‘Al-Qaeda for good’

Cameron Sinclair, an architect trained at the University of Westminster and at the Bartlett School of Architecture at the University College London, has for more than a decade focused on designing buildings for those facing crisis. Sinclair first began humanitarian work in response to the war in Kosovo. Then, as a way to encourage more architects to get involved with relief projects, Sinclair and Kate Stohr launched a contest called “Design Like You Give A Damn: Architectural Responses to Humanitarian Crises.” The competition led to a nonprofit now known as Architecture for Humanity, which has paired more than 40,000 architects with relief projects in 26 countries. Sinclair won the 2006 TED award for his idea to create an online community that would allow architects to share their designs through Creative Commons agreements. The Open Architecture Network officially launched in 2007 and includes thousands of building designs.  

Sustainable Industries editor Becky Brun talked with Sinclair in front of a live audience at West Coast Green to learn more about the early days of Architecture for Humanity and the power of the Creative Commons when it comes to humanitarian relief work.

BB: So how did you get started?
CS: I grew up in a crappy neighborhood of South London. The environment was so bad. It was post WWII concrete-block housing. I became an architect not because of great buildings but because of bad ones. The reason I became an architect and a designer was to improve the life of people that don’t usually get the opportunity to work with great designers. I ended up in New York City partly because of wanting to work with homeless communities and partly because of a girl. … That’s how life works out. My day job was as a CAD monkey. But I knew what was going on in Kosovo so I began wondering what I could do.

As someone who builds things, the destruction of things is really quite overwhelming. I began to think about the needs of the refugees. I wanted to build a housing design to help people anchor themselves back into their communities.

BB: I’ve heard you refer to the Open Architecture Network as ‘free innovation.’
CS: Yeah, it’s kind of free culture. We went through this free culture movement and things happened serendipitously. … The one thing we did in 2004 is we had this project in South Africa. And it’s kind of gimmicky, but I really cared about this project because we were working on these mobile health clinics to combat AIDS. I met this young medical practitioner, and she said, “For 13 years I’ve been working here and no mobile clinic is going to help these girls. We have an HIV/AIDS rate of 56 percent of girls between 14 and 24. They have nowhere to go. They don’t go to school. They don’t go to clinics. They’re being told to stay in their home. … You can build as many mobile clinics as you want but it’s not going to save this generation.”

So that really affected me and we started talking about the fact that when there’s money for sports it goes to boys. [We] put a sign up on a tree that said, “Do any girls want to join a football team?” and within two weeks we had 200 girls sign up. We never said it was about HIV/AIDS, we never said it was about healthcare, but we said you have to be fit and you have to be healthy to play soccer. And so the coaches of the girls’ team were also HIV/AIDS doctors. … I wanted there to be thousands of these all over Africa.
If you really want to make impact, it has to scale. So I said I wanted an open source, free innovation.

BB: Beautiful design doesn’t get lost in low-budget, efficient buildings.
CS: Yeah ... People maintain buildings that are beautiful. It doesn’t cost a lot to be beautiful. It’s just thoughtful design. And I’m Cameron Sinclair, 100 percent Scottish. We’re very stingy. We’re tight fisted. As a result, I want my buildings completely maintenance free. I’m completely stingy. What [Architecture for Humanity] realized is, when it’s beautiful, people take care of it. When you do crappy design—when you put vinyl on the walls that is causing health issues—people don’t take care of the building, the equity goes down, and you end up with blight. And we don’t need to be building blight.