involved of the project feel welcome.

For example, shortly after starting working with a 6 grade class in a small school in the middle of Jylland, Denmark, the biggest ambassadors for the project and for what the students were working on turned out to be the librarian and one of the cleaning ladies. They showed parents what their children were up to, and talked about the vision developed for the various areas.

All on the Same Level / Experts in Their Own Right

No matter who you work with, be it a class of 7-year-olds, a class of 17-year-olds, a bunch of teachers, the school administrators or a mix of all of them, always remember to make sure to listen to them and and take them seriously. Whoever is a part of the project team is an expert in his or her own right, so when working with co-creative processes, no one’s opinion is more worth than anyone else’s. A 7-year-old girl’s opinion about the learning space is just as valuable as that of her teachers and headmasters; make sure that this is clear when you start working together, and that it is respected throughout the process. Make sure that no one plays the seniority card to get her/his way…

Overview

Design an overview of the process and the various workshops. Explain the overall goal with the process, and the goal for each workshop—but not the details—to the students and teachers in the beginning of the first workshop. Draw them on the whiteboard with figures (cameras, maps, tools etc) representing each workshop. It’s good if you do this in the beginning of each workshop—that way, they will have a visual understanding of what is going on, and will be able to see where in the process they are, what they have been through to get there and what they have to look forward to.

Language

Everyone has an opinion of their surrounding, but not everyone has the language to express it. Students and teachers will find it difficult to express why a certain area is good, and why another one isn’t. It is your responsibility to help them develop a better understanding of their surroundings, and a way for them to express it, and it is your responsibility to make sure you get the information you need, and to make sure that the students and teachers participating in the workshops learn from them, and find them interesting to take part of. This wa,y no one feels like they are wasting their time and everyone works a bit harder to reach the set goals. It also creates a great positive energy that spreads like wildfire around the school.

When working with students, no matter what age, never ever use oversimplified language. Continue using words such as design process, co-creation and modules. Write them up on a section of the white-board, you can call it “The dictionary,” and then explain what it means using words that already are a part of their vocabulary.

By the end of a workshop, you might hear a student say to another student something along the line with “Oh, but this is not the finished product, it’s just a prototype of the modular system we are working on…” When that happens you will stop, listen and think to yourself, “Wow, so cool!”

There’s no Right or Wrong

Another thing that is good to think about is to tell the students when you start working with them that:

There’s no right or wrong! If you want to write down your idea, write, we don’t care about the spelling, or grammar for that matter. If you want to draw down your idea, draw. If you want to build your idea, we are going to do that too!

What at your age is called Fantasy and Imagination is called Creative Thinking later on, and is something older people go to university to learn more about. So don’t lose it, you will need it now and for the rest of your life!

Teams

When designing the process focus on teamwork. Make sure that they vary in size in the very beginning; depending on how many students you are working with in total, you can make them bigger. We have found that the magical number is 5–8 people in one group. It’s better with more teams than bigger teams. During the first few exercises, you will be able to see how they work in teams: which ones work more closely; who naturally becomes a leader and who takes the leader role by force; who is a good project manager or creative thinkers; who brings positive and productive energy to the team; and who simply can’t work together. Try to get them to reflect upon this in various ways so they are more likely to develop good team by themselves later on in the process.

And then you have the ones that just don’t seem to fit in—or in some cases don’t want to fit in—to any sort of group. It is your challenge to figure out what sort of role they can play in process. Maybe they can be the Journalist, create a blog for the project, take pictures, do interviews with teachers and their fellow students, and write articles for each workshop. Or maybe they can be your personal assistant, or the shoulder-tapper, the one who goes around and gives high-fives, tells the other students how good they are and gives them positive reinforcement, it’s an important task too. Just make sure that no one is left out.

Following her first article on her experiences as an architect/designer working with kids, Moa Dickmark offers her insights into the future of pedagogy and learning environments, an issue that raises various questions around the world. Here, she shares her vision for learning spaces in the future, how to go about developing them, and why she believes that students and teachers should have a say and be a part of the development and implementation process.

