Human-Centered Design
In 1964, President Johnson pushed through the Economic Opportunity Act, the centerpiece of the War on Poverty. Governor Pat Brown appointed Dr. Paul O’Rourke, a longtime advocate for improving farmworker living conditions, as director of the new agency, C
- PDF / 842,066 Bytes
- 30 Pages / 521.95 x 593.95 pts Page_size
- 96 Downloads / 213 Views
Human-Centered Design
The fight is never about grapes or lettuce. It is always about people.
—Cesar Chavez
In 1964, President Johnson pushed through the Economic Opportunity Act, the centerpiece of the War on Poverty. Governor Pat Brown appointed Dr. Paul O’Rourke, a longtime advocate for improving farmworker living conditions, as director of the new agency, California Office of Economic Opportunity. O’Rourke chose as its highest priority improving housing, health
S. Van der Ryn, Design for an Empathic World: Reconnecting People, Nature, and Self, DOI 10.5822/978-1-61091-505-2_2, © 2013 Sim Van der Ryn
17
18
|
Design for an Empathic World
care, and child care for migrant farm labor families in California’s Central Valley, where most of the US vegetable crops are grown. He retained my partner Sanford Hirshen and me to plan, design, and build facilities for migrant farmworker housing, health and child care in twenty-two rural counties. There were no building codes for farmworker housing. How could you write a code for families camping out under a bridge, sleeping in their cars, or living in an abandoned shack where a labor contractor stuffed as many workers as possible? Our assignment was not only to design and build the facilities, but also to find and secure the sites, which neither the counties nor the farmers were eager to provide. The industry needed tens of thousands of workers during the growing season and harvest times, but they didn’t want them living in their backyards. We searched for suitable building systems for both housing and separate health care and child care facilities. We also had to design infrastructure for each 100-home camp, including electricity, water, and sewer lines. We came up with a simple, straightforward system for the homes. We took two sheets of plywood, bonded them to a two-inch slab of Styrofoam, placed a two-byfour at either end, and we had a simple sturdy system for walls
Human-Centered Design
and roof. We didn’t know it at the time, but we had invented the first version of what are now known as SIP, or structurally integrated panels, and widely used in high-performance building projects. We provided each family with living and sleeping space, bath, and kitchen at a cost of less than $5 per square foot. Between 1964 and 1974, we designed and built thirty-three camps to shelter migrant farmworkers and their families in California. Sargent Shriver, President Kennedy’s brother-in-law and director of the nationwide OEO program, and Robert Kennedy both visited the camps with great interest. Farmworker leader Cesar Chavez was in favor of farmworkers developing their own communities, and we supported that effort. Yet, forty years later, in spite of these efforts and interest from high-profile political figures, the lack of suitable housing, health care, and child care for service workers remains a largely unresolved problem across the country. While advances have been made in some aspects of human-centered design, more significant changes in the field of architecture may be necessa
Data Loading...
