Shelter Library

2011-11-08T14:06:00.002Z

Robin Ashley Architects

Presentation, Feedback and Wrap

2008-11-07T13:08:00.008Z

The LP 11 team presented the culmination of the past 6 weeks work in Sheffield this morning to a packed audience of our tutors and students of the School of Architecture. The Shelter Library presentation provoked an animated debate from the floor, questions covered by elements of our work excluded from the presentation or by features already present on the Shelter Centre Website. Clearly, the early concerns we harboured as a team, as to the challenge we faced in communicating the complexities of the project, paid off and our audience appeared to grasp the nature of what we'd been engaged in.

Graphic used in the presentation to explain our searching methodologies
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The presentation outlined briefly what Shelter Centre is, how they fit into a picture of the Humanitarian Shelter Sector and how this fits into the wider mesh of Humanitarianism. Lorenzo then outlined how we'd undertaken content sourcing and our achievement of 450 documents at an upload factor of over 80%. Tom covered the expansion of our remit into the development of a Standard Operating Procedure to ensure a legacy document for the Live Project and as sustainability guarantor for the Shelter Library, this document, as discussed by Sarah Considine, opens up the chance, to Shelter Centre, to engage external volunteers in content searching without a fear of mis-communicated quality control levels.Printed copies of our S.O.P.
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Our conclusion to the presentation and the project as a whole was put by Sarah Hunt, who pointed out that whilst not overtly architectural in appearance, this project called upon not only the strategic and managerial skills of every team member, it demanded constant engagement of our design sensibilities. The 'Product' is not a formal confection rather it is an informational structure of some elegance and on a virtual level beauty.

This post comprises the closing of our activities on this project and weblog. Funding forthcoming, our results will be presented to the bi-annual Shelter Meeting, being held in Brussels on November 19-22 and our entries will be uploaded some time during November to join the Shelter Library.

Thanks for reading
Anthony

Stakeholder diagram

2008-11-03T17:29:00.006Z

Shelter Centre Stakeholder Diagram

This diagram outlines Shelter Centre's partner agencies. Unlike other stakeholder diagrams with a leading organisation or an agency at the top of the chain, the Shelter Centre stakeholder relationship can be better described by a spider diagram. Shelter Centre acts as the body providing information and support to the overall Humanitarian Shelter Community.
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The group have divided into three smaller sub-groups today to target the following tasks:

Team One
Are continuing the content search
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Team Two
Is starting work on our other main deliverable the S.O.P. for maintaining the libarary
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Team Three
Is starting the overall Live Project documentation and presentation.

Content Progress Update

2008-11-01T14:54:00.005Z

After another week's hard work, the intensive content seach raises the teams document tally to 255 fully tagged entries. With searching operations expanding into events and training, the team is operating efficently.
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Looking forward to the next few days the teams' content resourcing will be streamlined as documentation and reporting tasks are picked up.

Content Filtration

2008-10-31T17:09:00.019Z

One of the tools devised by the group, in collaboration with Shelter Centre, to aid the content filtering was series of "client profiles" to help tune the Live Project Teams' understanding of the Library's constituency. These profiles are essentially avatars of potential Shelter Centre Library users. Following our discussions with the Shelter Centre, we have proposed the following four profiles:

Roger

A Shelter Sector Field Operative who needs info on specific materials and subjects (e.g. bamboo, land rights).

Rodriguez

A desk manager who is a generalist but occasionally needs specific info on shelter issues.

Regina

A sanitary (or other non Shelter Sector) Field Operative with specialist knowledge who needs to construct some form of shelter as a satelite project.

Radhina

A government trainer needing material and an extensive bibliography in order of relevence.

These profiles will be developed throughout the remainder of the project. A refined versioned of these profiles is targeted for inclusion in one of the Delivery Documents the team is preparing for Shelter Centre

165 Entries Approved

2008-10-30T15:52:00.011Z

As our 'approved' document tally rises to 165, the Document Controller took a break to describe the information processing stages being followed to prepare documents for addition to the Shelter Library.

The chain in essences is:

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CONTENT IDENTIFICATION > DOCUMENT CONTROL > SHELTER LIBRARY

The mechanics of the searching process has been discussed previously this process takes up the story once a document has been downloaded

Step 1:

Once a document has been sourced and downloaded it needs to be analysed. Through discussion with Tom Corsellis a number of document 'themes' can be excluded straight away. These include:

- Academic Papers without any field trials or case studies.

