Iwan Baan: Ingenious homes in unexpected places

Throughout my career, I've been fortunate enough

to work with many of the great

international architects,

documenting their work and observing

how their designs have the capacity

to influence the cities in which they sit.

I think of new cities like Dubai

or ancient cities like Rome

with Zaha Hadid's incredible MAXXI museum,

or like right here in New York with the High Line,

a city which has been so much influenced

by the development of this.

But what I find really fascinating

is what happens when architects and planners leave

and these places become appropriated by people,

like here in Chandigarh, India,

the city which has been completely designed

by the architect Le Corbusier.

Now 60 years later, the city has been taken over

by people in very different ways

from whatever perhaps intended for,

like here, where you have the people

sitting in the windows of the assembly hall.

But over the course of several years,

I've been documenting Rem Koolhaas's

CCTV building in Beijing

and the olympic stadium in the same city

by the architects Herzog and de Meuron.

At these large-scale construction sites in China,

you see a sort of makeshift camp

where workers live during the entire building process.

As the length of the construction takes years,

workers end up forming a rather rough-and-ready

informal city, making for quite a juxtaposition

against the sophisticated structures that they're building.

Over the past seven years, I've been following

my fascination with the built environment,

and for those of you who know me, you would say

that this obsession has led me to live

out of a suitcase 365 days a year.

Being constantly on the move

means that sometimes I am able

to catch life's most unpredictable moments,

like here in New York

the day after the Sandy storm hit the city.

Just over three years ago,

I was for the first time in Caracas, Venezuela,

and while flying over the city, I was just amazed

by the extent to which the slums

reach into every corner of the city,

a place where nearly 70 percent of the population

lives in slums,

draped literally all over the mountains.

During a conversation with local architects Urban-Think Tank,

I learned about the Torre David,

a 45-story office building which sits

right in the center of Caracas.

The building was under construction

until the collapse of the Venezuelan economy

and the death of the developer in the early '90s.

About eight years ago, people started moving

into the abandoned tower

and began to build their homes right in between

every column of this unfinished tower.

There's only one little entrance to the entire building,

and the 3,000 residents come in and out

through that single door.

Together, the inhabitants created public spaces

and designed them to feel more like a home

and less like an unfinished tower.

In the lobby, they painted the walls and planted trees.

They also made a basketball court.

But when you look up closely,

you see massive holes where elevators

and services would have run through.

Within the tower, people have come up

with all sorts of solutions

in response to the various needs

which arise from living in an unfinished tower.

With no elevators,

the tower is like a 45-story walkup.

Designed in very specific ways

by this group of people

who haven't had any education in architecture or design.

And with each inhabitant finding their own

unique way of coming by,

this tower becomes like a living city,

a place which is alive with micro-economies

and small businesses.

The inventive inhabitants, for instance,

find opportunities in the most unexpected cases,

like the adjacent parking garage,

which has been reclaimed as a taxi route

to shuttle the inhabitants up through the ramps

in order to shorten the hike

up to the apartments.

A walk through the tower

reveals how residents have figured out

how to create walls, how to make an air flow,

how to create transparency,

circulation throughout the tower,

essentially creating a home

that's completely adapted

to the conditions of the site.

When a new inhabitant moves into the tower,

they already have a roof over their head,

so they just typically mark their space

with a few curtains or sheets.

Slowly, from found materials, walls rise,

and people create a space out of any found objects

or materials.

It's remarkable to see the design decisions

that they're making,

like when everything is made out of red bricks,

some residents will cover that red brick

with another layer of red brick-patterned wallpaper

just to make it a kind of clean finish.

The inhabitants literally built up these homes

with their own hands, and this labor of love

instills a great sense of pride

in many families living in this tower.

They typically make the best out of their conditions,

and try to make their spaces look nice and homey,

or at least up until as far as they can reach.

Throughout the tower, you come across

all kinds of services, like the barber,

small factories, and every floor has

a little grocery store or shop.

