Tag Archives: rural development

way way back

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Delta Design Build Workshop grew from a construction company into a social impact design, build, and teaching collaborative in 2016. Post Rose Fellowship, we are excited to have continued to work in the Mississippi Delta, building equity through the built environment and working in partnership with communities and organizations that share our values.

Unfortunately, while we were busy with all that growth, writing blog posts didn’t make it to the top of my to-do list. So to end the year, we are recapping a great twelve months with a series of blog posts that highlight how we stretched our capacity, our brains, our schedules, our budgets, and our legs in 2016.

To start the list, Delta DB’s longstanding partnership with Village Life Outreach Project continued. Our design team grew to include recent University of Cincinnati DAAP graduate Jesse Larkins as a summer intern, and Richard traveled to Tanzania to wrap up construction of one medical personnel duplex, and begin a second one. These staff houses are essential to support the Roche Health Center (read more about RHC here) because the remoteness of the site means that resident doctors and nurses are required for the center to qualify to offer many important medical services and medications.

We are thrilled to continue to be a part of this team (including partners both in Cincinnati and Roche) that values health and human life so much.

Many aspects of the process that has developed over our seven years of working with UC, Roche, and Village Life is represented in the pictures below. Roche residents build masonry (fence posts and soil bricks) on site, a team of Tanzanian craftsmen lead the construction crew, women are a part of the construction team, new water and electrical infrastructure is being developed, and UC alumni, faculty, and students provide medical care. It makes me proud to be a Bearcat.

innovation and the odds

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In July of 2015, a Washington Post article “An Opportunity Gamed Away” shared the story of Linda Fay Engle-Harris, a Tunica, MS resident whose housing and economic situation might have been different if the development possibilities brought by casinos had been tapped into by government and corporate leaders. Ms. Engle-Harris, like many others in rural Mississippi, lives in a dilapidated home and does not have access to affordable housing options that are safe, healthy or dignified. Though we often hear stories of Mississippi and the ways in which the deck is stacked against residents, especially Black residents, adversity also leads to ingenuity. Though a challenge is at the root of Ms. Engle-Harris’ story, in 2016, innovation is becoming the theme.

Olon Dotson, an Associate Professor of Architecture at Ball State University, was inspired by to get involved by the Post article. He contacted Ms. Engle-Harris and the two have embarked on a journey to improve Ms. Engle-Harris’ living situation, but also to engage Ball State students in important questions around affordable housing and social and environmental justice in the process.

My own work documents one story of how Katrina Cottages have been re-purposed as affordable housing after their initial deployment to the Gulf Coast. Now, Dotson and his students are digging into the question of how to utilize remaining one-bedroom (approximately 400 square foot) units that don’t fit well in the demographic of large and sometimes multi-generational households common in Mississippi’s rural environment. Students presented mid-term designs to Ms. Engle-Harris combining two of the smaller units into one large home.

Dotson’s studio is exposing students to topics that loom large in the architecture and community development fields today, such as how design can better be utilized and understood as a tool for building equity, and how the definition of the roles of the architect and the client change faced with contemporary challenges. But likely the most innovative aspect of this project is the balance that the student proposals strike between modular and site-built components. As architects seek opportunities for innovation throughout an expanded scope of project delivery, and interest in pre-fabricated, modular and manufactured housing continues to rise, this type of hybrid thinking is not yet well vetted but implies untapped potential for improving building performance and responding to client’s individual goals within the confines of a budget.