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Architecture that's built to heal

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    Every weekend for as long
    as I can remember,
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    my father would get up on a Saturday,
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    put on a worn sweatshirt
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    and he'd scrape away the squeaky
    old wheel of a house that we lived in.
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    I wouldn't even call it restoration.
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    It was a ritual --
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    catharsis.
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    He would spend all year scraping paint
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    with this old heat gun
    and a Spackle knife,
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    and then he would repaint where he scraped
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    only to begin again the following year,
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    scraping and re-scraping,
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    painting and repainting.
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    The work of an old house
    is never meant to be done.
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    The day my father turned 52
    I got a phone call.
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    My mother was on the line
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    to tell me that doctors had found
    a lump in his stomach --
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    terminal cancer she told me,
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    and he'd been given
    only three weeks to live.
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    I immediately moved home
    to Poughkeepsie, New York
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    to sit with my father on death watch,
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    not knowing what the next
    days would bring us.
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    To keep myself distracted,
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    I rolled up my sleeves
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    and I went about finishing
    what he could now no longer complete --
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    the restoration of our old home.
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    When that looming three-week
    deadline came and then went --
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    he was still alive --
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    and at three months,
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    he joined me.
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    We gutted and repainted the interior,
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    at six months the old
    windows we refinished
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    and at 18 months the rotted porch
    was finally replaced.
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    And there was my father
    standing with me outside,
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    admiring a day's work,
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    hair on his head,
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    fully in remission,
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    when he turned to me and he said,
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    "You know Michael,
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    this house saved my life."
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    So the following year I decided
    to go to architecture school.
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    (Laughter)
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    But there I learned something
    different about buildings.
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    Recognition seemed to come
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    to those who prioritized novel
    and sculptural forms,
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    like ribbons, or ...
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    pickles?
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    (Laughter)
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    And I think this
    is supposed to be a snail.
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    Something about this bothered me.
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    Why was it that the best architects --
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    the greatest architecture,
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    all beautiful and visionary
    and innovative --
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    is also so rare,
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    and seems to serve to very few?
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    And more to the point,
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    with all of this creative talent,
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    what more could we do?
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    Just as I was about to start
    my final exams,
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    I decided to take a break
    from an all-nighter
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    and go to a lecture by Dr. Paul Farmer,
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    a leading health activist
    for the global poor.
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    And I was surprised to hear a doctor
    talking about architecture.
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    "Buildings are making
    people sicker," he said.
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    And for the poorest in the world,
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    this is causing epidemic-level problems.
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    In this hospital in South Africa,
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    patients that came in
    with say, a broken leg,
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    to wait in this unventilated hallway,
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    walked out with a multidrug-resistant
    strand of tuberculosis.
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    Simple designs for infection control
    had not been thought about
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    and people had died because of it.
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    "Where are the architects?" Paul said.
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    "If hospitals are making people sicker,
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    where are the architects and designers
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    to help us build and design hospitals
    that allow us to heal?"
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    That following summer I was in the back
    of a Land Rover with a few classmates,
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    bumping over the mountainous
    hillside of Rwanda.
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    For the next year I'd be living in Butaro,
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    in this old guest house which was
    a jail after the genocide.
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    And I was there to design and build
    a new type of hospital
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    with Dr. Farmer and his team.
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    If hallways are making patients sicker,
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    what if we could design a hospital
    that flips the hallways on the outside --
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    makes people walk in the exterior?
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    If mechanical systems rarely work,
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    what if we could design a hospital
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    that could breathe
    through natural ventilation
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    and meanwhile reduce its
    environmental footprint?
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    And what about the patients' experience?
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    Evidence shows
    that a simple view of nature
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    can radically improve health outcomes,
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    so why couldn't we design a hospital
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    where every patient
    had a window with a view?
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    Simple, site-specific designs can
    make a hospital that heals.
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    Designing it is one thing,
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    getting it built we learned
    is quite another.
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    We worked with Bruce Nizeye,
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    a brilliant engineer,
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    and he thought about
    construction differently
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    than I had been taught in school.
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    When we had to excavate
    this enormous hilltop
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    and a bulldozer was expensive
    and hard to get to site,
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    Bruce suggested doing it by hand
