-
Every weekend for as long
as I can remember,
-
my father would get up on a Saturday,
-
put on a worn sweatshirt
-
and he'd scrape away the squeaky
old wheel of a house that we lived in.
-
I wouldn't even call it restoration.
-
It was a ritual --
-
catharsis.
-
He would spend all year scraping paint
-
with this old heat gun
and a Spackle knife,
-
and then he would repaint where he scraped
-
only to begin again the following year,
-
scraping and re-scraping,
-
painting and repainting.
-
The work of an old house
is never meant to be done.
-
The day my father turned 52
I got a phone call.
-
My mother was on the line
-
to tell me that doctors had found
a lump in his stomach --
-
terminal cancer she told me,
-
and he'd been given
only three weeks to live.
-
I immediately moved home
to Poughkeepsie, New York
-
to sit with my father on death watch,
-
not knowing what the next
days would bring us.
-
To keep myself distracted,
-
I rolled up my sleeves
-
and I went about finishing
what he could now no longer complete --
-
the restoration of our old home.
-
When that looming three-week
deadline came and then went --
-
he was still alive --
-
and at three months,
-
he joined me.
-
We gutted and repainted the interior,
-
at six months the old
windows we refinished
-
and at 18 months the rotted porch
was finally replaced.
-
And there was my father
standing with me outside,
-
admiring a day's work,
-
hair on his head,
-
fully in remission,
-
when he turned to me and he said,
-
"You know Michael,
-
this house saved my life."
-
So the following year I decided
to go to architecture school.
-
(Laughter)
-
But there I learned something
different about buildings.
-
Recognition seemed to come
-
to those who prioritized novel
and sculptural forms,
-
like ribbons, or ...
-
pickles?
-
(Laughter)
-
And I think this
is supposed to be a snail.
-
Something about this bothered me.
-
Why was it that the best architects --
-
the greatest architecture,
-
all beautiful and visionary
and innovative --
-
is also so rare,
-
and seems to serve to very few?
-
And more to the point,
-
with all of this creative talent,
-
what more could we do?
-
Just as I was about to start
my final exams,
-
I decided to take a break
from an all-nighter
-
and go to a lecture by Dr. Paul Farmer,
-
a leading health activist
for the global poor.
-
And I was surprised to hear a doctor
talking about architecture.
-
"Buildings are making
people sicker," he said.
-
And for the poorest in the world,
-
this is causing epidemic-level problems.
-
In this hospital in South Africa,
-
patients that came in
with say, a broken leg,
-
to wait in this unventilated hallway,
-
walked out with a multidrug-resistant
strand of tuberculosis.
-
Simple designs for infection control
had not been thought about
-
and people had died because of it.
-
"Where are the architects?" Paul said.
-
"If hospitals are making people sicker,
-
where are the architects and designers
-
to help us build and design hospitals
that allow us to heal?"
-
That following summer I was in the back
of a Land Rover with a few classmates,
-
bumping over the mountainous
hillside of Rwanda.
-
For the next year I'd be living in Butaro,
-
in this old guest house which was
a jail after the genocide.
-
And I was there to design and build
a new type of hospital
-
with Dr. Farmer and his team.
-
If hallways are making patients sicker,
-
what if we could design a hospital
that flips the hallways on the outside --
-
makes people walk in the exterior?
-
If mechanical systems rarely work,
-
what if we could design a hospital
-
that could breathe
through natural ventilation
-
and meanwhile reduce its
environmental footprint?
-
And what about the patients' experience?
-
Evidence shows
that a simple view of nature
-
can radically improve health outcomes,
-
so why couldn't we design a hospital
-
where every patient
had a window with a view?
-
Simple, site-specific designs can
make a hospital that heals.
-
Designing it is one thing,
-
getting it built we learned
is quite another.
-
We worked with Bruce Nizeye,
-
a brilliant engineer,
-
and he thought about
construction differently
-
than I had been taught in school.
-
When we had to excavate
this enormous hilltop
-
and a bulldozer was expensive
and hard to get to site,
-
Bruce suggested doing it by hand
-
using a method in Rwanda
called "Ubudehe,"
-
which means "community
works for the community."