What do I believe will be the future for education and education facilities?

Einstein, who said something to the effect of “If you can’t explain the problem simply, you don’t understand it well enough,” would not be happy with my answer.

The question seems so simple, but the answer, as most of you probably have noticed, is oh-so complex.

More and more, we see that newly designed schools around the globe is that the majority of architects rely on the teachers and the school administrators’ feedback regarding their work environment as the basis of their designs. Like most of you, I agree that this is an important part of developing a more multi-faceted school then what we have seen in the past.

And it is without a doubt important, as an architect, to listen to and truly understand the needs of the people who use the school spaces on a day to day basis. It is also vital that the architects read between the lines and interpret what the users can’t put into words themselves. We are fluent in the language of space, but we have to remember that not everyone is. This is also important when it comes to developing an environment that not only works better than the ones they had before, but becomes a way to develop and challenge existing ways of teaching and learning.

One thing I have noticed when studying various projects and architecture studios around the globe is that very few of them consult the students on a serious level. Don’t get me wrong, there are some really good projects where they are doing just this (and i will write about them, i can promise you that), but they are few and far between.

There are many reasons for this: the students (kids, tweens, teens) ideas can seem unserious, far fetched and unrealistic. They can also be hard to comprehend, and hard to implement into the design because of a lack of understanding of why the students are asking for whatever they are asking for. And then there is of course the problems that all kids have with adults: that the adults believe that they know best and know what the kids truly need.

Once more we have to keep in mind that not everyone speaks the language of space, but most people, no matter what age, have an opinion about it, and kids are no different. It can be hard for anyone to understand and pinpoint why they think, work, concentrate or come up with better ideas in one area of a learning space, and not in others.

There are various ways to get around this little hurdle—by guiding them through various small workshops where they explore and question everything from existing spaces at the school and the surrounding areas, as well as where they hang out after school and in their homes.

In the beginning, you (as an architect, designer or teacher seeking more insight to the students minds) will probably find it rather tricky—I know I did. But in this way, both you and the students will get a greater understanding of which areas are best suited for which sort of work, what areas work best for them and why, which areas do not work and why, and how you together can develop the areas that don’t work so that the students start using them.

The Almighty Designer…

During my time studying architecture at university and based on what I’ve heard from fellow architecture students in other countries, our mentors continue to talk about the importance of a good process, and that we are supposed to study our clients and users as thoroughly as we possibly can. Unfortunately, at least for me, it is not a part of the curriculum to learn how to develop our own design and work process, how to collaborate with non-architects, how to set a timetable for a project or how to develop and conduct a workshop.

This often results in students who believe they have the infallible taste when it comes to design, and that this means that their opinions are worth more than those who are actually going to use the building.

Janitors, Students and Teachers Are Also Experts

As an architect, it can be extremely hard to let go of your role (and view of yourself) as the expert when it comes to design, and I’m not saying that you should do so completely. But—and this is a big BUT—it is important to remember that everyone who uses the space is an expert in her/his own right, and that their expertise is not to be taken lightly. The teachers’ expertise, the janitors’ expertise, the 12-year-old students’ expertise, and the librarians’ expertise all must be taken into consideration in order to arrive at the optimal end result when designing or redesigning space.

Unfortunately, many architects see the client/users as a disruptive element, along with budgets that are too tight, annoying regulations and other parameters that messes up their design.

If you instead choose to see it as an opportunity to work together on developing and designing a solution that measures up to as many requirements as possible, the entire process will develop in another, more enjoyable, direction. A common goal of a good collaboration, where everyone involved is on the same level and is respected for their respective expertise, leads to a more interesting and more sustainable project.

It will probably cost a bit extra on the spreadsheets and take a bit longer, but considering the life cycle of a building, one to two months of extra research and development does not really matter, especially not if the results exceeds the ordinary.

Asking for What They Know

When my colleague Heidi Lyng and I first started working closely with schools to develop design processes with students and teachers, we were just starting our final year of our master from Aarhus School of Architecture in Denmark.

