BUILDING BACK BETTER COMMUNITIES

Stefan and I just got back from the BBBC site late this afternoon. Back at Maison Blanche with its proprietor “Daddy”. He’s another story for another day. Today was the inauguration of the housing exposition for the Building Back Better Communities project. The project is a program developed by the government of Haiti and being supported by the Clinton Foundation and the IDB (Inter-American Development Bank). Inscape Publico teamed with Relief International and is one of 40 finalists that have built their housing prototype. Eventually the best of these 40 prototypes will be selected to participate in a planned community to house 125 families.

Early this afternoon ex-president Bill Clinton and the newly elected Haitian president Michel Martelly visited the site. The two were greeted as rock stars, fitting for an ex-musician and our former first saxophonist.

Clinton was wearing a panama hat and through the scrum you could follow his movements around the site by tracking the straw hat floating above the crowd. It was great to see the two presidents at the site as they bring a much need voice to the project and the problem of homelessness in Haiti.

Clinton said he hopes that "all the technology deployed on this project will ever be available to all Haitians. That they no longer have to pay more for electricity, and that drinking water is no longer a rare commodity...

"- Greg

SITE SIGHTS, HAITI

THOUGHTS FROM DELMAS, HAITI

Architects create the spaces that we inhabit. I sit here inhabiting a second floor balcony at Maison Blanche, a guest house in Delmas, Haiti. Delmas is a suburb of Port au Prince, east and slightly north of the city. To my left, with views to the west and the bay of Port au Prince in the horizon, sits my colleague Stefan Schwarzkopf. Day is giving way to night. The sun dances on the water and dusk covers the city creating a sense of calm. This is Haiti, however, and underneath this façade is chaos.

From my vantage point Stefan is busy at his computer revising drawings of a housing prototype we’ve designed for a planned community in Zoranger, 30 minutes north of downtown Port-au-Prince. Bodies will one day inhabit the bricks and mortar, or more precisely structural concrete insulated panels, we’re orchestrating with our computer generated drawings. As I look east there are the remains of a concrete block structure. The roof porous but for tarps stamped

USAID

. People have gathered in the space provided to pray. Church hymns fill the early evening. The spirit of Haitians has survived. Keep going east along the dirt road and a banner spans your path.

INSTITUT DES PHILOSOPHES

Within the course of 100 meters the body, soul, and mind have come together.

-Greg