Small Scale, Big Change

Post date: Nov 17, 2010 6:51:58 PM

The exhibition inaugurated on October at New York's Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) by the Department of Architecture and Design features 11 projects designed to improve conditions for underserved communities in 9 different countries around the world. In words of Andres Lepik, the exhibition curator, “these projects have been selected from an increasingly large number of similar initiatives around the world because they exemplify the degree to which architects can orchestrate change, prioritizing work that has social impact but also balances very real concerns of cost, program, and aesthetics.”

Among the projects, we can find the housing complex for fishermen in Tyre, Lebanon, which is the result of ten years work by the Al Baqaa Housing Cooperative with the community and local and international NGOs. The architecture finds here its role of providing the service needed by the community in terms of program, cost and design, and avoids the prominent role of the architect as the center of attention.

Images: Hashim Sarkis, ALUD

This should be the direction the architecture should follow: stop talking about the authorship and heroism and more about the recipients of our work.