-
Hundreds of people came
with shovels and hoes,
-
and we excavated that hill
-
in half the time and half
the cost of that bulldozer.
-
Instead of importing furniture,
-
Bruce started a guild.
-
And he brought in master carpenters
-
to train others in how to make
furniture by hand.
-
And on this job site,
-
15 years after the Rwandan genocide,
-
Bruce insisted that we bring on
labor from all backgrounds,
-
and that half of them be women.
-
Bruce was using the process
of building to heal,
-
not just for those who were sick
but for the entire community as a whole.
-
We call this the Locally-Fabricated
way of building, or "Lo-Fab,"
-
and it has four pillars:
-
hire locally,
-
source regionally,
-
train where you can,
-
and most importantly --
-
think about every design
decision as an opportunity
-
to invest in the dignity
of the places and where you serve.
-
Think of it like the local food movement
but for architecture.
-
And we're convinced
that this way of building
-
can be replicated across the world
-
and change the way that we talk about
and evaluate architecture.
-
Using the Lo-Fab way of building,
-
even aesthetic decisions can be
designed to impact people's lives.
-
In Butaro we chose to use
a local volcanic stone,
-
found in abundance within the area
-
but often considered a nuisance by farmers
-
and piled on the side of the road.
-
We worked with these masons
to cut these stones
-
and form them into
the walls of the hospital.
-
And when they began on this corner
-
and wrapped around the entire hospital,
-
they were so good at putting
these stones together
-
they asked us if they could take down
the original wall and rebuild it.
-
And you see what is possible.
-
It's beautiful.
-
And the beauty to me,
-
comes from the fact that I know
that hands cut these stones,
-
and they formed them into this thick wall
-
made only in this place
with rocks from this soil.
-
When you go outside today
and you look at your built world,
-
ask not only what is
the environmental footprint --
-
an important question --
-
but what if we also asked,
-
what is the human handprint
of those who made it?
-
We started a new practice
based around these questions
-
and we tested it around the world.
-
Like in Haiti,
-
where we asked if a new hospital
could help end the epidemic of cholera.
-
In this 100-bed hospital,
-
we designed a simple strategy
-
to clean contaminated medical waste
before it enters the water table,
-
and our partners at Les Centres GHESKIO
are already saving lives because of it.
-
Or Malawi,
-
we asked if a birthing center
-
could radically reduce maternal
and infant mortality.
-
Malawi has one of the highest rates
of maternal and infant death in the world.
-
Using a simple strategy
to be replicated nationally,
-
we designed a birthing center
-
that would attract women
and their attendants
-
to come to the hospital earlier
and therefore have safer births.
-
Or in the Congo,
-
where we asked if an educational center
-
could also be used to protect
endangered wildlife.
-
Poaching for ivory and bushmeat
-
is leading to global epidemic,
disease transfer and war.
-
In one of the hardest
to reach places in the world,
-
we used the mud and the dirt
and the wood around us
-
to construct a center
-
that would show us ways to protect
and conserve our rich biodiversity.
-
Even here in the US,
-
we were asked to rethink
-
the largest university for the deaf
and hard of hearing in the world.
-
The deaf community,
-
through sign language,
-
shows us the power
of visual communication.
-
We designed a campus
-
that would awaken the ways
in which we as humans all communicate,
-
both verbally and nonverbally.
-
And even in Poughkeepsie,
-
my hometown,
-
we thought about old
industrial infrastructure.
-
We wondered,
-
could we use arts and culture
and design to revitalize this city
-
and other rustbelt cities
across our nation,
-
and turn them into centers
for innovation and growth?
-
In each of these projects
we asked a simple question:
-
what more can architecture do?
-
And by asking that question,
-
we were forced to consider
how we could create jobs,
-
how we could source regionally
-
and how we could invest in the dignity
of the communities in which we serve.
-
I have learned that architecture can be
a transformative engine for change.
