The year may be three weeks old but it’s still pretty new to me – the New Year, as for most people, has given occasion to reflect on my first four months with emi-uk.
Before I left Newcastle a couple of people who know me well commented it sounded like I was leaving to go and ‘live the dream’ and as I re-read the first blog post it certainly sounded like it! I can certainly say my relocation from north to south, from commercial practice to charity, from local to international mindedness, has been a great challenge and a perfect way to get exposure to the practicalities of this kind of work – and that the exciting and fun days are accompanied by frustrating and confusing ones too.
The change has been stimulating – much more than the blog has really reflected actually. I just made a list of all the topics I want to blog on but haven’t had chance to, and was surprised how many different angles there are to this kind of work. That is to say when you start trying to formulate the answers to the complex problems of the physical development of places and buildings in the developing world you actually discover more questions, and uncover the myriad ‘issues’ for want of a better word. It’s not a bad thing but it can be overwhelming. This may be surprising given I have only spent 2 weeks in a developing country since starting, but I think that makes it harder to draw conclusions due to the distance from the context in which these issues work themselves out. It is obvious that being in-country gives understanding that can’t be gained remotely, and whilst that is my aim, I am glad to be here in the UK at this point – the team here have lots of experience and so are great for sounding out my ideas and questions to, eMi has a real need for staff to help run projects; a variety of project work in Asia and Africa has been/will be useful for seeing the same issues from the perspective of different national contexts; and I can connect to people experimenting with balancing paid work with developing world work.
On that topic, the big change to my work this year is the start of some part-time paid work alongside my eMi work. Martin Evans Architects are based in Shoreditch in London and Martin is a trustee of eMi-UK and offered me a job to help subsidise my voluntary work. It’s a small office, and I’m working on residential projects 2 days a week from now on. (do get in touch if you’re in London Mondays or Tuesdays!) I’m already enjoying dealing with the UK system of delivering buildings – it is what I am used to I suppose and the familiarity has reminded me it’s still satisfying to work in this country. It also highlights how new everything has been at eMi – a thorough challenge of all my habits, assumptions, and framework for designing! So I’m definitely learning how to be creative and multi-faceted when it comes to doing this kind of work.
As for work specifics, I have spent the last two weeks doing some study whilst the office is quiet – I thought it would be really good to add a bit of background to my work and so when Architecture sans frontiers launched a new remote study programme called ‘Challenging Practice: Essentials for the Social Production of Habitat’ I thought I’d grab the opportunity to do it. It’s been good to ponder topics such as participation, discrimination, heritage, and land tenure amongst others: all part of this big picture of international development that is getting bigger the more I spend involved in it!
eMi-UK welcomes three new interns this week, and so we’ll be getting acquainted – I’m running a session on personal strength finding, one of the team building activities we do at the start of the internships. Further design work on the 60 feet project will follow that, as we look towards finishing that report in advance of project 2: Mustard Seed Ministries School masterplan in Uganda in late February.
Bring on 2013, what mystery you hold!
R
emibaby 