Notes from Nabeel Hamdi's Lecture at NTNU

This article is just a compilation of the quotations of Prof. Nabeel Hamdi which I have been able to note in his lecture today. I've just put them as I scribe them in my notebook hence you'll not find it as an organized article. These quotations are really touching and inspiring hence I wanted to share with people who cares about these issues. Also slides and the video of lecture (somewhere in same topic) will be useful to you. I found three examples at the last section are very interesting, worth to think over. We may generate many discussion topics from the contents of this lecture. Please comment or add more idea on this to build on it as more useful resource. 

Prelude: Only 5% of the built environment in the world is planned rest 95% is unplanned or informal. But we professionals, architects, engineers devote much of the time for that 5% and we neglect that 95%. 

"Participation is a creative process rather than corrective. Similar as, if I didn't engage an engineer in complex building, then there is much risk of structural failure, similarly if I didn't engage people then my planning is at risk."

The point here is about the imperatives for broadening the 'purpose' and 'practice' of our profession, redefining the meaning and purpose of 'Architecture'. It is to say, to continue practice while being 'strategic'. 

Intelligence lies in the street not inside the planning office. - Practical wisdom. It is not to say that they are good and we are bad or vice versa, but to respect and recognize the practical wisdom of the people. 

For this kind of planning, two levels of organizations are needed. 

1. Emergent structures: Flexible, grassroots, creative, responsive to need, cheap, simpler.  
2. Design Structures: Physical, legal, rituals, stability etc. 

Three Assumptions: 

1. Scope and purpose of our Practice: When we want to engage ourselves effectively, we need to consider or we come across global issues like, poverty, climate change, loss of identity, income inequity, social exclusion etc. An architect may say his business is to design, those are other people's problems. The point here is do practical works but add strategic values in it. 

We have stereotypical position of our scope of profession already. We design houses etc. In strategic thinking "what a house does is more important that that the house is." It seems fine that we limit ourselves to the core responsibility of design only, but it will to two things. Firstly, it denies tremendous opportunity and secondly your design may disturb the place. And if you realized this, do you have competence to deal with rest of the dimension than your stereotypical scope?

We don't need to feel bad about ourselves, don't paralyze yourself thinking that the issue is so big. If any project that evicts communities, you might need to say 'NO' to that design visualizing its impact. We may need to go to activism. Important here is "Willing and dealing", learn to think "big issues are difficult to deal but are fun in dealing such."

You have tremendous power, you can reach to the grassroots level of slum and other day you can go to the highest authority. Only you need is competence in dealing.

In such projects 'you can't point out which one is my successful project" because you work for process, you'll not be able to show what actually you have done yourself. Don't worry, process is more important. 

Need to develop the skill of business man. Even in harsh contradictions a business man goes to its counterpart and presents their views and takes their views, response. This skill of negotiation is very important in dealing with complex situations.  

Improvisation of place by users = user's art

2. Life and organization of Place: - - - -

3. Nature and value of expert's intervention: Take our responsibility as development practitioners. "To solve housing problem, stop providing houses". An adjustment in previous notion of 'providing is wrong and enabling is right': now we say 'to be a good enabler, you need to be a prudent provider.'

Understand the power relations. 

'Charity is not sustainable. Who feels good at the end?"

Principles of enabling:

• Understand Community Networks
• Widening choices
• Political enablement
• Market enablement: social enterprises. Not only PPP, but the partnership between formal private and informal private too. 
• Unlocking resources: 'Architecture as Opportunity'. 
• Adaptation to Change - flexibility: Learning from 'vernacular' doesn't mean to copy, but to understand the process, dynamics, organizations, hidden structures which has enabled them to create such product. 

"Provide to enable. Enable to adapt to change." --- this is sustainability. 

Eg  Sustainable barber shop > Shoes polishing at the time of hair cut. --- an idea is clear here, that that barber is not thinking anything about the sustainability of the world, but cleverly safeguarding his own business.  

Eg. After rigorous exercise, it was found out that to make kid attending school, the school but has to enter the community. But the road was so narrow that bus can't enter. The straightforward solution is to construct a road to the community. But that is again not a simple to implement. Need to acquire land, evict some households etc many complications. After struggling to find out how to succeed making the road, we realized that we left our main objective far behind. Our main objective of the project is to improve education and we need to make kids attending school regularly. Our objective is to take out the kids from the community not to get the bus in to the community hence. As soon as this realization, new idea emerged. Hire people to transport kids in bicycle. One bicycle can carry 6 kids at one time. Another, idea could be, hire somebody to walk kids to school safely. One person can control 6 kids. This could be an transect walk, a good way of learning their place. 

Eg. If somebody asked 2 + 2 = ?, simplest answer is 4, but if what is equal to 4, then the answer could be numerous, 1+3, 1.1+2.9, 1.5+2.5, etc uncountable options. This skill of asking question backward is very useful in dealing with complex situations. 

Scaling Up:

Small organization can't do all the works hence they have to be federated into larger organizations. 

Construct -- deconstruct

Demystify, Avoid Jargons. 

Jargons are the Defensive Mechanism for specialists. Another risk could be over-simplification. Housing is reduced to houses, Education is reduced to School etc . 

Some overhead Slides:  

Distinction of Pratical work and strategic. 

Cause analysis

Poverty and Livelihood concepts. 

Livelihood Security Model

Scaling up

Reflection - Learning 

Distinction between Community Action Plan (CAP) and Strategic Action Plan (SAP)

Hamdi Delivering Lecture at NTNU

Short Biography : 

Nabeel Hamdi qualified as an architect at the Architectural Association in London in 1968. He worked for the Grater London Council between 1969 and 1978, where his award-winning housing projects established his reputation in participatory design and planning. From 1981-1990 he was Associate Professor of Housing at Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), where he was later awarded a Ford International Career Development Professorship. In 1997 Nabeel won the UN-Habitat Scroll of Honour for his work on Community Action Planning, and the Masters course in Development Practice that he founded at Oxford Brookes University in 1992 was awarded the Queenʼs Anniversary Prize for Higher and Further Education in 2001.

http://www.brookes.ac.uk/schools/be/staff/nabeelhamdi.html

Watch the video below: The lecture is more or less of same content as this.