Photo by Jan Glasmeier
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on deck; people started to organise themselves. By that time my volunteers were there for two weeks. So by then, they were more confident in doing certain things by themselves, like making the bricks or building a wall.
CL: That’s great. Local efforts are usually the best. Rallying the troops is a very fulfilling effort. You have worked and taught in different parts of the world by now. How do you see the development of ecological architecture over the years? Personally, do you see that there’s been a big change or just more greenwashing? JG: I think the demand is huge, that’s for sure. The access for the majority on this planet to architects or architecture in general is very poor—99 per cent of architects work for 1 per cent of the world’s population that can afford it. So, in the end we have more residential, more condominiums for luxury living; high-end hotels, sports stadia and shopping malls, although I don’t know if there’s still a demand for shopping malls. I read an article recently in The Guardian that talks about big shopping malls dying, which is also an effect of the COVID-19 pandemic.
The number of people migrating has also never been this high and there will be big challenges and demands that the architectural profession will face and there will definitely be a lot of work. I do not know how these solutions will look like. They are very local, sometimes, and there are cultural differences, so you cannot apply something that works in Syria to a problem in Burma or South Sudan, for example.
What I have seen though, is that there are a lot of architectural competitions, especially for-profit competitions on the Internet, where people have been asked to design and build a school in Ghana, Uganda, Senegal, etc. They may generate 500, 600 entries. And the solutions or winning entries are very often similar, with similar façades like something already done by Francis Kéré, etc. So, I don’t know if there’s any more need to run these competitions. You win them and you have the opportunity to go there to build the project for three months. But is this the solution? In three months, you can’t really connect to the people there. You just go in, and go out, volunteering in a way, but this cannot be the solution. You have got to go and connect and stay, observe, build something and see how it is being used afterwards. I have seen projects that are done by volunteers that have been built a certain way, but ended up being used completely differently. The need changed during the building process, but it was never communicated because there was a lack of trust between both parties. Even within our own projects we have experienced this. You then have to support the transition and change the project into whatever the demand is at that time, or at least look at it and understand it. We have experienced projects that have been built by other architects, that, whatever happens to the projects afterwards, does not seem to be of anybody’s interest.
CL: There’s a gap between actualisation of a project and the local context, after which there’s a discontinuation of the lifespan of the project. And also, it’s about the relationship with the local communities. JG: Exactly, it’s not only about the lifespan of the project, but the connection with the local communities. How they are developing and evolving, how problems are changing and how demand for the building
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