OneSmallProject.... One billion squatters claim leftover spaces in cities and live in unauthorized dwellings made of locally available, oftentimes scavenged, materials. If you know even one of the one billion – if a begging mother in Mumbai lays her sleeping baby’s head in your lap as you idle in an open three-wheeler at a stop light; if you walk alongside a distracted man wandering in a tent city in Hambantota, his Sri Lankan family killed in the Indian Ocean tsunami; if you watch a child recycler in Buenos Aires hunt for glass, metal, and cardboard in your garbage, careful not to cut her fingers – you’ve been touched by her or his life, even if briefly and reluctantly. It is inevitable that the begging mother, the lonely survivor, and the young scavenger see themselves as they are seen by many others: as residue, debris, and the overproduction of society. As leftovers. I know something, admittedly very little, about leftover people. I’ve seen workers on construction sites in Colombo living in self-built dwellings made of scrap materials. . . . . Old women in St. Petersburg selling anything knitted, muffins, a handful of pea pods, whatever they can make or find, and having no buyers. . . . . . A house in Buenos Aires made of timber pallets, packing crate flats, and sheets of corrugated metal setting within a larger cluster of squatters’ houses. . . . . Vancouver’s Chinatown at night, a stained mattress in an alley, worn and welcoming. . . . . On the express train slowing into Mumbai early morning. Thousands living outside, washing in puddles, bending over garbage piles eating alongside animals, men squatting near the rail line, shitting, pissing, as we clickety-clack past. In Shadow Cities, Robert Neuwirth refers to such trackside living conditions as “a metaphysical enclosure marked in the dirt.” In this city of 7 million squatters maybe this is the worst that poverty has to offer. Seeing is not believing. A metaphysical enclosure is “a place that has to be believed to be seen” as U2’s Bono sings in Walk On. First you must believe what is. Only then can you see. In the US today, as in much of the world, there are leftover people, leftover spaces, and leftover materials. They are not as obvious; people in the US are very good at disowning and hiding debris. You must believe what you see and you need to know where to look. People are leftover. In The Working Poor: Invisible in America, David Shipler says of mistreated migrant workers in North Carolina: “You can hardly go through a day, much less observe a holiday, without the fruit of their labor in your life.” Barbara Ehrenreich, author of Nickel and Dimed: On (Not) Getting By in America, says that the minimum wage workers in the US are the nation’s true philanthropists. It is on their strong backs that the privileged lifestyles of many Americans are built. Space is leftover. As of January 2004 there were 245 former Wal-Mart “big box” stores sitting empty or partially empty. Seven thousand abandoned houses were counted in Indianapolis in 2003. And materials are leftover. Building the average 2,000-square-foot house creates 3,000 pounds of wood waste, 2,000 pounds of drywall waste, and 600 pounds of cardboard waste; 10-30% of the annual landfill waste stream is associated with construction and demolition. OneSmallProject is not about billions, millions, thousands, or even hundreds. It is not about pounds or percentages. It asks you to think outside the fascination with powerful men, trophy buildings, and great patrons that has for too long defined the architectural profession. In its place, OneSmallProject offers an empowering agenda that encourages each of us to create small projects alongside some one typically considered powerless. It is about one. One person. One architect. One small project. Repeat. It is about one because persons need assistance. Now. It is about one because we’ve lost touch with our humanness. As said by Fillip Noterdaeme, director of The Homeless Museum: “there are more homeless people among the privileged than on the streets of Manhattan.” It is you who is without a home. It is about one because we have much to learn from others. According to Neuwirth: “[S]quatters mix more concrete than any developer. They lay more brick than any government. . . Squatters are the largest builders of housing in the world — and they are creating the cities of the future.” Starting in 2001, a number of basic questions were asked with faculty colleagues and graduate students from Argentina, China, Germany, India, Mexico, Nepal, Thailand, Turkey, and the US. Who and where are leftover people? What and where is leftover space? And what and where are leftover materials? In our search, we moved to alternative paths