Porto is built along the hillsides overlooking the mouth of the Douro River in northern Portugal and is one of the oldest European urban centers. Still known as “Invicta Cidade” (“Unvanquished City”), it gave its name to Portugal, very early, around 200 B.C., when it was called “Portus Cale”, later to become the capital of the County of Portugal. It is also known worldwide for its bridges and both its ancient and contemporary architecture and its historical centre, classified as world heritage by UNESCO in 1996

This metropolitan city, constituted by adjacent municipalities which form a single urban agglomeration among themselves, has about 1,286,276 inhabitants. The historic centre of Porto constitutes an urban landscape of great aesthetic value that witnesses an urban development which dates back to Roman, Medieval and of the Almadas times (18th century). According to existing archaeological remains, its human occupation dates back to the 8th century B.C. The richness and diversity of civil architecture of the historical centre reflect both the cultural values of successive eras: Gothic, Renaissance, Roman, Baroque, Neoclassical and Modern and as its perfect adaptation to the geographical and social structure of the city, thus presenting a stable, consistent relationship with the urban and natural environment.

As much city as human achievement, the historical centre of Porto is a masterpiece of human creative genius. Military, demographic, commercial, agricultural and demographic interests converged here to house a population able to build the city. The result is a unique work of art, of high aesthetic value. It is a collective work, which was not carried out in a given time, but rather the result of successive contributions. One of the most significant aspects of the city of Porto, and in particular of its historical centre, is its panoramic value, the result of the complexity of the land, the harmonious articulation of its streets and the dialogue with the river. Despite the variety of shapes and materials, the historical centre of Porto retains a visual aesthetic unit. The city successfully translates an interaction between the social and the geographic environments.

Anna Engvall Synderå editor & ASF-int secretariat247, rue St. JacquesF-75005-Paris

http://asfint.org

february 2013

Welcome to the ASF-Int General Assembly 2013The Meeting of Architecture Sans Frontières International

13 -14 -15 april 2013, Porto (Portugal) All members and sympathizers of ASF are welcome to the General Assembly (GA) meeting of Architecture Sans Frontières International, to take place in Porto, Sunday 14 April 2013. The GA meeting is an opportunity to know the ASF-Int network and the new members who are joined to the network. Furthermore, all the member organizations and individuals belonging to such organizations are invited to nominate candidates to the Board of the ASF-int to be elected.Saturday 13 will be devoted to a seminar with selected speakers and Monday 15 will be devoted to a guided tour in the environment of Porto. The venue will be at the FUAP, the School of Architecture of the University of Porto (continued on page 2 ››).

On behalf of the BoardDick Urban Vestbro

ASF-Int Secretary

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Photo by Dick Urban Vestbro ››

City of Porto

Costs in connection with the participation in the General Assembly meetings of ASF-Int are covered by the respective member organisations. Some members cannot afford to spend their meagre resources for such costs. Therefore they rely on support from others to be able to attend this important annual event. The Board tries to set aside €2100 for this purpose, but this is far from enough. If you want to facilitate the participation of poor members, please make a contribution. Use the PayPal function on the website: http://asfint.org/-Become-a-sponsor-.html.

Register for the GA by sending an email to the Secretary (dickurba@gmail.com).

For information: www.asfp.pt

Text and Photos by Dick Urban Vestbro

Each organisation is expected to pay its own travel and accommodation costs. Our hosts, ASF-Portugal, will try to arrange cheap accommodation. For any support for travel costs, it’s necessary to send a request about this to the Treasurer Rune Asholt (asholt@gmail.com).

Organized by: Arquitectos Sem Fronteiras Portugalwww.asfp.pt info@asfp.pt

13th April 2013 - Saturday

Faculdade de Arquitectura, Universidade do Porto

Via Panorâmica S/N, 4150-755

Seminar associated to Architects Sans Frontiers International General Assembly:“The teaching of architecture in the development process”

All member organisations and individuals belonging to such organisations are welcome to nominate candidates to the Board to be elected at the GA meeting. The mandate period is two years (from 2013 to 2015). At present the Board has ten members. The mandate expires for five of them at the GA meeting. All nominations will be discussed by an Election Preparatory Committee, which is to make a proposal with a balanced composition. The committee consists of Beatrice de Carli of ASF-Italia, Niclas Dunnebacke of ASF-France and Sophie Jopling of ASF-UK. Send your nomination to beatrice.decarli@gmail.com.

