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SocialDesignZine is an Italian Web log on design and the public interest. The project was started last Spring by the AIAP, the Italian Association for the Design of Visual Communication.

A translation of a statement of purpose by Mario Piazza, AIAP President:

“The need for reflection and listening that is part of the job for those who work in communication design is today of vital importance. And it is for this reason that the AIAP has started this site and program as a new step in its operating policy, which in recent years has attentively investigated the professionalism, and above all, the discipline of this field. These two levels are inseparable if one truly believes in the maturation of this profession.

Our idea is simple: we want to build a series of on-line constellations around the association’s institutional site, which will continue to be the gravitational center of the network. A series of sites which approach pertinent professional topics in a thorough way. Themes which we have already confronted in part, but which can no longer be included our site and the ‘ordinary’ activity of the association. But not only this — these themes need to be looked at in a new light and with all the potential that new technologies offer us.

In our most recent meeting in Riccione we made a first stab at this new approach. Participation in the AIAP Community was very high because it was a sort of meeting place. A place for listening, where ideas flowed and communication was direct and friendly. It was a time for growth for a ‘community’ of designers.

It is along these lines that this new site was born. We have dedicated a fundamental part to the future and to something we have worked on a lot in these past years: the theme of the ethical horizon of the profession. Above all this working site, open to your contributions, will try to understand what the social dimension of communication design is. And so we start by asking a few questions:

Is social design a sustainable project? Is is an ethical project? Is it ecological? Participatory? Political? Or is it something completely different? Our wish is to build together a well thought-out answer. We would like to construct a sort of manifesto, a ‘bill of social design.’

Along these lines we will construct materials, documentation, reflections — a rich and complete database for research, instruction, continuing education. Also for this purpose we are requesting submissions and active participation in order to document projects and experiences which aid in reflection, which communicate the elevated meaning of designing.

But the heart of the project, and the part which we have already put into motion is the construction of testimony and presentations on daily themes, concrete instances, based on news, a life lived, personal research or information to be shared. In other words a place where, with a sense of responsibility and motivated participation on the part of the user, we can dialogue, exchange ideas, listen and grow together, developing a more critical and intense eye which, through these exchanges, will allow us to become responsible designers. Skilled, in quality and intelligence, in confronting professional themes with the knowledge of our own limits and those of the world around us. It is hope in a project, it is our new challenge.”

They’ve just posted an Italian translation of my review of the book Citizen Designer: Perspectives on Design Responsibility.

It’s also intertesting to see more professional associations exploring the issue of ethical practice. I wonder how far it will go.

In the Internet Archive, the javascript ticker still scrolls “Recycling    Community Improvement    Water Conservation    Job Creation    Economic Development    Brownfield Reclamation,”  beneath the former Web site:

“The Bronx Community Paper Company (BCPC) — a joint project of the Bronx-based Banana Kelly Community Improvement Association and the Natural Resources Defense Council is an innovative effort to harness New York City’s ‘urban forest,’ which includes the 1.2 million tons of paper the city throws out every year, by building a paper de-inking and newsprint production facility in the city....

The end result will achieve several important objectives: creation of hundreds of long-term jobs; reduction of the City of New York’s costs for disposing of wastepaper; revitalization of an abandoned industrial tract in the inner city; and protection of forests....

Throughout the development process, the BCPC kept the public continually informed on the project’s progress. In fact, during the environmental licensing process, the BCPC held over 120 public meetings with members of the South Bronx community, although by law a developer is only required to hold one...

With all legal, political and environmental issues behind them, only two major tasks for the BCPC remain — securing a deal with a paper company to operate the plant, and, of course, building the mill.”

Facilities for the BCPC were to be built on the Harlem River Rail Yard, a brownfield site requiring environmental remediation. The mill was to produce 2,200 jobs during construction and more than 600 permanent full-time jobs during operation.

In 1997, the Department of Energy posted a glowing review of the project as a “sustainable business success story”:

• The manufacturing facility will be an integrated recycling paper mill, including a wastepaper de-inking plant, a newsprint paper making machine, a wastepaper sorting plant and a steam boiler.
• The project will advance the market for economically viable recycling of 100% post-consumer, totally chlorine-free paper.
• The mill will serve as a solid waste alternative for a city recently proposing to build seven large waste incinerators.
• The paper mill will enable a major paper-making company to use secondary fibers for the manufacture of its newsprint, a commodity that is now manufactured mostly with virgin timber.
• The Harlem Rail Yard, an abandoned industrial facility in an out-of-use rail yard, will serve as the site of the mill. An additional goal of the project is to redevelop the rails, which will then serve as a transportation corridor for materials to and from the facility.
• The project will pioneer the use of water from a reclaimed sewage wastewater treatment plant, keeping water costs one-third lower than comparable fresh water.
• A comprehensive air study of the South Bronx was initiated to ensure technologies will be implemented to reduce to the greatest extent possible all emissions from the facility.
• The project will incorporate innovative energy-efficient technologies not implemented in any other paper mill in the country.
• The mill will utilize a chlorine-free de-inking technology that produces no air emissions or odors.
• Maya Lin, designer of the National Vietnam Memorial in Washington, DC, will design the facility’s layout and structure.

Banana Kelly was founded in 1977 when thirty residents gathered to stop the demolition of their homes along Kelly Street, a crescent shaped block in the heart of the Longwood/Hunts Point neighborhood of the South Bronx. Without support, tools, money, title to the property, they succeeded in rehabilitating the buildings and in creating 21 units of high-quality affordable housing. The activists formed the Banana Kelly Community Improvement Association, Inc. to continue the work that they had started. Since 1978, the organization has rehabilitated, weatherized, and managed thousands of housing units, provided service referral and housing advocacy, conducted education and job training, and attracted the first new health care clinic in the community in 22 years.

Revenue from the Bronx Community Paper Company was to fund other community development projects in the neighborhood, including:

• The Bronx Dormitory Project. A joint venture between Banana Kelly and Bronx Regional High School that will provide shelter for up to 20 students attending the high school who do not have stable living arrangements.
• The South Bronx Family Learning Center. A proposed 35,000-square-foot center that will include health care, child care, literacy classes, employment and training centers and housing opportunities.
• The Prospect Corridor Commercial Development Project. This project will promote local economic development by connecting existing and planned residences with a retail strip on Prospect Avenue.
• The Library Project. A project to increase the availability of library services in the South Bronx by providing additional equipment, supplies and materials to local libraries.
• Business and Housing Revolving Loan Fund. This project will provide a pool of working capital to be used by small entrepreneurs to purchase inventory, equipment or supplies to meet their contractual obligations and expansion needs. The fund will concentrate its services on housing groups that require basic repairs or replacement of major systems in their buildings.
• The Children’s Endowment Fund. To be administered by Banana Kelly, this fund will enhance and expand the educational and vocational opportunities available to children.

