01/01/2001

A Model Village for the World

Continued from page 2

By Kathryn Beaumont

The Self-Sustaining Village

Adapazari, which lies about 160 kilometers east of Istanbul, grew up over the past half-century on an ancient lake bed of unstable soil. Though the area has seen a dozen major earthquakes since 1939, its access to a waterway leading to Istanbul made it an attractive spot for development, and soon thousands of rural village families in search of jobs were living in its cheap, high-rise apartment buildings.

Wampler believes that if rural villages could provide employment and economic sustainability, families would not feel pressed to migrate toward work in cities, which are inherently rife with overcrowding, poorly constructed buildings, crime, and poverty. And here is the crux of his vision for the microvillage: it can offer both. The reason is the Internet. Rural Turkey may still be a ways away from having every home wired, but families moving from the city back to the village often include computer-savvy teenagers willing to not only learn the latest software but also share their skills with their parents, Wampler says. Wampler believes that, by incorporating a wired library in the community center into the overall plans for the microvillage, he can introduce the benefits of the Internet to the Turkish villagers-namely, the ability to bring in information and sell locally crafted products online. What teenagers can't teach their parents, scholars and professionals willing to visit the village and run occasional workshops can. The result-a self-supporting community-could go a long way toward reversing migration to the city, Wampler believes. "A small community can make something and sell it over the Internet," he explains. "People not only learn a skill, but they learn other skills, accounting skills or marketing skills." Women who will be living in the village designed by Wampler and his students have already expressed a desire to sell paper handcrafted from dried flowers over the Internet.

Such examples of entrepreneurism-of people's confidence that they can support themselves independently-is exactly what Wampler is after. "I believe that good architecture is the result of economic, social, and form issues-not just form," says Wampler. "And I teach that." Others have listened and learned. Most of the students in the original Turkey workshops have graduated and left MIT, but Habitat for Humanity International and CEKUL, a Turkish foundation, joined with Wampler, Brady, and Unver to form a Turkey-based foundation called Berikoy, Communities Creating Communities, which continues to raise funds for construction of the village.

When Wampler attended the groundbreaking for the village last July, he discovered that it was more than a ceremonial shoveling of dirt. It was a celebration of community. Children dressed in native Turkish costumes danced and performed songs. There were speeches and a roasted lamb, and dozens of the village's future inhabitants posed with Wampler for photos. Tears came to his eyes. "It really was the end of the hard work that had gone on for so many years," he says.

And while the workshop has been over for several years, some of Wampler's students are still carrying its lessons into their lives. For example, Miller, a native of Costa Rica, was designing small turbine engines in the aeronautics and astronautics program before he met Wampler. Now Miller is investigating the roles air transportation can play in local development and has started conducting a study in Costa Rica for its government.

Graduates of the Turkey workshop also stay in close contact with Wampler, Brady, and Unver to monitor the progress of the village. And Brady, who now lives back in Massachusetts, still devotes most of her working time to the Berikoy project. She writes grant proposals, schedules labor, and plans events. "The reason that we are doing architecture is because it involved so many components that affect the livelihood of so many people," Brady says, referring also to Unver; both are part of a steering committee that oversees the project in Turkey. "We're not architects that just want to put up a big monument, and we are not trying to do this ourselves. We have professionals, we have NGOs [nongovernmental organizations], we have local governments, we have corporations. Anyone alone would bring in his or her own biases and limitations. But as a team, this opens everybody's eyes to angles they wouldn't have considered. I think this was key to the uniqueness of the workshop." And as a product of Wampler's workshops herself, she says, "It's a very nice closure of the loop."