One Small Project

Archinect offers a terrific interview with Ball State U Architecture professor Wes Janz.

The leftover is a potent category; synonyms include waste, debris, rubbish, as well as surviving, unconsumed, and outstanding. Someone or something typically seen as worthless can be understood simultaneously to be worthwhile.

I like this shifted perspective. Is a "slum" a place of poverty and pain, as well as a place of vibrancy and life? What will the self-builder teach me, an architect? Am I the homeless one? Have I lost my way?

Now, I’m working bottom-up, one person and one small project at a time, taking seriously the displaced family, the claimed space, the scavenged brick. It’s the cascading energies of small responses and helping moments that interest me.

For more on Wes Janz and his approach to development, visit his group site: One Small Project.