NEXT for Community Architects

July 2010
Bamboo workshop to build bridge and low-cost housing at Mindanao, Philippine
Hosted by HOMELESS PEOPLE'S FEDERATION PHILIPPINES, INC. (HPFPI)

August 2010
Mapping Workshop in Pakistan
Hosted by OPP and URC

October 2010
Heritage for People Workshop at Penang, Malaysia
Hosted by Penang Heritage Trust

Contact TEE

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The YP Programme has been created to give opportunities to young professionals to work with urban poor communities as ACHR aims to build space for young people to join and actively participate in community working processes.

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Young Professionals and Community Architects Links in Asia

International Tibet Heritage Fund
China Tibet India

CASE Japan 
Community Architects for Shelter and Environment

UPDF
Urban Poor Development Fund Cambodia

OPP Pakistan
The Orangi Pilot Project

CASE Thailand Community Architects for Shelter and Environment

Penang Heritage Trust
Malaysia

Think City
Malaysia

The Milkcrate Unlimited
Australia

Kochi Citizen's Council
Japan

Habitat Technology Group India

PEP People's Environmental Planning South Africa

UPC Urban Poor Consortium
Indonesia

Arsomsilp
Thailand

CODI Community Organisation Development Institute
Thailand

TAO - Pilipinas Inc.
Technical Assistance Organisation
Philippines

Teang Tnaut
Community infrastructure, housing rights and research in Cambodia

Community Architects in Asia

The Regional Community Architects Meeting which ACHR organized in Chiang Mai last week (June 12-16, 2010) may very well have been the biggest-yet gathering of young COMMUNITY ARCHITECTS in Asia. 125 people joined the meeting, hosted by Chiang Mai University's Architecture Faculty, and held (at least initially) in the leafy, open-aired "Umbrella Courtyard".
Present were community architects and planners - mostly youngish and idealistic, but there were also some mid-career and senior community architects from around Asia, with a few friends from southern Africa, Australia, New Zealand and Colombia. There were also community leaders from several Asian countries who are veterans of their own community design and construction projects, and a team from the Chang Chumchon community builders network in Thailand.

The groups converged at Bangkok, and spent the first day making the long bus-ride up to Chiang Mai, with stops along the way to visit community-driven projects to revitalize a traditional market (at Sam Chuk in Supanburi), to upgrade informal settlements in Nakhon Sawan (the Chamlongwit and Ronachai communities) and to upgrade a historic temple in Lampang (Wat Pongsanuk).

 

The bulk of the 4-day meeting was given to presentations and discussions about the interesting and diverse work Asia's community architects are doing with poor communities, in some 20 countries, as organized in panel sessions on participatory planning and urban regeneration, community upgrading, rebuilding after disasters, and the poor in historic urban neighbourhoods. But each day's sessions in the meeting room ended mid-afternoon, and our hosts in Chiang Mai organized a series of afternoon visits to historic temples, the new "walking street", an informal community upgrading project near the city's earth wall, an historic neighbourhood-wide revival, and a dinner and culture show with the Mayor of Chiang Mai at a Lanna-style restaurant complex.

There was, of course, plenty of news shared, plenty of projects described and slides presented, plenty of good discussion and setting of plans for future community architects activities in the region. But for most, the important part of this big gathering was simply getting together, meeting others who are working in this somewhat new, somewhat vaguely-defined corner of the design profession, and feeling a little less lonely, a little more part of a large, new movement. An after-meeting e-mail from one of the senior architect-participants, Kirtee Shah says

"The energy of the young, their maturity and subject strength, richness of ideas, environment of togetherness and belonging, spirit of sharing, scale (23 countries!), variety and promise - all that was stunning and inspiring to me. It is working! It made me feel young again!"

Two young Thai architects, Nad and Tee, were the key organizers )of the meeting, and they prepared a colourful 96-page book, especially for the meeting, which describes in detail the work of some of Asia's key community architects. Copies of this book are available with ACHR.

A report about the presentations made at the meeting is now being prepared and will be distributed soon.

  

For the participants:
1. Nad has written a follow up document outling some common issues, actions, coordinating mechanism, support mechanisms etc. You can download this document by clicking here.
PDF file 160 Kbs 3 pages
2. For thiose requesting the "What Shall We Do" slide show of the last day of the workshop go HERE

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Community Architects Visit Fiji

 

Nad, Tee and Hugo relax during ACHR's visit to Fiji in March 2010.
Go to Hugo's web site here for the report. And then scale down to Hugo's video presentation entitled Activists Architecture: Tactics for a people-made city.

Samiti ( right) - Cordinator of Fiji's Peoples Community Network

Laos - Community Architects Course

YP's Chawanad Luansang (Nad) and Supawut Boonmahathanakorn (Tee),have been spending lots of time working in Lao PDR to help develop the country's community-planned and community built on- site housing upgrading project, at the Nong Duang Thung Community in Vientiane. Nad and Tee have also been using the project as a focus point for getting students, architecture professors, young architects and other professionals in Lao PDR involved the supporting communities.

With their assistance, a community architecture training workshop was organized in Vientiane in September 2009, with support from ACHR and the Lao National University.

There were 95 attendants including 50 undergraduate students and 10 post- grad students and ten young architects, 15 community leaders, 10 urban planner - all Laotians. Some young architects from the Philippines, Japan and Thailand also joined the workshop.

As the result of the workshop, the Nong Duang Thung community was chosen to be the first pilot project of on-site housing and infrastructure development and solving land security issue in Lao PDR. This community, located on the government land, is 50 years old. There are 84 households with 500 people. With the support of community members and the saving groups’ committee, the community proposed a plan for community improvement:
• Community upgrading on existing land by adjusting the community layout for widening walkways and roads linking with the main street.
• Improving infrastructure such as roads, drainage channels, electricity, as well as constructing a community’s centre, library, and greening the environmental condition by plants and vegetables.
• Housing restoration • Establishing saving groups for housing and infrastructure improvement purposes.
• Proposing to purchase the land or long-term rent to government.

