Community category

"The first thing is that we have to recruit the people."

Martijn Schildkamp, the Netherlands-based architect who established the Smart Shelter Foundation in 2004, minces no words on the sustainability point: "A project has to be carried by the people. The local organization," which works with Smart Shelter on a project, "completely understands what has to be done.

"And then we leave the knowledge over there."

Schildkamp almost left more than his knowledge "over there" in 2001, when he traveled to India to visit his brother who, at the time, was working in the slums of New Delhi. "On the fifth day," he recalls, "we went for a camel ride" in the Thar Desert near Jaisalmer "and I was thrown from my camel. Broke both my feet. And by the way, it was World Animal Day," October 4.

Already deeply moved by the poverty in which slum dwellers in Delhi were living as he made the rounds to school projects with his brother, who was focusing on educational efforts. "The schools he worked for," Schildkamp would later write from his architect's perspective, "were no more than bamboo matting held together by a few poles, covered with some tarps."

What his camel then provided was a closer look, "I wouldn't wish it on anybody," at what medical care in such a setting can be. He was in two hospitals in Jaisalmer and Jodhpur, with cows and chickens walking around inside."

Once transferred back to the Netherlands to recover, Schildkamp found himself seized by a new interest in housing for the poorest in the world, the nature of slums, the work of Japanese architect Shigeru Ban on earthquake-area design and of the United States' Alabama-based Rural Studio initiative at Auburn University, which studies indigenous needs, materials and potential for community progress.

Smart Shelter projects have included post-tsunami housing in Sri Lanka in 2005 and 2006; a "safe, child-friendly and playful" pre-school in Vellalapatty in southern India (2007), meant to encourage parents to keep their kids learning; and 13 earthquake-resistant mountain schools and an animal and agricultural center in Nepal in 2008 and 2009.

Schildkamp now is in Bali, talking with several groups that have contacted him for possible assistance and researching what initiatives he might have Smart Shelter take on there.

"A team of organizations here is interested in bamboo and earth construction. So we're beginning to explore for ourselves the what type of project we are going to set up here.

"I'm thinking something like a technology research center, a place people can learn how to build. If we make the offices a series of houses," each made in a different way with local materials to demonstrate the forms of building available to local residents.

Schildkamp adds, however, that within a couple of years, he may be looking for some shelter of another kind. "I've been doing this from my savings so far." And he doesn't expect that approach to hold out indefinitely.

Supported by organizations and individual sponsors, Smart Shelter, then, may well be designing new solutions of fiscal structure alongside the schools, homes and community centers.

"Our most important weapon," Schildkamp says, "is our local partners. High-quality materials, what is right to use, how to mix a good concrete, for example, measuring boxes, we leave all that with them so they have the means to do things correctly."

Designed by:
Martijn Schildkamp (architect), the Netherlands.

Additional credits:
Dennis Hofman (architect); Erwin de Maar, (architect).

Partners:
Technical Assistance in by Chitra Vishwanath Architects, Bangalore, India; Damodar Bhakta Thapa of SEED Foundation, Nepal.

http://www.smartshelterfoundation.org

http://cadc.auburn.edu/soa/rural-studio

http://www.shigerubanarchitects.com

Written by Porter Anderson