Architecture For Humanity

We have been in daily contact with Cameron Sinclair, Co Founder of Architecture for Humanity since the earthquake struck, developing a team and idea for recovery. AFH’s 10 years of experience of dealing with situations like this in a timely and long term manner is invaluable in this situation.

Cameron writes;

“It has been more than two weeks since the tragic earthquake and tsunami in Northern Japan. A lot of people have asked us what are we doing, what structures are we building and do we have construction going on right now. There are four phases of rebuilding a community; Relief, Recovery, Reconstruction and Economic Development. Our work begins in recovery and ends years later as economic development is underway. While the world still focuses on the nuclear issue, we cannot forget the loss of 10,000+ lives and a further 17,000 that are still listed as missing.

In Sendai and in the surrounding community hundreds of buildings have disappeared and thousands damaged. Architecture for Humanity and our teams in Japan have been working on our long term plan for rebuilding in these affected communities. It is our role to partner with local networks and support their initiatives as well as collaborate on new ones.

To help us focusing on developing our rebuilding strategy and implementation, we have assembled a Program Advisory Board. Currently this board includes;

Hitoshi Abe, Atelier Hitoshi Abe, Sendai and Los Angeles
Cameron Sinclair, Architecture for Humanity, San Francisco
Yutaka Takiura AIA, T-Design Architecture, New York [interior architecture]
Yoshiharu Tsukamoto, Atelier Bow Wow, Tokyo
Ryo Yamazaki, Studio L, Kyoto [landscape architecture]
Mark Dytham and Astrid Klein, KDa and PechaKucha Tokyo
Special recognition should also we given to our Board Member, Toshiko Mori, who has provided careful oversight of our current strategy.

As of today, March 28th, we will have a team presence in Sendai. We are honored to welcome Tohru Horiguchi as our design fellow & program representative. He is an Assistant Professor at Tohoku University in Sendai and will be help us liaise with existing design groups and community organizations. Atelier Hitoshi Abe has kindly offered us space and this will serve as our local base for the next 6 to 9 months. We will also have a design fellow in Tokyo within the offices of Klein Dytham architecture (KDa).

As we refine our plans we are making sure we dovetail with the Japanese national government initiatives, while responding to the needs of local government and community groups in Sendai”

Architecture for Humanities full plan can be found here.