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0:16
Hello. And good afternoon. Welcome everyone. My name is Rachel Weber. And I'm the chair of the Department of Urban Planning and Design at the GSD. And it is my honor to open this workshop, Urban Design as a Development Strategy, the Rwanda Institute for Conservation Agriculture Campus by MASS Design, convened as part of our celebration of the Veronica Rudge Green Prize in Urban Design. We have live captioning available. For those who are joining us virtually,
0:48
you'll see the Closed Captioning icon. And for those in person can use the QR code here on the screen. The Green Prize celebrates projects that have a potentially-- that have positively transformed cities and public spaces through thoughtful and innovative urban design. Beyond recognizing exemplary work, the prize also offers an opportunity to reflect on the broader aims and challenges that shape this field. Today's workshop applies that spirit of inquiry
1:21
to the Rwanda Institute for Conservation Agriculture, RICA, in Bugesera, Rwanda. RICA invites us to reconsider how design can structure not only physical form but also systems of agricultural and cultural production, local capacity building and entrepreneurship, and environmental protection and biodiversity in a rapidly urbanizing country like Rwanda. We hope that this workshop fosters dialogue across disciplines and geographies, deepening our shared understanding of how
1:55
design mediates between past and future, tradition and innovation. So over the next few hours, we'll explore the campus from multiple vantage points with MASS designers, GSD faculty, and with our students. Workshop A will situate RICA within the Green Prize lineage and the evolving thinking about urban design at the GSD. And after a brief intermission, workshop B will turn an analytical and developmental lens on RICA, examining how the project operates across scales,
2:30
from construction processes to social infrastructure, and how it might inform future collaborations between design and development, not just in East Africa but globally. I want to thank Professor Joan Busquets the Green Prize jury chair, who organized this program. I want to thank our speakers, and moderators, and our students, and also Dan Borelli and his team, who set up the exhibition in the Druker Gallery, and who, along with, Joan will provide a tour of the exhibit later today.
3:07
So please stick around for that tour and also to, at the end of this event, to raise a glass and toast and congratulate our recipients and participants. So please join me in welcoming Priyamvada Gannavarapu, who will introduce our first session.
3:30
Thank you, Professor Weber. Good afternoon, everyone. Thank you for joining us today. This is day two in a two-day series of celebration of the 15th Veronica Rudge Green Prize in Urban Design. Before we begin, I will briefly introduce myself. My name is Priyamvada Gannavarapu. I'm an architect, originally from India, and a recent graduate of the MAUD program here at the GSD. Over the past year, I've had the privilege of closely following the evolution of this year's Green
3:58
Prize from the very first jury deliberation through to today's exhibition and workshops in my role as a research assistant to Professor Busquets. It's truly an honor to introduce today's first session of workshop A. This workshop invites us to explore the nuances of the winning project of this year's Green Prize and how it advances the legacy of the Green Prize, which now spans nearly four decades. The first session, titled "Reinterpreting the Urbanistic
4:27
Achievements and Ambitions of the Rwanda Institute for Conservation Agriculture, RICA, Campus in Bugesera, Rwanda," will build on the compelling presentation that we heard last evening from Christian, Sierra, and Alan. In this presentation by Christian, we will hear in greater detail how the project was envisioned and realized, what the pivotal decisions were that informed the design process and RICA's place within the broader context of Rwanda's development and urban growth in Africa.
4:57
As a project, RICA asks us to rethink where urban design begins and ends. And it translates national ambition, ecological stewardship, and educational infrastructure into a single, coherent landscape. It's a campus, but it also operates a micro city and one that teaches us how architecture and landscape can also serve as instruments for development and agency. The session will also feature reflections from Dan Stubbergaard, an esteemed member of the Green Prize jury.
5:24
I will now briefly introduce our speakers. Christian Benimana, a senior principal and co-executive director at MASS Design Group, where he leads the Africa Design Studio. Christian is also founder of the African Design Center, an innovative field-based training program within MASS. His work supports designers across Africa in advancing equitable and regenerative development, helping the continent leapfrog unsustainable practices and emerge as a leader in resilient and context-driven design.