For the major part of our first semester, we were out working with students in various elementary schools located in Aarhus, and a school with for tweens with concentration and learning disabilities in Vejle. During this time we developed various co-creative design processes in order to get a hold of the information we needed as to be able to understand the students needs. We also developed different methods with regard to the age of the students, energy levels etc.

One of the many things we learned from our first semester at uni is that when asked the question of what sort of spaces they want and need in a new school, the teachers, students and school leaders answer by asking for what they already know or what they think we as architects want to hear without considering whether the spaces actually work. This is the reason why we use co-creative design processes—to open up for a mutual understanding and dig deeper into what is truly needed and what is just for show.

Another thing we learned (and keep reminding ourselves of) is that “small kids have small pockets.” For us, this means that we always have to keep in mind who we are developing the co-creative design processes for when it comes to both age and size…

The Ultimate Learning Environment

I have thought long and hard about what is needed as to create the ultimate learning environment, and come to the conclusion that it doesn’t exist. The only thing we can do is to create as much of an advantageous basis for space to develop as possible. We can do this by developing a space that works in collaboration with the educators, by hiring teachers who burn for what they do, and to create spaces where students and teachers work together as a team to create a good atmosphere where learning is something that students genuinely want to do.

The school, in terms of both architecture and pedagogy, must take in consideration that people are different and they have different needs to feel good and comfortable, and ultimately fulfil their potential. Only after you have specified the needs and wishes of various individuals can you design a space that even comes close to what can be called “the ultimate learning environment,” and this takes time, close collaboration between the various users and partners and the architects and engineers.

One of the things that I personally find to be important throughout the process is to design a solution that not only supports current pedagogy, but also challenges teachers and students to develop it further, and hopefully meets their future needs proactively. This is difficult, of course, since we can’t possibly know what the future will bring, but what we can do is study and develop spaces that work in the present so we can stop designing and developing spaces that don’t.

So let’s collaborate and co-create more, let’s take one another seriously when doing so, and let’s develop ways of working where we truly understand what the other one is saying, and not just brush opinions under the rug because they aren’t expressed in a language we can understand.

Let me start off by saying that this is solemnly based on personal experiences and opinions! Sure, there’s some facts to back it up seeing that we have done our research, but the sources are long forgotten. Not because they weren’t relevant, but i’ve mixed them up in my mental blender…

To the point: Working with kids has many sides. It can be hard, it can be challenging, you have to plan the day down to the minute, and make sure that you can rearrange your plans depending on the day play out, but most of all it’s good fun, inspiring and amazingly awesome to be let into their world.

As an architect by training, I have worked with my lovely colleague Heidi Lyng to develop various methods when working together with kids, teachers and leaders on developing educational spaces using co-creative design processes. We’ve been doing this for over two years now, and have been working on everything between concrete projects such as developing more active playgrounds to more fluffy projects such as developing a common vision for a gymnasium. We see everyone involved—from the 7-year-old student to the 62-year-old principal—as experts in their field. No one is as good at being a 7-year-old girl as a 7-year- old girl…

As I’ve already written, working with kids have many facets—it can be hard, it can be tricky, it can be hilarious, it can be oh-so-many things, but most of all it’s fun, it is inspiring and it is vital if you want to reach the optimal result with the project.

First, the Good

No matter what their age, kids have an insight into, and a view of, how it is to be a kid of their own age that no one, no matter how good you are at putting yourself into the shoes of others, can do to the same extent. Figuring out why a certain space works, and why another one doesn’t is something only the kids you work with can tell you. It’s their field of expertise. They know, instinctively, where they prefer to work, where they get inspired and where they feel safe etc. What we, the architects, do is help them define and understand theses spaces by playing games and asking questions.

The Bad

Let’s start with the obvious: Kids have an extremely short concentration span! But here is where it’s up to you to make sure to arrange the day in such a way that you can keep them interested. If one method doesn’t work, tweak it until it does or try another approach. If you notice that the concentration is on an all-time low, take a break, ask them to run around the building a few times and see who can do it the fastest, take them out onto the playground and play a game, get some fresh air. But whatever you do, do NOT continue as if nothing is wrong. There’s always something you can do, even if it’s just to let them go crazy for 5-10 minutes…!

