Design Like You Give A Damn
April 16, 2008
I’m working from Satellite Coffee this morning and just had a very interesting conversation with a grad student at UNM’s School of Architecture. She mentioned that the school recently hosted a mini-conference on socially conscious architecture during which the book Design Like You Give A Damn was featured.
From their website:
“Currently one in seven people lives in a slum or refugee camp, and more than three billion people—nearly half the world’s population—do not have access to clean water or adequate sanitation.”
That is astonishing and incredibly hard to comprehend. And it makes our (i.e. the other three billion people) credit, mortgage and economic “problems” seem much less significant. I’ve ordered the book from Amazon and look forward to reading it.
Nick Dominguez
April 16th, 2008 at 6:48 am
This is another interesting initiative. I think it would do ourselves a lot of good to start thinking more globally, it would put a lot of things in perspective.
Murf
April 17th, 2008 at 3:45 am
True enough. There is nothing like wandering the slums of Mumbai to make one realize that one’s problems pale in comparison. Unfortunately, part of the reason for lack of access to things like clean water and sanitation is graft and corruption at the political level. Sad.
Brandon
April 17th, 2008 at 6:27 am
So true. I have a friend in Mumbai who verifies that the political process is corrupt and that the gap between the rich and poor is extreme.