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    using a method in Rwanda
    called "Ubudehe,"
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    which means "community
    works for the community."
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    Hundreds of people came
    with shovels and hoes,
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    and we excavated that hill
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    in half the time and half
    the cost of that bulldozer.
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    Instead of importing furniture,
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    Bruce started a guild.
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    And he brought in master carpenters
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    to train others in how to make
    furniture by hand.
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    And on this job site,
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    15 years after the Rwandan genocide,
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    Bruce insisted that we bring on
    labor from all backgrounds,
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    and that half of them be women.
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    Bruce was using the process
    of building to heal,
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    not just for those who were sick
    but for the entire community as a whole.
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    We call this the Locally-Fabricated
    way of building, or "Lo-Fab,"
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    and it has four pillars:
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    hire locally,
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    source regionally,
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    train where you can,
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    and most importantly --
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    think about every design
    decision as an opportunity
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    to invest in the dignity
    of the places and where you serve.
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    Think of it like the local food movement
    but for architecture.
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    And we're convinced
    that this way of building
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    can be replicated across the world
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    and change the way that we talk about
    and evaluate architecture.
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    Using the Lo-Fab way of building,
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    even aesthetic decisions can be
    designed to impact people's lives.
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    In Butaro we chose to use
    a local volcanic stone,
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    found in abundance within the area
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    but often considered a nuisance by farmers
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    and piled on the side of the road.
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    We worked with these masons
    to cut these stones
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    and form them into
    the walls of the hospital.
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    And when they began on this corner
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    and wrapped around the entire hospital,
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    they were so good at putting
    these stones together
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    they asked us if they could take down
    the original wall and rebuild it.
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    And you see what is possible.
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    It's beautiful.
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    And the beauty to me,
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    comes from the fact that I know
    that hands cut these stones,
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    and they formed them into this thick wall
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    made only in this place
    with rocks from this soil.
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    When you go outside today
    and you look at your built world,
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    ask not only what is
    the environmental footprint --
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    an important question --
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    but what if we also asked,
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    what is the human handprint
    of those who made it?
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    We started a new practice
    based around these questions
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    and we tested it around the world.
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    Like in Haiti,
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    where we asked if a new hospital
    could help end the epidemic of cholera.
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    In this 100-bed hospital,
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    we designed a simple strategy
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    to clean contaminated medical waste
    before it enters the water table,
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    and our partners at Les Centres GHESKIO
    are already saving lives because of it.
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    Or Malawi,
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    we asked if a birthing center
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    could radically reduce maternal
    and infant mortality.
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    Malawi has one of the highest rates
    of maternal and infant death in the world.
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    Using a simple strategy
    to be replicated nationally,
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    we designed a birthing center
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    that would attract women
    and their attendants
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    to come to the hospital earlier
    and therefore have safer births.
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    Or in the Congo,
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    where we asked if an educational center
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    could also be used to protect
    endangered wildlife.
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    Poaching for ivory and bushmeat
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    is leading to global epidemic,
    disease transfer and war.
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    In one of the hardest
    to reach places in the world,
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    we used the mud and the dirt
    and the wood around us
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    to construct a center
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    that would show us ways to protect
    and conserve our rich biodiversity.
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    Even here in the US,
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    we were asked to rethink
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    the largest university for the deaf
    and hard of hearing in the world.
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    The deaf community,
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    through sign language,
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    shows us the power
    of visual communication.
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    We designed a campus
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    that would awaken the ways
    in which we as humans all communicate,
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    both verbally and nonverbally.
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    And even in Poughkeepsie,
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    my hometown,
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    we thought about old
    industrial infrastructure.
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    We wondered,
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    could we use arts and culture
    and design to revitalize this city
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    and other rustbelt cities
    across our nation,
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    and turn them into centers
    for innovation and growth?
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    In each of these projects
    we asked a simple question:
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    what more can architecture do?
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    And by asking that question,
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    we were forced to consider
    how we could create jobs,
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    how we could source regionally
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    and how we could invest in the dignity
    of the communities in which we serve.
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    I have learned that architecture can be
    a transformative engine for change.
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    About a year ago I read an article
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    about a tireless and intrepid
    civil rights leader
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    named Bryan Stevenson.
