One Small Project is a movement initiated by Wes Jans, PhD, RA associate professor of architecture at Ball State University, through which he seeks to connect fellow architects, students, artists, and designers with “Squatters” and the world’s working and urban poor. By building small projects, Wes provides an opportunity for these two group to work alongside one another.

I had the honor of working with Wes during my time at Herron by helping him create a visualization of his One Small Project for an upcoming exhibition titled “small architecture BIG LANDSCAPES”. The exhibit – scheduled to open at the Sheldon Swope Museum in Terre Haute, Indiana, in the spring of 2010 – will showcase the works of various artists whom Wes feels offer something special to a world often overlooked, under appreciated, and ignored by the flow of mainstream culture.

Every human who has walked the surface of our planet has thought and acted in relation to the landscape. We have some understandings of these dynamics through various artists’ work including: Ansel Adams’ photography of the U.S. southwest; Frank Lloyd Wright’s design for Fallingwater; Jane Jacobs’ insights into the life of American cities; the New York City of Ralph Ellison’s Invisible Man and Chase County; Kansas as portrayed by William Least Heat-Moon in PrairyErth; and Maya Lin’s monuments, installations, and buildings. At the same time, there is much that we do not know about the connections that many of Earth’s people have with their immediate landscapes today. One billion informal settlers (1/6 people worldwide) live in slums or shantytowns, twenty-five million people are currently displaced by war or natural disaster, and three thousand “homeless” people in Indianapolis will need a meal and a warm place to sleep tonight, every night. All of them inhabit the landscape, claim space, and make their way around the world. It will be argued that we have much to learn from their ideas, frameworks, and actions. This is the idea behind small architecture BIG LANDSCAPES.

The exhibit hopes to challenge our fairly conventional, middle class sensibilities regarding the landscape, and will document and interpret (and in some cases build) environments being occupied and small architecture being built in some of the most extreme, and simultaneously most common, landscapes in our world.

My hopes are that people will visit the exhibit, and view it not as an “art gallery”, but rather as an experience and opportunity to connect with others, share stories, be relational and intentional – To see the world through an old and familiar set of eyes, but with new sensitivity and awareness.

As a designer, I believe that it is important that I first view my environment in such a way that allows me to utilize my own unique skill sets in order to “mesh” with it, keeping true to its existing essence, values or beliefs rather than seeking to immediately redefine it. Through this lens of understanding it I am more in tune with its culture, its energy, and the people who inhabit it. For a large part, I think it’s common for design-minded individuals to feel as though we must constantly reinvent, recreate, or restructure the world for the future instead of first considering the existing world, and how to cater to the now.

I recently stumbled upon an article that speaks to this idea.

(Do starving African’s a favour. Don’t Feed them.)

For years, the countries of Africa have been in need of aid, and every time wealthy countries have come to the rescue with food, water, and other resources. Shipping food from places like the U.S. is costly, uneconomic, and can encourage dependency. Instead of just giving them food, why don’t we educate them on how to grow and maintain it? – using the existing landscape for growing crops and preventing drought. We’re just creating a short-term detour around the problem, and will never solve it.

I’ve also found a few other links that discuss innovations that are helping to promote agricultural and economic stimulation in developing country’s:

Q-Drum
Hippo Roller
Re-Designing Africa’s Ox-Powered Farm Tools
Innovation in African women’s farm tools