Another thing we have noticed is that our school is built up in such a way that the kids pretty early seem to lose their natural sense of imagination. By first grade, they are already taught that there are some things that are right, and some that are wrong. The more right you are, the more golden stars you will get. Unfortunately this means that their ability to wander through the door into a wonderful world of imaginary friends and create fairytale spaces is fading at a young age.

Thankfully this is not the case with all kids—some manage to keep the door open longer than others.

We find that starting off a process by telling the kids that we aren’t looking for right or wrong answers when we are there—we don’t care if they draw perfectly, if they spell correctly or build a perfect house. Whatever they do is good. Our job is to make sure that we create an environment where the doors of imagination can re-open and stay open.

And if it helps, let them know that what is called imagination and fantasy now is called creativity or creative thinking later on, and is something older kids study at university!

Now for the Awesome

Kids have this amazing ability to come up with cool and crazy ideas when you give them the possibility. You get to see completely new sides of them when you work with them through co-creative design processes. Their way of solving problems, the curiosity to try out things they’ve never tried in school, new methods of learning, working in teams, helping out their peers, and doing things that—at the beginning of the day—they thought they would never be able to do.

To see how they automatically switch roles in a group when they notice that someone else is a better leader on the new task then they were on the last one; how they develop their language and new ways of thinking; how their view on others and themselves changes. How they get grander visions for their future, and get excited about the idea of becoming a designer, a construction worker, a photographer, a teacher, a journalist or whatever else they find interesting.

To see how they encounter problems within the group and figure out a way to solve it within the group without crying, blaming and dragging in the teacher. Or how they go from being shy to standing in front of a crowd, explaining what they have come up with, and why it’s so good.

Taking the kids seriously and acknowledging that they are experts within (and outside of) the process is always a must for projects that have anything to do with them. If you give kids more responsibility and tell them out loud that you expect certain things from them—such as accountability for their own actions and achieving a goal as a group—they will do their utmost to not fail the group, yourself or themselves. It’s inspiring to be a part of their development, and it’s awesome to see the results they produce throughout the workshops.

Einstein said something along the lines of, “Don’t judge a fish on it’s ability to climb a tree.” So don’t judge a kid on his/her ability to be, say, a lawyer, and don’t judge a lawyer on his/her ability to be a kid. While the kid still has the possibility of becoming a lawyer, the lawyer’s ability to be a kid vanished a long time ago. Judge them on being experts on being exactly what they are at the moment.

When I write about projects and people that I find interesting, I often wonder “Why the heck don’t more people know about these projects/people?” You can say that I see it as my duty to spread the word, to inform people about the things going on out there, and make sure that you don’t miss out on all the awesomeness that is to be found in various places, and within people… which is a long way of introducing Communitere.

The Beginning

When disaster hit Haiti back in 2010, Sam Bloch was working on a custom-made lighting system for a weekend cabin up in the mountains. He had finished work for the day and was sitting in a bar, drinking a well-deserved beer, when he saw the news about the earthquake. Right then and there (because it sounds more dramatic that way), he decided that he needed to be there. He packed his big backpack with as few private things as possible and filled the rest up with tools. About a week later, he was standing in the middle of the disaster area with the feeling that he had made the right choice and was in the exact place that he needed to be. And although that moment marked the beginning of Communitere, Sam had already been working in disaster relief for about six years.

The name itself, Communitere—which I first thought was French—stands for Communities United In Response, Relief & Renewal.

What works, and what doesn’t

With quite a few years within the field, Sam had gathered a fair share of insight into what worked and what didn’t work. One of the problems he had identified was the lack of innovation within the global aid industry. Where there’s no margin to fail, there’s no margin for innovation, at the same time as it’s easy to argue that this lack of innovation is failure in itself.

