The project stood no chance, as it was built with a lack of engagement and understanding of the community who were to receive and maintain it. 

Aid architecture is about people, as much as it is about the design of physical structures; the formula for of deploying “foreign” buildings without community involvement engenders indifference and dependence rather than recovery. Climate change guarantees a (social) landscape of post-disaster sites, as catastrophic disasters obliterate not only the physical but the social order of a place. Hence “rebuilding” in this context goes beyond restoring the built environment that existed beforehand. It requires a sensitive rebuilding of the community itself.

While it is imperative for architects to be more critically engaged in aid architecture as it confronts the effects of climate change, the issue is that it requires our long-term participation, complicated by heavy financial and emotional investments. The challenges we face, as TYIN have, compel us to find viable models of architectural practice that do not set us up to fail , but allow us to sustain.