BUILDaCHANGE

BUILDaCHANGE

BUILDaCHANGE

Architecture should be regarded as a human right, to be extended to all those who today are excluded from it.

human right

BUILDaCHANGE

AboutBUILD a CHANGE is a non-profit organization [NPO] set up to promote the right to a suitable built environment as a crucial factor in fostering social empowerment. The name of the organization, BUILDaCHANGE, stemmed from the will to stress the potential of constructions to transform and improve the physical, economical and social nature of the environment.

Our work is focused on providing the ‘outskirts of the world’ with essential services such as educational, health and sanitary facilities, through the realization of buildings, prototypes and theoretical researches.

Our aim is to promote human rights, facilitating the access to essential services and contributing to the achievement of the Millennium Development Goals [MDGs] agreed by the main world’s leading development institutions.

BUILDaCHANGE www.buildachange.orgFAREstudio www.farestudio.it

BUILDaCHANGE

constructionis a powerful embodimentof values

BUILDaCHANGE

MISSIONand

valuesBUILDaCHANGE strives to be at the forefront in the implementation of projects aimed at fostering social well-being through appropriately conceived architecture and urban projects. BUILDaCHANGE wishes to provide even the most disadvantaged communities with the quality, safety and comfort of a built environment at the same time innovative and adapted to local contexts.

In this way we would like to improve the living conditions of deprived communities facilitating their access to dignified housing and adequate basic facilities such as schools, clinics, sanitary services, community buildings, etc.; and in doing this, we try to be always accurate, responsable, accountable, innovative and professional.

We believe that:

architecture should be regarded as a human right to be extended to all those that today are excluded from it

the quality of space can have a huge impact on social empowerment and cooperation must go beyond emergency management or poverty mitigation, planning and investing on longer term solutions

designing sustainable buildings based on capacity building approach, technical innovation and context analysis, is the best support we can give to local communities, charities and NGOs, also with the aim of putting in value the financial efforts behind every physical realisation apart from its instrumental function, construction is a powerful embodiment of values, priorities and finalities, and, if carefully planned, it can be an efficient tool for the self-promotion of operators and investors;

BUILDaCHANGE

Multidisciplinary approachparticipatory designAppropriate technology sustainable designCapacity building

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whatwe Do

We base our projects on:

Multidisciplinary approach and participatory design: paradoxically, working in a context of scarcity requires a wide and multifold range of skills; disseminating information and sharing competences during every step of the process, from planning to construction, is the only way to assure inteventions acceptance by local communities, positive feedbacks and good results;

Appropriate technology and sustainable design: we always incorporate in our design locally available skills and materials, and we use them according to contextual analysis and local tradition;

Capacity building strategies: each project introduces appropriate design techniques to local communities and make them learn how to use those techniques independently; our partnerships with local workers and contractors contributes to the improvement of the whole local building industry;

A ‘more with less’ approach: our experience in contexts of scarcity taught us how to design high quality projects with poor [material and financial] resources

Social innovation: our projects never deal with buildings only, but we always try to set up comprehensive processes of social cohesion and employment occasions through innovative proposals

BUILDaCHANGE actively promotes research in a field that is barycentric between built environment and social empowerment programs. BUILDaCHANGE tries to enlighten how important the interaction between those entities can be by associating a dimension of research and interdisciplinary exchange to a precise determination of practical commitment on the ground.

BUILDaCHANGE

BUILDaCHANGE

BUILDaCHANGE operates combining practical action and theoretical research:

Practical action

During the formulation of new social programs we collaborate with other international or locally based non-profit associations

Our specific expertise can support new projects started by other organizations or promoted by us In both cases we involve local communities in the definition of goals and strategies, in the financing or co-financing procedures and in the socio-economic sustainability of all initiatives.

Theoretical research

Research, dissemination and communication are an essential part of BUILDaCHANGE’s activity;

We are actively investigating the current paradigm of cooperation in order to attain a new, more effective approach to the subject;

We collaborate with academic realities in order to improve and disseminate architectural principles and actions related with social interventions.

HOW WE WORK

BUILDaCHANGE

Historyand

Team

Erika Trabucco

President[and founder]

Emanuela Valle

Honorary president[and founder]

Eljor KercikuVice-presidentChief Project coordinator

Riccardo Vannucci

Scientific Director [and founder]

BUILDaCHANGE was founded in 2012 by initiative of the architects of FAREstudio with a common desire to give a more effective personal and professional contribution in the field of social architecture and urban development, in low income countries and other disadvantaged circumstances.

