You can not get away from the fact that the Haiti earth quakes where and continue to be devastating to so many of the islanders, the misery seen by the globe via just about every news feed, showing the deep impact of the quake. But we should not forget the lessons we can learn from this, by reviewing the film footage and looking past the people and all the misery, and looking at the buildings and why they failed, ok we can say that a 6.5 quake did the damage, yes correct, but just why did each individual building fail, was it poor wall construction, were connections poorly designed, why did floor slabs collapse, students who live in earthquake zones should be studying this recording each building and making a detailed study, with conclusions, lessons to be learned. comparing this quake with past known examples.

Which bring me onto the next point, that being the future, how will Haiti rebuild, as they will have to, is there a master plan, are there any native Architects and Technologists left on the island, who can pull together a strategy, making something out of all this mess.

I can see the immediate need for shelter, services for waste and water being repaired or just planned and installed, communications  looked at, and where whole districts have been flattened, clearance and disposal of the waste, is going to have to be planned, Material supplies also needs to be looked at, any rebuilding will need a distribution of materials from basic plasterboard to timber, to the simplest nails and connectors.

Can the Architectural profession rise out of this with a new architecture, ridding itself of the need for concrete, and designing for the 21 century with factory built  economic, yet visual inspiring buildings, I hope so. Can we help, by that I mean assist with the drawing, surely it would not take much effort to set up a central web site and start the design process, making a new master plan, filling in with detailed designs for the infrastructure. I run a vectorworks practice, in the UK, with the use of dropbox I can offer time to draw, and share this with anyone on the planet who might also offer time. An online practice, using skype, dropbox and a decent cad package, Wave might also make the global time difference usable.

Any takers

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Tagged as: Add new tag, Architectural Technologist, Architectural Technology, Architecture, Caribbean, CIAT, Collaborative Professional Development, Concrete, construction, Continuing professional development, CPD, Design, Earthquake, Haiti, Technologist, vectorworks, Water