Architects Without Borders

The 72-Hour Challenge began on Thursday evening at 8p with a few brief presentations from a the coordinators and few Seattle Homeless Advocate non-profit groups: Share, Wheel and Women in Black, along with members of Tent Cities 3 & 4. They expressed needs for dealing with their garbage as well as human waste along with also wanting to address a temporary memorial for homeless that have passed away in King County and Seattle. After much deliberation, our AWB gang chose to work on the issue of human waste. We presented our design thoughts on Friday around 1p, and then spent from then until Sunday at 4p designing, building, and having vast philosophical discussions about issues of poo.  We worked on a whole spectrum of educational issues – from those that may be living in the more remote green belt areas to those inhabiting a slightly more permanent encampment where composting might be an option. Our main built object was a very low-tech, off the shelf kit of parts, no tools required privy. In the end there were 5 groups who presented responses (we were the only non-UW architecture student group!)– 3 toilets, and 2 memorials. The judges had great things to say about all of them, but in the end one of the memorials took the prize. Our greatest reward though was that members of tent city took a keen interest in our privy, and took it away to use just after the winner was announced! We also made some great contacts with several members of the advocate groups, as well as a writer from Real Change that would like to interview the design build team.

For more information:  http://www.designbuildchallenge.org/

AWB Design Build Team:  Akasha Whoorley, Bray Hayden, Dave Helton, Kim Shipley, Matt Ivers, Nate Harrold and Sam Adams