But by 2000 the project had folded.

From The New York Times, August 17, 2003

‘Bronx Ecology’: Green, Rocky Road

“In 1992, Allen Hershkowitz, a senior scientist with the Natural Resources Defense Council, proposed building a paper mill in the South Bronx. It would harvest the immense amount of wastepaper (used newspapers, junk mail, office detritus) New York City generates each day, recycle it into newsprint using ecologically sound methods and sell the product to local consumers, notably newspapers. Such a mill would address two city woes: the continuing slump, particularly severe in places — like the South Bronx — long dependent on the shrinking manufacturing sector (joblessness there hovered around 20 percent, 50 percent for teenagers); and the loss of traditional outlets for the city’s waste stream (ocean dumping, hauling to putrid landfills and burning in dioxin-spewing plants).

More grandly, Hershkowitz’s Bronx Community Paper Company would serve as a world-class demonstration project. He wanted to prove the viability of green capitalism — a marriage of economic development and environmental remediation+- to a host of unbelievers in the business world and the environmental movement, who were locked (he believed) in unnecessary combat. Hershkowitz knew the city presented a host of special obstacles to eco-industrialists, but if a mill like this could make it here, he reasoned, it could make it anywhere. He came amazingly close to pulling it off, as ‘Bronx Ecology,’ by Hershkowitz himself, and ‘Tilting at Mills,’ by Lis Harris, for many years a staff writer at The New Yorker, show.

To guarantee good relations with the plant’s neighbors, Hershkowitz found a local sponsor in Banana Kelly, one of the community development corporations that had sprung up in the 70’s, and vested ownership in it. Determined to resuscitate urban brownfields (polluted and abandoned industrial sites), the paper company settled on the derelict Harlem River Rail Yard. And to transform what others saw as waste into valuable raw material — a key precept of the sustainable economy movement — he insisted the mill use recycled water from a nearby sewage treatment plant instead of river water.

Hershkowitz found a receptive Swedish paper company, and with a corporate anchor secured, investment bankers came on board, as did construction companies and engineers. He got Maya Lin, the architect of the Vietnam Veterans Memorial, to design a striking complex. The Natural Resources Defense Council put up seed money and helped clear regulatory hurdles. A bevy of foundations gave predevelopment grants. The state offered loan guarantees and helped with cleanup costs, and the city’s economic development arm provided expertise. On paper, it looked like a half-billion dollar enterprise was taking off.

Almost immediately it slammed into problems.

Businessmen’s support proved fickle: from their perspective Hershkowitz had overburdened the project with costly, time-consuming and risky furbelows on behalf of extraneous, if not alien, social and ecological goals. Worse, when the Swedish firm withdrew (new management wanted to concentrate on European ventures) it proved impossible to find another big paper company, the kind Wall Street would approve (one potential replacement declined after calculating it could clear more than 30 percent in the Bronx, but 40 percent in South Korea). Besides, in the 90’s boom, higher profits were available outside the industry altogether, in tech stocks or hedge funds. After 1992, moreover, the supply of newsprint outran demand, so producers began consolidating; the last thing they wanted was a new plant online.

And there were local competitors. In 1995, an Australian company built a recycling mill on Staten Island and won the right to process up to 50 percent of the city’s wastepaper. Though not in direct competition — it produced liner board (used, for example, for shoe boxes), not newsprint — it lobbied hard against any municipal deal with Hershkowitz, just in case one day it might want the remainder. Also opposing the Bronx project were commercial carters linked to the mob, and waste haulers whose profits were linked to exporting the trash, including giant multinational corporations like Waste Management , whose campaign contributions gave them considerable clout at City Hall. Mayor Rudolph Giuliani was already predisposed against the project because the Bronx was the domain of a rival, Fernando Ferrer, though in fact Ferrer too was an opponent, miffed he hadn’t been allowed to pick the participating community groups.

Some of Hershkowitz’s biggest headaches came from his presumed community ally, whose new leadership proved undependable. Other community groups were also on the attack, some because the building trades refused to give construction jobs to neighborhood people, others because they wanted a slice of the development pie. (Once he was told that $70,000 would make his problems go away; when he refused to come across, Hershkowitz says, it was publicly implied that the plant was environmentally genocidal.)

Despite all this, Hershkowitz and the project plowed on, year after year, nimbly escaping one crisis only to tumble into another. Finally, just after having found a large construction company willing to undertake the project, the backers were sued by a rival construction firm (a common way to grab a piece of the action). Now the Natural Resources Defense Council itself wanted out, and its employee off the case. The paper company was handed over to the contractor-developer in 1999 and struggled on one more year before Giuliani pulled the plug....

The real question is how useful his blueprint for a greener future really is. Here, it seems to me, Hershkowitz pulls back from confronting the implications of what he’s laid out, particularly the key question of who exactly might be the agent to make his vision real. It’s clearly not the corporate world: ‘green capitalism’ stands revealed as a patent oxymoron. He urges environmentalists to step forward, but there’s no sign that major environmental groups will soon venture again into eco-industrial waters (certainly not if they read ‘Bronx Ecology’). As for labor, union pension fund managers proved even more conservative than investment bankers.

Hershkowitz comes closest to the mark when he wonders if the state might not expand its role, either building green projects as public works or committing public capital as lead investor. Certainly — pace current free-market pieties — government is capable of ambitious enterprise, viz. the Manhattan Project, the the space program, the Internet and the New Deal. Moreover, putatively private industries (notably pulp and paper, petroleum and highway construction) are, Hershkowitz reminds us, heavily subsidized by various levels of government. Why not be transparent about public investment, and establish a federal development bank like, but better than, the Reconstruction Finance Corporation that underwrote much of the New Deal and World War II? That might yet make Hershkowitz’s bold blueprint a reality.”

The Bronx Community Paper Company may be dead for now, but near by, in Hunt’s Point, a plastics recycling plant is just being planned.