- Health Documents / reports with no reference to Shelter
- Documents about conflict, civil war etc
- Annual reports for specific organisations

Step 2:

Following approval, the Content Identifier then inputs relevant information from the document into a spreadsheet entry. This entry includes document name, language, keywords, contacts etc. Continuity of entry information across different team members is ensured by a entry guideline which the Document Control team have drafted.

Standardised Entry Guide

Step 3:

The entry is then sent to document control for inputting into the Entry Database and the document is transferred to FTP document store. The entry is placed at the bottom of the database ready for checking.

Step 4:

Document control move entry to its alpahabetical position, at the same time the entry is evaluated via the following criteria:

Duplication - Whether its already been entered in the Shelter Library or the google docs
Language - Spelling and grammatical errors
Formatting - checked against guidelines above

Consistency - Whether authors, organisations and keywords are already in the Shelter Library search options. If they are not they are highlighted in green for Chris Tolles to add to the database.
Link relability - That URLs are shortened to the shortest possible term
PDF name - checked against guidelines

Step 5:
Document store and Entry Database are transferred to Shelter Centre for final approval, upload and inclusion in Shelter Library.

Acquiring knowledge

2008-10-30T11:18:00.003Z

In an age where continual political conflicts and natural disasters displace populations from their homes all over the world on a recurrent basis, it might seem surprising that young architecture students hoping to enter the field of humanitarian aid work are far from in demand. Conversely, it isn’t until the age of 25 that young people become ‘useful’ to the humanitarian field, once they have gained the appropriate experience and knowledge.
For many of us taking part in the Shelter Library project, this is our first time working within the humanitarian sector. Therefore, to a certain extent, our process of sourcing relevant resource material, whether mission specific reports or hard UN technical field guidelines, is one that we have been conducting ‘in the dark’ so to speak. Our lack of experience or intrinsic knowledge of the subject has presented us with a whole mass of information that is often difficult to specify as either useful or not. The internet is a sea of information and there is a danger of being overwhelmed with material that is seemingly appealing to us yet practically useless to aid workers in the field. ‘Nice ideas’ that remain untested or unsupported by credible agencies are a source that we are learning to be wary of.
As such, some sort of ‘filtering’ or feedback system is paramount to the library’s effective growth. Sending a current list of sourced titles, with author and publisher details, to Shelter Centre is a way of getting quick and immediate feedback on the types of material we are proposing for the library. This feedback system was instigated at the start of the week, and involves a daily email bulletin at the end of the evening listing the day’s findings, followed by a quick lunchtime conference call with Tom Corsellis the following day for title-by-title feedback in the form of ‘yes’ and ‘no’, and more importantly, ‘why’.
Naturally, the more feedback received, the more informed the continuing search. We become more self-critical about what we select as we become more aware of the credibility of certain sources. Thus, while the goal of achieving 500 titles might seem ambitious, we are becoming more efficient day by day as the feedback process expands. And while the subject matter is vast and new, we are in fact acquiring knowledge every day, whether consciously or not.

-FTP Document Store

Sector Memory

2008-10-28T18:15:00.000Z

The term sector memory refers to the transfer of experience from one operation to another or from veteran Shelter professionals to individuals entering the Humanitarian Shelter Sector.
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It is an important goal of the Shelter Centre and Library to act as a central repository for the Shelter Sector of lessons learned from the operational experience. The humanitarian sector comprises largely of nomadic individuals moving between operations, organisations and often out of the professional altogether. Unlike in fixed professions, architecture for example, the corporation of professionals themselves can’t be relied upon as a continuous memory resource. In most sectors of humanitarian relief this is not a issue as the major organisations operate permanent departments with recording and reporting mechanisms to act as their memory. None of the major NGO’s or UN agencies, however, have Shelter departments. There are no institutional mechanisms for recording success or failure in past Shelter Sector actions. This compounds the logistical difficulties facing the Sector: without an effective process for avoiding previous mistakes, each new operation and the professionals involved in it must learn these lessons anew each time.
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As discussed below the content sourcing process is structured around different distinct search strings rather than specific keywords. Into these strings have been added past operations as specific targets for available content.

