How to Be a Better Human
How to build resilience through architecture (w/ Alyssa-Amor Gibbons)
April 22, 2024
[00:00:00] Chris Duffy:
You are listening to How to Be A Better Human. I'm your host, Chris Duffy. Architecture is an art form that to me, often is invisible, but when I do start to pay attention to it, when I start to really see it, I realize how huge an impact architecture has on my day-to-day life. I mean, it's no exaggeration to say that it is literally all around me since I'm indoors right now.
Architecture is more than just our physical spaces, though. It also determines how well our homes, our offices, and our other structures hold up under pressure or in a natural disaster, and that's a factor that's increasingly urgent in the face of climate change. That is exactly what today's guest, Alyssa-Amor Gibbons focuses on in her work. Her approach to architecture has not only helped me to think more about architecture itself, it's also changed the way that I think about resilience. Here's a clip from her TED Talk.
[00:01:00] Alyssa-Amor Gibbons:
As a child growing up in Barbados, there were two things I can count on every summer, school break and the hurricane season.
At some point we would go through this whole routine of duct taping all the glass doors in these big x patterns, tightly boarding up all the windows except for one or two, so that, as my mother would curiously put it, we could let the wind come through. I am putting buckets in the living room to catch the rain in a futile attempt to stop our house from flooding when the roof started to billow and sag in the wind. I hated it because I was terrified the entire time.
Whether it was a tropical wave, a thunderstorm, a tropical storm, or the tail end of an actual hurricane that barely missed us, it was all the same to me, a possible end. No light, no water, no electricity, just a simple battery-operated radio waiting for the all clear and in my young eyes, mother nature on a personal mission to destroy us all.
I never understood why. Why if we knew this was going to happen every year, why couldn't we just do something to make sure that we were safer?
[00:02:27] Chris Duffy:
We are gonna find out the answer to that question. What could we do to make us all safer in just a moment? Don't go anywhere.
We're talking with architect Alyssa-Amor Gibbons, about climate resilience, architecture, and learning to live in an unpredictable world.
[00:03:54] Alyssa-Amor Gibbons:
Hi, my name is Alyssa-Amor. I'm an architectural designer from Barbados, and I specialize in sustainable, resilient, energy efficient architectural design.
[00:04:05] Chris Duffy:
You design environmentally conscious architecture and you grew up and you live now in Barbados, a country that has many times experienced some strong natural forces, you know, both in good ways and in destructive ways. So, can you talk about how that influenced your work and the desire to go into this field?
[00:04:24] Alyssa-Amor Gibbons:
Yeah, so growing up on an island is you're kind of hard pressed not to be connected deeply to nature here, surrounded by it. You know, we live on a rock in the middle of the ocean that's about 166 square miles and about 432 times our land size is our ocean space. So, when you talk about flora, fauna, marine life, you're so connected to it because you experience it almost every single day. I grew up spending, I want to say like 90% of my time, underwater.
You know, I grew up swimming. I grew up diving. I just grew up either underwater or in class at school. So, everything I did as a kid was so connected to nature and as professionals, we start to quote statistics and argue over 1.5 or 2 degrees, but firsthand, I don't need to quote statistics because I see it.
I live it every day. The marine life that I saw underwater as a kid, the coral reefs is not the same that I see now as an adult. The natural events that you experience as a kid, the tropical storms where you have, you know, so much notice of these impending events, now you're woken up in the middle of the night to events that claim thousands of homes. There's no way, you know, as a human being, forget as a designer, as a human being to not consider these things as I go about my daily life.
[00:05:55] Chris Duffy:
When you think about a path forward, you, it seems like one of the things that is really special about your designs is that you are both using traditional and proven techniques, but then combining them with also modern technologies and modern understanding of the forces of nature too.
[00:06:13] Alyssa-Amor Gibbons:
Yeah, at a very simple level, I'm here for a reason. I'm here because my mom survived. My dad survived. My ancestors survived and they had nowhere near the amount of resources or the depth of resources that I have now. And, if you start to think at that curious level about how architecture has survived to date, then you start to think, okay, what were the elements of that that made it successful?