A paper in the September issue of the American Journal of Public Health, “Promoting Safe Walking and Cycling to Improve Public Health: Lessons From The Netherlands and Germany” by a couple of researchers in New Jersey and Brussels examines:

“The public health consequences of unsafe and inconvenient walking and bicycling conditions in American cities to suggest improvements based on successful policies in The Netherlands and Germany.”

What they found:

“Cyclists and pedestrians in the United States were two to six times more likely to be killed than their German or Dutch counterparts. Per kilometer traveled, U.S. pedestrians were 23 times more likely to get killed than the occupants of a car, while bicyclists were 12 times more likely to be killed.” [source]

With this in mind and my previous post on the link between sprawl and obesity, I note that on July 24, the House Appropriations Committee voted a transportation appropriations bill out of committee that eliminates funding for the Transportation Enhancements program.

Since 1991, 10% of federal funds distributed to states through the Surface Transportation Program has been reserved for transportation enhancement activities. This meant roughly $600 million a year of federal funding for locally driven, pedestrian centered projects.

“Congress established the TE program in 1991 as a commitment by Congress to constituents that a small percentage of their gas tax dollars would be targeted to small-scale, community-initiated, locally selected transportation projects such as multi-use paths, pedestrian and bicycle facilities, historic preservation, and improvement of streetscapes and landscapes.” [source]

“Since its inception, the TE program has provided $6 billion to support 16,699 projects nationwide, including thousands of historic preservation projects. Now, Congress is acting to reverse this decade-long community building program and return to a regressive ‘roads-only’ policy.” [source]

The Rails-to-Trails Conservancy has posted a detailed state-level breakdown of projects funded under Transportation Enhancements program.

H.R. 2989, the Transportation and Treasury Appropriations Bill for 2004, actually increases highway spending to $34.1 billion — $6.1 billion more than 2003 and $4.5 billion more than President Bush’s request.

There is still hope, but we must act now. Before the full House votes on the bill it can still be amended. Congress resumes after Labor Day and is expected to vote on the bill in early September.

An amendment removing section 114 from H.R. 2989 would grant approximately $812 million to the Transportation Enhancements program. Unless reversed, individual states would be allowed to put all funds into highway projects instead of setting aside the 10% now reserved for bicycle and pedestrian projects.

See these action alerts to learn more, for contact information and talking points.

With all that’s going on, the issue is probably not high on everyone’s social justice agenda. But there’s an immediate and brief opportunity to save this great program right now.

UPDATE: On September 4 the House approved an amendment which strikes section 114 from the bill — restoring funding for the Transportation Enhancements program to the appropriations bill. On September 9, the House passed the full appropriations bill and sent it to the Senate. Thanks to everyone for taking action!

From the press release:

“A new national study and special issues of two prestigious medical journals released today offer powerful indications that sprawling development has a hand in the country’s obesity crisis. Together, they demonstrate the urgent need to invest in making America’s neighborhoods appealing and safe places to walk and bicycle. The peer-reviewed study, which used a county sprawl index developed in partnership with Smart Growth America, found that people living in automobile-dependent neighborhoods that suppress walking do indeed walk less, weigh more, and are more likely to suffer from high blood pressure. The study, Relationship between Urban Sprawl and Physical Activity, Obesity, and Morbidity is being published in a special issue of the American Journal of Health Promotion. Smart Growth America and the Surface Transportation Policy Project have issued a companion report, Measuring the Health Effects of Sprawl, which gives county-level data illustrating the findings for the metropolitan areas studied. In most metropolitan areas, residents in more sprawling counties are heavier and face higher odds of being obese and having high blood pressure than those in less sprawling counties... The report outlines seven steps communities can take to respond to the findings of the research.”

The paper was presented at the 11th annual Congress for the New Urbanism, an organization that pushes for all new development in the United States to be more compact and walkable.

The metropolitan sprawl index:

“uses 22 variables to characterize four ‘factors’ of sprawl for 83 of the largest metropolitan area in the US for the year 2000. The sprawl ‘scores’ for each metropolitan area show how much they spread out housing, segregate homes from other places, have only weak centers of activity, and have poorly connected street networks.... The county sprawl index uses six variables from the US Census and the Department of Agriculture’s Natural Resources Inventory to account for residential density and street accessibility.”

The sprawl index of 448 counties was compared to body mass index and data on average weight drawn from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Research into other factors, such as linking location to what and how much people eat, and analysis at the neighborhood level is forthcoming.

Obesity in the United States is at an all time high. More than two-thirds of adults are overweight and nearly 1 in 3 are obese. Obesity is rapidly catching up to tobacco use as the leading cause of death. [source]

via Planetizen

From The New York Times, August 28, 2003:

“Designing for the Dispossessed
by Alastair Gordon

At age 29, Cameron Sinclair was among the youngest speakers at the International Design Conference in Aspen, Colo., last week. He nonetheless brought a full auditorium to its feet Thursday morning with a review of his work with Architecture for Humanity, a nonprofit organization he started from his Manhattan studio apartment with a scattering of volunteers and a shoestring budget.

Over the last four years, Mr. Sinclair’s group has helped generate programs and designs for disaster relief in 20 countries, including Afghanistan, Kosovo and South Africa.

Mr. Sinclair’s talk, peppered with well-rehearsed lines (‘All I ask is that they design like they give a damn’) was tailor-made for a design conference that took global concerns with safety as its theme.

‘He has been a mainstay and hero of the conference,’ said Paola Antonelli, a curator at the Museum of Modern Art in New York and a chairwoman of the conference. ‘He’s asking architects to take a risk and forget about immediate profits.’

Mr. Sinclair’s appearance alongside more established design figures is evidence of a shift, particularly among students and younger designers, toward social responsibility.

‘Would someone like me have been invited to speak here five years ago?’ Mr. Sinclair said. ‘Probably not. But a lot of younger architects don’t want to design doorknobs in boutique hotels anymore. They want to be engaged, they want to help find solutions to critical problems.’

Of course, Mr. Sinclair is not the only one generating designs for relief. The Rural Studio, based in Auburn, Ala., has helped provide housing for the rural poor since 1993, and Shelter for Life, a volunteer group based in Oshkosh, Wis., has built houses in Afghanistan. But through persistence, personal charm and a marriage to a journalist who writes press releases and grant proposals, Mr. Sinclair has managed to make himself the center of a global network of designers, engineers and relief groups.

