Thesis Discussion - Your house is one but it can be a thousand.

The following was transcribed from a discussion between Brie Smith and thesis adviser Josemaria de Churtichaga on September 11, 2014.



BNS: So my thesis is titled A House for Crossed Crocodiles: An exploration in adaptability taste and satisfying a shared stomach. A crossed crocodile is a Ghanaian Akan symbol. Essentially it’s a symbol of democracy and union—one crocodile with two heads. Each has its own wants and tastes, but they share a common stomach. The nutrients are going to the same location, but how do you satisfy the different opposing wants and needs towards a common goal?

This thesis will look at the existing housing stock, the existing trends, the existing wants and desires to build and construct using permanent materials by focusing on Woe, a coastal village in eastern Ghana. It’s located on a sand bar between the Gulf of Africa and a freshwater lagoon.

Vernacular construction materials are readily available. They are affordable; they are accessible. The challenge specifically in Ghana right now is the social push to westernize, which is moving faster than their physical infrastructure can even accommodate. 98% of the country has mobile phones, and almost 70% has access to mobile data [in 2012] (National Communications Authority 2014). Meanwhile 91% still don’t have access to acceptable sanitation as determined by the World Health Organization (Water and Sanitation Monitoring Platform 2008). So there is an extreme dichotomy in want and reality.

Much of my research was trying to understand this push for development and this want to emulate western styles by trying to understand the historic implications and influences which affect the permanent construction today. The Dutch, the Portuguese, essentially all of the different colonization influences from around the world came through; the current permanent housing structure is still a result of influences from the past 400 years.

This push to build permanent structures is expensive and not necessarily attainable. People are investing in their want for development and compromising the building structures because they’re cutting corners, or not building it in a way that is supports or protects from the elements. There is a dichotomy between the wants and what is realistic.

This summer my initially plan was to go to Ghana, but the Howarth-Wright Fellowship and studying Frank Lloyd Wright took up a majority of my travel time. The plus side was getting to see a mass collection of Usonian houses. Those houses were designed specifically to be affordable, uniquely American, and made of materials that were local and accessible--very user-friendly materials assembled in a way that could help create an identity for a community and family.

Using these as a case study, moving forward I think my biggest challenge is focusing down. I’d like to design a prototype development plan for a small farming plot [in Woe]. There are quite a few on this sand bar. So taking the existing conditions of density, multigenerational housing, and the reality that there will be permanent construction--How to design a home that can 1) make the process more affordable, 2) use the materials at hand in a way that starts to celebrate and reincorporate current culture and community, and 3) have this be a design that can then be implemented, with outreach and opportunities to project?

For me the focus then moving towards December is working with my friends in town to design a house, and packaging [the design] in a way, so illustrations would be accessible, not just for a room full of architects but for anyone who doesn’t necessarily know how to build--almost an Ikea catalogue for coastal Ghana. [The design] should be expressive so the building and techniques are legible. It can still educate both actively during construction and outreach, and passively as people are seeing it and experiencing it after the fact.

Rather than trying to include all of the outreach and coordination and things that can take a bit of time and travel, I should really focus on creating a small, clean, comprehensive home design and development strategy for this plot that can be phased and implemented and applied. People can pick and pull what might work—small pieces, big pieces, a whole design. I’m trying to focus [this thesis] down to a house because I think that’s more attainable for this time window.

JdC: Okay, now this is a real house or an intended project for a specific plot? So this is a specific project that you have in your hands?

BNS: Yes.

JdC: So the clients are they typical common clients there?

BNS: Atypical in the sense that Noah is more of an entrepreneur and willing to take risks, but typical in the sense that his home has vernacular and permanent structures. He’s fairly well versed in the history and knows about the culture. In terms of family dynamic, income, resources and amenities within the family? Absolutely.

JdC: So what you’re trying to do is make a representative of a new way of understanding Ghanaian architecture. You’re designing a house, a house that can be a lesson for many others?

BNS: Yes.

