Posts Tagged ‘education’

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!

Start of the Haiti Fablab Project

Sunday, January 31st, 2010


cardboard mockup for Nadya’s rowboat in fabclass, 2009

In Port-au-Prince in the past few months, thousands of people have lost their homes, and with that all of their belongings. Many have been sleeping in the street– houses which are not completely destroyed are often too unstable to reenter. In the near future, Haiti will rapidly rebuild itself.

A fablab, or fabrication laboratory, is a workshop of computer controlled machines with which one can make almost anything: furniture, electronics, even houses. In the aftermath of the earthquake in Haiti, people need to be able to make the things they want and need to resume their lives.

We are raising money to be able to buy, install and run a FabLab in Port-au-Prince.