When thinking about “architect”, it’s often linked to formal planning and projects with large amount of money invested. However, architects are also needed for those with low-income, especially after disasters. Architects take the responsibility to transform disaster into a chance for development. In Stohr’s article “100 years of humanitarian” he describes that the role of architects is in serving the needs of those who could least afford their services.
The Depression in America, two world wars and natural disasters all brought architects in 20th century to the point to rethink their role as architects when they pursuit the technology progress in “modern era”. Shelters and affordable housing became the focus of some architects at first half of twentieth century. However, with the widely spread of these proposals in post war era, more problems were raised around the world, which made these design more like an utopian idea, rather than policies with possibility of implementation.
The role of architects then needed to solve the division between “top down” policies and the “bottom up” emergence. Architects should work as mediation connecting this gap. Government and planers treat the poor as “million” instead of the problems and abilities for each individual when they start a large-scale project from a planner’s perspective. It leads to the fact that some of the “top down” projects cannot actually go down to the construction, like the problem of Prouve’s project that the prefabricated concrete, which successfully solved European housing crisis, was hardly promoted in developing country Ghana. On the other hand, architect Fathy realized this division between top decision and practices on site, and developed the housing project in New Gourna, Egypt with sustainable building techniques and local traditional material. Rather than taking the idea of “apostles of prefab and mess production” without understanding of the poverty of Egypt, Fathy’s proposal returned to the “bottom up” emergence system that individuals used for a long time without government’s planning. He believed that “each family will inevitably make it into a living work of art.” Stohr mentioned Fathy’s definition for the role architects as a “personal consultant yielding his or her training to the aspiration of the home owner and to the demands of local construction methods and material.” The role of architects should be like catalyst and lubricant that can make “top down” projects go through and arrive to individual practices. At the same time, emergence of “bottom up” housing should under the regulated and proposed from an overall perspective.
Education of an architect won’t end after graduation from an architecture school with second-and-third-hand knowledge. It’s usually more important for architects to learn those first hand knowledge from the local. The role of an architect should not limit in a utopian idea of his or her own knowledge, but more social responsibility.