Shelter centre have given us direction as to what content is needed: the emphasis is on quantative operational reporting, targeted at the Humanitarian Sector, rather than qualitative reporting intended for publicity and fundraising use. This reporting should fall into two categories which can act as an indicator of relevant content to the teams when searching, these catergories are:

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SIT-REPS

Archived from when the operations were current – off the cuff reports of how operational progress is being effected by local conditions [geography/indigenous materials/level of local economic development/nature of disaster] and what measures the shelter professionals are implementing to cope with unforeseen challenges

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Operation Reports

Giving overview of shelter sector actions in completed operations. In the case of ongoing relief efforts, periodic progress reports are also of interest.

Content Busting

2008-10-28T13:45:00.005Z

Sourcing over 500 items of relevant information in a particular field is a task that is simultaneously both numbing and interesting: Whilst (though some may refuse to admit it) monotonous tasks are inherent in architectural culture, especially in certain stages in the construction and making of buildings, it becomes easy to overlook the substance of a particular fragment or piece of information. Thus the assignment of a door schedule becomes not about a lesson in the possibilities involved in the design of doors, but in the completion (through numbering, arranging or whatever) of the task at hand. It becomes easy to ignore, or even abstract, the immediate content and its significance as part of a wider whole.

The tracing and preparation of practical material for the library is for direct use by NGO workers and humanitarian agencies working in the global field of humanitarian shelter. The hope is to build momentum for the library and work towards creating an open location for a memory for the humanitarian shelter sector (currently non-existent). Library items are identified not only for the content section of the website but in other areas; providing information on events and training for NGO workers for example, perhaps with a view to developing a semblance of a distance learning setup, where the library acts more as an active portal than a mere repository.

The management of the sourcing has thus been broken down into different teams exploring different strands of research. A more structured approach produces teams that are better informed in specific areas. Each team has a more focused field of knowledge regarding a particular area, and is thus able to navigate it more efficiently. The research strands are as follows:

- Searching through NGO databases
- Through library / document bibliographies
- Within training + Events

In addition, the management of an increasingly large repository of information requires tight control and checking. This is maintained by a document controller, whose role it is to ensure the clarity, quality and consistency of the entries for the library. A clear goal for the project is the delivery to the client of a substantial database which contains clear and useful information, ready for uploading to the Shelter Centre Library.

Compiling an Individual Research Strand Master Document of Library Entries

Tools for Sourcing

2008-10-27T19:15:00.007Z

Since paths, interaction and transfer over the internet work rhizomically, attempting to source a bulk of content on a specific topic becomes increasingly difficult and myriad. The more content is searched and stored, the narrower the field becomes in which to discover useful information. Converse to this logic, the more data that is amassed, the more routes and opportunities for fresh information open up. To ensure website hits are documented, logged and not revisited by other team members, a number of plug-in tools have been implemented to systematize the content sourcing stage of the project.

StumbleUpon

creates a record of the path taken through an internet search, enabling logging and categorisation of websites. Websites are listed on a home page and accessible for all users to see and add to. Furthermore, a plug-in tool enables new websites to be ‘stumbled upon.’ These are recommended by other users, cross referenced with appropriate tags and sourced from the existing bank of websites so are different and relevant. This not only enables a documentation of the content sourcing procedure but is also a way to hit upon fresh content that may be of use.

GoogleDocs

is a shared spreadsheet document system that can be accessed by all users and updated live. Sources of content are split into two categories here; those that have been searched through and those that are yet to be looked at. Users can see who else is online and can communicate through a chat facility. Documents can therefore be sourced more efficiently as it is obvious which avenues have already been explored and which need immediate attention.

VOLUNTEER FROM HOME

2008-10-27T19:12:00.002Z

The Live Project Team has been working towards a target of 500 new entries to considerably expand the existing Shelter Library. However this is by no means a finite quantity and a serious concern for the Live Project Team has been how the library can be expanded and maintained after our input, particularly considering the nature of the information and its reliance on up-to-date information and new technologies.

For this reason the team has been working on creating a Standard Operating Procedure (SOP) that enables future Shelter interns to easily maintain the library, drastically reducing the ‘floundering’ period of the research. However, the Shelter Centre is a small organisation, largely comprised of interns on short placements and properly maintaining the library would require a significant commitment from the Shelter Centre.

