Core77 Design Award 2011: Safe Agua, Notable for Design for Social Impact
Posted in: Core77 Design Awards
Over the next months we will be highlighting award-winning projects and ideas from this year’s Core77 Design Awards! For full details on the project, jury commenting and more information about the awards program, go to Core77DesignAwards.com
Designer: Designmatters – Art Center College of Design
Location: Pasadena, California, USA
Category: Design for Social Impact
Award: Professional Notable
Safe Agua
Safe Agua addresses quotidian challenges of safe water access for families living in Latin American slum developments. Driven by field research in Santiago, Chile, the team designed innovative water solutions, implemented by the NGO client: 10 Mila community laundries, Relava kitchen workstations, and 1000s of Ducha Halo portable showers.
The practical challenge for Safe Agua was to design concrete solutions for utilizing, transporting and storing water for families living in the slum or campamento without running water. These families receive water from a municipal truck one to three times per week. When the water is delivered, they store it in barrels outside their homes. Women must hand carry water for each daily task. Bathing becomes an arduous chore rather than a relief; laundry can take a full day of physical labor; and a glass of water can make a child sick. These perpetual burdens consume people’s time, diminish their quality of life, impact health and dignity, and become an obstacle to earning a stable income and overcoming poverty.
The deep personal, empathetic connections that our team forged during field research with families living in these conditions ignited our creativity and our passion to work with the families to create Safe Agua projects with maximal impact, with minimal resources.
Core77: What’s the latest news or development with your project?
In Fall 2011, SAFE AGUA Peru will build upon the investigations and experiences of the 2009 SAFE AGUA Chile project, while working with a new community on the outskirts of Lima, Peru. SAFE AGUA Peru is a trans-disciplinary studio for social innovation: a collaboration between Designmatters and the Innovation Center of Latin American NGO Un Techo Para mi Pais (“A Roof for My Country”), with the aim to help families in Peru’s slums overcome water poverty. The project will begin with a ten-day intensive field research trip, where the team will work directly with families without access to basic services, including running water and sanitation, in Cerro Verde, a 30,000-person slum perched on the hillsides surrounding Lima, Peru. Driven by field research, teams will design innovative water solutions and create full-scale working prototypes, to be tested by the community, and implemented by Un Techo’s Innovation Center. SAFE AGUA Peru is the recipient of a 2011 NCIIA Sustainable Vision Grant.
SAFE AGUA will be featured in the Smithsonian’s Cooper-Hewitt, National Design Museum’s “Design with the Other 90%: Cities” Exhibition at the United Nations (October 15, 2011-January 9, 2012)
What is 1 quick anecdote about your project?
One of the most significant moments for many of us in the project was meeting Rosita Reyes, the remarkable community leader of Campamento San Jose in the outskirts of Santiago, Chile, where we worked with the Innovation team of Un Techo Para Mi Pais. Rosita’s vision, stamina and innate sense of leadership in the face of tremendous complexity was so very inspiring. I remember when we said good-bye after the end of our first field immersion. We were talking about the aspirations we both had for the project and the collaboration. I remember her telling me: This is a community with dreams. That statement, suddenly crystallized so much of what was at stake in terms of the design process that would follow. – Mariana Amatullo, Designmatters CoFounder, VP, Designmatters at Art Center College of Design
SAFE AGUA exhibit at the Inter-American Development Bank in Washington, DC, June 2011 (Client: Innovation Center, Un Techo Para mi País/Design Team Leaders:Penny Herscovitch & Dan Gottlieb, Padlab)
On the last day of our field research trip, Rosita, the community leader of Campamento San Jose, shared with our team the impact that we had made with each of the families in the campamento. What she shared was extraordinary—that the students’ research interviews and connection with each family had a therapeutic and “milagroso” (miraculous) effect, when our students truly listened to people’s aspirations and challenges, and deeply valued what each family expressed. These personal connections were essential to our design process of co-creation—a shift from designing for people to designing with people. – Penny Herscovitch, Faculty Environmental Design, Art Center College of Design / Principal, Padlab
Read on for full details on the project and jury comments.
SAFE AGUA exhibit at the Inter-American Development Bank in Washington, DC, June 2011 (Client: Innovation Center, Un Techo Para mi País/Design Team Leaders:Penny Herscovitch & Dan Gottlieb, Padlab)
Post a Comment