-
About a year ago I read an article
-
about a tireless and intrepid
civil rights leader
-
named Bryan Stevenson.
-
(Applause)
-
And Bryan had a bold architectural vision.
-
He and his team had been documenting
-
the over 4,000 lynchings
of African Americans
-
that have happened in the American South.
-
And they had a plan to mark every
county where these lynchings occured
-
and build a national memorial
to the victims of lynching
-
in Montgomery, Alabama.
-
Countries like Germany and South Africa,
-
and of course Rwanda,
-
have found it necessary to build memorials
-
to reflect on the atrocities of their past
-
in order to heal their national psyche.
-
We have yet to do this
in the United States.
-
So I sent a cold email
to info@equaljusticeintiative.org.
-
"Dear Bryan," it said,
-
"I think your building project
-
is maybe the most important
project we could do in America
-
and [could] change the way
we think about racial injustice.
-
By any chance,
-
do you know who will design it?"
-
(Laughter)
-
Surprisingly --
-
shockingly --
-
Bryan got right back to me
-
and invited me down to meet
with his team and talk to them.
-
Needless to say,
I cancelled all my meetings
-
and I jumped on a plane
to Mongomery, Alabama.
-
And when I got there,
-
Bryan and his team picked me up
-
and we walked around the city.
-
And I took the time to point out
-
the many markers that have
been placed all over the city
-
to the history of the confederacy,
-
and very few that mark
the history of slavery.
-
And then he walked me to a hill.
-
And it overlooked the whole city.
-
And he pointed out the river
and the train tracks
-
where the largest domestic slave trading
port in America had once prospered.
-
And then to the Capitol rotunda,
-
where George Wallace
had stood on its steps
-
and proclaimed, "segregation forever."
-
And then to the very hill below us.
-
And he said, "Here we will
build a new memorial
-
that will change the identity
of this city and of this nation."
-
Our two teams have worked
together over the last year
-
to design this memorial.
-
The memorial will take us on a journey
-
through a classical, almost
familiar building type,
-
like the Parthenon
or the Colonnade at the Vatican.
-
But as we enter,
-
the ground drops below us
-
and our perception shifts,
-
where we realize that these columns
evoke the lynchings
-
which happened in the public square.
-
And as we continue,
-
we begin to understand the vast number
of those who have yet to be put to rest
-
and their names will be engraved
on the markers that hang above us.
-
And just outside will be a field
of identical columns,
-
but these are temporary columns,
-
waiting in purgatory
-
to be placed in the very counties
where these lynchings occurred.
-
Over the next few years,
-
this site will bear witness
-
as each of these markers is claimed
-
and visibly placed in those counties.
-
Our nation will begin to heal
from over a century of silence.
-
And when we think
about how it should be built,
-
we were reminded of Ubudehe,
-
the building process
we learned about in Rwanda.
-
We wondered if could
fill those very columns
-
with the soil from the sites
of where these killings occurred.
-
Brian and his team have begun
collecting that soil
-
and preserving it in individual jars
-
with family members, community
leaders and descendants.
-
The act of collecting soil itself
-
has lead to a type of spiritual healing.
-
It's an act of restorative justice.
-
As one EJI team member noted
-
in the collection of soil from where
Will McBride was lynched,
-
"If Will McBride left one drop of sweat,
-
one drop of blood,
-
one hair follicle --
-
I pray that I dug it up
-
and that his whole
body would be at peace."
-
We plan to break ground
on this memorial later this year
-
and it will be a place to finally speak
of the unspeakable acts
-
that have scarred this nation.
-
(Applause)
-
When my father told me
that day that this house --
-
our house --
-
had saved his life,
-
what I didn't know
-
was that he was referring to a much
deeper relationship
-
between architecture and ourselves.
-
Buildings are not simply
expressive sculptures.
-
They make visible our personal and our
collective aspirations as a society.
-
Great architecture can give us hope.
-
Great architecture can heal.
-
Thank you very much.
-
(Applause)
Raissa Mendes
Line 13:39 - 13:42
Brian and his team have begun
collecting that soil
The name is "Bryan".