NEWSLETTER - ASF INTERNATIONAL 4

by Asf - Portugal

Nominate candidates to the Board!

Sponsor travel costs of members with scarce resources!

The role of architecture schools and teaching processes is rightly questioned. What should be the role of architecture schools in such a changing world? Many architects still focus on issues of authorial work, while the needs increase, not only in the lower-income countries, but so in the until now affluent nations. In the venue associated to Architects Sans Frontiers International General Assembly, such questions will be discussed and possible routes for the futures sought for, within themes such as: SCHOOLS AND TRAINING CENTERS_HUMAN HABITAT LIFE QUALITY_TEACHING AND TRAINING RESEARCHSCIENCE AND TECNOLOGY PROJECTS _PROGRAMS, POLICIES AND FUNDING PROJECTS_SOCIAL HOUSINGBUILT ENVIRONMENT REFURBISHING_SUSTAINABLE TECNOLOGIES

by Dick Urban Vestbro

A new portfolio of project descriptions has been finalised. It has been edited by Naomi Shinkins of ASF-UK. The portfolio is the second one of ASF-Int. It contains descriptions of 19 projects from six member organisations. This is an additional to the portfolio from 2010, which comprises descrip-tions of 52 projects from 13 member organisations. Some of these are completed while others are still ongoing. Both portfolios are available for downloading. See http://asfint.org/-Projects-.html.

The projects in the new portfolio cover building types such as schools, clinics, housing, community centres and infrastructure such as bridges, public space, recycling centres and sanitation. Quite many projects focus on the use of local building materials, experiments with new constructions techniques and energy-saving design. The projects address issues such as social integration, environment for children, cultural conservation, rural development, disaster prevention, refugee housing, slum improvement, community participation and training of professionals. This wide variety reflects very well the scope and aim of ASF-Int.

About 2/3 of the projects are located to low-income countries while 1/3 are located to Europe or Australia. One may note that almost all projects are carried out in collaboration with local partners, many of which represent unprivileged groups and community-based organisations. The portfolio is only a small sample of works realised by ASF-Int’s members. In order to get a full picture one has to visit the websites of the member organisations.

New portfolio shows variety and skills

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Text by architect Ingemar Saevfors(ingemar@saevfors.se)

www.bamboocompetition.comwww.saevfors.se

With the right structural design columns, beams and floors made ofbamboo components could replace reinforced concrete and steel structuresto a large extent.

Another method to get standardized dimensions out of the irregular bamboo poles is the Vierendeel design, named after a Belgian bridge engineer.Wall design is a challenge when building with bamboo. Urbanizing people expect:- Flush and planar surfaces, as with plastered brick houses, easy to paint.- A tight envelope against mosquitos and flies - If aware of energy costs, insulationfor air-conditioning. At the same time a bamboo wall has to be protected protected protected against driving rains as well as being resistant to mechanical impact.

With a honeycomb structure though, an extraordinary strength and a totally standardized width of the wallcan be achieved.Bamboo poles may take on the loadbearing function whereas the honeycomb cluster becomes perfect for bracing.

configuration whereby the stress is distributed evenly and channeled to a fixture that easily can be bolted to another.Bamboo can be machined, predrilled and reassembled to meet the requirements, when tight joints are expected.

The emerging economies, the climate change and the rural migration result in unprecedented urbanization trends in most low income regions of the world. The increasing demand for building materials combined with the higher costs of urban land is further marginalizing huge numbers of poor people.

However, a low-cost and renewable resource for permanent construction could be based on bamboo,even in urban densities. In tropical regions construction size bamboo reaches full strength already after 3-4 years. Growing on hill sides and along roads and fields it does not encroach on agricultural land either. On the contrary, bamboo can prevent erosion and even revitalize devastated rain forest soil.Local economy can be promoted at all steps in the supply chain. Globallybamboo can help the whole world by its remarkable CO2 sequestrating capacity.

Most of the traditional issues associated with bamboo constructionsuch as degradation by insects and fungi, sagging connections and flexing members have been resolved today. The still prevailing opinion of bamboo as “poor man´s timber” is simply a matter of ignorance. Eco-friendly and fairly low-cost impregnatingmethods based on borax and boric acid haveproved to be efficient, especially in Colombia,and also in Brazil, Indonesia, Vietnam, the Philippines etc.Yet, architects and engineers need to embrace new design parameters in order to protect the bamboo components against weather, UV radiation, humidity and flooding. Critical connections where concentrated forces have to be transferred must be carefully detailed so as to avoid cracking andbreakdown. Simply nailing and bolting as done in wood would bedevastating. Therefore a proven method is the bamboo>mortar>steel

The Promising New Bamboo Construction Technology

NEWSLETTER - ASF INTERNATIONAL

The “Pet Crown” space frame connector for eight elements converging into one moment free point. Architect IngemarSaevfors, 2012

Assembly of a Spaced Column resistant to buckling, with Joerg Stamm at Eco-Bamboo, Colombia, 2009.

A bamboo wall segment protected by an exterior plate of thin ferro-cement.

The interior wall surface could be made of practically any material.

Buildup of a multistory structure

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NEWSLETTER - ASF INTERNATIONAL

Bamboo Cafe at Thiruvananthapuram

These days, Cost-effective and sustainable building construction techniques fail to get recognition among concrete jungles in urban areas.

In such scenario a well known ethnic life style boutique in Thiruvananthapuram named “Sarwaa” approached us for constructing a small cafe in their backyard using any cost effective and sustainable building material.

This was a golden opportunity to showcase the potential of alternate technologies. After all visibility plays a very important role in getting alternate technologies accepted among the masses.

Architecture Sans Frontiers society-India teamed up with Bhoomija Creations, an architectural design firm based in Thiruvananthapuram to work on this project. We realised that the city had several public buildings showcasing other cost-effective technologies except Bamboo and we narrowed down to this material. The idea was to develop this space as technology demonstration building where people can freely visit and examine the technology.

The designing work started by July 2012 and the construction began in August 2012. New set of workers had to be trained as trained workers were not available. The structure consisted of Treated Bamboo frames supporting Bamboo Roofing on top. The treatment tank which was constructed for treating bamboo was later extended to form a water-body along the structure. The construction was over by November 2012 and the cafe started running by December 2012.

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Text and Photos by Guruprasad Rane

NEWSLETTER - ASF INTERNATIONAL

Kinshasa workshop on urban bamboo

Are cities to be tamed? Should architects and planners help to promote control of citizens?

A workshop on urban density housing based on bamboo materials was hosted at the School of Architecture in Kinshasa on January 3, 2013. The event was organized by Société des Architectes Congolais and Architectes Sans Frontières en RDC, with the participation of Marie-Ange Bunga from Eco Bambou et Forêts, an NGO focusing on bamboo cultivation and promotion of processed products. Also Gilbert Nkuli from GH Investment already involved in bamboo based fuel production took part. The workshop gathered some 30-40 professionals, mainly architects and planners.

problems into energy resources, sewers into purified waters, rain water harvesting, efficient public transport corridors etc. However, going vertical usually means more steel and reinforced concrete; unfortunately these industries are among the worst contributors of CO2 emissions.

The good news is that bamboo could become a renewable resource for permanent construction today, even when going multistory. From being a perishable weed worth nothing an eco-friendly technology, primarily developed in Colombia, has totally changed the prospects for bamboo.

Much discussion in Kinshasa concerned these treatment methods based on boron derivatives which turn bamboo into a permanent building material. The need for conscious architectural design as protection against degradation by weather and sun, inundations and humidity was also much in focus. The architects showed great interest in details of safe bamboo-mortar-steel connections, spaced anti-buckling columns, vierendeel beams and recomposed back-to-back purlins for dimensional standards as well as honeycomb wall structures with weather skin.

The networking with Eco Bambou et Forêts and GH Investment was also important. When architects now may have the endeavor to build with bamboo, there has to be a supply chain in place to deliver. The conditions for a three year harvest cycle of construction grade bamboo are excellent in the Congo and Eco Bambou et Forêts envisions to build a house as a proof of concept, in the longer term to raise more interest for quality bamboo housing.We congratulate the architects Arsen from Société des Architectes, Apolinaire Kitenge and Richard Losalajome from Architectes Sans Frontières RDC as well as Marie-Ange Bunga from Eco Bambou et Forêts for organizing this important workshop at such a short notice.

Ingemar Saevfors drew attention to the ever exacerbating urban sprawl of one level developments, whether they are spontaneous squatter settlements or so called home-of-dreams-villa-programs as promoted by banks on glossy prints. The resulting megacities are lacking the most basic infrastructure such as access, drainage and power networks. The Kinshasa urban agglomeration has probably a 12+ million population by now and is spreading over some 50 x 50 km. Imagine Los Angeles without the freeways!A reasonable urban density would allow for more rational development of urban utilities and service facilities. A more structured process could take advantage of recently developed eco-techniques based on synergy effects such as turning waste

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Text by architect Ingemar Saevfors www.saevfors.se

www.bamboocompetition.com

Text and Photos by Dick Urban Vestbro

This was the exciting topic of a most interesting conference organised by the Politecnic of Milano in November last year. About 60 participants from 24 countries listened to interesting keynote lectures, and discussed well selected papers in parallel workshops. Altogether 150 abstracts had been submitted, but only 45 were chosen. Apart from Europeans there were participants from Bangladesh, Egypt, Ethiopia, Ghana, India, Iran, Israel, Jordan, Kenya, Palestine, South Africa and Turkey. This composition helped to focus on “Standards and alternatives in the spatial transformation of the urban South” (the more formal title of the conference).

One of the keynote speakers was Erez Tzfadia, professor at the Ben Gurion University in Israel and a member of Bimkom, an Israeli non-profit organisation seeking to enhance the link between civil rights, social justice and the planning in Israel (see http://eng.bimkom.org/). Tzfadia explained how informality could be used for control – the opposite to what is normally considered to be the case. He linked the process of increased informality to globalisation and traced the roots of informal planning to the culture of poverty and capitalist exploitation. He made an interesting theoretical distinction between a) informality as “hyper-sovereignty” and b) informality as an absence of sovereignty. He furthermore showedhow public space (in principle open to informal uses) could be militarized and how law can be interpreted to suit an ethno-national logical in order to justify the expropriation of property (as in the case of Israeli actions against Palestinian settlements). The

interested reader may look for his book Beyond the Metropolis: Urban Geography as if Small Cities Mattered”. Another keynote speaker was Prof Nabeel Hamdi of Oxford Brookes University and an advisor to ASF-UK. He spoke about “new professional roles”, a subject which is of great interest to ASF-Int. Let us get back to this theme in another issue of the newsletter and acquire the lecture for distribution among members!

The whole conference will be published by ‘Planum - the Journal of Urbanism’ in January 2013. See further: http://www.contestedspaces.info/index.html. The paper of the undersigned, called “Development Aspects of Formal and Informal Urban Types”, will also be available at this site. At the conference I spread information about ASF-International and ARC PEACE. It turned out that many participants were interested in our networks. Egyptian scholars said that NGOs to which they belong would apply for membership soon (two NGOs on their way to submit formal documents). Several participants became individual members of ARC PEACE.

Francesco Chiodelli, Lina Scavuzzo, Beatrice De Carli and Maddalena Falletti were the organisers of the successful conference.

The final session of the conference. Participants expressed great satisfaction with the event.