Unfortunately, for us in the Caribbean and through a lot of the diaspora throughout a lot of the global south, it was kind of necessity by not even invention, by sheer force. You need to survive. You know, we have vernaculars that were the outcome of the circumstances that we had to live through. And, when you layer on top of the injustices that happen, trying to survive not just those historical events, but then in natural events, just by the fact that you're in this geographical location, there's a whole new meaning to what does it mean to survive not just mentally, spiritually, but physically.
And, at its most basic level, that's what architecture is, shelter. But, what I want to put out into the role is this concept that that's just the bare minimum. You know, architecture can do a lot more. And, by kind of pairing those sort of first principles of what architecture is with emerging technology, with a bit of vision, what more can we do?
Can architecture be a tool to not just survive, but to thrive?
[00:07:48] Chris Duffy:
In your vision for architecture, what can architecture do?
[00:07:52] Alyssa-Amor Gibbons:
Uh, I think architecture has the ability to take people out of poverty in one generation. I think architecture has the opportunity to take people from the bottom of the pyramid of hierarchy of needs to the top, to where self-actualization.
I think architecture is really about carving space out to nothing for me. Is that place you go to as a kid where you realize, this is what I wanna do for the rest of my life when I walk into a beautiful library, if I walk into a beautiful urban space. By taking us out of just that basic approach of just dwelling and, and surviving and sheltering, architecture to me presents such an amazing opportunity to now tap into the holistic, the mental, the spiritual.
You know, aspects of who we are as human beings. A building can impact everyone. Whether you walk past it on a daily basis and you absolutely hate it and there's this visceral reaction, or if it's just the most beautiful space you've ever seen, and you go there to just sit down and mind dump. Architecture has such power beyond just concrete and steel to impact people's lives.
[00:09:06] Chris Duffy:
It's a really inspiring vision for architecture and something that that I also am really inspired by with your work is the way in which you draw on that vision and, and also on nature, but also on history. So, I wonder if you can walk us through maybe a piece of history from Barbados that you have incorporated into some of your architectural designs.
[00:09:27] Alyssa-Amor Gibbons:
Caribbean history in general is the vernacular of the Chattel house. Being oppressed and not having access to certain materials, not having access to wealth, not even having access over ownership of yourself. Right? But, out of that, people started to get resourceful, you know, had to figure out ways, okay, we don't have what we need to necessarily withstand and shore up ourselves against these events. But, how do we work with it rather than try to fight against it?
So, the Chattel House was a early example of that kind of indigenous architecture where they design their homes, their spaces, in such a way that when push come to shove, for lack of a better phrase, you opened it up and you, you let the wind pass through instead of knocking the entire house over. And, that kind of resilience is something that I've pulled into a lot of my inspiration and honestly into some of the tectonic expressions of buildings, like in facades, for example, where you understand that there's an element of flexibility that needs to go in.
Although I advocate for the use of technology, we're, we're not god, or whatever universal entity you believe in. You may not always get it a hundred percent accurate, but what you try to do is build in the kind of fail safes and build in the, the things that take a bit of the guesswork out of how the building would perform.
So, if that means taking that idea of allowing the wind to pass through certain aspects of the building and then taking that into a facade where you understand, okay, I'm gonna allow this facade to, allow the wind to come through in certain areas and disperse the wind load against the building so that even if there's some damage, it’s on superficial elements that have helped to kind of break up the wind force against the building.
To me that is more resilient than suffering a devastating loss, having billions of dollars in damage and then investing to rebuild very quickly after. For me, resilience is not about withstanding breaking, it's about the flex and bend while you're going through that thing that's trying to break you.
[00:11:45] Chris Duffy:
I mean, talk about, uh, a extremely relevant definition, not just for a building, but for us as people too, right?
[00:11:51] Alyssa-Amor Gibbons:
Yeah. Exactly.
[00:11:54] Chris Duffy:
Well, for, for someone who's listening and hasn't seen your TED talk or hasn't seen photos or, or drawings of your designs, paint us a picture of what some of this resiliency might actually look like.
