Designing for Good in Haiti

Last summer, a small crew from our Shelter production team filmed in Haiti. We had just a few days to cover the vital work of Architecture for Humanity, Yves Francois, and several students with the University of Minnesota College of design who were working on infrastructure and community development projects. The short film we made has been shown at screenings in San Francisco, in Los Angeles, and of course, has been viewed a lot on Vimeo. We started up our educational outreach program, called Shelter: connect, running workshops and connecting with students worldwide.

Now it’s time to go to the next step. We recently did a follow up interview in San Francisco with Eric Cesal, who heads up Architecture for Humanity’s Haiti office. We’re prepping to return to Haiti to complete the stories we started tracking there.

The campaign is live on Kickstarter. Have a look and find out what we’re planning to film during our return to Haiti. We’re offering some great rewards for your support.

There’s a fascinating debate going on about the changes in the professions of architecture and design.  Writing in Salon, Scott Timberg has noticed that creating wildly-expensive ego-driven buildings is not such a great career choice these days.  But there is another way to make a living in design, and in architecture, and that is by designing for the ‘other 99%’ – all those people who have not received the benefits of good design. Tom Fisher, Dean of Architecture at the College of Design at the University of Minnesota, writes in Metropolismag.com about the rise of humanitarian design as a real profession.  He talks about the power and purpose of organizations like Architecture for Humanity, Project H, the Seed Network and the Mass Design Group.

In Public Interest Design, John Cary contrasts the two views.  What are your thoughts?