This event took place online on 23 February 2021 in the midst of the Covid-19 crisis. An international audience gathered with a panel with representatives from 4 different time zones to examine where the power lies in design, construction, and infrastructure projects working with international communities, and look at how the power of design and of designers can be directed to improve people’s lives.
You can review the recording of the event in full. Many who wanted to attend were unable to and it also repays revisiting the rich discussion generated by a diverse panel.
The Conversation is framed by Tom Newby who questions the nature of design and how it can be used to empower communities and in particular can it be misdirected to dis-empower and harm them. Many of the contributions come from the context of international development and post-disaster reconstruction. It is in such contexts that power imbalances can be particularly stark; however the issues can be equally relevant to other areas of development. Examples are provided from all the panelists:
Jennifer Furigay works for Accord which is a humanitarian and development organization in the Philippines. She shows how it is important to differentiate the whys/purposes and hows/process of design from the outcomes. She illustrates the importance of design complementing local capacities and resources through examples.
Geomilie Tumamao-Guittap, of Emergency Architects in the Philippines explains how power dynamics shape our built environment and explains how they work by providing technical skills working alongside various stakeholders and tapping into their knowledge. They are also observant of the power dynamics at a project scale so they can understand things so much better.
Mark Harvey, Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office (FCDO) shares his thoughts on what sort of engineers we need and how to learn to do things through a better understanding of people and infrastructure.
Christopher Otieno Aboch, Community Leader in Kenya gives a graphic reminder of failure and success resulting from the participation (or not) of the local community in even seemingly small-scale infrastructure projects.
Maggie Stephenson, now an independent consultant with long experience of working in international development gives a masterclass for design professionals in understanding the design context. Starting from first principles and direct experience she warns us to be wary of the over-blown claims of best-practice case studies.
The audience discussion raises many further issues: as well as better/differently educated engineers how do we give them the opportunities to work differently? (How) can we teach empathy? How do we make egotistical mega-projects uncool? How do we make human-scale participatory projects cool?
Some important points arising from the Conversation:
- Designers need to step back and lead from behind: true negotiations only happen between equals.
- Both the process used and what is actually done have real world impacts and designers cannot just approach their work as academic exercises. It is too common for designers to separate themselves and their desk-based work from the actual realities of their projects. There is individual responsibility there and designers should not and cannot absolve themselves from it.
- Empathy and deeper understanding are not sufficient in themselves; we need to change the entire value system that underpins the built environment. This is a huge challenge, but we don’t address these issues just by being more empathetic. It needs real structural change in the industry and beyond.
- Climate scientists have come together and are able to produce clear direction and advocacy, and have the ear of those in power as a result. By contrast built environment professionals are so often fragmented and competitive – and according to some constrained by self-interest – that they cannot have a clear voice for change at any level (locally, nationally, internationally).
- Follow the example given by Maggie Stephenson of the National Solidarity Programme in Afghanistan. This how successful it can be if power, and the money that goes with that power, is genuinely devolved to the users of the (future) infrastructure at local level.
- We need to be much more thoughtful about what infrastructure is for and, in addition, who it is for.
Some final observations from the chair:
It was both interesting and positive, that a conversation about power was so wide-ranging. We didn’t talk about power explicitly very much, but everything we did discuss was strongly linked to understanding and recognising power and power dynamics. It showed how central power actually is to the realities of what we do.
It was interesting that in a discussion about power, which started by looking at how built environment professionals need to be more cognisant and inclusive of marginalised and less powerful groups, clients, beneficiaries, users (however they are described), ended up talking primarily about ‘ourselves’ and how we can change our industry and what we do. It is not wrong that those changes are needed, but it is so easy for something that is about giving voice and power to others to become a conversation just about ‘us’ which doesn’t include the people the changes are meant to serve. This shows how much deliberate and continuous effort has to be made to give the floor to others.
The Panel
From top left to bottom right: Mark Harvey, Maggie Stephenson, Geomilie Tumamao-Guittap, Tom Newby, Jennifer Furigay, Christopher Otieno Aboch.