FAREstudio is a Rome based award-winning socially-oriented design firm and it is the result of over 25 years of experience in architectural design, technology, management. FAREstudio has been working in the last decade in several international cooperation projects in partnership with UN Agencies, NGOs, and local communities; from all those experiences emerged the idea to create an independent non profit organization for social design and community enhancement.

BUILDaCHANGE

Giovanna Vicentini Financial strategy andbusiness planning

lucianocardellicchioResearch MentorLecturer in Design and Technology & Environment atUniversity of Kent[GB]

Joao Sobral

Site coordinator

Flavio Giaccone Project coordinator and communicationdesigner

Cecilia sabelli

Communication and Content manager

GiovanniQuattrocoloOperator in the fieldBurkina Faso

BUILDaCHANGEarchitecture is a way to foster social promotionsocial promotion

BUILDaCHANGE

ProjectsWe aim to design, build and manage architectural and urban projects in order to provide safe and appropriate buildings for the most vulnerable communities, and use architecture as a way to foster social equity.

BUILDaCHANGE safe and appropriate buildings the most vulnerable communities vulnerable

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developing countries

The selection of developing countries as the favorite place for BaC’s activity stems from various considerations, from the scale and magnitude of social injustice that affects those situations to the fact that developing countries are already the recipients of remarkable amount of resources coming from the developed world, and these resources not always are ‘productive’ as they should.

BUILDaCHANGE

2.5 billionpeople have no access to anadvanced sanitation system

1.0 billionpeople have no alternative todefecating in the open air

748 millionpeople lackaccess to safe drinking water

88%Burkina Faso

of deaths by diarrheaare caused by inappropriatepersonal hygiene and by thelack of access to improvedsanitationfacilities and water sources

Countries where less than 75% of total populationhave access to improved water sources

Countries where less than 50% of total populationhas access to improved sanitation facilities

2.5billionpeople have no access to anadvanced sanitation system

people have no alternative todefecating in the open air

people lackaccess to safe drinking water

= 100.000.000 peopleSource: JMP[Joint Monitoring Programmefor Water Supply and Sanitation] 2014

billion

million

1.0

748

SANITAtionworld

situation

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Progettozero

2015Ouagadougou, Burkina FasoWomen of the associationLa SaisonnièreResearch, concept design, design development, final design

The issue of absent or inadequate sanitation affects Burkina Faso as many other low income coun-tries, and not only in Africa. Figures are astonishing and refer to an endemic situation of risk and emergency.The causes of this condition are related to the plague of pover-ty, articulated in its various phenomena: [recent] urbanization of a large number of deprived people, structural lack of in-frastructures, and, last but not least, cultural factors mainly related to the concept of privacy and decency of corporal issues.Given such a scenario, it is understandable why the area of water, sanitation and hygiene [WASH] is one of the priorities of international cooperation.

Several programs tried solve WASH problem in Ouagadougou capital city of Burkina Faso. They sug-gests that it is probably the case to go for an alternative to the model based on the household

DateLocation

Final user

Activities /services

Description

- ongoing -

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as the minimal unit to be served.In fact, if the ‘one family /one toilet’ principle might be a rea-sonable goal but it is not sus-tainable from an environmental, economical and social point of view, then something that changes one or more terms of the equa-tion, at the moment unsolvable, must probably be introduced.

Progetto Zero proposes therefore a structure that is:

• shared, in terms of access and ownership, rather than indi-vidually/family-run;• multifunctional, incorpo-rating other activities of pub-lic interest [showers, laundry, store, battery chargers, bicycle shed, hotspot wireless, educa-tional facilities like black-boards and hygiene promotion kits, etc];• integrated and self-con-tained, constituting a complete and independent unit in and of itself, provided with drinkable water and following the full cy-cle of input-outputs;• modular, so to be easily replicable and adjustable to var-ious circumstances;• pleasant in terms of light, odors control, space, safety and security, in order to

offer the users an experience that is at the same time reward-ing and unusual.

In this way the main endeavor of Progetto Zero, alongside its functional connotation, would be evident:to provide a deprived area with a basic urban infrastructure with strong identity, spatial quality and architectonic character, giv-ing self-respect to the community by dignifying what is normally disagreeable, hidden and misera-ble.Obviously nothing prevents the [desirable] possibility to re-gard, one day, the facility as part of an extended network where each single module can act as part of a wider system spread-ing a variety of interconnected services around the neighborhood, and as a terminal for data col-lection and the supply of social-ly relevant information.

services

WC

Mobile phones charger

Public lighting

Fertilizer

Showers

Washbasin

Laundry

ImprovedSanitation Hub

Watertank

Sanitationmodule

Publicspace

Satellitefacilities module

BUILDaCHANGE

click here and watch the video!

