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Marina Nikolova

To construct buildings of aesthetic value, to meet the needs of the community, not to shake the aesthetics of local residents who are also engaged in project implementation is one of the ideas of architects and designers who took part in the second conference in Athens Ethics/Aesthetics, which was held at the Benaki Museum and was organized by Against All Odds Project.

The conference included an exhibition of artists who are interested in the connection between activism, society, aesthetics, identity, and the ethics of occupation. The slogan on the web page of the project is the memorable phrase of Albert Einstein: "We can’t solve problems by using the same kind of thinking we used when we created them." And thus the ball of stories of designers, architects and artists, who spoke at the conference and talked about the creative strategies they used to realize their projects, about fundraising and about the purpose that they want to achieve begins to unravel.

"Every morning my cell phone sends me news of the disasters that have happened on the planet," says the inspirer of the project Architecture for Humanity Cameron Sinclair from the USA. Currently, the architects involved in the network are designing buildings, schools, hospitals in areas around the world that are affected by natural disasters or hit by social problems. He told that he was in a small village in Africa during one of his expeditions where the floor of the building, which was used as maternity hospital, was covered with mud and the conditions as a whole were not hygienic. Instead of starting the process of fundraising from the top (i.e. government funding programs, nonprofit organizations, contractors, etc.), he and his team toured the community and asked the men, showing them pictures of the hospital, if they wanted their sister, wife or mother to give birth in such a place. They managed to quickly raise the funds, and for a few weeks made an appropriate building, using local materials and the labour of the residents. The idea of ​​Cameron Sinclair is not only to make a good project, but to implement it rapidly, using materials available in the area and cover the most urgent needs of communities hit by natural disasters. One of the important elements in the work of the architects is to immerse in the reality of the troubled people so as to understand their needs and local aesthetics.

The key words in the speech of the founder of the project Architecture for Humanity are "urban acupuncture" and "acupuncture points" which is quite interesting as a concept of architecture in favour of society. What does it mean? Cameron gives an example of a run-down neighbourhood with high crime. What should be done is to find the place where most crimes happen and to build there a public building as a hospital, school or police station. According to the data presented, this space is gained for the benefit of society again, but the plan to make the danger zone a habitable and safe place for living again does not end there. His idea is to connect several such "acupuncture points" in a neighbourhood so as to work together and to alert one another in case of emergency. This theory is derived as a result of an actually implemented project and just in a year in the neighbourhood where he applied this idea to gain back space for the benefit of society through construction of community buildings there has been registered a 22% decline in homicides, 20% reduction in crime and 200 % increase in the feeling of safety among residents.

The formula of success for Cameron is to provide 24 hours technical support, to engage local communities with the projects and local professionals to carry it out. So, the credo of the team is: "Follow your heart, break the rules and build!" And finally, the most interesting news is that that 90% of the fundraising is made on the Internet and over 50% of the investors are people under 24 years old.
 
The designer John Patterson from the company Public Architecture follows the same path and his motto is to unite the designers from around the world to change the world. His most famous project is "1%" as the basic idea is designers to give one percent of their time each day for one charitable purpose. According to the interesting calculations presented by Paterson, about one million designers are working in the USA, 1% of a eight-hour working day is 4.8 minutes, there are 15 million non-governmental organizations, and if each designer is working five minutes a day to help any organization to advertise its activities that equals the work of about 14 000 designers, working on an eight-hour day all year round in favour of society. There is a platform for quick meetings between designers and non-governmental organizations on the website of the organization that enables them to share ideas and cooperate.

The organizer Lina Stergiou and Zoe Kazazaki from the Ministry of Culture and Tel Hanningan from the U.S. Embassy in Athens spoke at the opening of the Ethics/Aesthetics conference too.