WHO ARE WE?
The International Design Clinic is a registered not-for-profit that provides students, artists and designers the opportunity to use their unique creative talents to design and construct projects for communities in need throughout the world. Since its inception in 2006, the IDC has completed over a dozen projects on three continents, including an urban tent for the homeless made of trash; a communal playspace for Romanian orphans from construction debris; a vision for education based upon borrowed resources for the migrant communities of India; and a three-dollar projection system designed to rearticulate the manner in which art and architecture is conceived, displayed and regenerated.
WHO’S IN CHARGE?
WHY DO WE EXIST?
The International Design Clinic exists for three reasons:
1. WE BELIEVE OUR WORLD IS IN NEED.
In the developing world, alone, approximately 1.2 billion people earn less than $1 per day, placing them below the international poverty line while over 3 billion people, nearly half of the world, live on less than $2.50 per day. This lack of resource translates into dire living conditions. UNICEF’s 2008 annual report estimates that 1 billion people do not have a safe water supply and approximately half of the entire human population is living without adequate sanitation. (a) Poverty, hunger and disease are the result, as each condition is cyclically perpetuated by the unavailability of basic necessities such as clean water, adequate shelter and minimal health services. Statistically, children are particularly hard hit by these conditions. According to UNICEF, every other child in the world is currently living in poverty. In terms of specific conditions faced, 1 in 3 children do not have adequate shelter, 1 in 5 do not have access to safe water and 1 in 7 do not have access to health services. (b) Not surprisingly, this translates into staggering childhood mortality rates. In 2006, 9.7 million children died before they reached the age of 5, or the equivalent of every child in France, Germany, Greece and Italy. (c)
Industrialized nations are not immune from the affects of homelessness and mass poverty. In the United States almost 1 in 4 minors live below the poverty line and over 750,000 people are living without shelter. Phrased another way, if all of the homeless were gathered into one city, it would be one of the largest cities in the US, rivaling the size of San Francisco. (d) (e)
Even more sobering, these numbers are only growing, leading to the production of sidewalk settlements, refugee communities and pirate subdivisions at a scale never before witnessed. Today in the Amazon, informal settlements account for about 80% of overall population growth, while in India, the slums are currently growing 250 times faster than the overall population. It is thus not surprising that organizations such as UN-HABITAT estimate that the slum population will double over the next few decades, until, around 2030, when one in every three people in the world will be living in an informal slum, pirate subdivision, refugee camp, or sidewalk. If nothing is done, the cities of the future, to paraphrase author Mike Davis, will not be made of glass and steel, but of mud brick, straw, recycled plastic, and scrap wood.
2. WE BELIEVE THAT THESE NEEDS REQUIRE CREATIVE SOLUTIONS.
These conditions have prompted an army of aid organizations, multi-national corporations and citizens to give time, money, and resources to those in need. Giving USA 2008, an annual report compiled by the American Association of Fundraising Counsel, found that in 2007 Americans gave $306.39 billion to their favorite cause. The organizations supported in this manner have had a profound impact upon many of the needs cited above. To point, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation’s Global Health program has committed more than $3.6 billion in global health grants to organizations worldwide in order to ensure that lifesaving advances in health are created and shared with those who need them most. These efforts have immunized entire populations and stemmed the tide of disease in many parts of the world. (f)
Sadly, such long-term solutions are quite rare. Although disease may be eradicated by a one-time vaccination, other effects of poverty, such as homelessness, hunger, and education, require solutions that can be adopted and evolved by the communities they are intended to serve. This is why an organization can build a hundred thousand vinyl sided homes in an impoverished South American community, or give billions of dollars of produce to a starving people, without ever meeting the needs of either populace. In these scenarios, by using a foreign solution to a local problem, the humanitarian agency has denied the community, which has neither the materials nor the expertise to build upon the offered solution, the opportunity of self-sufficiency. Although the situation faced by each community in the short-term might be radically improved, their long-term prospectus remains virtually unchanged, unless the given solution is continually propped up by the outside world. Left without this constant infusion of money, effort and time, the gift will gradually fade into memory and the local population will invariably return to its former state. To prove the validity of this assertion, one has only to look upon the litany of poorly attended community programming, rarely used public services and empty, dilapidated community buildings that surround the poorest areas of the world.
In order to reverse this situation, those being assisted must feel that the gift is not a well-intentioned imposition of the outside world, but a vital asset that grew from within. Only then will the project become part of the community, surrounded by motivated individuals who are vested in its success. Although money and effort are required to address every need, long-term change is quite often less a question of time, effort, or money, than it is the strategic allocation of each.