The Live Project Team believe that there is a potential resource of willing volunteers that can be utilised by Shelter Centre. In a sector where volunteering information exchange is as important or more important than volunteering physical presence, we believe that our SOP could be used remotely enabling people to volunteer time from locations all over the world. In the past Shelter Centre has tended to disregard using volunteers without extensive experience within the humanitarian sector. However, a detailed SOP to manage volunteers, fully tried and tested, offers people with limited prior knowledge the opportunity to contribute, by following a step by step procedure.

…Humanitarianism

2008-10-27T13:30:00.000Z

A benefit to the group from the Geneva visit was an explanation by shelter centre of some of the organisational and professional structures which make up the humanitarian sector. From the uniformed position of interested outsiders the sphere of humitarianism was perceived as more of a volunteer based ad-hoc network rather than the muti-billion dollar professional industry which it is in reality.

Sector Organisation
Simplified, the sectors major players are divided into three groups:
UN – various agencies mandated to avoid overlap and gaps [sic] most of these agencies act in a coordination and policy making role. They aim primarily to organise the operational activities of NGO’s
NGO’s – a raft of actors from the large international organisations, IFRM
Donors – Government agencies and charitable foundations who provide financial material and human resources to the Humanitarian Sector

Humanitarian sector reform
Led by the Inter Agency Standing Committee (IASC) and coordinated through the website www.humanitarianinfo.org, reform of the humanitarian sector is being directed towards workgroup clusters rather than seperarte overlapping organiseations. These clusters subdivide the Humanitarian sector into different relief areas with the intention of coordinating the actions of separate NGO’s working in the same operational theatre. This process manifests in Humanitarian Information Centres (HIC’s) which the IASC instigates for each distaster the Humanitarian sector intervenes in.

Professional organisation
CPD -The workforce in the humanitarian sector is arranged into professional disciplines not dissimilar to the strands into which professionals in the construction industry are separated into. Humanitarian professionals have training goals which must be achieved prior to promotion to the higher levels of the sector – namely field operations. Involvement in field operation is restricted to individuals who have proven experience in humanitarian operations or sufficient training and understanding: NGO’s are highly risk averse with regards new operatives. It is precisely for the facilitation of this training, or Capacity Building, within the Humanitarian Shelter Sector that the Sector Training component of the Shelter Centre website was conceived.

Research Methods and Structure

2008-10-23T18:15:00.001+01:00

Beta post … for comment & revision

It is apparent that a proper management structure is paramount for this project and needs to go beyond simple task allocation. This structure requires flexibility to accommodate tasks with indeterminate time lengths and potential overlaps. Since the content sourcing may become drawn-out and monotonous, the management arrangement must also include tactics to guard against a drop in productivity. In recognition of this and in dialogue with Shelter Centre, the content sourcing process will be arranged thematically and kept on a tight leash with regards to time and resources. This aims to not only streamline the sourcing process and target quality entries more effectively, but also hopes to sustain high productivity and continual interest for the LP team.
Furthermore in order to coordinate the delivery of a useful end-product [for the shelter centre library] the sourcing of useful content needs to be programmed in parallel with components such as documentation, project inheritance and the development of a standard operating procedure. The team’s ‘project champion’ has the responsibility of coordinating the upcoming intensive content sourcing week. Feedback from Shelter Centre prior to project closure must be facilitated and so ensuring further space for project development.

Charting project components

2008-10-22T09:35:00.001+01:00

After our initial meetings with Tom Corsellis, an increasing clarity to the component parts of the project was drawn up. A charting of our project deliverables was established, ranging from client base requirements to further project potential. The project components are chronologically ordered; ranging from original brief deliverables (see numbers 1, 2 et cetera of the project map) to our own particular aspirations for the Shelter Library with regards to content sourcing and the future implementation of this. The upper numbers represent more ambitious aims: for example areas of project inheritance that could possibly be implemented in future live projects or during future collaborations between Shelter Centre and student groups.

La Nuit Fondue

2008-10-22T09:00:00.001+01:00

The team - willing and keen to experience the entire strata of humanitarian aid culture within the capital of the humanitarian aid world - dutifully partook in a taster of the local delicassey. Fondue, a rather 'open source' process of cheese consumption, brought the team together with various members of the Shelter Centre group in order to help develop the communication, discuss strategy and knock back a couple of pints of molten swiss cheese.

