Transcriber: Alexandra Zumwinkel Reviewer: Zsófia Herczeg
When I was a student of architecture,
I had the chance
to work in some of the largest architecture offices around the world.
I was part of the design team
working on buildings like this one in Saudi Arabia.
I spent five months working in Beijing on this particular building.
I had the chance to work with some of the best architects in their field.
And it was a great time.
I learned a lot of skills.
I learned how to deal with these large-scale projects.
But then, there was a point where I felt,
"Well, it kind of still doesn't feel like this is what I want to do
by the end of the day."
So at some point, I decided I'm going to leave from Beijing,
and I'm going to go travel.
This is where I arrived.
So I was backpacking through Kenya and Tanzania.
And in the end, I was stranded in Nairobi
because I was out of cash.
I couldn't really do much.
So I was sitting there in the hostel, and I asked,
"What can you do in Nairobi if you don't have any cash?"
And the hostel lady proposed I could go on a slum tour.
I could go and visit Kibera slum,
which is one of the largest slums in the world.
And basically, the deal was,
a guy from the slum would come, pick me up, show me around,
get five euros for that.
So I agreed.
And I went with this man we see in that picture.
And these were my first impressions I had of Kibera.
So, many things I had on my mind were absolutely true.
There was rubbish everywhere,
there was obvious poverty,
there was sick people.
The smell was overwhelming.
And that was quite a strong thing,
experiencing that the first time.
But I got along quite well with my guide.
We were the same age.
And we ended up talking a lot.
So I decided to just come back by myself the next day.
And looking at it a bit closer,
I found there is also a lot of good things in that area.
There is smiling, there's happiness, there's music playing,
there's people dancing, celebrating.
And I could feel there's life, yeah, in that place.
And well,
what my teacher - ah, sorry -
my guide was actually a teacher.
He had started a school for children who couldn't afford going to public school
because it's not free in Kenya.
So he was teaching there without getting any salary
and even trying to provide food for the kids in the schools
from his own money,
which he made from side jobs, like a tour guide.
And I got invited to teach a bit in these schools.
I was teaching a bit of mathematics, geometry, of course,
and we made a volleyball net.
And we got to know each other quite well.
And I was really impressed that these people who had nothing
really wanted to do something to change the future of their kids.
So I had to leave, but I told them,
"Well, maybe, there is some way I can help you once I'm back home."
So I took my flight,
and I was sitting there on a stopover in Amsterdam.
And I was asking myself,
"Are you really going to do it?
Because, if you do it, it might mean a lifelong commitment."
And what I said was,
"Sure, of course, you're going to do it."
And it didn't feel bad at all.
This is from my notebook which I had on the travels.
I right away made a first to-do list,
a few organizational things.
And most important, probably,
I somehow had to collect that cash.
And the very most important point, number five, don't panic.
Well, so I had to become a bit innovative for point four, collecting that cash.
I was still a student, and most people I knew were students.
And the only thing students always have money for is beer.
So I organized these parties where I was selling drinks,
and with that profit,
I was able to start supporting these two schools.
So I started sending over the first donations,
and I was able to get some minimum salary for the teachers
and to provide a bit of help for the food for the kids.
And what I got back was like joy.
That was just incredibly motivating.
You know, these kids get super excited about new school books, you know.
I mean, I wasn't that excited about a new school book, yeah.
But they know it's like a privilege, yeah.
And when you see that, it really keeps you going.
It's a very motivating thing, yeah.
So you get much more out of it personally.
And so I continued, and now I have the help of friends,
I'm partnering with other NGOs,
and now we managed to raise -
there are two schools we have been supporting,
from an initial number of 80 kids
to more than 600 kids today,
within the last six years.
So today, we still care about getting them breakfast and lunch in school.
We can build additional classrooms,
bit by bit expand the school.
And we can even provide a bit of medical care.
This is one of the schools.
And it seems like people like it.
And it's good at that point.
The only thing is
now it is way too small.
And if you look closer, there's other things.
Well, first of all of them,
there you see two classes combined in one room,
which is not ideal for teaching.
Up there you see the inner courtyard,
which for a lot of kids is just not enough to play.
The toilets are unhygienic and insufficient.
And most problematic is the heat.
So we got like up to 50 degrees Celsius in these classrooms.
And yeah -
so the teachers asked me,
"Oliver, aren't you an architect, right?
Can you help us build a second story or a new school building for us?"
And I was really happy that they asked me that
because I felt, for the first time after four years,
I could really help with what I've learned,
with my profession.
And I took this question
to be my architectural master thesis.
And I designed a new school building for them,
on the same plot, two stories high,
with a bit of a bigger courtyard.
And I wanted it
to be an inspirational place for the kids
because it's from primary to upper primary.
It's very important years for children to be at an inspirational environment.
And I said,
"Only because it has to be cheap,
it doesn't have to be only practical or ugly,"
you know.
And maybe, through my thinking,
I can make it as cheap as a normal school
just by -
by using my technology, my thoughts.
And I'm going to tell you how.
I was looking at the way they were currently building in Kibera.