5:53
Dan Stubbergaard is a professor in practice of urban design at the GSD. As an architect trained at the Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts in Copenhagen, he is the founder of Cope, established in 2006. Drawing inspiration from Copenhagen's transformation into a model city for livability and sustainability, Dan champions the architect's responsibility to create resilient, long term solutions, and believes that architects have profound responsibility
6:17
in creating long-term solutions to improve the life of cities. We will hear Christian and Dan in conversation shortly after the presentation. So please join me in welcoming Christian for his presentation. [APPLAUSE]
6:38
Thank you very much. Good afternoon, everybody.
6:46
Sorry. I'm trying to get on my slides. I don't see them coming up. So I need help here.
6:58
While we wait.
7:02
I can give a little bit of hint about what I'm going to talk about so you're not surprised when I talk about it. When I was reading the caption of today's session, I was wondering how I would frame my presentation to prompt the conversation that we're going to have with Dan. And the presentation will be around context, providing the context in which this project was set up, so that when you hear other speakers from our office, you can understand how some of these design decisions
7:37
came about to address those challenges. Recently, I've developed a theory. It's not researched yet.
7:49
And I think that one of the dangers of design and creative disciplines is that, even when they are answering their own questions, they work. Like we can still produce good solutions even when we're addressing the wrong problems. And when we talk about the solutions in isolation, we forget that what we're trying to solve for in the first place wasn't either not worth it, or, at worst, was the wrong thing that we're trying to solve for. So for that, especially coming from the context where
8:26
I come from, I've developed this obsession of understanding the context. Where are we and what problems are we trying to solve before we dive into solutions? It has become a real obsession for me. And I think I want to ground the conversation today about that so that when we do actually evaluate some of the solutions we come about later on when we've gone through back and forth and in issues of conflict of egos, and budget cuts, and conversations about what's possible,
9:01
what's not possible, then we are conscious about where our success resides and where our failures actually are. So that's what I'm going to talk about in my presentation. So there is this binary we've created in our minds and in our physical world around nature, and humans, and everything related to supporting our lives. And I think there's a lot of studies around how this binary is not good for us later on the environment. I'm not an expert in human life and wildlife conflict.
9:40
But it's apparent there's many conversations in many disciplines beyond design that talk about this. Cities are designed to push nature out. And nature we see it as something that we go to see whenever we want and then come back to our own life. And then we've also pushed our technological advances in ways that disconnects from basic principles of how nature works. We believe we're the superior race. We can engineer nature, and physics, and everything
10:17
and bend them to our own will for our own satisfaction, sometimes our own egos. And we've created processes that support our lives through this lens, through this belief about our superiority from nature, our improvement from nature. And then we're obsessed about making this natural ecosystem the source that feeds every need we have, whether basic or superficial. But as long as we need it, and we want it, and we can get it, we can go and get it.
10:55
We've created that that is acceptable, that that is OK. Our industries produce things to satisfy our ever-growing needs for survival but also for just, I don't know, live, and be happy, and chase that high, however we want to see fit. And economists, my friends have told me, that whenever there is a need, there's going to be a supply, that's apparently a law of economic that we cannot escape with. And as a result, the contrast between where we live, and what we do, and how we interact
11:41
with the world, the natural world we inhabited is growing more and more separate and very divided. And again, as I said, in many disciplines, we are questioning how devastating this is for ourselves, let alone the natural environment. This is a real, actual photo that is grounded in time in our country where the law not to encroach natural spaces was passed and enforced with effective, immediate--
12:28
what do you call this in English? Basically, it went into effect and they enforced it immediately without allowing any time to phase out and everything else. And therefore, it has created this line you can see that is very clear about the national park and the fields. This is the north end of Rwanda. It's below the volcanic rock, very fertile soil. If you taste Irish potatoes that come from this place, I promise you they'll blow your mind. But that was a decision that was made at national level
13:00
because it was no longer sustainable for our country to do.
13:07
And there is this idea that we hold that I just explained to you a couple of photos about how this relationship between urban cities and centers create this relationship with periurban areas, and natural environment, and what roles we're supposed to do with the growth of urban centers are expected, or, for some reason, we've accepted the idea that they will put pressures on the natural environment. For some reason, you operate as if that is a fact.
13:46
And therefore, we are often asked to reduce that pressure or to manage that pressure. And it made me question whether that is the right goal or not. And I think that's where my prompt when I started talking came about is when we are responding to reducing the pressure of urban growth environment, naturally, is that the right prompt? Should we actually respond to that? And we try to do that. Sometimes we don't. Actually, most of the time we don't.
