With names like Frank Ghery and Daniel Libeskind being dropped casually around the open-plan office, architecture has never been sexier.
So why would any young architect want to forsake the glamor of devising neoteric museum plans or erecting penthouse-capped apartment towers for clients as rich as God?
"One out of six people in the world lives in slums," explains architect Cameron Sinclair. "When I left college, I was frustrated. Most of the design we do is for the top two percent of the world." While others set their sights on outfitting Condé Nast cafeterias and Malibu mansions for elitist accolades, Sinclair decided to build a little good karma. "I would rather help shape policy than design a building."
And that's what he did. In 1999, the former CAD monkey started up Architecture for Humanity
(AFH), A penniless cell-phone-and-laptop operation whose first project was a competition to design transitional housing for victims in war-torn Kosovo. Sinclair expected his fellow disillusioned architects to participate, but he didn't anticipate receiving more than 200 entries from more than 30 different countries.
Future Projects
One of the winning designs was by indie architect Sean Godsell was on display at the Cooper-Hewitt Museum in New York City. FutureShack, the portable refugee housing is made from a repurposed shipping container, which means it can easily be hauled where it's needed. Plus it comes with a folding parasol roof, solar power and good looks, making it way sharper than a standard-issue Red Cross tent. Cost-efficient and easily transported, Godsell's design was chosen for its practicality and use value. In contemporary design, that's pretty avant-garde.
While most of AFH's ventures are international, Sinclair also takes on local projects. Besides planting trees with under-privileged kids in the Bronx and restoring a crumbling squat on New York City's Lower East Side now that the squatters' rights to ownership have kicked in, he's also chewing over a plan to transform voting booths into small businesses like flower shops and newsstands. "It's like urban acupuncture," says Sinclair. " You can do a small project that can create significant change within a community. We get excited about that."
Even big-name architects are starting to pay attention. A project with Canada's own design Don Quixote, Bruce Mau, is in the works. Suddenly, people with no homes and no money to finance one aren't such unlikely clients. Now that green is the new black in architectural design, it won't be long before Sinclair's name starts getting dropped at loft parties the world over. But Sinclair has fame all figured out too. "Most architects don't get known until their sixties," he figures, "so I have thirty years to screw around."
