Archive for the ‘reblog’ Category

Design of a Haitian Village by Haiti FabLab Collaborator Gerthy Lahens and MIT Architecture Professor Jan Wampler

Wednesday, February 17th, 2010

Gerthy Lahens and MIT professor Jan Wampler are working on a project to design a small, self-sufficient village in Arcahaie, Haiti. The village is designed with rebuilding Haitian education in mind.


From Boston.com: Jan Wampler (left), an MIT professor of architecture, and lead organizer Gerthy Lahens explain details of their Haiti project. (Pat Greenhouse/Globe Staff)

From MIT President Susan Hockfield’s Letter to the Community:

Architecture professor Jan Wampler is designing a small, self-sufficient settlement consisting of a school and housing for 350 Haitian students and 100 staff. The settlement, conceived for a region about one hour from Port-au-Prince, will be carried out in coordination with local Haitian organizations, engineers and contractors, and can also serve as a model for use across Haiti.

Gerthy Lahens has been helping us with finding stakeholders in Haiti who will take ownership of the Fablab. Fablabs cannot just be plopped down and then take off: they require people more than machines to work. We are still looking for stakeholders who can take ownership, if you know someone, please contact us!

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Setting up wireless internet in Port-au-Prince

Wednesday, February 10th, 2010

Amidst the chaos, people of Haiti cannot avoid rebuilding. Here a Port-au-Prince resident has started an internet cafe using Fablab’s favourite router, the Linksys.


From boston.com Gay Maclaire (right) sets up a wireless modem at his new internet cafe at a makeshift camp in Port-au-Prince, Haiti January 30, 2010. After the earthquake destroyed Maclaire’s internet business, he recovered some of the equipment and started an internet cafe at a makeshift camp in front of the damage presidential palace, where he lives with his family. (REUTERS/Carlos Barria)

One of the Fablab Afghanistan’s favourite projects is FabFi: directional antenna + wireless router. In Afghanistan, FabLab users are progressively expanding a wireless mesh broadband network to communicate with each other and extend internet connectivity from a few isolated uplinks to a user community that spans more than 50 square kilometers.


Afghanis work on a small directional antenna for sharing wifi. Photo by Keith Berkoben.


Wireless hops can be chained together, with larger antennas making big hops and smaller ones sharing locally. Here in Afghanistan, a large antenna can hop up to 5 miles. Photo by Keith Berkoben.

Even though Fabfi is working well in Afghanistan, it does not mean it is the best thing for Haiti. Developing technology that is appropriate for the surroundings is key, and perhaps there are materials more easily available in Haiti that people can make wireless antennas with.


Here, instead of using the original design for the FabFi antenna, Afghanis reused a USAID vegetable oil can to make a directional antenna. Their upcycled version is only a few dB off from the original. Photo by Hameed Tsal.

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