New school benches, Port au Prince, Haiti

The benches are intended for a school near the border, with the Dominican Rupublic; to be constructed as part of a joinery workshop for local Haitian's. This is one of many projects being completed by a number of NGO's located, within the grounds of an existing house in the North of Port au Prince; including Grass Roots United and Kleiwerks.

A number of the Architecture for Humanity (AFH) team, with a number of other NGO's were attending a workshop held by Kevin Rowell of Kleiwerks on the future role of Bamboo in Haiti. The workshop accompanies a number of other initiatives by Kleiwerks to determine the logistics and long term potential of the role of bamboo in Haiti's future.

Architecture for Humanity's involvement with Kleiwerks is not new. They have worked closesly before and the hope is the practical and skilled bamboo knowledge of the Kleiwerks team can provide the required knowledge to allow these techniques to be carried forward into AFH's work.

My own role while in Haiti, will be to work with Kleiwerks to develop a introductory manual to bamboo (linking directly to the the construction of buildings), in a wordless form. The manual is intended to provide the reader, viewer, with a basic understanding of the potential of bamboo and how it can be used.

Unfortunately the baterries died in my camera, but I remained behind to spend the afternoon with Kleiwerks and work through ideas. It was evening before anyone was able to come and collect me, and make the hour trip back across town to the AFH house in the South of Port au Prince. Making the jounrey back after dark was a fasinating oppurtunity to see more of the city and view more of its inner workings made starkly more apparent by the contrasting lights of open shops against the darkness of the night and the darkened areas of tented communities. Darkened gaps between buildings highlighted areas affected by the earthquake, revealing in the dim light the distorted forms of the previous structures. Tented communities seem to occupy any open space within the city, but the darkness as you look out over these newly formed communities is intimidating.