So basically, what they do is they put up a wooden scaffolding,
and then they use some wet mud,
and with the bare hands, they put it inside that scaffolding,
and after that,
they would apply a layer, like one inch, of plaster on the outside,
which results in a wall like the one you see underneath.
It's basically a good concept
because it comes from the vernacular way of building there.
So it's a solid thick wall using the local material,
but it's not really what people want.
They want it to be a very straight wall.
It looks like a poor man's house to them.
And also, it collapses every now and then
after the rainfalls.
There's two, twice per year, heavy rainfalls in Kenya.
And then they have to fix it.
Like that yellow wall we saw before,
it just collapsed,
and we had to completely rebuild it.
And yeah, so I thought,
still, I want to stick to that method as close as possible.
So I thought, why not reverse the method?
Build the plaster first and then fill it with earth afterwards.
So I had the idea of making these prefabricated concrete bricks,
like that size, hollow elements, that can be filled with earth.
And of course, it had to be as practical,
as free to design in the slum for the people, as they always are.
So if you think of Kibera,
you can easily imagine a slum is not like Manhattan,
it's not a rectangular grid.
So you need to be completely flexible in angles and plan.
So these elements can do that.
They can be arranged in a modular way.
You can freely expand, shorten, make openings.
And you don't need any mortar.
You can just click it together.
Clearly, I didn't want to only assume it's a good idea
or that people like it maybe.
So there you see me discussing, for example, with Mr. Oloo.
He has more than 40 years experience in construction in Kibera.
And he helped me a lot, actually,
to say, "Okay, well,
this is a good size for our people to carry it.
For the elements, we have this kind of concrete,
this kind of concrete mixture."
And yeah, we both came to the conclusion that this really can work there
and people will be happy to have that technology.
Another thing I did,
I had to make sure the material is right
because sand around the world is not the same everywhere,
especially when it comes to very thin-shell construction.
So I traveled to Nairobi only on the so-called "Nairobi sand mission."
It was my only objective, to get that reliable source of sand.
And I managed to find it and bring back ten kilograms,
which, as you might be able to imagine,
was not that easy to explain to the guys at the airport:
what's that bag I'm bringing there on the plane
with this powder inside?
But yeah, I managed to convince them that it's only sand.
And they were like, "Okay, sand. No problem, you can go."
Yeah.
Yeah, and I brought this back to the lab in Innsbruck,
where we're currently doing the research on optimizing the contents of these bags,
say which material is possible.
And we also search on optimizing the best way
to produce these elements.
What's the most efficient way?
What's the way that cancels out most mistakes
to maintain always the same quality.
Yeah.
And now, you think,
"Well, for just making one school building,
this is a lot of effort, right?"
But here, we see the building site.
And this is a very, very small fraction of that slum.
So I said,
"If I build a school,
and then afterwards, there's a school.
And then what?
It's not as much as I could do."
So, I rather wanted to develop a method
that can be applied by the people from Kibera themselves
in order to also make other buildings.
So once that school is done,
there will still be a manufacturing workshop
for these elements,
and people from Kibera will run it
in order to even make single-family houses.
Single-family houses.
You see that on the right-hand, an illustration of how it could look,
a house that can be built below a thousand euros
by people themselves.
It's pretty much
what a comparable house with a local construction method,
which is already done in Kibera,
would cost today.
But it's way more fireproof,
it's much more long-lasting,
and it looks more straight,
which is important for people's self-esteem.
What you see on the other hand, on the left side, is a tablet.
And that tablet I want to use as a tool in Kibera
because I programmed a software
that allows people to design with these elements,
just using the finger drawing the plan of the building.
And then they can adjust it and make some openings there,
just intuitively.
And that software automatically calculates
how many elements are needed.
It would make you a plan,
which would rather look like an Excel sheet
than an architectural drawing.
It enables you to make less mistakes,
to know in advance how much that building will cost.
And people, most important, can do it themselves.
Because that's what they always have done,
because slums are always built
by the people.
And this is why I said,
"We better keep it that way."
I'm not going to change the way.
I'm just going to change the tools.
This is an estimation by UN-Habitat
about the world slum population in 2025,
which is only eight years from now.
When we add up these numbers,
we get to a total of 1.7 billion people
living in slums only eight years from now.
And this is quite a huge number.
And if I look at this number,
I think it cannot be solved
from top-down approach.
You know, we cannot make a master plan.
We cannot hire construction companies from outside
in order to change how slums look.
It's not going to happen - there's corruption.
We must rather enable the people
because the people are there.
The people want to do something,
then the people anyway always build something.
So that's why I say it's much more about empowerment
and giving them the better tools.
Still, 1.7 million is a lot, right?
So you feel like, what can I do?
And this is what it looks like right now in front of the school.
And what we are going to do,
is build this school as a first prototype of that construction method,
and from there, we will try to carry it on.
So my vision is that at some point,
more and more people will learn how to build with that technique.
I will help initially to design some houses,
at some point, they will do it themselves.
It will be a tool for other NGOs as well
to be able to build their own schools.
They want to donate in a more cheap way.
And, well -
every big vision has to start somewhere.
And this is where we start.
Thank you.
(Applause)