Mr. Sinclair and his wife, Kate Stohr, 29, have gone a long way with limited means. He was laid off from his job as a project architect at Gensler a year ago, and has devoted himself to Architecture for Humanity full time ever since. ‘Here we are doing health programs around the world,’ he said. ‘And we can’t afford health insurance for ourselves.’

Four days after 9/11, the United Nations High Commission for Refugees called Mr. Sinclair, he said, to tell him he was on a list of people that could be asked to help with the coming relief effort in Afghanistan. ‘I told them I hope it’s a long list,’ he said, ‘because I’m a 28-year-old alone in my apartment.’ (He put them in contact with architects and engineers in Pakistan and other neighboring countries.)

During the 1960’s and early 70’s, young architects as a rule felt almost obliged to address issues like affordable housing and community planning. But by the time Mr. Cameron arrived at the Bartlett School of Architecture in London in the late 1990’s, these concerns had given way to a preoccupation with signature design and theory.

‘I was the black sheep of my class,’ said Mr. Sinclair, who designed housing for the homeless as his thesis project. ‘My fellow students were more interested in getting into Wallpaper magazine.’

He does not feel like a black sheep anymore. In the past two months, more than 120 people have applied to work for him as unpaid interns, most of whom had to be turned away.

‘A lot of my generation is disillusioned,’ Mr. Sinclair said.

‘You finish school, start with a big firm, and become a CAD monkey working in a little cubicle,’ he added, referring to computer-animated design. ‘You’re told that only one out of a hundred will make it as a name architect. That’s depressing.’

Mr. Sinclair, who was raised in London, showed his organizational knack two years ago when he founded the ‘Uncoordinated Soccer League’ in New York for unathletic designers, a dozen of whom ended up volunteering for his group.

In 1999, with a budget of just $700, Mr. Cameron held a competition to design transitional housing for refugees returning to Kosovo. He received nearly 300 entries from 30 countries, including a modern yurt built around a central column by the Oakland-based firm Basak Altan Design. ‘Refugee shelter is usually a last-minute, ad hoc affair with little in the way of advance planning,’ Mr. Sinclair said. His goal was to provide shelters where refugees could live for years while rebuilding homes.

The jury, which included the architects Tod Williams, Billie Tsien and Steven Holl, picked 10 winners. Five prototypes were built, including a structure made of paper by Shigeru Ban of Tokyo and a shipping container lined with plywood by the Australian architect Sean Godsell.

Gans & Jelacic, a firm in New York, built a prototype of their entry, a triangular structure that pops up from a container with the help of a standard car jack.

I-Beam Design, another New York firm, designed a shelter made from wooden shipping pallets. ‘We were looking for a simple solution and realized that supplies sent to disaster areas are often shipped on these pallets,’ said Azin Valy of I-Beam. ‘We wanted a universal system that a child could put together.’

Ms. Valy and her partner, Suzan Wines, built a prototype in an abandoned lot in the South Bronx. Within weeks, a homeless man had moved in; and a week after that, the city had torn it down.

For all his persuasive ways, Mr. Sinclair has so far failed to actually build anything in Kosovo. He is among the first to acknowledge the failure. ‘We architects enjoy a pat on the back, but unless you build it, it’s just an idea,’ he said.

However thoughtful they may be, designs intended for developing countries often fail to consider local conditions. Muslim countries, for example, typically require separate facilities for men and women. Steel shipping containers, used in several submissions, may, in fact, be unsuitable in tropical climates. And structures that are hard to assemble are of limited use when recipients are largely women, children and older men.

‘It’s important that architects consult with the beneficiaries, which seems obvious, but this doesn’t always occur,’ said Erin Mooney, deputy director of a project on displaced people for the Brookings Institution and Johns Hopkins University.

Gans & Jelacic were one of the few who went into the field. Deborah Gans attended the Refugee Studies Center at Oxford University while her partner, Matthew Jelacic, visited refugee camps in Bosnia. There, tents outside Sarajevo had collapsed under snowfall.

Mr. Sinclair and Ms. Stohr married while organizing the Kosovo competition, and they left shortly afterward for a monthlong honeymoon in South Africa. ‘The honeymoon lasted two days,’ Mr. Sinclair said. While his wife began reporting an article on a rape epidemic in South Africa, later published in The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, Mr. Sinclair met with urban planners and visited shantytowns.

Two and a half years later, in May of 2002, Mr. Sinclair staged a competition for mobile medical clinics that could be used to treat AIDS in Africa. He received more than 530 submissions from 51 countries. (An exhibition of entries is touring five countries, ending with South Africa.)

The proposal that won first place, by jury, is a self-sufficient clinic with a satellite dish, solar power and a water collection system. The clinic, designed by Khras Architects of Denmark, would be made from a lightweight metal skeleton with natural materials added for local texture.

‘Instead of one solution we wanted to come up with a system,’ said Mads Hansen, a member of the Khras team. ‘In Africa, especially in remote areas, you don’t just get a spare part from down the road.’

Mr. Sinclair is trying to raise $20,000 to send four finalists to meet with doctors and relief workers in South Africa before building prototypes.

‘Architects pride themselves on having a vision of the future, but in this case they’re not rising to the crisis,’ said Rodney Harber, an architect in Durban, South Africa, who has worked on AIDS-related projects for 10 years. ‘Cameron has made a real contribution. His competitions and Web site have helped to stimulate a global dialog.’

Mr. Sinclair and Ms. Stohr see their role over the next few years as advocates, shepherding their various projects to completion. ‘I’m hoping to one day watch the sun set in Africa while we sit on the porch of our mobile health clinic,’ Ms. Stohr said.”

Some interesting ideas in the mix. In 2002, I visited the church / community center built of cardboard tubes that Shigeru Ban constructed in Kobe after the horrible earthquake of 1995. It was still standing and very much in use.

The winning clinic is designed so it can be locally built, run, and maintained. The design criteria for the mobile clinic are as follows:

1. The unit should adequately house, transport and be easily operable by a small team of medical professionals (2 to 5). Storage of equipment and medical supplies should be taken into consideration.
   
   
2. The clinic should be cost-effective. If possible it should be built using sustainable materials and construction techniques. Designers can make use of either advanced or simple technologies and should look to take advantage of local materials, construction techniques and labor.
   
   
3. The unit should be mobile and durable enough to be transported through widely diverse areas of Sub-Saharan Africa. Topography and terrain should be taken into account. Ease of maintenance and repair are essential.
   