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Practicum in the Phnom Penh Communities

A Workshop /Course for Young Professionals Cambodia
at the Royal University of Fine Arts in Phnom Penh - February 4th to March 6th 2009

69 Participating Students
     49 Students from 7 Phnom Penh universities
     12 Young Professionals working with NGOs
      6 Young Professionals working with government

Scope of the Course: To introduce to the participants the practical concept of planning and implementing housing and improvement projects in urban poor communities drawing on successful models in Phnom Penh and relevant models from the region ( Asia)

Cambodian students at CODI Thailand
Learning through exchange visits.

 

Here's a link to the Bangkok Post Nov 25 08 article on YP Patama Roonrakwit from CASE

Sheltering the poor
Architect Patama Roonrakwit, founder of Community Architects for Shelter and Environment, tells why she has chosen to serve the urban poor

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YPs in Nepal

Chawanad Luansang (Nudd) an architect YP from Thailand working on the Bann Mankong (Secure Tenure) process and from Community Architects for Shelter and Environment (CASE-Thailand) and Chanwit Sookporn, instructor from Silapakorn University, Thailand worked with Lumanti in Nepal for 4 months.  Their assumption is that “Community improvement and city development can be implemented in parallel and benefit the city as a whole”. They assisted Lumanti in carrying out and compiling 12 settlement surveys in Kathmandu, and then they proposed 2 development plans as pilot projects to the city for implementation in Pathibhana and Shankhanole areas.
Both also helped ACHR Preservation for People process with research in the heritage city of Bhaktapur.

Lalintip Rumgruang and  Chawir Rak-U, 2 young architects working with Baan Mankong program Thailand joined students and city building professionals from various countries in an interdisciplinary forum and studio in Johannesburg, South Africa. Co-organised by Sydney University and Wits University Johannesburg.
Bhutan

YP Manjusha Rai completed an internship with UPDF in Cambodia and returned to Bhutan to set up an Urban Resource Centre in the capital city.

Jumin  Kim (Korean born, Thai raised, now a doctoral student in the joint PhD Program of Social Work and Sociology at the University of Michigan) spent March - June in Thailand on a YP internship based at CODI. Jumin had her own financial support.

 

Community Youth in Karachi

For more information on the youth, the surveys, results, implications and impacts go to the OPP-RTI web-site HERE

Community Youth Map and Survey over 500 of Karachi's Katchi Abadis ( slums )

The documentation surveys of katchi abadis of Karachi has been going on since 1994. These surveys have been undertaken by trained youth from the settlements who are part of the OPP-RTI youth training program.

The survey of the 334 katchi abadis shows the extent of the peoples work. Out of a total of 19,463 lanes, comprising 224,299 houses, sewerage lines have been constructed on a self-help basis in 10,131 lanes (that is, 62 per cent of the total lanes that have sewerage systems) and water lines have been laid in 6,991 lanes (that is, 50 percent of the total lanes that have water lines).

1,041clinics and 773 schools have been set up by the people as against 12 government clinics and 143 government schools.

 

UPDF YP's Cambodia

YP's in Cambodia have helped expand the UPDF's upgrading program to 16 more towns over the past 2 years.

 

UPDF's Youth

A Note from Somsack at UPDF

Young volunteers have been welcomed by UPDF and space has been created as an opportunity for volunteers to work with communities through UPDF mechanism, as the philosophy of UPDF is to encourage, spread and build volunteerism amongst young people by joining and participating on community working process. In the year 2006, UPDF took in volunteers from various organizations to enable them to gain knowledge on community life, culture and community development through following processes:

1) Saving & Credit Schemes of community by visiting community and interacting and learning from community representatives

2) Community upgrading activities by working with the people on proposals on land and housing security in Phnom Penh

3) UPDF schemes by being involved and contributing to schemes such as community loan, loan repayment, interest rate charges from UPDF, community deposit in UPDF office and so forth.

Student volunteers working with UPDF in 2006

Student volunteers working with UPDF in 2006

The local student volunteers worked in the fields of savings and credit. accounting and community development

YP's from out-side the country

YP's from out-side country( ba rang)

5 people offered to support UPDF as volunteers for short period of time, whereby UPDF acted as a facilitator to assist them in learning about community development through active interaction with the people and the processes of UPDF.
Some of the volunteers who worked for UPDF were:

Manjusha Rai, from Bhutan, (photo right) assisted UPDF to carry out and compile settlement and eviction surveys in Phnom Penh by involving the Savings and Credit network and communities themselves. She was also assisting UPDF in liasing with various other NGOs and assisted UPDF on the Comprehensive Community Upgrading activities.

Jack Jin Gary Lee, Singaporean, (photo left) studying at the University of Chicago, Faculty of Sociology, was researching on activities of community development process through UPDF mechanism and their relationship with the people and the other agencies involved.

John Scott Reilton, from Michigan University, was a short time volunteer with UPDF assisting in carrying out community mapping using a GIS system in Phnom Penh including training some UPDF and Teang Tnaut staff on how to use GIS. Mapping of resettlement sites is almost complete and shows that already there are more than 50 sites around the city periphery.

Below - John, Roath and Gary

Anne Vermeulen, and Charlotte Raeymaekers from Sint-Lucas Architect Hoge school, Belgium, spent one month with UPDF working closely with two communities on re-blocking of their community and on a conceptual plan for Phsa Thmey 10 ABC community.( existing plan with people as an alternative of community) and presented to people and Municipality of Phnom Penh.