Interview: Mark Gilbert on Designing Jacmel by Alexander Britell
Mark Gilbert discusses redesigning and rebuilding the city of Jacmel, Haiti with Alexander Britell from Caribbean Journal. The architect and his colleagues at trans_city used New Orleans typologies and their concept of rapid-response housing to provide an economical reconstruction proposal that will provide long-term stability to the people of Jacmel.
Reconstruction Plan for Haiti / Trans_City Architecture and Urbanism
Over the last 18 months, Trans_City architecture and urbanism, has developed a comprehensive plan for the reconstruction of Jacmel, Haiti based upon the concept of satellite cities located at the edge of the existing, earthquake-ravaged city center.(A concept developed in accordance with the universal design principals of the Housing Reconstruction Framework of the Haitian Government)
The concept includes an urban masterplan, and a proposal for prefabricated houses, in which the building shell is industrially manufactured in Austria, and finished by local hand workers. In line with the content of the project, the architecture does not attempt to be spectacular. Rather, it is the holistic integration of the many levels of an urban system that makes this project interesting. More images and project description after the break.