Team in Geneva!

2008-10-21T18:53:00.000+01:00

Since arriving in Geneva on Monday evening, we have taken over a small area of the Shelter office. Aside from a visit to the Red Cross Museum and a taste of Geneva’s best fondue, we have spent the majority of our time working alongside Shelter conceptualizing our approach to the project. Being in direct contact with Tom Corsellis has enabled us to clarify our collective aims for the remainder of the project.
Sourcing relevant content for the Shelter Library has become one of our main priorities, whilst evaluating and documenting our processes. Being in Geneva and conversing with Tom has made us aware of an additional number of sources of information for the library, including the world’s current largest ‘physical’ shelter library (which comprises just three bookshelves in Tom’s office!) On this realisation, the broader significance of the project has dawned upon us. A major inefficiency in the humanitarian sector is lack of continuity between missions. Our effort is to create a memory for humanitarian shelter that can be used time and time again by the workers in the field.

Live Project Report

2008-10-18T15:12:00.006+01:00

The following report was prepared and issued to Shelter Centre for confirmation re. the objectives of the brief and to develop a better understanding of how we might best be able to respond to the brief in terms of establishing longevity to the Shelter Library project.

Last Thursday's meeting - what the client requires vs/and/or what we will provide

2008-10-14T00:07:00.014+01:00

These are some of the notes that were made during the meeting. Shelter Centre's new website was launched [ http://www.sheltercentre.org/library ] last week and gave us the opportunity to analyse the 'pros' and 'cons' of the new online library service. More on these to come...

Calling Geneva!

2008-10-12T19:45:00.001+01:00

Been looking and trains from Geneva to Venice are actually cheaper when you get them through the Swiss train people..... http://www.sbb.ch/en/index.htm We can get them when we get to Geneva.

Post Conference Meeting

2008-10-10T18:29:00.006+01:00

Laura emailed us after the conference meeting and included some links. I have copied and pasted her e-mail here

"Hello everyone,
It was good to hear from you all before, I hope that you found the briefing useful and that you're looking forward to project getting under way.The new website has changed to a new address at http://beta.sheltercentre.org, it will be there until the 9th of October after which it will be officially launched and will move to http://www.sheltercentre.org ...

Please find attached two documents containing publications that were found for Shelter Centre by an external consultant, these should give you some ideas of the direction to aim for. [see Shelter Library One Five Samples] Also, http://www2.hdm.lth.se/bi/report/frame.htm is a link to a number of appropriate publications at Lund University, Sweden. I will get back to you soon regarding the best way for you to input the publication data, and which fields of information will be requires.

Looking forward to working with you all,

Laura"

Conference Meeting with client #1

2008-10-10T16:43:00.002+01:00

Tom briefs the group from Geneva over an online conference.

We had a live briefing session over Skype with Tom C and Laura H who were based in Geneva on Friday 3rd October. It was a very successful conference meeting in that Tom C communicated clearly to the group and was concise with his speech. When is come to contacts with clients, the effectiveness of the methods of communication is very important.

Below is a summary of the meeting but the whole 45 minutes-long conference session transcribed by Laura Collins is available. [see Conference Call pdf]

Shelter Centre is a new flavour of NGO - it’s a sector support NGO – and this means that it is not actively operational but in the background helping a range of aid agencies to address humanitarian shelter with operational guidelines, community practice tools, resources of meetings and training.

All of Shelter Centre’s work is open source, all the work is ‘share-wear’ so to speak which is a somewhat new approach unlike many other organisations who publish their own brand.

It is important to realise that the state of the Humanitarian Shelter Sector is far behind the state of other sectors of humanitarian response. These sectors are like departments for example the sanitation sector, logistics, health, nutrition.

Shelter Centre has been framework funded by DFID, the Department for International Development of the British Government over 5 years.

http://www.dfid.gov.uk/

There are two Shelter Meetings held each year, on in Geneva and the other in Brussels. At these meetings are representatives from all the major UN agencies, NGOs, IOs and donors as well as academics to discuss how to prioritise and progress activities for the collected Shelter Sector of response. Participation is free.

One of the main delivery tools of Shelter Centre is the website which is intended as an everyday of the week continuation of the Shelter Meeting.