JdC: Okay, so what kind of output are you presenting? Are you presenting a very defined house or a house that comes from a general perspective? How is it going to be? I don’t see the output. This would be a project? A constructed project?

BNS: Yes, it would be a constructed project. What I don’t know is if I should say “here’s the project” and then offer supporting documentation. If you’re three generations rather than four, this is how [the project] can be modified to adapt to you. If you have an adjacent plot and room to farm, this is how [the project] can be tweaked. I don’t know if it’s one plan that shows the flexibility and adaptability.

JdC: That could work. It also depends on the kind of innovation you should have. I’m not sure if you are innovating in the construction process or offering any new techniques or new ways to do the same in a different way. Maybe use the house as a prototype for exploring new ways of using the traditional techniques.

The nice part of your project should be to exploit these lessons—lessons that do not belong to a specific problem for a specific client for a specific plot, but instead see the house as an example of a generic typology. Both sides should be present. We should see underneath your project that you are proposing more than a house. You are proposing a different attitude, a different constructive process, a different whatever…

What kind of innovation are you introducing, because I haven’t seen your design? Every design should have the potential to change things, things far beyond a specific problem, and instead solve a bigger problem in Ghana. It should be a Ghana problem; at the same time it should be very familiar.

BNS: So in terms of…

JdC: I don’t know what… This depends on your design. I haven’t seen it, so once I see it, okay. Have you been working on it, or is it still fuzzy?

BNS: It’s probably closer to fuzzy than resolved, but I have more substantial parts.

JdC: Move the fuzzy to the right and try to focus, because you have the risk of fuzzy. I want you to land.

BNS: I’m thinking of a series of simple diagrams looking at the current housing stock. Here you have a full house that has no roof. It’s starting to crack. Or you have an entire house that’s only built up three courses and the rest is unbuilt. But then offer the modification or tweak—that could be phasing, and taking all of the bricks and building one room.

JMC: Those kinds of houses are isolated or are they able to form more of a community? Because I’ve seen in some villages the unit is a very very isolated unit, but they can be grouped to form different compounds.

BNS: Yes, typically they’re grouped within the family.

JMC: So you can explore that—how this kind of system would be applied to this house, but at the same time it’s a system and can be understood as a typology. It’s about typology. It’s like a family. You will define a member of the family, but the families will get bigger.

BNS: This is a plan of a typical family plot that’s three generations; each has its own house with some shared amenities. Look at what that offers and redesign it to help maximize for specific uses.

JdC: This looks like a very typical addition problem. You can more or less define the edge. They start with a unit, and they extend as far as they go… or they have kids… kids become grandsons, or whatever.

You have to establish a very playbook in which those kind of expansions and contractions work. And you have to show this. And take one as an example, or maybe two extremes. Even from a design point of view, I think you should take yourself in an attitude in which the committed situations are coherent.

So for example the famous house by Luis Kahn, this is a house about cubes. This is a system. This house could have twenty bedrooms or one, but it’s the same house. Why? Because within the design it is the shape of this kind of idea becoming a system. It can be multiplied. It can grow. It can shrink. It can adapt and change. If you take for example this one it’s a whole; it cannot change anything. It’s not expandable. It can be expanded, but it’s not its nature. So you have to find a nature that belongs to this kind of sketch, by a non-architect. Because his thinking in growing, his thinking in flowing and change--he’s trying to adapt to the change. He’s making this drawing.

For me it’s a nice drawing in terms of looking at something which is resilient. That should be part of your design if you want to succeed. And this should be very obvious—that your house is one but it can be a thousand.



References:

National Communications Authority. “National Communication Authority - Market Share
Statistics.” 2014. http://www.nca.org.gh/40/105/Market-Share-Statistics.html (accessed
April 12, 2014).

Water and Sanitation Monitoring Platform. “Status of Ghana’s Drinking Water and Sanitation
Sector.” Annual Report, Accra: Ministry of Water Resources, Works and Housing
- Ghana, 2008.