believing we have respected the same voices, the same pieces of architecture, and the same logic systems for too long. To paraphrase a colleague: the thinking that created the problems can not provide the new insights that are necessary to move beyond the problems. Included in these studies are timber and mud pavilions constructed of found materials in Sri Lanka (2003); seventeen temporary dwellings (2001) and six timber pallet pavilions (2004) built with scavenged materials; and galleries of timber pallets and construction site dumpsters (2005). One master’s thesis studies the political aspects of mobile houses in Israeli settlements in the West Bank; in another, an artist’s working space was covertly constructed in the superstructure of a bridge. Collaborators, who are contributors to OneSmallProject spoke with us: Cengiz Bektas of Turkey, Spaniard Santiago Cirugeda Parejo, Azin Valy and Suzan Wines (U.S.).  And work with collaborators in 26262625 explored similar questions as a bus shelter designed of rejected limestone blocks (2002) and an arbor made of scavenged materials (2001+). OneSmallProject is a call to action. To make a small difference in the life of one human being -- whether a squatter in an informal settlement or the architect or designer inside each of us -- is the basic responsibility this work accepts. One person. One architect. One small project. Repeat. And this work is about one young woman. When I think of Rasika, then, she walks among coconut trees on a sand dune near Kalametiya on Sri Lanka’s southern shore holding one-year-old daughter Naduni. Think September 11, 2001 changed everything. Think again. On December 26, 2004 at 7:58 AM local time, the Sumatra-Andaman earthquake occurred off the west coast of northern Sumatra, Indonesia. With a magnitude of 9.0, it was the fourth largest earthquake in the world since 1900. According to locals, the ocean recedes, gathering itself. Then a liquid battering ram, five- to fifteen-meters tall, powers over the dune that was Kalametiya. Then quiet. Then the water returns. It crushes everything. And it’s aimed at Rasika and Naduni. Think crosshairs. Think target practice. Think PULL. See mother running, clutching child. Feel the death grip of mother to daughter, of ocean to everything. Fact: the tsunami killed three times more women than men. Among the reasons: women were at home while men were fishing or in the fields, had difficulty outrunning the wave, were slowed as they struggled to save children, and weren’t strong enough to climb trees or hold onto floating debris. Rasika and Naduni are knocked down, underwater. The sharp steel of a barbed wire fence grabs them. The mother reaches down to free them. The fence digs in, rips at muscle and tissue. Deep tissue. Building parts tumble past, whole sections of brick walls. People too. The ocean is hungry and it’s come to eat. Naduni is ripped away. An angry Indian Ocean claims her to be its daughter, its child. Fact: the tsunami caused more casualties than any other in recorded history. More than 275,950 people were killed, 14,459 are missing, and 2,242,212 were displaced in south Asia and east Africa. Tsunamis killed at least 30,959 people in Sri Lanka. Kalametiya was a fishing village of 30 families, 190 people. The tsunami killed 11. The bodies of 3 were recovered. Fact: Naduni is not one of them. When I think of Rasika, March 2005, I see her walking in the temporary settlement constructed by Oxfam workers, four kilometers inland from her destroyed house. There are no cooling ocean breezes, no shade provided by palm trees, no sand. Now Rasika and her family, along with other villagers, bake day and night, in the sun and the sweltering box houses. To use her words, they are “dried fish.” When I think of Rasika, March 2005, I see her standing in a trench digging with hand tools, alongside me and my students, catalyzing the reconstruction of one of the first new permanent villages in the country, post-tsunami. Thirty parcels, each to have a house with granite foundations, reinforced concrete bond beams, brick walls, coconut wood rafters and purlins, clay roofs, and concrete floor slabs. And I think of my students digging with mamotties and picks for a week, plunging tools and energy and hearts into this work, digging trenches alongside tens and sometimes hundreds of locals. We find relevance in the red earth, in the blisters on our white hands and the sweat pouring off our sun burned backs. All of us find new “homes” in the big energy of this young woman with her husband Gamini, daughter Ishara, son Navoth, and now youngest child Pasidu, reclaiming their lives. Maybe, finally, this is why I am an architect. One person. One architect. One small project. Repeat.