LLBen's Reflection of Design & Looking Forward

Crossing the Stream in Fonds des Blancs - Photo: Lauren Metts

m Photo Lauren Metts

After our trip to Haiti, we decided that our initial design needed several alterations to become more successful. Not knowing how much the extreme topography affected the site as a whole, we had designed homes that would no longer be legitimate to build. Also, we needed to take into consideration the noise coming from the generator the people of this community would have access to and how to deafen it. Being a new and improved neighborhood, the design of the kitchen within the homes needed to be altered to uplift and strengthen the notion of a more technologically advanced society.

Several key issues that we saw the need to develop further after our visit are as follows:

1. The placement of homes within the site and the probable conditions needed to be thoroughly thought through after visiting the site.
2. The homes needed to have access to a road or path of some kind for (at least) the construction purposes, as well as vehicular access.
3. The relationship of public verses private spaces needed to be designed systematically to encourage outsiders to want to come to Fonds des Blancs, which included the size of the lot for each unit.
4. The porch and its placement within the floor plan was a key component in the home. We also learned that the porch should be treated as the most popular room within the dwelling, being the main space inhabited by the owner and his visitors. The idea of a back, more private porch needed to be considered in addition to the front, public porch attached to each unit.
5. Access and placement of the public spaces, water, a generator, the commercial program, and footbridge needed to be dealt with by thinking as a Haitian would (who would or would not have vehicular access).
6. The diverse categories of housing for different types of people coming into Fonds des Blancs also needed to be considered as we moved from the site plan to the individual units.

With all of our designs, we had to keep the idea of the next phase of design in mind, Phase III, which included the airstrip adjacent to our site at hand, and would be a possible place to expand our initial design.

 Photo: Lauren Metts

One of the homes found on our hike 

Team LLBen's Design proposal for Fonds-des-Blanc

As a studio we are designing a housing community in Fond-des-Blanc, Haiti. Last year a studio designed a secondary school in the same area, which is now being constructed and will be completed in September 2012. The community we are designing has a close connection to the school, as it will become the home of many current and future schoolteachers. Our clients, Jean and Joy Thomas, have a vision for this community to be an urban alternative, a place where people currently living in the city of Port-au-Prince and ex-patriates would be pleased to relocate.

 Our studio split up into teams to try to come up with the best solution for this project. We began with research and precedent studies. The first precedent study was focused on places that we love and what makes a place enjoyable to be in. The second precedent was focused on observing a community whose condition may be similar to ours in Fond-des-Blanc. We studied ways that these design projects were good, as well as, bad. Both precedent studies are post in earlier entries.

After these precedent studies we moved into the beginning phase of conceptual design and development. Our team tried to find the best design solution for this community while keeping in mind issues of site topography, trying to reasonably maximize occupancy, accessibility to the proposed footbridge and community pavilion, as well as various floor plans and lot sizes. The main concepts of our design proposal are:

1. Communal spaces: these include both small scale(near each pod of houses) and large scale(the community pavilion space)
2. Promenade: creating a walking space for pedestrians that is easily accessible to the main communal spaces as well as the main road
3. Encouraging social interaction between persons by orientation of unit porches and house placement
4. Minimizing roads while still accommodating for people who will be driving in the neighborhood

All of these designs were created prior to traveling to Haiti and visiting our site. After experiencing the culture of Haiti and better understanding the site, our team plans to develop these initial concepts into a fitting final design solution. 

Next steps

Sketch of the "Urban Alternative" site

Our team has honed in on several key issues that are necessary for a successful and fulfilling project.  Each issue will hopefully guide us to a total design.  Each issue was forged from different sources.  As a group, we seek to apply our knowledge gleaned from Jean and Joy Thomas, our observations of the Haitian people, and the work and insights of our fellow classmates.

Sketches completed throughout trip

It is imperative that we bend our designs to suit the Thomas’s desires.  Their insights are really the only insights we have into the nuances of Fond-de-Blanc.  Without them we would not be in Haiti.  They are also the leaders of that community.  What they see fit should be staunchly acknowledged.  The community of Fond-le-Blanc is already seen throughout Haiti as the destination.  It has successfully led a program to plant millions of trees where other regions have failed.  It has accommodated many earthquake refugees without interference.  It has been and will continue to lead Haiti so long as John and Joy are at the leadership helm.  While our design must satisfy our own exacting standards, it is perhaps more important that the design cater to our guide’s initiatives.

We saw how the Haitian community at Fond-de-Blanc lived through a visitor’s lens.  We cannot and will not claim to understand everything we saw.  And we only saw a portion of Fond-des-Blanc.  Learning and interpreting from the best of our observations is really the activity of paramount importance.  Everything we saw was important, but there is a hierarchy that we must ascertain as we sift through all the new and exciting sights.  “Should we consider safety, or running water more of a priority?” we may have asked before departing from America.  The answer is still up to contention but we should continue to challenge our preconceived notions against actual observations.  These observations will be the driver of a total design.

Home in Fond-des-Blancs

Our fellow classmates all made compelling arguments regarding their group’s designs.  Our group needs to learn from them.  Furthermore, our group should collaborate with the others in an effort to cut the fat and maintain the strengths.  When combined they will surely compose a mutual design much stronger than an individual effort.  Each group will surely attempt to incorporate their observations, and who knows, maybe they were looking at something else than we were.  Using one another will be of increasing benefit as we seek to pare down this project into one sleek venture.

We cannot wait to return to Fond-des-Blancs!