Please view our new Volunteer Resource Site http://brigaders.wikidot.com/ and use this site from now on for all your brigade and project preparation!
Mission
Global Architecture Brigades (GAB) is dedicated to the design and construction of socially
responsible solutions to architectural problems in developing nations. University students utilize
extensive community dialogue and independent research to create efficient, appropriate, and
elegant structures to be embraced and utilized by those for whom they were built.
History
Global Architecture Brigades is a subsidiary of Global Brigades, a U.S.-based nonprofit that unites volunteers around the world to help communities in the developing world. Global Brigades works to improve the lives of people through medicine, business, public health, water, environment, architecture, and law. Subsidiaries of Global Brigades are located on more than 100 university campuses. Each year, over 2000 student volunteers travel to Honduras and Panama to take part in seven day Brigade trips. These trips are highly intense community immersion experiences where students work with local residents, community organizations, government agencies, prominent local NGOs, and international NGOs, including Peace Corps Panama, CHF International, Japanese International Cooperation Agency, and Earth Train, to create positive social impact.
In 2003, Global Medical Brigades, the first subsidiary of Global Brigades, was formed by a small group of students from Marquette University who, after returning from a medical mission in Honduras, set out to create a campus club that would allow students to take part in international medical relief. In 2008, after five years of growth and development, the program evolved to include development work, and Global Architecture Brigades was piloted at the University of Illinois at Chicago to address the spatial and structural needs of developing countries.
In January of 2009, GAB UIC traveled to Barrigon, Cocle, Panama, to assist with the design of an agricultural tourism cabin for a subsistence farmer whose land boasted incredible natural beauty, and had close proximity to the Omar Torrijos National Park. The club returned to site in Late June 2009 to assist with the cabin’s construction.
In the short time since the pilot project, GAB has spread to 20 universities across the United States, and held more than 25 brigades with over 300 volunteers in two different countries. Currently there are two large-scale projects that are in the construction process. Increasingly, GAB is resolving more challenging and complex architectural problems that affect communities throughout the developing world.
Community Needs
In rural Honduras the lack of community based structures such as community centers, health centers, and schools detrimentally impedes long-term sustainable development.
Currently, the average education level of rural Hondurans is the 6th grade. These communities do not offer schooling beyond primary education most of the time, mainly because the institutions are simply not there. If a person wishes to continue their education after 6th grade, they must either commute or move several hours away to the nearest municipality with secondary education facilities, or in some cases the national capital, Tegucigalpa.
Health Centers in these communities can be anywhere between 1-4 hours walking distance and provide little support for sustainable health care. This reduces a community's desire to seek medical care unless in the most dire of situations, leading to various chronic illnesses going untreated.
Without a community center or recreation space, community integration can be lost and town governance must resort to taking place in the local primary school or in an individual's home.
Lacking permanent community fixtures such as these, development efforts become almost entirely focused on symptomatic relief. The necessary infrastructure must be in place in order for long-term development to take root .
Architecture Brigades focuses primarily on improving this situation by focusing on the development of community based structures in collaboration with the community.
Global Brigades Solutions
Global Architecture Brigades is a volunteer, student-based collaborative dedicated to the research, design, and construction of socially responsible, environmentally sustainable solutions to architectural problems in the developing world. A think-tank design approach utilizes extensive community dialogue and independent research to create efficient, appropriate, and elegant structures to be embraced and utilized by those for whom they were built. Ultimately, extended relationships between brigades and communities will result in not only the implementation of a variety of projects, but also the accumulation of a vast wealth of knowledge from which future students, designers, and communities can learn. Creating these solutions within the current parameters that the field of architecture has set is simply not possible. Students of design must question, reconsider, and ultimately rewrite every aspect of design that they have come to accept. Through this counter-cultural approach to design defiance, architecture can become something not only for the few who want, but also for the many who need.
