Thesis

Ken,

I'll forward your email to earthquake shack expert Jane Cryan. She's retired from the business, having dedicated a couple of decades to researching and saving refugee shacks, but you might get lucky and she'll feel inspired to find some numbers for you.

Type A shacks were 10 x 14, and I think Jane said only about 500 were built.

Type B shacks were the most prevalent and I think they were about 14 x 18.

Type C's measured 18 x 24, I think? Just a couple of them survive today.

The fourth size I think were more in the style of barracks, but Jane would be better able to tell you on that.

Overall, 5,610 refugee cottages were constructed. A couple of hundred were burned or broken up, but the rest were hauled off to be new homes when the camps closed.

Good luck with your thesis!

Woody LaBounty
Western Neighborhoods Project
www.outsidelands.org

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Hi Ken,

Thank you very much for your email. I visited your blog and was quite impressed. You have undertaken a monumental, very important project!
Was the Fact Sheet I sent enough info about the Shacks? In 1999 I gave all my research papers and realia to the History Center at San Francisco's Main Library so I have nothing with me except the Fact Sheet and the books I wrote on disk. I gave copies of the books, which have not been published but have been and continue to be widely quoted, to the History Center. Most SF historians self-publish and I was just not into that. If you thought it would be helpful to you, I could email you a copy of the main book.

The Library (sfpl.org I think) has written and placed a summary of my donation on the web. If you Google "1906 Earthquake Refugee Shacks" the library site will pop up and you can view the contents and the librarian's comments about the collection.

You may be interested in knowing that in 1988 I was contacted by an architecture student from U.C. Berkeley -- Sergio Amunategui -- who did his Master of Architecture thesis on the subject of the Shacks. He engaged me as his imaginary client and designed a residence for me (using an actual vacant lot in SF) composed of 22 refugee shacks. The name of Sergio's thesis is: Shelter, Dwellings, and Metamorphosis: Adaptations of the 1906 Earthquake Refugee Shelter in A Single Family Dwelling. The thesis is dated May 23, 1989. Sergio is now a famous architect in his native Santiago, Chile. He is Googleable and I believe you can get an email address for him in one of the many blurbs that pop up with his name or his work mentioned.

Do let me know if there is anything else I can share with you.

Regards, Jane C.


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Ken,

Thanks for contacting me.

It looks like you're attempting a very interesting project, an important project. I'm happy to make some quick comments, based on a quick review of your boards and a skimming of some of your writing. In this spirit, I might say something not appropriate or off the mark. If so, please, take no offense, and/or understand that this is a quick response.

First, and most important, I want to say it is so great that you're engaging in these topics and questions. I get so much inspiration and energy from the great questions and passions of many of my students these days. And I very much want to say THANK YOU for bringing me into your curiosities. It's a real privilege to engage someone so determined to ask some difficult questions of our society, and of himself.

I'll make a few critical comments -- don't take these as being personal, please. Rather, you're touching on, or maybe you're not touching on, some ideas and approaches that seem important to me these days. So, in a sense, with your own work I have a chance to be more critical of my own ideas and perspectives.



I can appreciate your analysis of Fathy and Newman . . . that's fine, their principles, all that. I guess, as you say, it's both dated and timeless, and I understand this.

Still, who else today is thinking about the architectures of squatters or informal settlers or streetpeople? Robert Neuwirth in Shadow Cities. Urban Think Tank in Informal City. The book World Changing. David Adjaye in Making Public Buildings. Marjetica Potrc's Urgent Architecture. The book Portable Architecture. Zero Yen Houses by Kyohei Sakaguchi. Micro Architecture by Kiyoko Semba and Kesaharu Imai. Bryan Bell's Good Deeds, Good Design. Tadashi Kawamata's Dwellings project. The first few chapters of Howard Davis's Culture of Building. Teddy Cruz's work in the Border Zone at Chula Vista/Tijuana. Sidewalk by Duneier.

There's quite a bit out there these days, and it's important because it is both timeless and NOW, in that it is looking at our cities and the difficult lives some people live in cities today, their unique qualities and energies and potentials. This is very different than rural Egypt, a World's Fair site in 1967, New York circa 1970.

I value history, believe me. Still, in this area, what you call the homeless, or the poor, I think we especially need to be current. Now. Today. There's just no denying this need.



And it's interesting to me that your review of Fathy and Newman includes diagrams, plans, sections, etc., this is architecture that you know how to analyze. But nothing of the sort when talking about Dignity Village. Why no site plan? No building plans? No building sections? I understand if you say, well Wes, they don't exist. Still, if you really are trying to understand Dignity Village, you might at least try to create a similar line of analysis -- maybe you create a kind of conditional set of architectural drawings for a few of the buildings, for which there are photographs. I haven't GoogleEarthed Dignity Village; does anything exist? Again, why do Fathy and Newman and Safdie get to have "principles" and the squatters don't? Why no comparable analysis of the cities, neighborhoods, and dwellings of self-builders? I assure you, they too design and build defensible space, they too have local construction knowledge, they too understand the heat of the Sun, they too share urban space and design accordingly.