   
4. Entrants should take into consideration the tasks performed within the clinic. Although the unit will primarily be used for the prevention, testing and treatment of the virus and associated infections, it must also be a place where health care professionals can teach and disseminate information.
   
   
5. In addition to HIV/AIDS, many other deadly but treatable diseases afflict the African continent, chief among them tuberculosis and malaria. The ideal design will take into account the varying health care needs of the population and should be easily adapted to treat these other diseases and conditions.
   
   
6. One of the major obstacles is the stigma surrounding the disease and this should be taken into strong consideration when designing. If a clinic arrives into a remote area for the first time, think how it will be received into the community.
   
   
7. Finally, the ideal design will also create opportunities for economic growth. Many of the regions deeply affected by HIV/AIDS have suffered economically to the point of reverse development. In addition to becoming a highly dispersed health care distribution network, designers are encouraged to pursue ways of providing complimentary or secondary services in addition to health care via the same mobile unit.

It’s great to see the power a couple of individuals can have to promote the design in the public interest.

Still, it’s unfortunate that it is so apolitical. Better treatment and a few more rural health clinics is a good thing, but clinic design does not address public health policy, or the economic, social, and cultural factors propelling the AIDS epidemic. There are plenty of clinics in the West, and yet the epidemic continues. I wonder if the Africa clinics will be used for to test those Western AIDS vaccines, too.

I also wonder if participation in the competitions will radicalize the architects in their own countries. With members in 75 countries around the world, such a network could, for instance, join the movement to keep international pressure on the WTO to change drug patent rules that keep cheap drugs out of the hands those who need them. Those architects around the world could push their countries to forgive foreign debt in Africa. With debt relief, governments in Africa could fund their own health programs rather than spending their budgets on interest payments, and relying on still more loans and donations to support such public health initiatives.... loans from international lending agencies that in many cases require the dismantlement of public health programs.

Chicken&Egg Public Projects “conceives and develops interpretive environments and interactive strategies that advance public understanding of cultural and social issues.”

Coming soon:

“Architecture of Segregation explores how racial attitudes shaped urban, suburban, and rural landscapes that maintain divisions in American society. This multidisciplinary project examines the ways in which forces ranging from violent individuals to institutional practice to government policy embedded racial biases in everyday spaces, places, and structures during the second half of the twentieth century. Through collaboration with a network of scholars and institutions, Architecture of Segregation will comprise a major publication, national traveling exhibition, web site, and educational activities. These products, conceived to engage a broad audience, are intended as a stimulus for public discussion, continued scholarly research, and new directions in public policy.

The Supreme Court’s 1896 approval of separate and ‘equal’ facilities for blacks and whites permitted Americans to build an exclusionary, unequal society. The Civil Rights, Voting Rights, and Fair Housing Acts of the 1960s gave hope but did not lead to the dismantling of the architecture of segregation. Today, Americans do not realize how decisively discriminatory motives guided the construction of everyday landscapes. Scholars in many disciplines have examined segregation but have not provided a broad view of its physical structure, from housing to highways.

Architecture of Segregation asks: How have racial attitudes shaped the built environment? What are the structures of a closed society? How do these keep races apart, even in the absence of prejudice? Architecture of Segregation will encourage the general public, scholars, policy makers, and the media to consider these questions as they reexamine the twentieth-century construction of the American home. By concentrating on familiar spaces and activities, it will encourage the public to understand the forces that shaped the landscape and to recognize how that landscape shapes their behavior and beliefs. With this understanding, they can consider rebuilding a divided United States....

A book, published by The New Press, will take a geographically diverse, cradle-to-grave look at black and white worlds. Essays will be written by leading scholars, such as Jacqueline Jones on work in the rural south, Raymond Mohl on the interstate highway system, and Gwendolyn Wright on housing. Contributors include Mindy Fullilove (birth), Waldo Martin (education), Lise Funderburg (neighborhood), Maurice Berger (leisure), June Manning Thomas (worship), and John Vlach (death). The Graham Foundation has provided a grant to support publication.

A national traveling exhibition is scheduled to open in 2004 at the National Building Museum in Washington, D.C., which is producing the project in conjunction with Chicken&Egg Public Projects, Curatorial Assistance Traveling Exhibitions, and a planned consortium of museums in New York, Boston, Atlanta, Chicago, Houston, Minneapolis, and San Francisco or Los Angeles. Using powerful visual media within a striking spatial configuration, it will include artifacts, photographs, and artworks representing white and black environments from all regions of the United States. The exhibition will serve as a springboard for public programs, including discussions, lectures, workshops, tours, and film series. Architecture of Segregation will engage the public in an exploration of the relationship between race and place in the United States.”

I wonder how the exhibition organizers are working with groups engaged in current struggles, and how those groups can use the event to build some public pressure.

“In Israel, a forest of 6 million trees is being planted in the Judean hills between Jerusalem and Tel Aviv, in the words of B’nai B’rith, ‘as a living memorial to the six million Jews who perished in the Holocaust.’ Begun in 1954, this planting clearly takes on several layers of practical and symbolic meaning in Israel: it remembers both the martyrs of Nazi genocide and a return to life itself as cultivated in the founding of the State. Rather than remembering the victims in the emblems of destruction left behind by the Nazis, thereby succumbing to the Nazi cult of death, these trees recall both the lives lost and the affirmation of life itself as the surest memorial antidote to murder. It was also with this traditional veneration of life in mind, as symbolized in Jewish tradition by the Etz Chaim (tree of life), that Yad Vashem has planted a tree to remember and to name every single Gentile who rescued a Jew during World War II.” [source]

......

“Israel’s Defence Ministry is investigating reports that Palestinian olive trees uprooted to make way for a security fence are being sold illegally to rich Israelis and town councils, sometimes for thousands of pounds each.

The illegal trade in olive trees has flourished as Israeli contractors, supported by armed guards, clear Palestinian agricultural land where an 80-mile electronic fence is being built to seal off the West Bank.

Thousands of olive trees have been dug up to make way for the 150-ft wide barrier and security zone. Its route usually passes inside Palestinian territory, not along the old pre-1967 border, and thousands of Palestinian farmers say their livelihood is being taken away.

Sale of the olive trees emerged after the owner of a contracting company offered two reporters from a popular Israeli newspaper, Yedioth Ahronoth, 100 large olive trees for £150 each.

The reporters found one enormous tree, said to be 600 years old, on sale at an Israeli plant nursery for £3,500. They said the trade was conducted with the complicity of an official in the civil administration, the Israeli military government in the occupied territories....