[00:12:05] Alyssa-Amor Gibbons:
There's always a tough one for me to do because every design is so specific to its individual context. But, I think there are some elements of thought, at least, that carry through that might look like a building that has a sacrificial core where there's a central place that we acknowledge between myself as a designer and the owner, of course, that if anything happens, this is what we're willing to let go of and we invest substantial engineering and, and investment in safeguarding other space that might look like timber fins around a facade that acts as barriers to wind blown.
Coconuts are something, if you're on a cliff side, you know, it might look like something as simple as, how do I orient the building on site so that it's aligns efficiently for sun and heat gain and wind direction for natural ventilation. It looks different across every building, but I think one of the elements that I kind of draw on is a understanding of what are the natural, what are the natural materials within this area?
In some cases, we have taken fell trees that were blown over in hurricanes and incorporated that into the facade, incorporated that into furniture elements within the building. Like, being on site with the client and the artisans and pointing to mango trees and saying, okay, we're gonna cut this slab out of here and we're gonna take this and put it on this part of the building.
So, for me, what that resilient architecture looks like is not just about the end products, you know, the, the beautiful photograph in a magazine, but it's about the process that we go through walking the land with the client. I've personally slid down many hillsides, mapping out, mapping out a site on saturated mud after events with the client and having to be like, build out, um, and helped back up.
But, it's about the process of really understanding the space that you're designing in, the ecology of the place, the terrain, the, the personality of the site as I like to call it, and kind of bringing all of those elements together in the best way.
[00:14:24] Chris Duffy:
Something that I, think about when I think about architecture sometimes, visible architecture to me is often only at like the highest end, right?
It's these like giant, extremely expensive, monumental buildings, or it's these high-end luxury homes where it's an artist, it's an artist's vision, and yet architecture is also the tiniest of homes is a product of architecture, the tiniest of spaces. So, I wonder, first of all, if that also resonates with you, if that's like how you imagine architecture…
[00:14:55] Alyssa-Amor Gibbons:
Yeah.
[00:14:55] Chris Duffy:
…when you imagine it, and how your work kind of challenges that 'cause I think that it does.
[00:15:00] Alyssa-Amor Gibbons:
Yeah. For like a hundred percent. And, it's such a, it's such a paradox because you kind of have to put your ego aside and think from the point of view of sometimes the best design is something that doesn't need to be designed at all. Barbados is a great example. I grew up, you know, at school, sometimes we'll still have our classes outside under tamarind tree.
And, if you ask me to design the ideal school right now, I would put a couple chairs under tamarind tree and job, job done. You know, so in some ways it is really about understanding that your job as a designer is not to intervene, first. Your job is to understand if there's need for intervention, and if so, what does that look like?
[00:15:50] Chris Duffy:
Coming at this, as someone who lives in the United States, so often, one of the real lasting and sometimes invisible after effects of slavery and of racism is that the people who live in the land with the most problems, right, the lowest lying land that's most likely to be flooded, the places that are the most polluted, the most vulnerable, that's not coincidental.
Right?
That is a direct result of policies meant to put certain people in certain places so that they would be at the highest risk. And, it does seem like architecture is a way to have a form of reparation. If you can't just change where people live, at least you can give them homes that work and that aren't as vulnerable.
[00:16:36] Alyssa-Amor Gibbons:
I, I could honestly talk forever about this and this, I understand it's an uncomfortable conversation, but it goes both ways. It was as uncomfortable for me and as emotional for me as I'm sure anyone else. And, my people, my community, people I grew up with, our ancestors, we've played such a critical role in the development of the rest of the worlds for such a small place to have been a linchpin in the development of the wider worlds.
My ongoing life purpose, I feel like, is to figure out how we can re-leverage that identity. There's power in that. There's a lot of bad. There's a lot of ugly. There's a lot of heinous things that have happened, but there's also power to be extracted from that and particularly after I give my, my talk, you know, there are a lot of comments.
People could be so mean. But, it was one that said something along the lines of, you know, people like this, meaning me, and the countries that they're from, they should basically just be shut down. Like, they shouldn't be allowed to inhabit them anymore. Just put them somewhere else meaning people like me. And, I, I could not wrap my head around it.
You know, Barbados is 300,000 people. But, that's 300,000 people, not things or objects to be moved. There's a culture, there's a history. Here, this is home. I'm a designer. I have a background in engineering. I love design. I love a good challenge. