I spent half of summer 2009 volunteering as a design researcher in a coastal village in rural Indonesia. Americans know this place as Borneo, although Indonesians call it West Kalimantan. I had previously been brought to West Kalimantan as an Industrial Design Masters student as part of a design team of six architecture students from Georgia Tech. We were designing a new hospital for a health clinic and rainforest conservation project called ASRI, started by an American doctor named Kinari Webb. ASRI is associated with an American fundraising organization named Health In Harmony.
A solo return trip was motivated by my own fascination with the local community and excitement in helping start the construction of our hospital design. Upon arrival, my work immediately began and was mostly self-directed. I appropriated the large-scale design into the design of a 9m x 9m bunkhouse for the use of now healthy patients who choose to repay their health care costs to the clinic in the form of gardening labor in ASRI's organic garden. The design included innovative materials and methods for the village, including a concrete foundation and low-use of wood which is now scarcely available due to over-logging.
Using my design research and interviewing skills, I helped hunt-down sources of local raw materials (including coconut wood, a 'greener' material than the rare rainforest trees which are mostly illegal to use) as well as skilled labor (like men able to build a concrete foundation). This all happened through old fashioned, relentless questioning and literally knocking on strangers' doors. I developed logistics for construction, including budget research conducted at the nearest hardware stores located 3 hours away by boat, I met with a professional contractor in the island's capital city, and I wrote a timeline estimate pieced together from talking with local craftsmen. Mind you, this was all conducted in Bahasa Indonesia, the local language, with the help of a translator. However, in under 1 month I had learned enough Indonesian to travel back to the US using no English.
Before I left, the foundation on the building I had designed was constructed and the project was in motion. A fully detailed report including my gathered data, important contacts, and photos was submitted to ASRI. Kinari Webb expressed extreme satisfaction and gratitude for my work. For the experience, it was a reciprocal appreciation.
This project has many interesting challenges that are tightly interconnected. First, the site is on the edge of Gunung Palung, a national park of protected rainforest, home to orangutans, rare species of birds and reptiles. It is one of the planet's last remaining rainforests. In past years, the local logging industry has devastated the ecosystem by over-logging from the rain forest. While much of the harvested wood is exported from the island, the same wood is also the preferred building material for the local community. Therefore, it was vital to develop an innovative design that reduced, or eliminated, the use of ironwood, the common but endangered species of wood. This project would serve as a community-wide example for a new, sustainable building method. On a personal level, this is a powerful example of resourcefulness and having no qualms about talking to strangers. There was a point at which the isolation of being the only fluent english speaker bore its burden, but I found joy, as I always do, in helping progress a large design project.
Below is a 20 page PDF containing my designs, local materials research, local labor recommendations, and photos taken during my return to Sukadana during Summer 2009.
I continue to play a designers role with ASRI, including graphic design for their communication documents.