Olives are the lifeblood of Palestinian agriculture, almost the only crop which grows on the stony hillsides of the West Bank without irrigation. Most Palestinians are unemployed after two years of violence and their staple diet is bread and olive oil.

About 11,000 Palestinian farmers will lose all or some of their land holdings to the fence. Sharif Omar, from the village of Jayous, near the Israeli town of Kochav Yair, said: ‘I have lost almost everything. I have lost 2,700 fruit and olive trees. And 44 of 50 acres I own have been confiscated for the fence.’

His village lost seven wells, 15,000 olive trees and 50,000 citrus and other fruit trees. ‘This area is the agricultural store for the West Bank. They are destroying us,’ he said.” [source]

I was working on an item on Universal Design and realized that I hadn’t actually defined what I was talking about. So from the man who coined the phrase:

“Universal design is the design of products and environments to be usable by all people, to the greatest extent possible, without the need for adaptation or specialized design.”
— Ron Mace, founder and program director of The Center for Universal Design

Universal design has its roots in demographic, legislative, economic, and social changes among older adults and people with disabilities after World War II.

Here are some general principles for the evaluation of universal design from the Center for Universal Design. These were drafted in 1997 and refer to design in the physical world, though could be applied broadly to electronic interface design.

1. Equitable Use
   The design is useful and marketable to people with diverse abilities.
   1. Provide the same means of use for all users: identical whenever possible; equivalent when not.
   2. Avoid segregating or stigmatizing any users.
   3. Provisions for privacy, security, and safety should be equally available to all users.
   4. Make the design appealing to all users.
      
      
2. Flexibility in Use
   The design accommodates a wide range of individual preferences and abilities.
   1. Provide choice in methods of use.
   2. Accommodate right- or left-handed access and use.
   3. Facilitate the user’s accuracy and precision.
   4. Provide adaptability to the user’s pace.
      
      
3. Simple and Intuitive Use
   Use of the design is easy to understand, regardless of the user’s experience, knowledge, language skills, or current concentration level.
   1. Eliminate unnecessary complexity.
   2. Be consistent with user expectations and intuition.
   3. Accommodate a wide range of literacy and language skills.
   4. Arrange information consistent with its importance.
   5. Provide effective prompting and feedback during and after task completion.
      
      
4. Perceptible Information
   The design communicates necessary information effectively to the user, regardless of ambient conditions or the user’s sensory abilities.
   1. Use different modes (pictorial, verbal, tactile) for redundant presentation of essential information.
   2. Provide adequate contrast between essential information and its surroundings.
   3. Maximize “legibility” of essential information.
   4. Differentiate elements in ways that can be described (i.e., make it easy to give instructions or directions).
   5. Provide compatibility with a variety of techniques or devices used by people with sensory limitations.
      
      
5. Tolerance for Error
   The design minimizes hazards and the adverse consequences of accidental or unintended actions.
   1. Arrange elements to minimize hazards and errors: most used elements, most accessible; hazardous elements eliminated, isolated, or shielded.
   2. Provide warnings of hazards and errors.
   3. Provide fail safe features.
   4. Discourage unconscious action in tasks that require vigilance.
      
      
6. Low Physical Effort
   The design can be used efficiently and comfortably and with a minimum of fatigue.
   1. Allow user to maintain a neutral body position.
   2. Use reasonable operating forces.
   3. Minimize repetitive actions.
   4. Minimize sustained physical effort.
      
      
7. Size and Space for Approach and Use
   Appropriate size and space is provided for approach, reach, manipulation, and use regardless of user’s body size, posture, or mobility.
   1. Provide a clear line of sight to important elements for any seated or standing user.
   2. Make reach to all components comfortable for any seated or standing user.
   3. Accommodate variations in hand and grip size.
   4. Provide adequate space for the use of assistive devices or personal assistance.

“Please note that the Principles of Universal Design address only universally usable design, while the practice of design involves more than consideration for usability. Designers must also incorporate other considerations such as economic, engineering, cultural, gender, and environmental concerns in their design processes. These Principles offer designers guidance to better integrate features that meet the needs of as many users as possible.”

In 1998, Ron Mace delivered his final public speech at the first international conference on universal design. He discussed the differences between assistive technology, barrier-free and universal design:

“Barrier-free design is what we used to call the issue of access. It is predominantly a disability-focused movement. Removing architectural barriers through the building codes and regulations is barrier-free design. The [Americans with Disabilities Act] Standards are barrier-free design because they focus on disability and accommodating people with disabilities in the environment. In fact, the ADA is the now the issue of access in this country.

So, what is the difference between barrier-free and universal? ADA is the law, but the accessibility part, the barrier-free design part, is only a portion of that law. This part, however, is the most significant one for design because it mandates what we can do and facilitates the promotion of universal design. But, it is important to realize and remember that ADA is not universal design. I hear people mixing it up, referring to ADA and universal design as one in the same. This is not true.

Universal design broadly defines the user. It’s a consumer market driven issue. Its focus is not specifically on people with disabilities, but all people. It actually assumes the idea, that everybody has a disability and I feel strongly that that’s the case. We all become disabled as we age and lose ability, whether we want to admit it or not. It is negative in our society to say “I am disabled” or “I am old.” We tend to discount people who are less than what we popularly consider to be “normal.” To be “normal” is to be perfect, capable, competent, and independent. Unfortunately, designers in our society also mistakenly assume that everyone fits this definition of “normal.” This just is not the case.

Assistive technology to me is really personal use devices—those things focused on the individual—things that compensate or help one function with a disability. Many of you wear eyeglasses because you have limited sight. The assistive technology is your eyeglasses. We could legitimately say that everybody who wears eyeglasses has a disability.”

This is a good starting point, but I read in these principles a disconnect between designer and user. The user is not a part of the design process except as an object of measurement — a consumer rather than a participant. If universal design is intended to be usable by all people without the need for adaptation or specialized design, a more participatory and inclusive design process seems to be one useful way of achieving this. I’ve not yet found a handy list of such principles for the development of universal design.

Also as noted in the conclusion to the principles, these focus on physical interaction and do not address the physical life span of the design or its existence in the broader cultural world. Usability through degradation and reuse fall partially under “sustainable design.” The cultural context, though, surely shapes legibility, user assumptions, and what is considered normative just as much as the physical context.