Obviously, said strategies cannot be mass-produced or reapplied. To offer an effective long-term response, every solution must be designed to fit the specific conditions that surround those in need. The means, culture, and traditions of each community must be uncovered, analyzed, and reapplied so as to create new strategies that are neither a replication of existing local methods nor an imposition of foreign solutions. Rather, they are a synthesis of both traditions – a hybrid address that empowers those served to possess and evolve the given strategy in a meaningful way. Instead of offering vinyl siding we offer new ways of building based upon local traditions and materials. Instead of a fish, we offer not a pole, but ways to design new poles and raise new fish.
3. WE BELIEVE THAT STUDENTS, ARCHITECTS, ARTISTS, AND DESIGNERS HAVE THE SKILLS NECESSARY TO DEVELOP THESE CREATIVE SOLUTIONS.
Gifted with a broad education and a subsequent ability to solve complex problems, students of the creative arts, including artists, architects, and designers from a wide range of fields, are uniquely equipped to offer the creative design solutions required by communities in need. Years of rigorous training have given these individuals an innate ability to grapple with complicated situations and uncover new solutions. They are some of the most creative visionaries of our world – professionals whose distinct talents enable them to propose projects that will develop new resources, build collaborative efforts and harness the capacity of existing infrastructures. Within the sensitive hands of the artist and designer, formerly overlooked materials find new promise, unheard publics find new voice, and underutilized infrastructures find renewed vitality.
Yet these skills would mean very little if these people had no desire to help. Fortunately this is not the case. OUR STUDENTS DESPERATELY WANT TO HELP. They simply lack the infrastructure to do so.
The IDC exists to fill this need.
WHO BENEFITS?
Each project of the IDC is designed and constructed by our student-members, who use their creative talents to propose strategies that are custom designed to the specific needs, culture, and traditions of the communities we intend to serve. Once completed, these projects not only benefit the receiving community in a way that boilerplate solutions simply cannot; they also help to create a generation of designers who are:
A. BETTER CITIZENS — Foreign travel is a crucial part of the educational experience for all students of design. Through it, they are given the opportunity to gain valuable firsthand experience of unique cultures, as well as world-renowned works of art, architecture and design. The IDC magnifies these benefits by asking students to become active members of a community utterly unlike their own. More than simple tourism, our students are given the chance to work with people who speak a different language, have different customs, and carry different values to accomplish a single goal. The perspective gained from this experience will forever change the way both parties view themselves, their culture, and their world.
B. BETTER DESIGNERS — Through the completion of the project, the IDC will provide participating students with the opportunity to become deeply involved in all aspects of the design process, from concept through construction. Aside from the gratification of seeing something they designed come to life, this experience will allow students to work directly with clients and end users and become part of a large team working toward a common goal: constructing a work that will fill a need within our adopted community. In the process, the uncompromising principles of construction are made tangible, resulting in designers who are better equipped to offer effective design solutions once they enter the workforce.
C. BETTER CITIZEN-DESIGNERS — Most importantly, this experience will clearly demonstrate to the students the potential impact of their unique professional talents. They will have seen the lives changed by their work and measured the true value of their gifts. This insight will remain with the students for the rest of their lives, producing professionals who are more compassionate to those in need and more aware of their power to offer a solution.
As our students return from this experience, their expanded vision will undoubtedly be shared with fellow students, faculty members, and other design professionals. Their testimony will encourage others to take stock of their talents and realize that they too are UNIQUELY EQUIPPED CITIZENS, capable of offering the CREATIVE STRATEGIES required to address the circumstances faced by a WORLD that is in NEED.
NOTES:
(a) http://www.unicefusa.org/news/publications/annual-report/UNICEF_ar08_FINAL.pdf
(b) http://www.unicef.org/publications/files/SOWC_2005_(English).pdf
(c) http://www.unicef.org/publications/index_4810.html
According the State of the World’s Children 2005: “Childhood Under Threat” more than half the children in the developing world are severely deprived of one or more of the necessities essential to childhood: 640 million children do not have adequate shelter; 500 million children have no access to sanitation; 400 million children do not have access to safe water; 300 million children lack access to information; 270 million children have no access to health care services; 140 million children have never been to school; 90 million children are severely food-deprived. The State of the World’s Children also makes clear that poverty is not exclusive to developing countries. In 11 of 15 industrialized nations, the proportion of children living in low-income households during the last decade has risen. (State of the World’s Children Report 2004, Girls, Education and Development. UNICEF,
(d) http://www.epi.org/economic_snapshots/entry/webfeatures_snapshots_20060719/
(f) World Health Organization, http://www.who.int/mediacentre/news/releases/2006/pr08/en/)