Role

Three Cups of Skywalker

by David Week on 06 August 2011

The furore around l’affaire Mortenson has died down. At its height, opinion and speculation filled the blogosphere. Some hoped Mortenson would make it through the flames. Some wrote of how he had inspired them to care. Others pointed out that his development model, based around school construction, was bad from day one; that anthropologists had [...]

The moral frame of development research

by David Week on 22 July 2011

I’ve been reading a post by Tom Murphy entitled Aid’s God Complex and Bloggers Groupthink. Towards the end of the post, Tom says this: Critics of research will decry the wonky conversations that do not address the issues at hand. Some will say that things need to get done and it is a waste of resources [...]

How to become an aid professional

by David Week 5 November 2010

First: you need to know what an aid “professional” might look like, and the hazards (and potential strengths) of being an aid “amateur.” There’s been a small debate on the blogs recently, and Saundra of Good Intentions has posted a cool summary of the results, here. Everyone starts at some time as an amateur, and learns [...]

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What Tolstoy said to the development worker

by David Week 6 October 2010

Games people play I find two there are two types of commentary on development which I find really push some kind of button with me. Ain’t It Awful The first is “the world is a mess, and it’s only getting worse, and nothing we’re doing is really going to fix it.” In 1964, the psychologist [...]

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What development teaches you about architecture

by David Week 20 September 2010

I recently registered for a new initiative of The Guardian newspaper concerning global development. (Thanks to Craig Zeliger of the Peace and Collaborative Development Network for alerting me to this.) In introducing myself on this site, I felt like saying something about how development has changed the way I understand my profession. I think this is [...]

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Accountable design—Part 1: Cui bono?

by David Week 3 September 2010

Focus on architecture The title of this blog is “architecture for development”. The persistent problem is that architecture for development tends to unearth all kinds of interesting bigger issues, and it can become more fun to explore these bigger issues, than the nitty gritty of architecture’s role in development. For the moment, I shall resist [...]

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Architectural traditions and development

by David Week 7 August 2010

Traditions shape you Some years ago I did some work with the World Wide Fund for Nature in Australia. We ran a participatory process to help them in the design of their new workspace. During this process, there was a tea break, and I ended up alone in the meeting room with WWF’s chief scientist. [...]

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The real engine of development

by David Week 7 August 2010

I was listening this morning to an ABC Radio National program on the great Indonesian poet Rendra. He spoke in many ways about development. A little scrabbling around on the Internet found these lines: Hiburan kota besar dalam semalam Sama dengan biaya pembangunan sepuluh desa! Peradaban apakah yang kita pertahankan? The night life of one [...]

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About “Architecture for Development”

by David Week 27 April 2010

Why this blog Below, I’ve pasted my professional “about” blurb from my CV, written in some version of bureaucratese. It serves as a potted history of my professional life, and provides some insight, I guess, into my professional persona. But I’m not blogging to further my professional career, which is doing just fine. Here are [...]

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