This lack of innovation is the problem that Communitere took to heart and decided to make into its main focus. By creating Resource Centers, spaces that also know as “Spaces of Safe Failure,” they have established big workshops where the locals inhabitants can learn how to build their own homes; use the tools provided in the workshops; use the space to work on new ideas; and collaborae with visitors on prototypes and projects to solve a specific problem.

As Bloch says, “You can’t empower people, the only thing you can do is give them the tools to empower themselves.”

“Focus on solving the problems that others are not”

It’s one thing to think that you know what the people you want to help want, but actually knowing what they want may be a whole ‘nother thing. There’s also a difference between knowing what they want and what they truly need. Needs can be tricky in the sense that sometimes what you need the most is something that you didn’t even know existed—a problem that might be so ingrained in your day-to-day life to that you don’t even see it as a problem, but rather you take it for granted.

One of the problems you encounter in the world of aid is oftentimes many organizations focusing on solving the same problem without communicating with one another what they are up to, at what time, where, and so on and so forth. This results in redundant efforts, resources going to waste, as well as other areas being neglected when it comes to support, products or medicine.

Another problem that you often encounter is that some organizations inject themselves and their projects into a community without involving the locals, and without finding out if the project they want to build is truly wanted and needed. Not only does this mean that energy and resources may go to waste, but also that these organizations may lose credibility with the locals, both in the present and in the future.

Before starting a new project, organizations should ask themselves:
– Who wants this, is it the organisation or is it the locals?
– Do the locals really need this, or is there something else that is more important?
– Is there any other organization working on solving this problem?

It’s important to work closely with the local inhabitants both when it comes to locating the needs and creating a priority list. Another perk with this way of working is that it creates ownership and has a bigger chance to make a lasting positive impact on the local community.

The lack of communication between the various organizations and the problems that this engenders are frustrating for everyone involved and everyone affected by it—an enormous amount of medicine, building materials and other resources end up going to waste. This is why Sam and his crew created a kind of a “Take one / leave one” market in Haiti, where various organizations could come and leave the things they had in abundance, (and would have discarded otherwise), and pick up other things that they may need, left behind by other organizations.

Resource Centers – Tools to empower

As mentioned earlier, Communitere builds Resource Centers as a way for locals community to build itself up from the inside. Everyone is welcome to become a part of this space, and it is built up in such a way that it is self-sustainable. The first 20 (or so) locals to sign up will be allowed to use it for free; beyond these founding members, there is a sliding scale: Local inhabitants get to use it for a very low fee, the local government pays one fee, various organizations pay another, and so on and so forth.

The Resource Centers are seen as a melting pot where International Innovators can get culturally appropriate feedback on their ideas and prototypes before implementation, while local innovators can receive input and feedback from people around the globe. It’s neutral ground, a space for creating, teaching, collaborating, growing, learning and failing.

One of the ideas that has developed over the years and now is coming to life is a project called Maker to Maker. The idea behind this project is to connect individuals using the Resource Center with engineers, architects, mechanics and others who can help develop a project around the globe.

Building made from upcycled styrofoam bricks

Innovation generated from problems

Other than creating physical and interactive spaces for growth and development, Communitere works on problems and needs that haven’t been addressed by other organisations or businesses.

As in so many other countries, waste is a major problem. In some areas of Haiti, there is so much waste floating in the water that, in some areas, people can walk on top of the waste as to get to the other side of the river, using it as a floating bridge. Styrofoam is among the materials that cannot be easily recycled, so an American scientist helped them develop a process to turn it into bricks from which they build homes. The factory for these styrofoam bricks is located on top of one of the building on the grounds of Communitere Haiti.

Show your support

Last but not least, let’s talk about what is on the agenda for Communitere in the near future. In January, the plan is to start building a Community Center, specifically focusing on youth in the area. On this project, Communitere will be working with a rather well-known organization (read: World renowned).

Right now Communitere is running an IndieGoGo campaign to raise money for their the Resource Center and the Maker to Maker initiative in the Philippines. Check out the video and show your support for “Communitere: Make It Happen in the Philippines.”