Jesse Han Receives Honorable Mention in Image of Research Competition
Han has also just returned from presenting the work at the Structures for Inclusion Conference in Portland, Oregon. Dearborn and Han are working together on the paper that will be published by Design Corps and the Center for Public Interest Design in the conference proceedings and are looking for other venues to publish this work.
The original image was taken from a design-build project in Arusha, Tanzania. Jesse, along with 20 other students, partnered with a local orphanage, Neema Village, to design and build a permanent home where unadoptable children can grow up with a family until adulthood. The project was a successful case study of what architecture can do when it considers the public’s interest from the beginning, throughout construction, and to occupancy. When designing, they considered the vernacular architecture along with the desires of the orphanage and learned building techniques from local craftspeople. The home is almost completely furnished and ready to house up to 12 children and a host family. Public interest design is a relatively new field within architecture that engages designers to use their skills to improve environments of underserved communities. Literature emerged in the form of websites, guidebooks, project analyses, and critical reflection, providing specific recommendations for practice and documenting case studies and methodologies. This paper presents the results of a comprehensive review of this literature to evaluate the breadth of existing resources for public interest design and will explore how effectively the resources inform the public and train the next generation of public interest designers.