BUILDaCHANGE

new strategies, conceptsand ideasto extend and strengthen civil society.

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socialinnovation

Social innovations include new ideas, strategies, practices aimed at meeting social needs.They might refer to education, health, working condition, gender equity and so forth and operate on the background of existing alternatives.In fact, despite ideological assumptions, the market alone is not able to fix the same issues it produces, and politics is rarely in the position to act on behalf of the most disadvantaged.

The potential ambiguity of every philanthropic approach can be reduced if not eliminated by investing on capacity building, the intention to strengthening the abilities, skills, and competencies of people and communities in developing societies so to overcome the reasons of their exclusion and suffering.

Similar emphasis has to be put on the sustainability of proposals, whereas sustainability is intended in its broad economic, environmental, social meaning.

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social innovationrecyclecooperative designurban regeneration

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urbanfaber

2015RomeConcept, financial proposal

Urban Faber project wishes to activate new virtuous processes where traditional values such as quality of products and Italian design may interlace with the respect of resources and the promotion of social innovation and sustainability. Urban Faber is the place where, in the city of Rome, all this can happen: a physical and telematic laboratory whose activities try to have a gradual positive impact on the plague of unemployment, on the decline of the art of handicraft, on the poor development of innovative technologies and on the degradation of urban outskirts of Italy’s capital city. In fact Urban Faber’s action will be focused on the context of Rome and, by re-using waste products, promoting cooperative working and creating an on-line multi functional platform, it aims at becoming a catalyst of new, creative social and professional experiences.

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circles and ramifications,protected and interconnected shapes, are inputs for the project

BUILDaCHANGE

casalbianco

Park2012RomeLocal citizens committeeLocal communityConcept design, design development

The project is located in the outskirts of Rome, an area of relatively recent development, quite representative of an expansion that is not illegal as many others in the past but shares the same lack of quality and the inadequacy of public facilities.

A committee of citizens raised the need to realize a public garden in an area adjacent the housing development.The land is owned by the Rome Municipality and officially dedicated to green space.

In order to counteract the inertia of the department in charge of the design, realization and maintenance of landscaped areas of the city, the committee asked the preparation of a proposal for the garden.

DateLocationClient

Final userActivities /services

Description

BUILDaCHANGE

The right to a shelter should be regarded as a basic condition for human beings, the true symbol of humanity.

The right to a shelter

the true symbol of humanity.

BUILDaCHANGE

HomelessThe issue of homelessness is possibly the most striking form of social injustice. The capacity of a social system to provide protection, dignity and identity to its members gives the measure of a community’s development.

The right to a shelter, a home, or a roof as in the Italian expression ‘senzatetto’ [roofless], should be regarded as a basic condition for human beings, the true symbol of humanity.

For this reason BUILDaCHANGE includes homelessness among its priorities, and this interest is addressed to both the facilities for the homeless [night shelters, toilets and showers] and the provision of housing, conventional and/or alternative.

BUILDaCHANGEspaces must begenerous and well lit,finishesrobust but nice.

BUILDaCHANGE

showersfor

homeless2012RomeCentro Sociale VincenzianoHomeless of RomeConcept design, design development, final design, procurement, construction quality control

Refurbishment of a toilet and shower facility part of an existing diurnal centre for homeless people.

The requirements of these premises are related to the reality of the users: normally they do not like to leave their poor things unattended, sometimes are quite reluctant to self-control and discipline in the use of the facility, but their dignity and privacy must be preserved. As a consequence, the spaces must be generous and well lit, the finishes robust but nice so to trigger a form of refrain from abuse.

The sense of the realization lies therefore in its humbleness, but the adoption of technical solutions aimed at achieving durability and ease of maintenance has not affected the intention to provide a friendly and comfortable place.

DateLocationClient

Final userActivities /services

Description

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getinvolved

As a small charity,your help makes a real difference to our work. There are many ways to get involved in BUILDaCHANGE:

Give your Corporate Support: instead of Christmas presents, why don’t you offer your staff a donation to BUILDaCHANGE?

Become a Partner: you can support our activities with your products or your expertise

Sponsor: being at our side financing some of our activities, you can make things happen!

Build a Change ONLUS

Bank Banca Popolare Etica Rome branchc/c 00000144261IBAN IT43T0501803200000000144261BIC: CCRTIT2T84A

Tax code 97684270586

If you are a Foundation or a Corporation:

data

BUILDaCHANGE

build achangeVia Latina 4300179 Rome ITALY+39 06 9727 6340www.buildachange.org

Architecture should be regarded as a

human rightto be extended to all those who today are

excluded from it