As Mark Robbins, former NEA Design Director, said on the promotion of universal design principles:

“Central to universal design is a developing awareness of difference that questions normative standards. The sense of what is the norm needs to change.”

Simply put, underlying the principles of interaction listed above is another basic principle. From Leslie Weisman:

“Architects and planners have traditionally defined the ‘user,’ or the ‘public’ in the case of urban planning, in very narrow terms. Rather than recognizing the vast array of ages, cultures, and lifestyles that use buildings and public spaces and that actually exist in communities, architecture and planning theory has been based on a conception of the ‘user/citizen’ that is inherently masculine, and a ‘public’ that tends to be made up of middle-class white people living in nuclear families. So when architects and planners attend to the provision of housing, transportation, and community services, they have tended to design and plan for only a small segment of the population, thereby creating many problems for the ever-increasing numbers of people who do not fit into this assumed definition and life pattern.”

Universal design is vehicle for promoting social equality and justice, environmental sustainability, and human health and well-being. This is as not just design for equal use, but for unemcumberbed participation in everyday life, and in public life. This is design for democrcacy.

“Designing the High Line” is an exhibition of ideas for the conversion of the High Line elevated rail structure to public space. The exhibit is showing in Grand Central Terminal until July 26. 720 entries were submitted from 36 countries. More than 100 of the proposals, including the competition winners, are displayed in the Grand Central exhibit. All 720 entries are displayed on the Web site.

In addition to the four principal winners, designs were selected for special cash awards for depicting the most compelling solution for universal access to the elevated structure, and for incorporating plants and wild flowers native to New York. (Pictures are posted here and here, though difficult to read.)

The High Line runs for 1.45 miles over Manhattan’s West Side, from 34th Street down through Chelsea to Gansevoort Street in the Meat Packing District. The High Line was built during one of New York City’s largest infrastructure projects, the West Side Improvement project. The project took place in the early 1930’s during the Great Depression and was presided over by Robert Moses. The Line carried freight above the streets of the West Side until 1980, when the last boxcars hauled a load of frozen turkeys down the tracks. The structure has been inactive since, collecting trash, shedding rust, and sprouting an elevated garden of weeds and wildflowers. [more history here]

In 1992, the Chelsea Property Owners, a coalition of two dozen businesses who own property under and near the Line — mostly parking lots, machine shops, warehouses, and the trendy Chelsea Market — won a conditional demolition order from the Surface Transportation Board. The proposal to tear down the Line was later supported by Mayor Giuliani. The plan never materialized because the coalition and the railroad’s owner at the time, Conrail, could not agree on an ultimate price tag for demolition. [source]

Through the economic boom of the 90’s, however, new residents moved into the neighborhoods below the Line, among them artists, designers, and galleries. In 1999, an altogether different group of neighborhood residents founded Friends of the High Line, a 501(c)(3) non-profit organization with the mission of converting the structure to an elevated public space.

And, after much lobbying, it looks like the High Line might actually be redesigned. At the July 9 benefit preview of the exhibition, New York City Council Speaker Gifford Miller announced a $15.75 million funding commitment for planning and construction. The first $750,000 was allocated in the budget adopted by the New York City Council on June 27.

“The funds can be used for planning, design, and construction costs related to the High Line project during the fiscal year that began July 1. The remainder of the $15.75 million commitment will be allocated to the High Line in the following three fiscal years.

‘The High Line was built during the Depression to invigorate New York’s economy, and it will reinvigorate our City again today,’ said Speaker Miller. ‘As we have learned from our City’s great parks, public spaces create value and catalyze growth. Central Park was planned in a recession. Even in tough economic times, we have to invest in our future—by planning for the public projects that will keep us at the forefront of the world’s great cities.’

The funds will come from the City’s capital budget, which pays for project costs such as planning, design, construction, and long-term leases. The allocation will not affect municipal services, which are funded separately through the City’s expense budget.” [source]

The Friends of the High Line are also seeking private, corporate, foundation, and federal funds for the project.

The competition follows two detailed planning studies: Reclaiming the High Line, sponsored by Friends of the High Line and the Design Trust for Public Space; and a comprehensive economic feasibility study, commissioned at the City’s request.

In December 2002, the City of New York took the first step in converting the High Line to a public walkway through federal rails-to-trails legislation. FHL is currently waiting on decision before Federal surface transportation board to allow City to move forward.

“As the next phase in its project to preserve and re-use the High Line, Friends of the High Line will hold a series of open workshops with members of the community beginning in September, with a variety of the competition proposals serving as springboards for discussion. At the end of 2003, Friends of the High Line will incorporate the community’s comments into a Request for Proposals, which will lead to the development of realizable designs.” [source]

The High Line is currently private property, owned by the rail company CSX Corporation. CSX acquired the High Line when it purchased Conrail in 1997. Conrail was created by the federal government in 1970’s from the remains of the New York Central and other railroads bankrupted by “competition from trucks, subsidized by the federally-built Interstate highway system, and an archiac system of economic regulations which prevented railroads from responding to the needs of the market.” The corporation was sold to the public in 1987, in what was then the nation’s biggest IPO. [more on Conrail] Though the High Line is private property, the federal government, specifically the Surface Transportation Board, has control over the Line as a piece of the nation’s rail infrastructure. CSX has been ordered by the government to work with all interested parties to effect the best exit strategy for the High Line, and to remain neutral as to the High Line’s outcome.

The City can not afford to purchase land under High Line, so has instead proposed rezoning and property transfer, moving air and development rights out to sites around West Chelsea. One potential consequence would be a wall of huge residential towers springing up along 10th and 11th Avenues in otherwise moderately sized manufacturing and retail zones. One challenge faced by city planners is the prevention such “massing.”

The High Line snakes through many neighborhoods and buildings, but sits almost entirely within the area served by Manhattan Community Board No. 4. The current Line blocks sunlight, collects trash, and drops water, rust, and pigeon droppings on the streets below. However, according to a survey by the Board, most community residents support conversion over demolition. They want to make sure, though, that the results of the redesign are the best damn park possible. The community is wary of new large-scale structures or billboards that would block sight of or access to the Hudson River. The project should provide open space for cultural programing, be accessible, and safe, providing a way to get up or down quickly. But most of all, it should connect with and respect the community. Some residential buildings sit within 5 feet of Line.