14:16
And therefore, the result of the processes of design, and creation, and urban planning, and everything else result in entrenching problems you already have. And then we celebrate very little wins. So that's a set of problems that are a result of beliefs that we've created, comfort we've sought in the past, which we realized are no longer working. Now there are even more challenges, as I spoke about last night, especially in Africa, that rises from the population growth that--
14:57
the population growth dividends depend on building infrastructure and amenities that are going to allow that population to be productive where we're going to be building more than 50% of the floor area in the coming 50 years, which is much bigger than any other region. And this does not account for the current deficit. This is only projecting what is needed to add to accommodate the additional population. So if we were to even account for the current lack
15:31
to serve the current population, this number will even be bigger. And this study was done, I think, in 2017. And I can tell you eight years later now, I don't think we've done much towards progress in this construction. So this added challenge brings a sense of urgency, but also a scale that really forces us to think differently whether we like it or not. And if we choose to think the same way we've been thinking for the past 50 or 100 years, then we should do so at our own peril
16:12
because, if you take stock of what we've done trying to address these issues in the past, we've seen that the disconnect in trying to implement some of these solutions, in many cases that do solve certain problems but create other problems down the road that further disconnect the communities that we work with because they are not rooted in context, they're not rooted in cultural, historical relevance. And they, in most cases, it threatens
16:44
to make our problems reflect in our built environment even worse. We've seen this in many instances, not just in Africa. It's just accentuated when we are in Africa. In addition to that, there is this idea that, as professionals, we should be the one coming up with solutions to solve for this problem. The challenge is, again, in Africa, because that's the context I'm speaking at, one, there's a shortage of those professionals in comparison to the need.
17:21
And that is the result of disinvestment in education or neglecting necessary investment in education that would have led to having enough professionals and now we don't. And there's also issues of brain drains where Africa's brightest, because of unfavorable conditions, they leave. They come to work in the US. They go to Europe. They go to other places where they can live better. In addition to that, most of us that are professionals and working on the continent
17:55
are a legacy of systems that teach teaches us or taught us to solve problems that are not ours. So we've never studied actually to solve problems that are very specific to us. And therefore, even when we do, it takes us a very long time to arrive there. It will take us to practice 10 or 15 years before we're able to practice in ways that at least try to address some of these issues before we are trusted with commissions that can allow us to demonstrate, like RICA does, that you can do
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things differently before our government takes us seriously that we can actually provide some of these solutions. This is another challenge. Africa, being home to more than 20% of the last remaining biodiversity on the planet. When you talk about climate change and the actions we have to do, again, I'm not an expert in this, but it's proven that conservation is not enough. Stopping or meeting zero carbon now would be a good thing to do, but it's not enough to reverse the trend.
19:05
To reverse the trend, we actually have to rebuild the biodiversity if we want to see a better future. So the goal is not to do good. The goal is to do much, much better than we've done in the past to reverse the trend, not to stop what we're doing. And I think this is very important when you speak about RICA later. You can understand how we're trying to push the project to demonstrate that business as usual is just not going to cut it. We really have to do better than that.
19:41
So very quickly, I'm not going to dwell on these issues, but the population growth is very accentuated in Rwanda when you talk about in Africa. I spoke about the density that is bringing the country now to more than 500 people per square kilometer. I don't know any comparison that will make sense in the US, but it's really, really high. And in this context, you try to understand that even when that problem is bad now, it's going to get even worse and fast because that population is going
20:15
to double in the next 25 years. So really, we shouldn't be solving for what the problem we have now. We should be solving for the problem that is coming in the next 25 years. This slide was presented yesterday. This is the transformation. This is the damage we can do in less than 50 years that we've seen. Right now, we need to make decisions that not only stop this trend, similar to what I was talking about in biodiversity regeneration, but because stopping this trend is not enough.
20:52
This is the farmland now that we were dealing with in the country in 2016 when RICA started, from where it was 30 years prior. So RICA was envisioned in this whole context and try to understand that if we start with the problems of stopping the challenges that we have now, issues of unproductive land, how does that work? How does that function in the context of this unproductive or destructive agriculture practices of the country that makes issues that project beyond agriculture?
21:35
They don't only degrade the soil, but to demonstrate how bad it is, it also shows in health where malaria prevalence in the country can be directly correlated to this land degradation. This is a map of what it was 30 years prior. And this is a map that you can transpose to the map that I just showed about the land turning from natural land to farmland. So what this shows us is that the phenomenon that we observe in agriculture changes and practices don't only affect that system.
