Design After Disaster

I had the privilege of working in Haiti in the Spring and Summer of 2011, two years after an earthquake devastated the most densly inhabited part of the island nation. I worked with two organizations dedicated to addressing these issues, Architecture for Humanity and SODADE, a planning firm started by local professionals. I worked as a member of the Villa Rosa Planning Team, and did everything from physical mapping with GPS units, to pathway and drainage design, to designing engagement sessions (with lots of language and cultural help from Haitian team members). At SODADE, I assisted the planning team with early-phase masterplanning for the Canaan area, a settlement that grew up around the centralized foreign aid delivery that lacked any kind of pior planning or engagement.