And you even find a church.

And on the 30th floor, there is a gym

where all the weights and barbells

are made out of the leftover pulleys

from the elevators which were never installed.

From the outside, behind this always-changing facade,

you see how the fixed concrete beams

provide a framework for the inhabitants

to create their homes

in an organic, intuitive way

that responds directly to their needs.

Let's go now to Africa, to Nigeria,

to a community called Makoko,

a slum where 150,000 people

live just meters above the Lagos Lagoon.

While it may appear to be a completely chaotic place,

when you see it from above, there seems to be

a whole grid of waterways and canals

connecting each and every home.

From the main dock, people board long wooden canoes

which carry them out to their various homes and shops

located in the expansive area.

When out on the water, it's clear

that life has been completely adapted

to this very specific way of living.

Even the canoes become variety stores

where ladies paddle from house to house,

selling anything from toothpaste to fresh fruits.

Behind every window and door frame,

you'll see a small child peering back at you,

and while Makoko seems to be packed with people,

what's more shocking is actually

the amount of children pouring out of every building.

The population growth in Nigeria,

and especially in these areas like Makoko,

are painful reminders

of how out of control things really are.

In Makoko, very few systems

and infrastructures exist.

Electricity is rigged and freshest water

comes from self-built wells throughout the area.

This entire economic model

is designed to meet a specific way of living

on the water, so fishing and boat-making

are common professions.

You'll have a set of entrepreneurs

who have set up businesses throughout the area,

like barbershops, CD and DVD stores,

movie theaters, tailors, everything is there.

There is even a photo studio

where you see the sort of aspiration

to live in a real house or to be associated

with a faraway place, like that hotel in Sweden.

On this particular evening,

I came across this live band

dressed to the T in their coordinating outfits.

They were floating through the canals

in a large canoe with a fitted-out generator

for all of the community to enjoy.

By nightfall, the area becomes almost pitch black,

save for a small lightbulb

or a fire.

What originally brought me to Makoko

was this project from a friend of mine,

Kunlé Adeyemi, who recently finished building

this three-story floating school

for the kids in Makoko.

With this entire village existing on the water,

public space is very limited,

so now that the school is finished,

the ground floor is a playground for the kids,

but when classes are out, the platform

is just like a town square,

where the fishermen mend their nets

and floating shopkeepers dock their boats.

Another place I'd like to share with you

is the Zabbaleen in Cairo.

They're descendants of farmers who began migrating

from the upper Egypt in the '40s,

and today they make their living

by collecting and recycling waste from homes

from all over Cairo.

For years, the Zabbaleen would live in makeshift villages

where they would move around

trying to avoid the local authorities,

but in the early 1980s, they settled

on the Mokattam rocks

just at the eastern edge of the city.

Today, they live in this area,

approximately 50,000 to 70,000 people,

who live in this community of self-built

multi-story houses

where up to three generations live in one structure.

While these apartments that they built for themselves

appear to lack any planning or formal grid,

each family specializing in a certain form of recycling

means that the ground floor of each apartment

is reserved for garbage-related activities

and the upper floor is dedicated to living space.

I find it incredible to see

how these piles and piles of garbage

are invisible to the people who live there,

like this very distinguished man who is posing

while all this garbage is sort of streaming out behind him,

or like these two young men who are sitting

and chatting amongst these tons of garbage.

While to most of us, living amongst

these piles and piles of garbage

may seem totally uninhabitable,

to those in the Zabbaleen, this is just

a different type of normal.

In all these places I've talked about today,

what I do find fascinating is that there's really

no such thing as normal,

and it proves that people are able to adapt

to any kind of situation.

Throughout the day, it's quite common

to come across a small party taking place

in the streets, just like this engagement party.

In this tradition, the bride-to-be

displays all of their belongings,

which they soon bring to their new husband.