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And therefore, the issue we are dealing with touches many systems that if we want to reverse the trend, we cannot do in just one single system. We actually have to address it across all systems.
22:32
RICA, where it was situated as a site, is a very interesting one. I think some of my colleagues will speak about it a bit later when they talk about the diversity that was concentrated on that land and was represented as an ideal location for testing some of these ideas. And when you look at it, you could project that diversity to a much larger area that is beyond the borders of Rwanda, which means that, again, if we're able to understand how these challenges can be addressed
23:13
on this particular site and in Rwanda, it has the potential to become a footprint to solve these problems for a much, much larger area beyond the country that has similar conditions and much of the same challenges and problems. And then we also spoke about the discoveries in science around big concepts like One Health that, yes, start to recognize that these ideas that transcend single systems that we have created are actually the right things to invest in.
23:49
So we are able to find the right solutions. This slide shows basically trying to transpose the current practices in the black on the other side of how we had accustomed to use our land for producing what we need and leave to what the ideal would look like on the right. And the goal is to make the move and the shift to go from the practice of business as usual to what the ideal conditions of production would make as start creating that balance because we have
24:31
to achieve two outcomes at the same time if we are to be successful. We have to be food secure. And we have to restore the biodiversity. If we are not able to get that as an outcome, then we would have failed. If we get one of them, then we cannot claim success in this instance. That was the fundamental understanding of what success means. And therefore, a lot of design decisions, the curriculum and everything else that went into RICA, was trying to achieve this as much as possible.
25:09
The issues of communities, especially in Africa, is that, again, when we talk about the custodians of the last remaining guardrails that will allow us an opportunity to kick start this process, we think they must government. We think they must, I don't know, landlords, or whoever it is. And we forget that some of these Indigenous communities are the custodians of some of these last remaining ecosystems. And they protect them. So it's often forgotten.
25:51
And I'm sure my colleagues will talk about our community engagement and why that was very important to get the buy in because a lot of production that is done is done in the name of these communities seeking what do we have set as the ideal development goals. And therefore, if a rural person in Rwanda is seeking to get rid of their earth constructed house and want to build the house with concrete and glass and everything else, it's because we've said that's what development looks like.
26:24
That's what progress looks like. So we have created a situation where the land and assets that they're custodians of is not valued as it should. But when we talk about it in terms of carbon credits, and carbon sinks, and everything else, then they have value but for institutions, but not for these communities. So there's also a disconnect from aspiration standpoint, from development standpoint, from financing standpoint. There are so many systems that are beyond what we can intervene
26:59
in that are skewed, that don't allow us to actually deploy these systems at scale the way that we should. And our practice in the built environment, as Alan mentioned last night, is inherently extractive and therefore every design decision we make needs to consider that we are going to extract materials. We are going to disturb the earth. We are going to make certain decisions that are destructive to this natural environment. And then we have to evaluate whether those decisions are
27:34
worth it or not. And then the systems in which we do that evaluation needs to change because finishing the project on time, on budget, and with quality is no longer enough for us to justify why we just spent $100 million in five years changing the face of this site that we found in the way that it was. So what it is that you have to justify the decisions to invest all of that. Business as usual is not going to cut it. Again, I'm going to speak very briefly about this
28:13
and my colleagues will expand on it when they get into more technical issues. But it's easy for us to go into global forums and say that we're going to cut our emissions by half. But what does that mean in real terms? What does it mean to cut half? This graph we did it to demonstrate that when you set that goal and then go back to the building and unpack it, then say, OK, if the goal is to reduce this by half, what decision do I have to make to reach that point,
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it becomes a much harder exercise, because then it means that the iron sheet that I can order and get them on my site tomorrow because our supply chains are built that way is not going to allow me to reach half. It does not matter how much I paint it green and say that it was green architecture. It's not going to cut it. So we have to really make radical, fundamental changes to meet some of these goals that sometimes we set in very broad terms but we don't really
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understand how they translate down or we don't commit to the necessary changes needed to make that happen. A lot of these decisions that we've made, I can tell you right now, they were very unpopular with our subcontractors, with our suppliers, with everybody. But I think there was a conviction that we had that this is what was necessary to be done for us to reach that half. And the alternatives are not many. In maybe other developed markets, you can say,
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I have five options to replace from the iron sheet that can allow me to juggle with these numbers. No. The materials are like two. It's thatch or fired clay tiles. That's it. And then you have to figure out how to work with that. And you have a project that needs to be delivered on time, on budget, and with quality, because those haven't gone anywhere. So we have to figure out how to balance that. And we are an architecture firm. We're not going to tell the Ministry of Trade and Investment
30:22
to call a factory to manufacture new materials so we can finish our project. They'll be like, well, that sounds nice but it's not going to work. So how do we commit to some of these issues and be able to advocate for them? It's very important for us.
