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[guitar music]
[SOCIAL ECONOMIC ENVIRONMENTAL DESIGN: OCS]
[car drives by]
Lima is an incredible city, but it's one of the hardest cities to live in in the world.
It has very little water available.
It has the lowest green space per capita in all of South America.
It's the second biggest desert city after Cairo.
It has the fastest rate of informal development or slum community development,
and it's a difficult life for people here.
[music]
[people talking]
We're in a community called Loma Se Zapeal, which is an informal urban settlement in northern Lima,
and we are working at a school called the Pitagoras School,
which has a secondary and primary school, and about 2,000 students.
[children] Buenos Dias!
Right now, we're standing in the Parke Primari Pitagoras, which is a project we did last year
[Ben Spencer: Assistant Professor, Dept. of Landscape Architecture, University of Washington]
with the collaboration of the University of Washington, Architectural Borders, University of San Marcos,
and the parents and teachers and students of the Pitagoras School.
That first year, we held these workshops and identified priorities
that the parents and teachers and students want to work on.
The first priority was new classrooms for the school.
The second priority was a health post, and the third priority was green spaces.
So, we got started on working on those projects.
Coco Alarcon, who is the on-site coordinator as a Peruvian architect,
and I began designing classrooms for the upper school.
When we first started working here in 2010, most of the classrooms looked like these and were basically built
out of wood paneling with corrugated metal roofs--
very dark inside, poor ventilation.
During the summer months it would get very, very hot.
So, it was hard for students to concentrate inside.
Our project--the classroom project we're working on is where the--you see the clear space over there,
and we're going to be starting our construction on it on Wednesday.
The following year, I started bringing students down here, and we held additional participatory workshops,
and based on the outcome of those workshops, we reconfirmed that one of our priorities was green space
and that they wanted to build a park at the school.
[sawing wood]
[hammering]
Part of our park design utilizes a hand-washing station,
where the majority of the kids at the schools wash their hands, and the water flows from the hand-washing station
through a sand filter, where it's cleaned, and then down through a series of ceramic pots,
where it slowly infiltrates into the soil.
It's a clay pot system which is actually an Incan system that was developed hundreds of ears ago.
It allows you to grow plants in places you wouldn't think vegetation could grow.
The people need something to change the landscape, they live in the middle of the desert.
[Jorge "Coco" Alarcon: Independent Architect, On-site Coordinator] So, the plans become like a symbol of change.
Green spaces provide a huge number of benefits.
They improve mental health and well being,
they clean pollution and dust particles from the air,
they provide habitat for animal, insect, and bird species,
and they create a place for people to gather and be together in public space,
which is an really enjoyable atmosphere.
For me, as more of an ecologist and an engineer, I think about what does evidence say about testing these things,
[Susan Bolton: Professor, School of Environmental and Forest Sciences, University of Washington]
and there is some evidence, and there has been many studies in the Netherlands and Spain and even Peru
on peoples--how people use green space and how it often reduces their stress and makes them feel
more comfortable and more likely to talk to each other.
What is it that I like the most? [Eleuteria huaman Slvador: Pitagoras School Parent]
I really like that the sand is disappearing more every day.
Last year it was full of sand and we've planted plants,
and it looks much better for our children.
We are improving day by day and we thank God
for the support that we receive from outsiders.
[Mario Lopez Antezana: Director, Pitagoras School]
The impact was huge on the students, teachers and parents.
with no dimensions or purpose
but now the flowers and the central part of the park
have helped a lot as people are taking care of it and feel happier.
[sawing wood] Children run around in the park;
the change in their attitude has been very obvious
as they feel happier and want to study more.
They really want to come to this area that used to be very poor and depressed.
[chimes and music]
[The Participatory Design Process]
The parents express their goals for the park's design in the participatory design process,
and then the students from UW develop three design options from which the parents picked one,
and that initiated the construction of the project, which is the Parke Primari e' Pitagoras,
and during a two-week period, we had about 300 parents who came to work at the school and to construct the park
in collaboration with the students who were here, and it was an amazing process to witness.
[Gaya Nakajo: Master of Landscape Architecture Graduate Student, University of Washington]
Two of the things our professors first told us were:
1. Things never go as expected or according to plan, and
2. that things take longer than you think, and every day we realize that it's true,
but a day like today where all these parents have come out, it just--it really makes you realize just--
you have to be flexible and patient and just--you know--it's the community's project.
So, we just--we work with them, and we let them set the pace,
and, in that way, it's been the most rewarding and successful.
It has come to me very surprising when you actually ask people in a community what it is they want
as opposed to what you think they should want
or what they should need, and so--and it's very time-consuming, and it's very frustrating,
because the building of the trust takes a long time and it's repetitive and it's iterative,
and sometimes it works and then the next minute they don't come to.
So, you have to have a lot of patience and a lot of understanding of the culture
to make that sort of process work.
Between parents, between people--professionals are working here and the people that are from the communities
is something really important.
It's one of the things that make more sustainable the project, because even if they
don't understand too much of the project, they have a relationship with you--they consider you their friends.
So, they say, "This was built by my friends, so we should take care about that."
[Building Relationships] [chimes and music]
I love as much as any architect to build a building and take--spend all night
figuring out the details and iterating different forms,
and I--on the one hand, I think that's an incredibly important process in itself--
that design process, but if you can marry that with the ideas and aspirations of a community,
then I think you have something that's much richer and more beautiful.
[sawing wood]
You have to spend time in the street, and you have to listen to them very carefully.
That's how you make a strong relationship with the people--with the community.
We've been, in some words, some sort of different--I don't know how we started to work,
but they're really kind, they're really impressed that we have--
at the beginning we have a language program, I think--ahh--but--
[Susan] Yes, that's because you talk too fast in Spanish.
[Coco] Yeah, I don't know, but by the time we--everything becomes easy.
We didn't have any big trouble.
[Susan] No, we like each other.
[Coco] Yeah. [both laugh]
[Susan] And we laugh a lot. [Coco] Yeah.
[children chanting]
It's really taught me a ton about the resilience and the vitality and the incredible lives of the people
in this community have, and their ability to overcome hardship and work together to build
something like this school and a better life.
So, for me, that's what inspires me and keeps me working, 'cause I see these communities
working incredibly hard under very difficult circumstances to make better lives for themselves and for their kids.
As a mother, I want many things.
I want them to study and maybe leave here and go to another place.
I want them to get further ahead than us
and that's why we work here every day,
so that they can be better in the future.
[SOCIAL ECONOMIC ENVIRONMENTAL DESIGN: OCS] [Produced by: The UpTake] [In Partnership with: Design Corps] [Funded by: The Fetzer Institute]
[music]