Consequently the internet is wonderful as a resource for the aid business but to date we had websites which either tried to sell you a goat to get funding or they try to push information. The sort of face-book, discursive resources really are not there and we feel this is a great shame, a missed opportunity and

Shelter Centre has developed one of the first web 2.0 websites for the humanitarian community which is going live on the 10th October 2008. This has been developed by one of the leading open source software developers in DRUPAL, an organisation called Development Seed. Another organisation from the birthplace of DRUPAL is the open source content management system based in Brussels called Crimson.

The main aim of the website is to provide reference material for aid agencies that require information out on the field. These include technical guidelines, reports and case studies. The website will also be used to pin-point and connect different aid workers located in the same areas.

Some other resources: (provided by Foxwell)
The Martin Centre in Cambridge (research into disaster relief and development)ITGD – http://www.practicalaction.org/

Matthew’s book – appropriate building methods or similar bibliography.

Group Meeting #1 (Tuesday 30th September 2008)

2008-10-10T16:08:00.001+01:00

On Tuesday 30th September, the individual members of the team had an introductory meeting to become acquainted with each other. Through the meeting, the aim of this live project was concluded to be to develop the library information foundation of Shelter Library: the Global Resource for Humanitarian Community’s existing work. Shelter Library serves as a source for the humanitarian sector.

As this was the first meeting, it was not surprising that all team members raised questions as to the objectives of the project and tried to clarify the brief. The client has not specified any definite brief based on the information we had at this stage of the project. However it may seem that the client has expectations from the project group in terms of contributing to the contents of the online resource centre. [see Brief for the University of Sheffield Department of Architecture ‘Live Project 2008’]

Some of the questions raised and thoughts for debate at that stage were as below:

What is the best way to communicate with the client and to run this project?
Where will our work go beyond the tagging and entering of data?
How can we introduce the availability of technologies/mobile technologies?
How could training be integrated?
How can we find funding but not waste time fundraising?
How can we ensure that the online library is geared towards agencies as represented by Shelter Centre? And ensure that this does not become a branding exercise?
How can we test our strategies /presentations before making them open to the public?

Communication with the Client

It was reassuring to know that Tom C would be available for a conference meeting on 3rd October. The fact that the client is based in Geneva, Switzerland means face-to-face communication is limited. But we the team has agreed to take a trip to Geneva for the chance to meet the client and to vary the method of communication with the client. At this moment in time, emails are being used as the main form of contacting the client and for sharing information.

Perhaps we were starting at the deep end with these thoughts and needed to focus on our planning and agenda for the entire project. [see minutes 30.09.08]

How did the University of Sheffield meet Shelter Centre???

2008-10-09T10:59:00.000+01:00

Renata invited Pete Manfield to run a workshop and a lecture at the school 4 years ago about 'Shelter' for the Whole School Event (the theme was 'whatever the WEATHER...) Pete Manfield and Tom Corsellis used to work together on Sheffield Centre in Cambridge. She met Tom earlier this summer and through talks about our Live Projects here at Sheffield. Tom made references to last year’s URINE project http://www.01liveproject07.wordpress.com. This led to a possibility of submitting a proposal and hold and behold Shelter Centre was selected as live project number eleven, chosen from a short list of 20 by staff at the department. This concept of Live Project is very different to past and current running live projects.

It was an “unknown territory and different dimension to the others” as Renata describes it. Shelter Centre did not know for sure that the proposal will be selected so at the start of the project (at this stage), we can interpret the brief to suit us but we should have consultations with the client in order to keep the point of the project in focus. We should strongly consider negotiating with the client what the objectives of the project are and also and challenge the original brief.

About the Team Members

2008-10-09T10:11:00.000+01:00

Cathrine Allison
6th Year Architecture Student at Sheffield University (M.Arch); Graduate from Oxford Brookes (RIBA Part 1) and ETSAB exchange (Barcelona).
Most of my work experience has been conservation, residential and green-eco-type visitor centres in Scotland. I have also participated in and fund-raised for a recent Voluntary Design and Build Project in Romania.