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The reason why it's important is because right now, Africa, and majority of the Global South are urbanizing, and they're developing they're not waiting for us to figure this out. It is they're developing whether we do something about it or not. So in addition to not having the right solutions right now, there's also a train that is moving and is moving fast and people are acting. They're actively changing our environment. Unfortunately, the people consume
31:23
solutions that exist, that they can trust, that they can access. Africans are not going to all wake up one day and decide to hire architects to do their single project in house and everything else. It doesn't happen in the US or Europe. It doesn't happen anywhere else. It's not going to happen in Africa. So what projects like RICA for me represents is this idea that we need-- at least we never have the opportunity to invest in solutions that fundamentally challenges the status
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quo in ways that is very, very different with the hope that it's going to help reverse the trend of what's going on now and therefore give fertile ground for new solutions to become mainstream because if we're not able to do that, the development trends that I showed earlier are not going to stop. They will continue until these problems that I'm speaking about become worse or unbearable at a certain point in time. So when we're talking about unpacking the success of this project in my mind,
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I'm talking about how they challenged the status quo in ways that is fundamental that shows that we can actually build world class institutions without following the blueprint that everybody knows around. But many lessons from talking about biodiversity, talking about materials, talking about management of water on site, talking about energy, talking about agriculture, and growing food, and teaching, and training, all of those are meant to reverse the trend of urbanization
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where it's assumed that development must be inherently in contrast with conservation or regeneration of ecosystems. That is the goal because if you don't challenge that notion, it's not going to happen. And my last slide will be about this is that the people that need to understand this, yes, it's all of you who sit here, but all of you here are very intelligent people. It's very easy for you to understand these things. Right now, I'm preaching to the choir.
33:48
Nothing I said here, I saw someone say, no, that's not it. These are things that you know that we know. And continue talking about it amongst ourselves is great because we all can exchange and improve in our own fields and expertise about what we're doing. But really, the hard work is here because this is our target audience. This is our client. These are the people that if we want these changes to reach a certain scale, we have to know the vocabulary, the language,
34:18
the incentives to communicate why this is important. But we cannot have that conversation from our pedestal of intelligence, and professionals, and everything else without valuing what they actually have to-- one slide that I mentioned about the custodian of the estate that will actually help us kick start this process. So until we figure out how to value what they have and then show them why that is important to everything you are trying to do, I'm afraid that our community consultations
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and engagement, everything else will remain, again, on a technical sheet on our clipboards where we are checking off a list of things without really changing things. So one of the things I hope that RICA can do, which we haven't evaluated to see is that it start showing different trends.
35:15
It stops demonizing earth construction. It starts showing it as something that can be aspired to because if we don't change that mindset, then it's difficult for us to advocate for earth construction if it's still seen as a sign of underdevelopment, if it's still seen as a sign of being backwards, if it means it's a situation we have to leave so we can be considered developed nations. If we can't change that trend, I'm afraid nothing will change. I don't want to end on a negative point here,
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but I have to just be very blunt and say that our efforts have to aim to change that so that we have a chance at being successful. Thank you. [APPLAUSE]
36:29
That's a lot of questions. I have more than 20 questions for 19 minutes. And that's because I am very kind of or I would say the jury have been very inspired and really investigated this project in many different ways. So I just would like, again, to congratulate you with something which I think is a very significant approach and also something which I think we in our jury discussed a lot. What is the role of urban design and also the understanding that urban design is very relevant also
37:12
in the rural context or in the context of nature, as you very precisely spoke about in the introduction of your presentation. One thing I have been thinking a lot about, Christian, now I have you in front of the audience for 20 minutes, this is a very comprehensive project in terms of you can call it a synthesis or gesamtkunstwerk where you work with the design of furnitures, of specific architecture, landscape architecture, planning, regional planning on nearly on the scale
37:55
of putting a way forward for the continent of Africa. And I think this seamless exercise in scales and disciplines within our profession is something which is really distilling the project into something which is holistically strong. And it's very robust. And I'm just curious, what does it actually mean that you, as a group of architects, were able to maneuver in all these scales and disciplines at the same time? How important is that factor to the project? How important it is?