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    (Applause)
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    And Bryan had a bold architectural vision.
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    He and his team had been documenting
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    the over 4,000 lynchings
    of African Americans
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    that have happened in the American South.
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    And they had a plan to mark every
    county where these lynchings occured
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    and build a national memorial
    to the victims of lynching
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    in Montgomery, Alabama.
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    Countries like Germany and South Africa,
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    and of course Rwanda,
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    have found it necessary to build memorials
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    to reflect on the atrocities of their past
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    in order to heal their national psyche.
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    We have yet to do this
    in the United States.
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    So I sent a cold email
    to info@equaljusticeintiative.org.
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    "Dear Bryan," it said,
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    "I think your building project
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    is maybe the most important
    project we could do in America
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    and [could] change the way
    we think about racial injustice.
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    By any chance,
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    do you know who will design it?"
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    (Laughter)
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    Surprisingly --
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    shockingly --
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    Bryan got right back to me
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    and invited me down to meet
    with his team and talk to them.
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    Needless to say,
    I cancelled all my meetings
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    and I jumped on a plane
    to Mongomery, Alabama.
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    And when I got there,
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    Bryan and his team picked me up
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    and we walked around the city.
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    And I took the time to point out
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    the many markers that have
    been placed all over the city
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    to the history of the confederacy,
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    and very few that mark
    the history of slavery.
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    And then he walked me to a hill.
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    And it overlooked the whole city.
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    And he pointed out the river
    and the train tracks
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    where the largest domestic slave trading
    port in America had once prospered.
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    And then to the Capitol rotunda,
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    where George Wallace
    had stood on its steps
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    and proclaimed, "segregation forever."
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    And then to the very hill below us.
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    And he said, "Here we will
    build a new memorial
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    that will change the identity
    of this city and of this nation."
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    Our two teams have worked
    together over the last year
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    to design this memorial.
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    The memorial will take us on a journey
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    through a classical, almost
    familiar building type,
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    like the Parthenon
    or the Colonnade at the Vatican.
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    But as we enter,
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    the ground drops below us
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    and our perception shifts,
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    where we realize that these columns
    evoke the lynchings
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    which happened in the public square.
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    And as we continue,
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    we begin to understand the vast number
    of those who have yet to be put to rest
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    and their names will be engraved
    on the markers that hang above us.
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    And just outside will be a field
    of identical columns,
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    but these are temporary columns,
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    waiting in purgatory
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    to be placed in the very counties
    where these lynchings occurred.
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    Over the next few years,
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    this site will bear witness
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    as each of these markers is claimed
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    and visibly placed in those counties.
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    Our nation will begin to heal
    from over a century of silence.
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    And when we think
    about how it should be built,
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    we were reminded of Ubudehe,
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    the building process
    we learned about in Rwanda.
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    We wondered if could
    fill those very columns
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    with the soil from the sites
    of where these killings occurred.
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    Brian and his team have begun
    collecting that soil
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    and preserving it in individual jars
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    with family members, community
    leaders and descendants.
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    The act of collecting soil itself
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    has lead to a type of spiritual healing.
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    It's an act of restorative justice.
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    As one EJI team member noted
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    in the collection of soil from where
    Will McBride was lynched,
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    "If Will McBride left one drop of sweat,
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    one drop of blood,
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    one hair follicle --
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    I pray that I dug it up
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    and that his whole
    body would be at peace."
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    We plan to break ground
    on this memorial later this year
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    and it will be a place to finally speak
    of the unspeakable acts
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    that have scarred this nation.
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    (Applause)
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    When my father told me
    that day that this house --
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    our house --
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    had saved his life,
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    what I didn't know
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    was that he was referring to a much
    deeper relationship
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    between architecture and ourselves.
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    Buildings are not simply
    expressive sculptures.
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    They make visible our personal and our
    collective aspirations as a society.
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    Great architecture can give us hope.
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    Great architecture can heal.
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    Thank you very much.
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    (Applause)
Title:
Architecture that's built to heal
Speaker:
Michael Murphy
Description:

more » « less
Video Language:
English
Team:
closed TED
Project:
TEDTalks
Duration:
15:38
  • Line 13:39 - 13:42
    Brian and his team have begun
    collecting that soil

    The name is "Bryan".

English subtitles

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