Tom Newby, Happold Foundation – chairing
Tom Newby is a structural engineer and an Associate Director at Buro Happold. He started his career designing buildings with BuroHappold Engineering, working in Bath, London and New York, delivering challenging and inspirational structural engineering projects.
Between 2013 and 2019 Tom was Global Shelter Lead and then Head of Humanitarian at CARE International UK, part of one of the world’s largest development and humanitarian charities. He led a team providing expert advice and operational support to responses to humanitarian emergencies around the world. He is dedicated to bringing the benefits of engineering knowledge to those who cannot normally access it, and to pursuing gender equality in the engineering profession.
Having worked with the Happold Foundation since 2004,. Tom leads the charity’s activities in Human Development. As well as being a trustee for the Foundation. He also chairs the Institution of Structural Engineers’ Humanitarian & International Development Panel, leading their efforts to strengthen professional guidance for engineers working in these sectors.
Maggie Stephenson, Independent Consultant
Maggie Stephenson has worked in housing, urban planning and built environment education over the last 25 years in Europe and the global South. She has been involved in conflict and disaster crisis response and reconstruction and in long term development, working with municipal and national governments, with UN agencies, the World Bank, EU, NGOs, civil society and academia.
She was co-author of ‘Supporting Housing Reconstruction after Disaster: Planning and Implementing Technical Assistance at Large Scale’ (2019 UN Habitat AXA) and ‘Learning from Community Planning following the 2010 Haiti Earthquake’ (2020 IIED), both of which discussed the roles of technical professionals.
Mark Harvey, Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office (FCDO)
Mark is one of thirteen Heads of Profession (HoPs) at FCDO. The HoPs provide professional leadership on development issues in their areas of expertise, in an inter-disciplinary way. Mark has worked for FCDO since it was formed in September 2020, DFID from its creation in 1997 and, before that, the UK’s ODA from 1991. He graduated as a Civil Engineer in 1980 at the University of Leeds, worked for consulting engineer firms in Zambia, the UAE and the UK primarily in the water sector. After completing a MSc degree in 1991 at WEDC, Loughborough University he has worked on the UK’s country development programmes in India, Southern Africa, Nepal, Ethiopia, Afghanistan (twice) and Vietnam with occasional periods at headquarters in London. Postings have increasingly taken him to fragile and conflict affected states, in line with DFID’s focus over the past decade. The future in FCDO presents interesting opportunities. For these City Conversations Mark will cast his mind back to work in India in the 1990s and bring that forward to Myanmar in 2021
Geomilie Tumamao-Guittap, Emergency Architects Philippines
Geomilie S. Tumamao-Guittap is an architect and urban planning researcher from the University of the Philippines. She leads the Knowledge Management initiatives, specifically on Collaborative Research Development and Networking, for the Office of Research and Publication of the UP School of Urban and Regional Planning. She provides technical assistance to local government units and national agencies in crafting various plans and studies as an assisting consultant at the UP Planning and Development Research Foundation. Outside the University, she heads the Capacity Building Cluster of the United Architects of the Philippines-Emergency Architects in supporting grassroots disaster resilience in urban communities.
Jennifer Furigay, Accord Philippines
Jen is a humanitarian and development worker in the Philippines with over 10 years’ experience in designing, implementing, managing, and monitoring humanitarian response, disaster recovery, and disaster risk reduction projects. She is working with ACCORD – an organization with which she shares the commitment of empowering and promoting the resilience of least served and most vulnerable communities affected by disasters, climate change, and conflict. Jen is currently the Design, Monitoring, Evaluation, Accountability and Learning Coordinator of ACCORD.
Christopher Otieno Aboch, Community Leader & Chairman of Vuma Group, Kenya
Christopher Aboch is a founding member and the current chairperson of VUMA youth group. VUMA stands for Vijana, Usafi na Maendeleo, which translates to ‘’Youth, Cleanliness and Development’’. It was founded in 2011 to empower youth in Makina village in Kibra and has been seminal in pushing for environmental cleanliness, improved security, clean sanitation facilities and growth of employment opportunities. Some of the milestones Christopher has achieved with VUMA include delivering a community hall and improved sanitation facilities for the community through strategic partnerships with government and non-profits. The organisation’s goal is to empower their members and subsequently their community through business development and dignified service delivery.