38:39
It was very important. But again, I need to paint the context a little bit because I think one aspect of RICA that maybe you haven't had a chance to discuss, which I'm going to introduce today, is that RICA was the opportunity. The project really is MASS, but the RICA was that one opportunity that allowed MASS to work that way because we had been in practice for close to a decade and working on a project where the opportunities to do all of these things were being open in small instances.
39:19
So, for instance, we work on a project, a hospital project. We say, how can we increase health outcomes? We work with the Ministry of Health, and the doctors, and health care professionals. We learn the science. We do all of these sort of things. We do it. And then we start saying, like, OK, can we also build it with earth construction? They're like, hey, no, no, no, no, no, no, that's not going to happen. We agree with the ventilation strategy, fighting nosocomial diseases.
39:51
That is relevant to our field. What you're talking about, go speak about it with the Minister of infrastructure. We need our hospital tomorrow. Please finish it. That's it. And then we work on a school in DRC. We're like, well, we can't get concrete here. Can we build with earth construction? They're like, well, that's logical. Let's figure out and then we do it. And then we say, can we make furniture here? They're like, oh no, no, no, no. That one is easy to transport so we can bring them in.
40:19
Don't do that. Then we work with another project. Then we try something else. They're like that we can do, but these are the things we can't. Then RICA comes. Then we're like, oh, can we do this? They're like, sure. OK, then we'll do it. Can we do that? They're like, uh, we're not sure. But if you convince us. Then OK, then do it. So we expanded like all of these areas of practices because we had the opportunity at that time. But really, the project-- that's why I'm saying the project
40:51
is the practice is because these are things that we are committed to that we want to see happen. And most of the time, we had to do them because the supply chains are around us did not offer us those solutions. If there was someone who was making this furniture and we could tell them, hey, we're going to subcontract you to make this furniture the way you like it and everything else, and they do it, we will not have taken on that scope and go do it ourselves.
41:20
We would have invited them to come and collaborate with us. We didn't want to be a furniture maker, but we were like, well, we don't like what we see around, but can we do it? And now the hope is that because we've done it and people like them, and there are also going to be more practices and manufacturers that make furniture the same way that we do it because there's value in doing it the way we did it. So I don't know if that answers your question. Yeah. But that puts-- I think this is--
41:51
I think this is maybe the value of trust. We spoke yesterday and then you explained that the first step in this project was actually your involvement in building a road to the site. And through being part of that building a road, you gained a little bit of trust. And then it was like the next step of, I would say, gaining more trust. And I personally think this creating trust is one of the most important competencies within our profession because this is really
42:25
where you create the space for allowing change as well. And I think also you can really feel it in the project that this engagement and also creating a certain trust among all involved parties is what really is the glue of the project. And I think another striking thing you explained was when the workers were having a lay down and you went yourself and started to create a kind of payment. And so I think this understanding that urban design is also about creating the kind of environment
43:08
where trust, education, involvement is actually the guiding principles of creating change or creating something new. And I'm just curious, Christof because when you presented some of your analysis in terms of the kind of urban development in Rwanda, would you be able to take these kind of systems, or the approach, or the process and bring that, for instance, further towards the periphery of an urban situation because is this like-- I think have you created a model which is actually
43:49
replicable to other situations but also other types of, I would say, urban landscapes? Yeah. I think it's possible. But again, there must be systems in those places that are committed to solving the right problems.
44:12
It's a process of creation that the practice I think we've really gotten at where we're able to come in and say, OK, you say you want to solve this problem. Can we validate that? That's the real problem we have before we even start investing in solving it. Are you willing for us we call it to make the problem bigger before you solve it. Do you want us to facilitate that because, as our practices, I'm sorry to say, we've evolved to respond to requests.
44:42
People write a document, a request for quotation, request for proposals, whatever that is. And we just take that and respond to it. And we want to demonstrate how we aligned with what they're asking for because we trust that they have run out of this analysis. Maybe in most places, that's true. But where we live, we find that it's not true. There's a consultant paid by the World Bank that came to Kigali, and sat in a cafe for one week, and then wrote that document,
45:12
and left it for the Ministry of Health. And they left. And the Ministry of Health gave it to us as architects. We need a hospital. And we look at it like this makes no sense. That doesn't solve any problem that I have, as [INAUDIBLE] but for that person makes sense. And if you read that document, in isolation, makes sense. So to answer your question, yes, we can take it anywhere really. But the starting point of it is defining what problem you're trying to solve.
