Architects as problem solvers

While I'm traveling in places that may have an internet connection, but not likely at the same time that I'll have a continuous power source, here's an interesting article I came across to for you to look at until I return with new from Bangladesh.

It's called the Architecture of Disaster Recovery: A Call to Arms for Designers from the World's Most Vulnerable Regions. I found it in the Solutions Journal and it talks about how there are too few designers out there that are adequately trained in disaster recovery.

When I studied Architecture we learned how to design structures that would hold up against things like wind, earthquakes, heavy snowfall. But it was assumed that we would be building houses or high rises similar to the ones all around us. We thought about designing cool looking buildings that had more to do with sculpture than survival. 

There are a few schools that have studios or seminars that deal with real world problems, the article claims, and one that offers a Master's program in what it calls Sustainable Emergency Architecture.  As people start getting more interested in looking at long term solutions for keeping the world suitably housed in sustainable way, we need the academic world to pick up the pace.

For more on the subject read the book the article was based on: Beyond Shelter: Architecture and Human Dignity (Marie J. Aquilino, ed., Metropolis Books, 2011).