Greenwood, Mississippi
You want to move where???
I recently had the chance to connect with Emily Rousch-Elliot from Delta Design Build. Emily doesn't give herself the title "Architect" or even the catch phrase "Citizen Architect", instead she describes her work as a "Social Impact Architect". The work Emily does is situated mostly in Greenwood, MS. A small town of 14,000 people, 70% African American, and fairly low income across the board. Delta Design Build uses undervalued assets in order to produce affordable housing, buildings for nonprofits, a small municipality buildings. The work they do is "for-profit" but engages the local context and people. I wanted to include the beginning of her bio, because I feel there are parallels with which we are discussing and the reading Scarcity Contra Austerity.
Emily's Bio: “My work is led by the conviction that your well-being and mine are intertwined. Though the built environment has traditionally reinforced inequities, social impact design-build offers the opportunity to combine the processes and products of architecture to invest in our environment, our sense of place, and the people around us, particularly those who have been marginalized.”
Throughout my conversation with Emily, we agreed on many topics such as;
I recently had the chance to connect with Emily Rousch-Elliot from Delta Design Build. Emily doesn't give herself the title "Architect" or even the catch phrase "Citizen Architect", instead she describes her work as a "Social Impact Architect". The work Emily does is situated mostly in Greenwood, MS. A small town of 14,000 people, 70% African American, and fairly low income across the board. Delta Design Build uses undervalued assets in order to produce affordable housing, buildings for nonprofits, a small municipality buildings. The work they do is "for-profit" but engages the local context and people. I wanted to include the beginning of her bio, because I feel there are parallels with which we are discussing and the reading Scarcity Contra Austerity.
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| Roche Health Center - Delta DB |
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| Tree House - Delta DB |
Emily's Bio: “My work is led by the conviction that your well-being and mine are intertwined. Though the built environment has traditionally reinforced inequities, social impact design-build offers the opportunity to combine the processes and products of architecture to invest in our environment, our sense of place, and the people around us, particularly those who have been marginalized.”
Throughout my conversation with Emily, we agreed on many topics such as;
- The commitment to realities
- All ships rising
- Not-sexy work
- A sustainable approach.
We also discussed the idea of an architect lending their skills to whomever needs it. In the short clip about Rural Studio it was also stated, "we need to use our skills to make peoples lives better". I could not agree more with both my conversation, Rural studio, and the dialog we are having in this class. This type of architecture isn't every architecture student's dream, and most wont pursue it, but there is a need for housing and community structures that many overlook and the best we can do is either participate or get the conversation going.
I want to end on a comparison from the scarcity reading that I think could be applied to affordable housing in this relation.
Scarcity as constructed: "...The clearest example of this is food; there is plenty of food on the planet, but much of it is in the wrong places; or at least, not in places where people are truly hungry."
I think the same can be said for housing and the ways in which we produce housing and build relationships with people can honestly go back to a fairly indigenous manner with a 21st century knowledge.
I think the same can be said for housing and the ways in which we produce housing and build relationships with people can honestly go back to a fairly indigenous manner with a 21st century knowledge.
I love your post and think the analogy to food being in the wrong places illustrates the issue really well. I also appreciate hearing your friend Emily's story about working in a small Mississippi town. I feel like the south gets wrongly overlooked when it comes to contemporary design talent, when really there are many great minds working with the southern context. Two firms that come to mind are OJT (they do a lot of low income housing work, such as https://www.archdaily.com/919835/bastion-community-housing-ojt?ad_source=search&ad_medium=search_result_all, and https://www.archdaily.com/917950/starter-home-housing-ojt?ad_medium=widget&ad_name=more-from-office-article-show), and also Trahan Architects.
ReplyDeleteWhat a great personal mission statement... “My work is led by the conviction that your well-being and mine are intertwined. Though the built environment has traditionally reinforced inequities, social impact design-build offers the opportunity to combine the processes and products of architecture to invest in our environment, our sense of place, and the people around us, particularly those who have been marginalized.”
ReplyDeleteI think this idea that we are not lacking housing but lacking affordable and accessible housing is crucial. We are pushing people to the suburbs, therefore making spaces inaccessible to people who don't have means but also making it inaccessible for the general population therefore using up space for no reason and really destroying our environment through architecture
ReplyDeleteNiel and I were driving around one day and noticed the amount of empty houses all around this area, some our income properties sitting vacant, others are second and third homes. It's sad to see the distribution of these resources, there are people in need of a home meanwhile there are homes that aren't being used. Of course there are economic structures making this all possible, but I think it highlights the inequalities in our country. I am inspired by several firms that work in affordable housing, LMSA in San Francisco is one in which I've kept contact with for the past year. I think this is an area where young architects and designers can shine because they tend to be more experimental and progressive in their designs, providing new typologies for affordable housing, such as your example.
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