45:42
And also like when I started presenting, I said the problem with that first process I was describing is that it's very difficult to when it's wrong. We actually can't, like when we have an RFQ, we respond to it. We are selected as an architect. We are asking to make like a beautiful and awesome building. We can do that. Many professionals are able to do that. But it's very difficult to know that we are actually not responding to the right problems.
46:14
Actually, I think because I gained a lot of learnings by understanding on many different levels. And then this is a very, I would call it a traditional question, but I need to address it anyhow. So for you, what is one of the most important learnings from this? And also is there certain things you would have done differently? Now, sitting here, shining, celebrating a big prize, because I've actually been looking for you can call it the hairs in the soup because it's nearly too perfect.
47:00
And I was just curious, is there an element where you would say, OK, next time I would for sure do this and this in a different way or a different process? Yeah. So I can-- yeah. I can start with the last question. There are things that I wish we could have done better or done differently. Yes, many, a lot of things. I mean, even to summarize what that is, I would say I think we were in the mindset of trying to get this done because we were blinded by the opportunity
47:38
to prove all of this, that it can be possible that we forgot to demonstrate the value of each and everything you're trying to do. Even talking about Chris having $60,000 in a suitcase of a car trying to pay people, like we could have charged, I don't know, banking fees or, I don't know, transaction fees or something. I don't know. I don't think we did. So I feel like, unfortunately, things we did not do well was to advocate enough of why us becoming a contractor,
48:13
becoming a furniture maker, becoming, I don't know, a material tester and everything else is trying to correct failures of systems that have to function better. It's not because we didn't want to. I'm sure we did. But we didn't have the time. We didn't have the bandwidth. We didn't have the structure in place to understand all those things. A lot of things were done out of necessity. And I can also sit here and be very honest that there are some compromises that we've done just because we
48:45
didn't have the time. There is a material that we really wanted to use here but the lead time to get it it will take us five years and we don't have five years to complete the project. We're like, OK, we're going to add a little bit of carbon on our project, but we move on to the next stage. Those compromises happen in a project of this scale and size. But it's part of the territory. It's a lesson we've noted somewhere. But I think that the--
49:18
the thing I would have done differently is talk about, or convince people, or make people actually behave-- when I say people, I mean, everyone we worked around from community to decision makers and policy makers about why everything that we're trying to do about this project should be a mirror in which we test other systems that were not supporting this process. I don't think we've done that enough. That maybe leads me to something I was thinking about last night.
49:51
And that is one thing we really discussed in the jury was the kind of importance of impact on, you can say, for normal people in what is urban projects generating of impact and relevance for people. And I think one thing if I would be able to do a field trip because we have all these beautiful images. And we have this beautiful architecture. It's very precise, I think. It is still also very simple. It's like nearly this kind of manual. And you could actually give this kind of manual
50:32
and then people would be able to build these typologies by themselves. So if I would be able to do a field trip, hopefully with you, I think what would be really interesting would be, is there kind of already spinoffs of this. Is the local people starting to build in this new vernacular architectural style or approach in the nearby villages? The farmers. Have they been inspired? Are they starting to build differently? So what is the ripples in the water? I would love to have this image and then
51:12
image of eight farm buildings and housing units which is inspired by this. I would like-- is it happening? Is it happening or is it still working really well on seeing this but it's not really creating an impact? I mean-- Do you understand the question? I understand the question. But what we have observed in the country where we work is that that to happen takes a long period of time. How long? 10 years. Yes. Perfect. Can we go in eight years' time? And then I would love to--
51:46
you have to come to see it first, and then you can come back in 10 years. The reason why I say that is because our first project, Butaro Hospital, used this volcanic rock from that region, the volcanoes, with this cladding system. Obviously has thermal mass capabilities but it's also done-- it's mortarless. It's like this, like a mosaic but really puzzle built like. And it was beautiful to look at but also performative and everything else. So that was in 2008.
