Two Rice architecture alums, and former Gensler Houston interns, Sam Brisendine and Scott Key are utilizing their top-tier education and expertise to make serious waves on a global level — and Gensler wants everyone to know about it. June is Global Giveback Month at the international design and architecture firm, and Every Shelter, the charitable organization founded by Brisendine and Key, is getting the spotlight with a new exhibit in the lobby of Gensler’s office in downtown Houston titled “Why We Flee.”
Photographed by 26-year-old war photojournalist Moses Sawasawa, “Why We Flee” shines a light on one of the world’s largest drivers of human displacement today: an endless conflict in the Democratic Republic of Congo, or DRC. Also on display are the common goods that Every Shelter helps to repurpose into supplies and tools that refugees can then use to design and build their own permanent homes themselves.
Every Shelter focuses on designing, building, and supplying permanent shelter solutions for homeless and displaced war and natural disaster refugees. Based in Houston, TX, and Kampala, Uganda, Every Shelter works directly with newly-arriving refugees from the DRC in Ugandan refugee settlements across the southwest of the country.
Every Shelter is unique in that they are “community led, expert supported,” and teach communities how to design and build for their own communities. Megan Mark, director of advancement at Every Shelter, tells CultureMap about a design studio that they are currently piloting at their Ugandan office.
“We have a humanitarian aid architect there and a program manager. They work with the social innovation leads, who are typically refugees who we’ve employed to help us navigate refugees’ needs in the context of the environment that they are in,” she says. “A refugee who is in Turkey doesn’t have the same needs as a refugee in Uganda. Right now we have three architects who are still in school.”
Humanitarian aid architects spend nine weeks leading an architecture and design curriculum for refugees between the ages of 18-30 years old. At the end of the nine weeks, the students will have designed a solution, or “intervention” as Every Shelter calls it, for a need that they have in the community.
“We are really excited to see what they come up with,” says Lauren Hanson, community manager at Every Shelter. “We teach refugees how to make things, then certify them to be the teachers. Then they can go make their own, they can sell their own, they can even start their own business teaching others how to make these things. We want to give the power to them to take whatever intervention we come up with and utilize it. They can take any idea and scale it, and that’s what we want to happen.”
The most coveted shelter solution by far has been the brick molds that Every Shelter supplies to the communities. While brick molds are nothing new, availability has been scarce. With high demand and low supply, local rental fees for these tools skyrocketed. The UN and the Ugandan government supply refugees with land, a UN tarp, a few poles, and a small amount of money to get settled. Refugees tend to spend 10-26 years in these settlements, far longer than the 3-6 month lifespan of a UN-supplied tarp.
By supplying brick molds and an invaluable education in building and design — especially lessons on making bricks from local organic matter — Every Shelter can get families from living under a tarp to living in a brick home in about a year. The brick molds cost under $10 to make, and the savings from potential rental fees ($130) is the equivalent of three months of food per household, which is a huge savings for families who are trying to get their children into schools.
Communities band together to share molds and can work together to allocate bricks in an efficient manner. One house requires approximately 1,500 bricks, and with lessons from Every Shelter, families can design and build homes that best fit their individual needs. Skylights are designed and built using recycled water bottles, and decommissioned billboards are treated and up-cycled into roofing and floor tiles, which have a lifespan of about eight years. Lessons in home repair are also instrumental for those who may need them down the line.
The focus that Every Shelter places on design, architecture, and construction in underserved communities is something that resonates deeply with Gensler. Stephanie Burritt, managing director and principal at Gensler Houston, certainly feels a connection to the organization’s ethos.
“When they came to us and told us what they are doing, it was just hand-in-glove in terms of how it fit with our global giveback and our focus on homelessness, and it just made a lot of sense,” Burritt tells CultureMap. “We have happy hours here with contractors, employees, vendors, and everyone who walks through here all the time asks us what this is that we are showcasing and how they can help.”
Gensler’s summer intern class arrived the same week as the “Why We Flee” installation, and Burritt thinks it has been a good thing for them to see. “I think, for them, it was super exciting to see somebody who had been an intern — 12 years ago, or whatever it was — and go ‘Oh, wow! This is the kind of impact I can have at some point in my career that’s beyond what you see in our day-to-day work at Gensler.’ And I think that’s really special.”
Every Shelter co-founder Scott Key enlisted college friend and curator Ben Rasmussen to oversee the installation of the exhibition. As for the subject matter, Rasmussen wants the show to be experienced in a fluid way. “Wherever you enter is how you experience it,” he says. “It can be moved through in whatever way people choose, and that sort of personal way of moving through the work kind of echoes the sort of chaotic way that people experience it on the ground. So we wanted for that to exist in a way that people can see it, without trying to force an education on a really long-running and complex conflict.”
One benefit of the exhibition is the amount of exposure that Every Shelter is receiving from Gensler’s local contractors and vendors, with labor and materials contributions for the organization’s new Heights-area office already pouring in. “Why We Flee” hopes to find a new home after its time at Gensler comes to a close at the end of the summer, so check in with Every Shelter if a trip to Gensler this summer isn’t in the cards.
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See “Why We Flee" Monday-Friday from 9 am-5 pm at Gensler’s Houston office in 2 Houston Center (909 Fannin Street, Suite 200).
