Humanitarian Design & Real Needs

Dr. Bruce Becker’s lecture on November 3rd about refugee’s living circumstances and designers’ responsibility for humanitarian design solutions for such user-groups in need of help truly struck me. To be honest, I have always wanted to become a designer who can make people’s lives better; however, people like refugee or anyone who could not even afford one’s life essentials (such as water, clothes, and shelter) were out of my concern. To be even more honest, I thought such serious issues ‘were being’ and ‘should be’ dealt by some other professionals but Industrial Designers. What struck me so much was my ignorance to such greater reasons for us designers to exist, and more than anything, the fact that biggest changes in the world can be made by our smallest realizations and effort.

　
In the “Reactive material” course I am taking for the advanced studio, we made a visit to MOMA in New York to view their current exhibition called “Home Delivery: Prefabricating the Modern Dwelling”. The architects involved in the project claim that it is more efficient and environmentally friendly to mass produce parts of houses and fabricate them, compared to long term home constructions on a large scale site. Also the compactness of the house itself saves large amount of energy used to maintain the space. Lastly, they believe that such modern concept of deliverable house can be fun and entertaining for anyone around the world.
　
During the lecture, many aspects in the refugee camp reminded me of the contemporary project, prefabricated compact housing. The three main aspects both refugee camp and prefabricated compact houses have in common are that they have limited space, limited access to power/ resources, and limited permanency (so it should be mobile). In my Reactive material course, by trying to design a house as compact as possible, I became aware of the priority concerns for human being and living:
　
1. Water + Food
2. Toilet + Shower
3. Sleep + Rest
4. Safety + Privacy
5. Entertainment
　
While top three on the list are clearly essentials for life maintainence, lower two may sound like a luxury for people in serious poverty and threat like refugees. However, I think it is our responsibility as designers to keep our user-groups not only physically but also mentally alive, despite what kind of circumstances they may be in. For example, multi-functional products can be spatially and financially economical and fun to explore at the same time.

Exterior Perspective of Water Block House

by Kengo Kuma and Associates

Rendering of Water Block

The problem of having limited access to power can be solved by the use of renewable resources around us. In the study of various smart materials, I learned about remarkable natural power sources such as rain energy, luminescent materials, piezoelectric materials, and so on. On the other hand, the limited access to water can be solved by design idea such as “Water Block House” by Kengo Kuma and his associates. The picture of endless water bottles lined up on a ground to gather rain water, which was shown in Dr. Bruce Becker’s presentation, definitely reminded me of this project which challenged the idea of traditional building blocks. This revolutionary idea of building a house out of water bottles suggests potentials of the house as a place for dwelling as well as collection of life essential resource.

Living Pod by David Greene/Archigram

The unique feature about prefabricated houses is that they can be deconstructed into sections rather than demolished, once it is done with use or being moved. The interesting project I would like to point out is called “Living Pod”, which David Greene has proposed as an ideal portable home. It has inflatable flooring and interior furnishings that can be deflated and flattened out completely for easy transport. This was my personal favorite project within the MOMA exhibition, since it uses cheap, light weighted, water-proof, and easily washable material to bring instant feature to our concept of home in an enjoyable way.
　
I still may not have a definite answer for what top design concerns and responsibilities should be for industrial/humanitarian designers. However, I believe that my approach in searching for such answer has already begun, by finding myself writing this post not just for ID history class, but for myself. I also believe that many of the designers out there feel the same way, since I have already found many humanitarian aspects in contemporary designs that could be adopted and applied to fulfill majority’s needs. As I mentioned earlier, the smallest change in all of us can make the biggest change for the world.