52:22
And it's now, when you go around the country, especially in cities and urban centers, that you see people now are using that volcanic rock, of course, in different shapes and forms, but they're still using it using as a cladding material. And it's industries that process the stones, cut them, has been established. People have gotten small grants. And they can finance small and micro enterprises to process the material, get on the market at an affordable price because as when we're building it
52:55
at the hospital, we're going to get the stones and bring people to chip them on site and mount them. It's the best medicine could build seven stones a day. And now people just go on the market and buy them already cut on pallets and [INAUDIBLE] whatever. The masons can finish the job in two days. So for supply chain systems to adapt to that change, it takes a lot of time. And that's why you will not see a farmer that lives next to RICA
53:26
do this because then they don't have a place they can go and get this tile. You've seen the gallery when you go there. Some of these tiles have RICA on them because we had to design the mold. And someone in our office thought it would be funny to also put RICA in it. And now it's sold on the market, but it has RICA in it. That's amazing. Yeah. So those are things that make it take that amount of time. And that's to the point I just made is, like, I wish we were powerful enough
54:03
to force the market and the industry to change as quickly so they can allow farmers to be able to go purchase these systems when RICA is completed. But it will take some time before we get there though, I will say, if you look into that law of innovation of diffusion, something like that, that the early adopters have already been there. I think Alan mentioned it yesterday that there are some hotels that have started using rammed earth in their spaces and have photos on Instagram.
54:40
They're promoting this earth construction as a sustainable material because RICA was built. And there was capacity in the country to do it. And it looks beautiful. And now they can go source it. But people who set up hotels, they have capital. They have knowledge. They have these things that a farmer that lives next to RICA right now doesn't possess because then they don't depend on the architect that the hotel is going to hire to do this because the architect is going
55:07
to call us and say, hey, MASS, can I talk to the subcontractor you worked with on rammed earth? Sure. There's their number. Call them and they can do your project. That farmer will have to depend on the mason in his community to build his house. And that mason has not gotten the training to do the rammed earth yet because it takes time to get there. Basically, you educated what is it 1,200 or 2,500 builders who actually got the knowledge of building in this method? Right.
55:41
So in that sense, I think that's pretty extraordinary also with the project that that's also creating this change you spoke about or impact as well. Yes. Absolutely. Let's see. I've got a very strict time schedule and the clock. Maybe I need to select out of the 29 questions here. And there's-- now I think also, when you started your presentation speaking about context and it's maybe also again for you, Christian, more personal because I think you
56:28
have described also earlier that architecture is a social act, meaning that--
56:39
you can say that we are also social entrepreneurs with what we do as a profession. And I think what is important to me to ask you about is the role of you also reflected on that in terms of education. And you are one of the Rwanda pioneers of architecture, one of a first, really. And I was just curious to hear how and what kind of tools do you need to have to accelerate that, to accelerate the level of education, to actually enable more of these types of projects to emerge?
57:23
I think what we need are opportunities, the opportunities that come with trust, as you said earlier because without that trust, without opportunities that expand the field we can explore in what is possible, and a level of tolerance for risk taking, we will not be able to learn. And yeah, I'm always curious to use the word training or education because it suggests that we hold knowledge and we can teach other people how to do it. And I like to use the word learning because it
58:03
has to be collective learning. Understanding the problems we have or challenges we have to solve. Make sure we participate in the prioritization of what we can actually start with and end with, trying to find solutions that are workable, negotiating what works for the architect, works for the client, works for the contractor, what works for the supplier. All of these are instances where we have to learn, but we learn better when we are trying to do that for a common goal.
58:39
If the contractor is only interested in making profit and that's all, this is the only thing that is motivating them, then they're not really committed to actually solving that problem. If the architect is only interested in getting the accolades because the building blows out of the water, any other building in the region, then they're not really working for that collective or that social mission that we're talking about. If the client is only interested in getting
59:05
their building finished, close their accounting books so they no longer have to deal with that, and it's the only thing they care about, then they're not committed to the learning that we really have to commit to. And I think at MASS, at least as we are committed to be the facilitator of that learning, as long as it does not break us emotionally, and mentally, and financially. But I think that's what we need, the real opportunities that come with the level of trust that we can apply this process
59:38
and get to better results. Maybe the last thing. How are you going to bring this acknowledgment and the prize back to the community? I haven't thought about it. So we'll be getting suggestions in our suggestion box. We'll put it out there. That's very important. Well, first of all, thank you. And big congratulations to Christoph and to [INAUDIBLE]. Thank you. Thanks everybody.
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