Achieving Sustainability // Eradicating Poverty
Architecture is often seen as an artistic pursuit, with magazine spreads posting glossy photos of delicate designs in wealthy suburbs for a star-studded, affluent clientele. Alternatively, the so-called drivers of sustainable architecture often works within the confines of major corporations or large government entities, seeing green architecture as a means of rebranding and generating the image of sustainability. What we often forget and ignore are those less fortunate in society, people who are arguably in greater need of sustainable livelihoods than those in our urban environments.
Poverty is in fact also fuelling damage to the environment. It has been noted that poverty is “creating environmental stress in a different way. Those who are poor and hungry will often destroy their immediate environment in order to survive.” (Broad, 1994, p. 811). More specifically, people with limited income will often do damage in attempting to earn a living, “their herds overgraze…off-season incomes drives them to cut and sell firewood…” (Barbier, 1987, p. 102).
The result is environmental damage which over time, further reduces these populations’ ability to earn enough to leave their poor situation, resulting in a vicious cycle of ecological damage and social inequity. The people are therefore “becoming [merely] not victims doomed to the downward spiral, not agents of destruction, and not merely sustainers, but positive actors” (Broad, 1994, p. 813) in a perpetuating our unsustainable society.
Similarly, the housing of these people trapped in poverty is often “…unauthorised settlements…[a] sprawling pattern and a density of development too dispersed to allow for cost-effective infrastructure and service provision.”
(Barbier, 1987, p. 106). The result is a further disconnection from the developed urban fabric, preventing integration and limiting their opportunity to better themselves and their families. It is here that architects have now ethically begun to introduce interventions and offer opportunities for change.
Architecture is not always about new forms and expensive surfaces,
even the simplest local materials can create functional, effective architecture (Heringer, 2014).
Noted architect Anna Heringer is at the forefront of helping communities in poverty, having been awarded the Aga Khan Architecture Prize for her simple yet life-changing Handmade School in Bangladesh. In an age where architecture is fascinated by the possibilities of parametric forms, Heringer has been praised for a school in which “new and refreshing local identity can be achieved by exploiting the immediate and the readily available” (Architecture Review in Heringer, 2014). Not only does the sourcing of local materials and workers vastly reduce embodied energy, her philosophy of design has generated a structure which is truly integrated with the community, while also using ‘simple’ and ‘common’ materials as “bamboo sticks and nylon lashing” (Aga Khan Jury in Heringer, 2014).
Involving local communities in construction, encouraging education are all factors which can improve environments and also encourage more sustainable practices and urban cities. (Heringer, 2014).
Heringer’s work recognises that the issue of poverty is not achieved through massive funding projects or establishment of bureaucratic non-government entities. It instead lives up to the belief that “…providing lasting and secure livelihoods that minimise resource depletion, environmental degradation, cultural disruption and social instability” (Barbier, 1987, p. 103) is the true answer to the problem of social inequity and extreme poverty. I believe that architects should see Heringer as an exemplar architect, her work as a simple yet effective and thoughtful regional piece of architecture which is not only environmentally sustainable in construction, but can sustain a better lifestyle and is therefore also socially sustainable.
References
Anna Heringer. “METI – Handmade School in Rudrapur, Bangladesh.” (2014). Retrieved on 22 May 2014 from: http://www.anna-heringer.com/index.php?id=31
Robin Broad. “The Poor and the Environment: Friends or Foes?” World Development 22, no. 6 (1994): 811-822.
Edward B. Barbier. “The Concept of Sustainable Economic Development” Environmental Conservation
14, no. 2 (1987): p. 101-110.