A gathering like this one

offers such a juxtaposition

where all the new stuff is displayed

and all the garbage is used

as props to display all their new home accessories.

Like Makoko and the Torre David,

throughout the Zabbaleen you'll find all

the same facilities as in any typical neighborhood.

There are the retail shops, the cafes

and the restaurants, and the community

is this community of Coptic Christians,

so you'll also find a church,

along with the scores of religious iconographies

throughout the area,

and also all the everyday services

like the electronic repair shops,

the barbers, everything.

Visiting the homes of the Zabbaleen

is also full of surprises.

While from the outside,

these homes look like any other informal structure

in the city, when you step inside,

you are met with all manner of design decisions

and interior decoration.

Despite having limited access to space and money,

the homes in the area are designed

with care and detail.

Every apartment is unique,

and this individuality tells a story

about each family's circumstances and values.

Many of these people take their homes

and interior spaces very seriously,

putting a lot of work and care

into the details.

The shared spaces are also treated in the same manner,

where walls are decorated in faux marble patterns.

But despite this elaborate decor,

sometimes these apartments are used

in very unexpected ways,

like this home which caught my attention

while all the mud and the grass was literally

seeping out under the front door.

When I was let in, it appeared that this fifth-floor apartment

was being transformed into a complete animal farm,

where six or seven cows stood grazing

in what otherwise would be the living room.

But then in the apartment across the hall

from this cow shed lives a newly married couple

in what locals describe

as one of the nicest apartments in the area.

The attention to this detail astonished me,

and as the owner of the home so proudly

led me around this apartment,

from floor to ceiling, every part was decorated.

But if it weren't for the strangely familiar

stomach-churning odor that constantly

passes through the apartment,

it would be easy to forget

that you are standing next to a cow shed

and on top of a landfill.

What moved me the most was that despite

these seemingly inhospitable conditions,

I was welcomed with open arms

into a home that was made with love, care,

and unreserved passion.

Let's move across the map to China,

to an area called Shanxi, Henan and Gansu.

In a region famous for the soft, porous Loess Plateau soil,

there lived until recently an estimated

40 million people in these houses underground.

These dwellings are called the yaodongs.

Through this architecture by subtraction,

these yaodongs are built literally inside of the soil.

In these villages, you see an entirely altered landscape,

and hidden behind these mounds of dirt

are these square, rectangular houses

which sit seven meters below the ground.

When I asked people why they were digging

their houses from the ground,

they simply replied that they are poor wheat

and apple farmers who didn't have the money

to buy materials, and this digging out

was their most logical form of living.

From Makoko to Zabbaleen, these communities

have approached the tasks of planning,

design and management of their communities

and neighborhoods in ways that respond

specifically to their environment and circumstances.

Created by these very people who live,

work and play in these particular spaces,

these neighborhoods are intuitively designed

to make the most of their circumstances.

In most of these places, the government

is completely absent, leaving inhabitants

with no choice but to reappropriate found materials,

and while these communities are highly disadvantaged,

they do present examples

of brilliant forms of ingenuity,

and prove that indeed we have the ability

to adapt to all manner of circumstances.

What makes places like the Torre David

particularly remarkable

is this sort of skeleton framework

where people can have a foundation

where they can tap into.

Now imagine what these already ingenious communities

could create themselves,

and how highly particular their solutions would be,

if they were given the basic infrastructures

that they could tap into.

Today, you see these large residential development projects

which offer cookie-cutter housing solutions

to massive amounts of people.

From China to Brazil, these projects attempt

to provide as many houses as possible,

but they're completely generic

and simply do not work as an answer

to the individual needs of the people.

I would like to end with a quote

from a friend of mine and a source of inspiration,

Zita Cobb, the founder of the wonderful

Shorefast Foundation,

based out of Fogo Island, Newfoundland.

She says that "there's this plague of sameness

which is killing the human joy,"

and I couldn't agree with her more.

Thank you.

(Applause)