Dream Big But Within Reach

Lessons on How to Make a Difference

Do you want to inspire, or do you want to actually get something done? Hopefully, you can do both.

Two weeks ago, I and six other fellows from around the globe met in Manila for the Civic Innovation Fellowship. We were given three enormous urban challenges to conquer in just under two weeks. That’s right — design and prototype ways to solve major city issues in just two weeks!

The way that actually broke down looked a little something like this:

• Rapid-fire intro to federal, city and local government responsibilities
• Split up into our specific challenge teams
• Meet with the related experts and government officials to get an overview about the budget, constraints and what’s already being done
• A couple days of various site visits
• Then brainstorm
• Come up with a solution
• Revise
• Revise
• Nap
• Repeat
• Produce!

Throughout this process, we all had the same question: should we design something the city can have right now, or should we design what will push the city forward and could take years to achieve?

My teammate and I took on the multifaceted issues plaguing Marikina City daycares. No two daycare centers were identical in terms of physical space as well as resources available to them. The biggest overarching issues most were facing were a lack of supplies and resources, inadequate space, issues with ownership (constantly having to move locations) and flooding every time there’s heavy rain.

The road to our final solution wasn’t easy (think: late nights, 2AM hot fudge runs, a very tiny fire from the laser cutting machine… you get it). In two weeks, we believe we were able to give an answer to both the big dream and an immediate response.

In the end, we presented a conceptual design for a new daycare that could virtually go on any plot of land, anywhere and for the existing a new storage solution that housed chairs and tables that could be taken apart to act as building blocks for children.

Dreaming Big

The biggest surprise coming in was it’s not really about the budget; the money is there. It’s more about not having viable land.

As architects, that is not something we hear too often. If the funds are available, there’s not much that designers can’t solve. If you’ve got the money, honey, I’ve got the design.

Even before the site visits were over, I was concocting elaborate ideas in my head and pre-designing this daycare without ever putting a pen to paper. If there are any first-year architecture students reading this — don’t do that.

My partner and I decided immediately after visiting the daycares that because there were so many unique problems for each daycare, the only way to really help all of them was to get around the land issue and build new.

The new daycare would act as a container housed within a structural system that elevated it off the ground. This would allow the water from small floods to go back into the earth and avoid unwanted damage to the interiors. Wait, it gets better — during major floods, this envelope would rise and fall with the unwanted high tide. Woah.

We started detailing ways to make this one idea work, leaving behind the rest of the problems they asked us to address. We went full speed ahead with what we believed they needed.

Let Go of Your Ego

Designers cannot help themselves, we love to put our stamp on something new and cool.

A daycare that floats on water when there’s a flood — how sexy is that?!

However, it is crucial to remember at all times: don’t ever fall in love with your ideas. It’s difficult of course because these concepts become our babies, and letting go can be heartbreaking but crucial to a successful project.

We were pumped when we presented our ideas at our preliminary meeting. Even though both the people from the daycare and the government seemed impressed, they still responded with, “That’s really interesting, but what are you doing for the daycare workers right now who don’t have resources?”

When this happens, there’s always a choice. You can cling onto your ideas for dear life, or, if you really want to make an impact, you can listen and start to rework your thinking.

Reboot, and Make It Quick

With less than four days left, we had to come up with a solution that would be viable for 38 existing daycares that were all different in terms of size, quality of space and existing allocated resources.

Initially, it seemed like there couldn’t possibly be one solution to help the very specific problems of each one.

However, there’s always an answer, and our response was to design tables and chairs that could be taken apart like building blocks. Each child would be responsible for their own set and would use what already existed in each daycare now as a source for learning. Once the students put away their “blocks,” the space could be used for other things. And bonus, the furniture could be made out of cardboard. Recyclable and affordable!

To keep these and all other learning materials safe from flood damage we designed watertight storage units that would accommodate the furniture building blocks and be built to the scale of the students.

Keep It Simple, Stupid

Smart design is often simple and straightforward. Oh, and BTW it still looks awesome. It becomes exciting because it’s completely achievable and can really become a part of people’s lives fast. After all, that is what they flew us to the Philippines to do!

It’s so tempting to always be coming up with the most cutting edge solutions possible. But more and more, my favorite compliment has become, “That’s so obvious. Why aren’t they doing that already?”

The Best Part Is…

In the end, each team presented completely achievable proposals. Some could be implemented sooner than others, and some with a lot of questions that would still need to be answered after we packed up and left.

But the truly exciting part, was the relationships we were able to form with the professionals already involved in each project, whose feedback to us was that we inspired them and pushed them out of their comfort zone to realize there are new answers to problems they’ve been dealing with for years.

The truth is, even if the only thing we were able to accomplish is nudge government officials and other experts in the field to reconsider the status quo, that’s an exciting first step to making real change happen.

Hopefully, on my next visit to Marikina, I get to see all of these beautiful ideas come to life. Until then, thank you to everyone involved who made this such a successful and inspiring experience.