I was struck recently when I went on BBC.com's news page when I saw that the South African government and I am proud to say, host of 2010s World Cup and World Forum on how football can help to alleviate racism and xenophia, had decided not to offer one of the foremost respected advocates for peace, the Dalai Lama, a visa to attend the Forum. I mean the best of the world peace proponents were supposed to be there, Archbishop Desmond Tutu, Nelson Mandela (organized by his grandson), the former president of Finland Martti Ahtisaari and Queen Rania of Jordan (who I must say I completely admire, a beautiful strong willed woman). I mean what were they thinking. Representatives of the Chinese government had already made it clear that allowing the Dalai Lama to come would hurt relationship with South Africa but the South African government was in complete denial saying that the Chinese influence had nothing to do with the decision talking about the focus would switch from South Africa to Tibet. What?!I love South Africa, I have visited there several times, and this is a classic case of African governance and how due to the need to do business (or whatever happens between governments in closed door--for our own protection of cause), makes some decisions that may be fine for the short term have long and difficult consequences. Can anyone say colonization, yes I said it the C word. A contemporary country with fantastic contemporary cities like Pretoria doing very well but somehow can not reconcile the things that may not have tangible effects on the society with its own history and the difficulties that brought it to where it is now. The question then becomes: what does this have to do with architecture. Well... the face value answer is.. nothing, nothing at all.
But the more subtle similarity is this: architecture seeks to deny itself the foundation of its societal impact. Like everything else it borders the line between commodity and human right. There are architects and builder because there is a market for it, everybody needs a place to live that will not end up killing them. Let us focus on sustainable architecture and the current push in more North America, Europe and all over the world to move towards design and implementing homes, offices, building that harness energy store it and even recycle it more efficiently. So how within that discussion there the idea of a "smart grid" has been included. Centralizing a idea that at least from my perspective seek independence. A lesson that is being learn through the mistakes of the current inefficient grid giving the control of energy resources to private entities and governments.
These same governments and entities, are directly given influence over our everyday. So if the Chinese government says no to the Dalai Lama, then the South African government says no. If the government of Ghana decides to sell power to its neighbors while there are rolling power outages in our cities then you and I, my aunts, uncles and brothers, that do not live in certain parts of the city, live with rationed power. At the end of the day, there has to be a new idea for the contemporary African city to move us for the post colonial, constantly on the cusp, to thriving citizens. GDPs are fantastic, and they can be measured but we must believe that the quality of life of the citizenry can be a better indicator of development in contemporary African cities. Lets not forget that numbers and model can be shifted. And since architects and builders are part of that development, because we can measure infustracture, homes, business: we can also enable the citizenry.
Even the comments on this story... seem to miss the idea, but to each his own thoughts. A lot to take in most definitely... but leave a comment.
http://www.treehugger.com/files/2008/07/permanent-camping.php
image from Treehugger