As development proceeds, areas beneath and adjacent to High Line will become lucrative spots for retail. Indeed, represenatives of our businessman-turned-Mayor is keen to move some of that retail up onto High Line itself. Other possibilities include constructing adjacent buildings with roof access that would meet the High Line or produce huge urban stairs, parks that terrace up to the bed of High Line, which is about 30 feet from the ground.

At a panel discussion, I asked Robert Hammond, co-founder of Friends of the High Line, about their advocacy strategy and how design competition fits into it. The competition took a year to organize from beginning to end and was a way to get people excited, to generate activism and support, and to provide a public platform for discussion. He noted the power of crazy, weird ideas - and how it is often easier to draw attention and support for the crazy ideas than the conservative plans. Another panelist noted that, when not located to a specific neighborhood, the constituency of public open space is transient and often does not have a consistent voice. The competition was an opportunity “to get those ideas out there.” Over the years, many have developed redesigns of the High Line for their thesis projects.

I asked Mr. Hammond what has led to their success to date while civic budgets are being cut and other projects around the city have faltered. Mr. Hammond proposed that the support base was “not the usual mix of neighborhood advocates.... The strongest supporters are architects, artists, art dealers.” Indeed a list of supporters at the gala benefit includes many A-list authors, actors, and artists. Not your usual city planning scene.

Mr. Hammond also noted that the design of their campaign materials was also key. Several designers have donated services to develop graphically sophisticated materials. Brochures, Web site, postcards for public comment... “Everything produced looks interesting. It suggests that the final design will be as innovative.”

Ironically, development of the High Line may push many in the arts community to leave the area. When the project is complete, rents around the Line are likely to increase. Many arts spaces are already midway through their 10 year lease, and unable to afford the current market rents. Part of the development plans could create public spaces that would not command retail rents and could support galleries, though these would be limited.

So how will the crazy ideas not get lost, or bogged down by politics? And allow ultimate designer to maintain poetic vision? The challenge is yet to come. Once New York realizes that the project is possible, everyone will want a piece of the action. It will be important to maintain a clear vision, and to make sure the final product is as extraordinary, interesting, and strange as the High Line itself.

Check out these photo galleries on the current state of the High Line.

The High Line was mentioned here in one of my first blog posts.

From an April 2002 interview in Metropolis Magazine:

“Rosanne Haggerty is the new landlord of the Andrews Hotel, a grim vermin-infested joint at the corner of Bowery and Spring Street on Manhattan’s Lower East Side. She is also founder and executive director of Common Ground Community, a nonprofit organization that has purchased and converted a handful of historic buildings, including the Times Square Hotel, into some of New York’s most progressive low-income housing — work that last year earned her a $500,000 ‘genius grant’ from the MacArthur Foundation.

After four years of field research that took Haggerty and her staff from the public shelters of New York to the capsule hotels of Japan, Common Ground Community is set to begin transforming the century-old Andrews into something they call First Step Housing. Working with New York architects Marguerite McGoldrick and Gans + Jelacic, and more than 150 homeless men and women who contributed feedback, Haggerty plans to combine elements of the Bowery’s dying flophouse tradition — $7 a night, no lease, no questions — with smart management, on-site social services, and space-efficient modular design. Recently she spoke with Douglas McGray about the project’s design considerations — and its lessons.”

Rosanne Haggerty:

“Social scientist Christopher Jencks zoned in on the loss of the cubicle hotels as a specific cause of the rise of single-adult homelessness. That got me thinking, Why don’t these places exist anymore? For years I’d get close to the question and then recoil because these buildings were so squalid. The quality-housing advocate in me couldn’t comprehend how one could responsibly advocate their resurgence. It finally occurred to me that until not-for-profits started working on them, single-room occupancies had also been looked at as substandard forms of housing. Then it clicked — it’s more of a failure of imagination on our part than anything embedded in the model.”

After extensive research, including two months in Osaka, Japan studying the flexible use of limited space, interviews with individuals and groups of homeless men and women, including feedback on three rounds of prototypes, Common Ground developed a design that was attractive, affortable, and secure.

“The main reason people are remaining on the streets is safety. They perceive themselves to be more secure sleeping in a public space than in the city’s shelter system. People were very keen on the idea of metal detectors, very concerned about what the roof material would look like — how secure it would be. They were concerned about the strength of the lock and the durability of the construction....

Somebody had a very good line. He said, ‘You don’t want it to be a doll house, but you don’t want it to be a cell either.’ A lot of these folks have been in psychiatric hospitals or in jail, and they don’t want an environment that reminds them of that. Things as subtle as being able to move the furniture around — not having it nailed down — being able to get control of a degree of privacy in the space, having a window that opens and closes onto a central corridor seemed to take something that could have been viewed as institutional and make it cozy....

Frankly, design makes a significant difference in terms of the atmosphere of calm and respect that you establish. People respond behaviorwise to being in that kind of environment. Keeping maintenance costs reduced is also a consideration. We need spaces that can be cleaned easily, panels that can be removed and replaced without having to trash the whole unit.”

The First Step units are prefabricated, ship nearly flat and can bolt together in almost any commercial space.

Many of the housing projects incorporate social services:

“Supportive housing is permanent housing with social services for the formerly homeless, people with mental and/or medical disabilities, the elderly, and individuals with low-income. Supportive housing combines affordable accomodations with services like mental health and drug addiction counseling, job training and placement, community activities, and help with life skills like cooking and money management.

Supportive housing was created by non-profits around the country as a more holistic response to homelessness. Approximately 70% of homeless single adults in the United States have problems like mental illness, substance abuse and HIV/AIDS — problems which contribute to their homelessness. By offering a variety of support services designed to address these issues, supportive housing has paved the way for a more effective approach to preventing homelessness....

Two long-term government studies have shown that more than 83% of the homeless individuals placed in supportive housing have remained in permanent housing and have reintegrated themselves into mainstream society.”

See the Corporation for Supportive Housing and the Supportive Housing Network of New York.

Common Ground and the Architectural League of New York are currently running an open competition to design a new “prefabricated individualized dwelling unit.” The registration deadline is July 11, 2003. The design entry submission deadline is 10 AM, August 25, 2003.

“Up to four competition winners will be chosen. Winners will each receive a cash prize of $2,000 and will be engaged to develop their proposals for manufacture and installation at the Andrews House, a lodging house on the Bowery in Manhattan, for which they will be paid a design fee. An exhibition of entries will be mounted in Manhattan in October 2003, and displayed on the competition website. A publication documenting the competition may also be produced.”

See the First Step Housing Web site for more detail.