In my work, I'm arguing that we have much to learn from the self-planners and self-builders. A challenge becomes how to see and share such "principles." Plans? Sections? Maybe what a "principle" is needs to be rethought. Or, maybe you figure out how to analyze Dignity Village first and use that methodology or line of questioning to analyze works by Fathy and Newman. I mean, why do we always always privilege designers even as we talk about the need to create "self-built/self-governed/self-sustained" communities and architectures? Just this week I've started thinking about how almost everything we do is "designer-centered design" even as we talk about populations and people who obviously know what they're doing as they create their own home and neighborhood and community every day. Every day. I'm not saying your wrong, more I'm trying genuinely to understand this phenomena.



In a similar way, your site analysis, also, is reliant on such known tools. Wind, sun angles, views, site history, and the like. Again, I understand this, I appreciate these tools. Still, I wonder if your particular project cries out for something else? Again, I don't have the answer for you, can't name a set of drawings for you to do, but I do wonder what else might be considered.



"Design for the poor" . . . I don't know about such an approach. I think this use of the word "for" is problematic . . . why not "by" or "with," just for example? Why are we so interested in providing something for someone we think needs our help? We can ask the same question of Habitat for Humanity, or Architecture for Humanity, or the "Design for the other 90%" show at the Cooper Hewitt last summer. Fundamentally, this suggests to me that whatever it is we do is still ours, and not theirs. We'll still wonder, in the future, why what it is we did for them is unappreciated, maybe even unused.

And as long as we keep saying "the poor," well, immediately this is a category filled with preconceptions, our own values, and more. "Homeless" too, by its very nature, points out a deficiency in a group or a person. I mean, why do we do this? Why do we create a category for a group of our fellow citizens and give it and them a name that points out what they don't have? How would you like this if it was done to you over and over and over and over. And of course, all "homeless" people do have homes -- they live in shelters, in assisted-living apartments, in a car, under a bridge, etc., etc. I'm not saying this casually . . . these are realities. Again, the point is, they do have "homes." So why do we, why do you, call them "homeless"? Saying it's easy, or everybody does it, or everybody understands what you mean, isn't a good answer. Such a title keeps you from actually understanding who a person is or who people are.



These days, I'm referring to an article written by Margaret Crawford about twelve years ago: "Can Architects be Socially Responsible?" in the book Out of Site, as edited by Diane Ghirardo. After a long analysis of the profession and several historical case studies, Crawford says no, architects can not be socially responsible. First, practitioners are too concerned with economics -- deadlines, budgets, marketing, clients, all of that -- what she calls compromised action. Second, professors are too comfortable in the classroom talking about social responsibility, but doing nothing else, what Crawford terms esoteric inaction.

However, she makes two suggests: biography and available materials. That is, get to know real, local people in-need. Spend some time with people in a retirement community, a soup kitchen, a residential facility for persons recently released from prison, with illegal immigrants, in a disaster-relief setting. Get to know somebody. And work with what you have at hand, don't wait for some utopian scheme or proposal or material (see Safdie's Habitat, just for example).

In this . . . I'd say I very much appreciate your intentions and as it is, you're doing good work. Still, you're keeping the subjects at a distance (too much reliance on old guys in your analysis, too much reliance on conventional tools in your analysis), when really you need to get to know any one or two people. Talk to one guy on five different days. One single mother for two hours. Work at a soup kitchen one day a week for the entire semester. I absolutely absolutely guarantee you, no doubt, that this will change your thinking and your project. And your life.

Your project is about real people, right? Living difficult lives, right? Who, I argue, have much more to teach us than we have to offer them. As Crawford says, these are "ideal clients." So . . . tell me about him, her, or them.



To put this differently, you're doing a great job. Really, you are. You've analyzed some well known precedents and positions (Fathy and Newman), you're a good writer, you have a very strong skill set when it comes to visual communication, and you've done a very good job with your site analysis. In a sense, no one can argue with any of this -- you're good.

So . . . I say to talented and committed people like yourself . . . we need help as we shift our attention to the billion or so informal settlers and squatters and streetpeople of the world. We architects are so used to designing for the middle and upper classes, so used to designing important buildings, so used to the "we need to educate the clients to appreciate our design" rhetoric of architectural schools and offices, that we need brave, probably young people to show us some new ways, some new lives, some new knowledge, some new approaches.

This is you. We need you.

Be confident and proud of your abilities and talents. Now . . . set that aside, go out and talk to somebody real, look around to find what you can build with now, and then use your talents, then rekindle your professional responsibility on their behalf, and yours.

Yes?

Let me know if I can be of further assistance, or if I can clarify any of these thoughts.



Here's two relevant blogs:
http://view-sidewalk.blogspot.com/
http://thehomelessguy.blogspot.com/



And thanks again for asking. It's great to know about your work. Keep me posted.

Wes.