Architecture for Humanity

Architecture for Humanity is a 501(c)(3) charitable organization that seeks architectural solutions to humanitarian crisis and brings design services to communities in need. Our design team relies on Google SketchUp software for the intuitive and efficient interface to develop architectural designs and model the details of a project for local contractors.

How they did it

Because Architecture for Humanity engages a diverse range of projects around the world, each project manager and design fellow finds new and creative ways of working with Google SketchUp.

In India

The NIKE Gamechangers program is a series of grants awarded to community organizations around the world designing for social change through sport. Applicants are awarded grants based on the strength of their proposals. SketchUp has enabled these teams to articulate their design ideas and be granted money to develop and build them.

One such project is the “My Game is Beautiful” Football Hub to Combat Human Trafficking in Jharkhand, India. Jharkhand, a place of few opportunities for women, has been the focus of intervention by local NGO Yuwa. Using the love of football (soccer), Yuwa has helped hundreds of girls from Jharkhand build confidence, learning, health and leadership to overcome gender inequality. Yuwa had been given land by the government to develop a sports center, and was awarded a NIKE micro-grant to build one with Architecture for Humanity. SketchUp visualized how the property could host a protected football pitch and classrooms for the organization. The new Football Hub is now under construction, and will help several thousand girls upon completion.

The Childlink India Foundation in Delhi is also executing a NIKE grant with the help of SketchUp. The Creation of Sports Infrastructure in Delhi is securing dedicated land in a crowded city for recreational use and a place for children to play, working with communities that are most deprived of sports. Design Fellow Keshav Kumar is working with Architecture for Humanity to develop two such locations in Delhi, one for Mission to the Unreached in Noida Sector 121, and another for the Asha Deep Foundation in Shahid Nagar, Ghaziabad. Keshav has been working closely with these two organizations to develop realizable structures for their respective youth programs. The MTU center will reach the 10-12 thousand inhabitants of Noida. The site for the Asha Deep center is surrounded by 8 slums home to 300,000.

In the United States

Many of our community partners are not designers themselves, and SketchUp is an invaluable tool translating the oft-complex design language into something legible. When it came to envisioning the future of a neglected Skate Park beneath the Manhattan Bridge, we looked to the program to put together clear, accessible renderings that we could shop around to the client, the community benefiting from the park improvements, and the various city commissions assigned to review the designs. An estimated 10,000 skaters – local and visiting – and community members will enjoy the features today mapped out in SketchUp. The skatepark is slated to open in June.

In Haiti

At the Haiti Rebuilding Center, Architecture for Humanity has found radically different uses for SketchUp. While the facile platform still lends itself to quick study and mass models, there’s also an equal amount of attention paid to details. Local Haitian contractors partnering to learn from and work with the Rebuilding Center are generally unfamiliar with Western architectural drawing sets. SketchUp steps in to illustrate the complex construction techniques Haiti needs to improve its building stock but which are still unfamiliar and under-available in the country.

Every drawing set the Haiti team produces these days leaves room for 3D screenshots of architectural details built in SketchUp. Whether for corners of ring beams, connections at stairwells or shapes of concrete foundations on steep slopes, the models are conveying more in a more literal way to contractors and the unskilled local laborers working on site.

Understanding how reinforcing steel bar interlaces through different parts of a building is a difficult enough concept for the most astute contractor. The Rebuilding Center began in 2010 to model the rebar layouts in SketchUp, color-coding the different systems: vertical and lateral, columns and slabs. The color drawing sets are distributed to the contractors on site and were coordinated with training sessions using real painted bar to illustrate principles.

Design fellow Gerard Reilly has been managing the rebuilding of College Mixte Le Bon Berger, a secondary school in the village of Montrouis, in a partnership between Architecture for Humanity, The Stiller Foundation and Students Rebuild. SketchUp has allowed Gerry’s team to make accurate calculations of material quantities, such as volumes of concrete, lengths of steel, block area, wall areas for paint and plaster, and roof area for roof sheeting. These calculations were used to efficiently create contracts and a bill of quantities, and negotiate material changes in construction.

A unique feature of the Montrouis school is the vibrant spectrum-painted sunshade running the length of the second story. Gerry knew this would be a challenge to coordinate with the builders tasked to mix gradients of paint colors on-site. Again, SketchUp stepped up to facilitate these specifications. Gerry was able to quickly place the purchased colors digitally against the model components and establish gradient swatches to be applied to each successive fin of the sunshade.

On February 29, the Montrouis school opened and its 400 students could find beautiful, safe classrooms to continue pursuing their education. What was once a crumbling school block is now among the strongest buildings in Haiti. SketchUp helped convey these specifications to builders, and coordinate its graceful finishing touches.

The SketchUp Pro feature LayOut allowed the team working on the rebuilding of College Mixte Le Bon Berger Montrois in Haiti to calculate materials needed for their project, aiding contract creation, billing and project management.

“We used SketchUp to draw about half of the details for Montrouis. The on-site trouble shooting and detailed design changes were almost all thought out and conveyed through SketchUp as well. It’s been an invaluable resource for quick rendering and illustrating our design ambitions.” - Gerry Reilly, Architecture for Humanity Haiti

Impact

On February 29, the Montrouis school opened and its 400 students could find beautiful, safe classrooms to continue pursuing their education. What was once a crumbling school block is now among the strongest buildings in Haiti. SketchUp helped convey these specifications to builders, and coordinate its graceful finishing touches.

400 students head back to school at the College Mixte le Bon Berger in Montrouis, Haiti. The school was developed in detail through Sketchup – from rebar overlaps to stair connections to specification of colors for its distinctive sun shade.