Laura Cinnamond Collins
5th Year Architecture Student at Sheffield University (M.Arch); Graduate from the Mackintosh School of Architecture, Glasgow School of Art (RIBA Part 1)
I have undertaken work placements in practices in Belfast (Todd Architects, Hamilton Architects, Hall Black and Douglas Architects), Belgrade (MIT Arcitects) and Paris (Edouard Francois, Jean Nouvel) across a range of private and public sector projects. My interest in the development sector and the work by Shelter Centre stems from my volunteer work with School Aid Romania and Asha India during my school years, and current volunteer work for Article 25.

Sarah Considine
6th year Architecture Student at Sheffield University (MArch); Graduate from Sheffield University (RIBA Part 1).
I have two years work experience prodominately in working in the housing, community and education sectors, on both small-scale, self-run and large-scale, team-orientated projects. I also have relevant voluntary design experience with Crisis (through Architecture for Humanity UK) for their Open Christmas programme, and research experience with a former Live Project ‘Darfur Shelter’ with Article 25 in which the feasibilty of using urine in mud brick construction was tested.

Lorenzo Dwyer
6th year at Sheffield University (MArch); Graduate from Sheffield University (RIBA Part 1)
My life is currently interspersed between attending University here in Sheffield, employment in London and the occasional dip in the sea off the South Wales coastline (the latter I cannot do without). I am to begin my post-university architectural life in London next year working on schools and educational projects. I am a keen traveller and have travelled extensively within Europe, often staying with friends who I met as a student at the United World College of the Atlantic in Wales.
I am excited at the prospects of working with the Shelter Centre team in helping to develop the Shelter Library during this year’s Live Project.

Sarah Foxwell
6th Year Architecture Student at Sheffield University (M.Arch);
Graduate from Sheffield University (RIBA Part 1).
I have worked for Chetwoods Architects in Leeds during my year out in practice.
I have volunteered for Voluntary Design and Build in Romania during Summer 2007, and was involved with the Romania NGO Better Homes through my 5th year Live Project at Sheffield.

Molly Gray
6th Year Architecture and Town and Regional Planning Student at Sheffield University; Graduate in from Cardiff University (RIBA Part 1).
I have work experience in planning policy (work in development control office Sheffield City Council); in architectural practice (London offices public and private sector); and in volunteer work (Arcosanti, Urban Laboratory, Arizona)

Sarah Hunt
6th Year Architecture Student at Sheffield University (M.Arch)
Graduate from Sheffield University (RIBA Part 1).
I have worked at Arup Associates, London (2005-2006) and Bing Thorn Architects, Vancouver (2006-2007) as an Intern Architect. I have relevant building experience through work on the ‘Space of Waste' timber pavilion, Sheffield CIty Centre (2007) http://02liveproject07.wordpress.com/

Anthony McMahon
6th year at Sheffield University (MArch); Graduate from Sheffield University (RIBA Part 1).
My experience of architecture draws on studies at both Sheffield School of Architecture and The Bartlett [UCL] and from activities in practices in London and research trips to North America, Central Europe and Central Asia. Until my involvement in the Romania live project last year my experience of humanitarian work was nil. This project enlightened me, however, to the tensions present in design projects that operate across both international and cultural margins which, remain as a source of fascination to me.

Judith Ng
6th Year Architecture Student at Sheffield University (M.Arch); Graduate from Sheffield University (RIBA Part 1).
I worked in Terry Farrell and Partners’ London office during my year out in practice. I have worked on a range of private business and residential towers as well as urban master-planning projects.

Tom Rooksby
6th Year Architecture Student at Sheffield University (MArch);
Graduate from Sheffield University (RIBA Part 1)
I have worked at BDP Manchester (2005-2006) as a Part 1 Architectural Assistant and currently work part-time for BDP Sheffield (2006-present).

Juliet Sakyi-Ansah
5th Year Architecture Student at Sheffield University (MArch); Graduate from Sheffield University (RIBA Part 1).
I based my placement period in the city of Bristol, U.K where I worked for a medium-sized practice and later with a relatively smaller office for variation. My involvement in the Shelter Library Live Project reflects my interest in aid work and humanitarian outlook. I aim to be as well-informed as possible where aid work bridges the built environment; for personal reflections and for referencing through my academic and professional life.

RSS

2008-09-30T12:59:00.001+01:00

Cameron Sinclair TED talk:
Worth a look - discusses the copyright/ownership issues amongst other things, but also the 'one laptop per child' scheme which could be relevant as an accessibility to information issue:
http://laptop.org/en/vision/mission/index.shtml