Incensed.

I couldn’t believe the apathy that was expressed in the classroom during the arts of survival lecture. What can we as designers do to make a difference in the slums seemed to come out as if no one thought they could really do anything, or weren’t prepared to. What incensed me was they were not even prepared to conceive of the possibility that they could, I heard excuses like oh but there’s no money, or oh but we can’t do it alone. This may be the case, but by no means does that mean that we cant make it happen. Slums and poverty alike are a problem that as designers we are fully equipped to deal with.

In Samuel Clarke’s survival entry he recognizes that something needs to be done but his detachment prevents him from putting the responsibilities for those changes on his own shoulders. His rational is that the problem is larger than a righteous designer wanting to make a difference. Is that what everyone meant? Lets all just accept that we can’t do anything and move on to designing for the next Brit Pop Awards.

Is this lack of compassion and urgency due to how detached we are from such situations? Jennifer when explaining the slums felt that she needed to direct us to look at books and other media in order to gain understanding. That is how far we are from the appalling circumstances that these people affected live in.

This depressing attitude unfortunately seems to extend beyond this select few and into the whole comparatively affluent public. An illustration of this collective apathy is reflected in a conversation shared with the reader by Cameron Sinclair in her Introduction of Design Like you Give a Damn. She recalls a phone conversation with the United Nations High Commission for Refugees (UNHCR) who had her organization of Architecture for Humanity on a list to help in Afghanistan. Her joking response was ‘I hope it’s a long list.’ To which the answer came, a resounding no. We are not the only ones looking the other way.

What we need to acknowledge is that there are plenty of ways in which we can use our design talents. Growing up with my father working for the NGO World Vision, I do believe that a collaborative potential exists that could make a remarkable difference to relief work. An example of a project undertaken by World Vision Mozambique consisted of giving families goats in order to create economy and trade. A woman with many children, perhaps a husband who was killed in the war has little means of survival. For her she would receive a female goat from which she could create an income through both the milk and from its kids. Projects like this are the kind of concept that our minds would be perfectly imaginatively and practically equipped to create.

You just have to page through Design Like You Give a Damn to see that there definitely is something that we can do. Sam is right it is an ethical decision we make to help, so lets not use excuses that we can’t, of course we can if we are moved enough to apply ourselves.





Bibliography

Samuel Clarke (04 March 2007) The Arts of Survival.

Architecture for Humanity (2006) Design Like You Give a Damn, Palace Press International, China.