You Are Where You Live
You are what you eat, right? Peter Williams thinks you are where you live. Give people suitable sanitation, proper ventilation, adequate eaves, like in the award-winning Breathe House design above, and they’ll be healthier. And they won’t need drugs to manage many of the diseases that attack them, such as tuberculosis.
Williams is founder and executive director of ARCHIVE (Architecture for Health in Vulnerable Environments). He’s working to increase awareness of the link between housing and health. It’s a connection that can make a difference: in many of the world’s cities, one in six people live in overcrowded, unstable structures that lack adequate sanitation.
At a recent event at Herman Miller’s National Design Centre in London, Williams spoke about ARCHIVE’s mission to combat diseases by making architecture central to a systemic process of improving lives. And with projects such as Kay e Sante nan Ayiti (Creole for “Housing and Health in Haiti”), he’s showing how we can all participate in creating a better world.
Photo via ARCHIVE
Kay e Sante nan Ayiti competition
1st Place Entry: Breathe House
Anselmo Canfora (assistant professor of architecture); Richard Guerrant (medical doctor); Ewan Smith (engineer); Galen Staengl (engineer); Michael Stoneking (architect); Aja Bulla-Richards, Sara Harper, Sally Lee, Nathan Parker, Chase Sparling-Beckley, Lauren Thompson (architecture students)