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Both days started with an introduction to the context, and then followed with an activity to establish and prioritise the vulnerabilities that the participants had observed. The first day then evolved to explore Disaster Risk Reduction, and then gave participants an opportunity to develop a proposal to reduce the vulnerability and improve the resilience of the community through the logical framework model. The second day challenged the participants to develop a project proposal to address one of the vulnerabilities through the lens of a theoretical framework, and then develop a master-plan to include all existing residents of Mashimoni without discrimination and enabling multiple tenancy options.The seminar was fast paced and challenged participants to develop strategies with limited information and within a limited timeframe. The scenarios gave them a taster of the complexities of the field, and the nature of the work involved. They responded well, and although exhausted by the end of the two days gave positive and constructive feedback:‘Really enjoyed the interactive case study’‘Great introduction and insight to community development planning’

On the 17-18th November 2012, ASF-UK hosted the first Stage 2: Weekend Seminar pilot as part of Challenging Practice: Essentials for Social Production of Habitat.

Stage 2 is open to anyone who has completed Stage 1, a free introductory online course, which lays the foundations for understanding the complexities in this field. The weekend seminar is designed to enable participants to reflect on their knowledge from Stage 1 through case studies and facilitated discussions and interactive scenario building. 23 participants attended the seminar, ranging from architects and architecture students, to drainage engineers and business managers. Only 25% of the group where British, while the others included, Spanish, Malaysian, Greek, Polish, Brazilian, South African, Czech, Chilean, Italian and Chinese participants.The aim for the weekend was to expand on the concepts explored through the modules in the introductory course. Two case studies provided a context for the participants to engage with the three key principles of engagement (participation, discrimination, and sustainable approaches), one of the built environment principles (land tenure) and two project implementation tools (theoretical frameworks and project cycle).The first case study was a resettlement colony in north-west Delhi, India, where inhabitants of an inner-city slum had been relocated and where a fire had just taken place. The second case study was a village in the Mathare Valley located to the north of the CBD of Nairobi, Kenya, where slum upgrading programmes which aim to improve the social, economic, and environmental conditions, currently provide little to no opportunity for slum dweller participation.

ASF-UK runs pilot seminar for Stage 2 of ‘Challenging Practice’

Text and Photos by Sarah Ernst

Photo by Sarah Ernst

Text by Jordi Balari

ASF-UK, ASF-Italy, ASF-Spain and ASF-France will host Stage 2 seminars twice a year. These are the dates for 2013: ASF-Italy: 22nd-23rd February_ASF-France: March _ASF-UK: May _ASF-Spain: October

NEWSLETTER - ASF INTERNATIONAL

Leonardo da Vinci_Project Partnerships

As you know, a partnership between members of ASF-France, Italy, UK, Sweden and Spain have been working for two years on the design of a training program in development projects. The initiative came from the idea that the academic training of architects is aimed at developing their profession in the formal economy, while the reality is that over 60% of the world’s population lives in the informal economy through land occupations, self-building, no infrastructure settlements (slums). Working with such populations requires additional training beyond the conventional academic training.

The project Challenging Practice: Essentials for Social Production of Habitat has ended August 1, 2012 and has been favorably reviewed by the Agency Leonardo da Vinci of the European Community, which has provided funding for the project. The course is divided into four stages: a theoretical introduction on line (Stage 1), a two-day seminar (Stage 2), a deeper theoretical online course (Stage 3) and finally a practical workshop (Stage 4). The short term approach is to deliver stage 1 of the training which is now available for free down load, Along with Stage 2, with seminars being presently implemented in most of the partner countries. The long term approach is to Develop Stage 3 and 4 through the establishment of an on-line learning platform including lectures by an international array of experts and development through the Implementation of one or two pilot workshops / hands-on experiences in the field.

During 2013 we will develop the short term approach which we’ll report regularly. To make the long term approach we are outlining the working group which, apart ASF organizations, can be integrated with universities and recognized NGOs for better security of getting the new application.

Once stage 1 and 2 of challenging practice is finalized in January 2014 a new application for the Grundtvig programme is needed. The two years experience has been really positive for the members of this partnership and we believe that ASF-International should raise the possibility of continous joint work.

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www.challengingpractice.org