Architecture or international cooperation?

The construction industry has a role to play in international cooperation initiatives, whether for humanitarian or development aid. This role spans all types of built structures and touches on an array of far-reaching issues. Architects at FAR, based at the Smart Living Lab in Fribourg, have spent several years looking at how high-quality architecture can be deployed in areas with a structural lack of resources.

One research method being used at FAR is student workshops designed to achieve two main goals: to think collectively about issues that are moving to the top of the agenda, and to explore the students’ roles and responsibilities as future architects and how they can make an impact. In humanitarian and development projects, architects are confronted with consequential challenges that both entail ethical considerations and call for a probing look at the limitations of conventional architectural practices – especially when those practices face the complexity of being applied in remote contexts.

The challenge lies in designing buildings that will be not just physical structures for meeting functional needs, but true architectural spaces.

The challenge lies in designing buildings that will be not just physical structures for meeting functional needs, but true architectural spaces – and doing so with limited materials and methods. In these situations, the lack of available resources, rather than detracting from architectural quality, can stimulate the architects’ creativity in developing ingenious techniques and using new types of materials in innovative ways.

Raising awareness

Perhaps the biggest hurdle for architects in humanitarian and development projects is making other stakeholders (such as NGOs and international organizations and local partners) aware of the opportunities offered by a complex, multifaceted, cross-disciplinary and integrated approach to architecture, especially since the profession is largely seen as inconsistent with the fast pace of action needed in field operations.

This is one goal of the research being conducted at FAR, as Vannucci and his team believe that the quality of a building depends not on how sophisticated the construction materials are, but rather on how well the architect was able to address occupants’ functional needs while going one step further through an integrated, fit-for-purpose design.

A fundamental right

There’s a certain harmony in the economy of resources to satisfy essential needs. The architects’ job is to find that harmony, to bring it to life and to show stakeholders in the international cooperation ecosystem that quality architecture is a fundamental right since it affects citizens’ everyday lives. Quality architecture can promote development in much more than just the economic sense.

Riccardo Vannucci, architect, senior scientist and lecturer at EPFL’s Laboratory of Construction and Architecture (FAR), Smart Living Lab, Fribourg

• This article appears in the March 2022 issue of Habitat magazine, which is published by three local dailies – La Côte (Vaud Canton), Le Nouvelliste (Valais Canton) and Arcinfo (Neuchâtel Canton) – under a joint initiative between EPFL and ESH Médias to showcase the R&D being carried out at EPFL on advanced construction techniques.