Sergio A. Palleroni, research fellow at the Center for Sustainable Development at the University of Texas, Austin, runs 10-week-long design/build studios around the world in marginalized communities. Participants learn to use hands-on construction and design skills, maximize locally available, recycled, and inexpensive materials, and implement lighting and energy systems that help to reduce energy costs and promote conservation. In turn, communities mobilize indigenous resources and develop long-term practices that sustain cultural identity, dignity, and stability. National Design Awards
After struggling to find more information on Mr. Palleroni, I found the following stub in an Amazon.com entry for his book, "Studio at Large: Architecture in Service of Global Communities":For more than a decade, architects and students from the University of Washington have been working with squatter communities in Mexico, migrant laborers in eastern Washington, and Indian reservations of the inland West as well as communities in Cuba, India, and Africa to provide housing, schools, clinics, and other vital structures. Led by Sergio Palleroni, Steve Badanes, and David Riley, these pioneering design/build programs have combined innovative architectural training with cross-cultural immersion, social activism, and environmental science, using design skills and hands-on construction projects to confront poverty and urgent social problems one building at a time. Amazon.com
Fascinating. Seems compatible with the architectural democratic nature of squatter communities to begin with.
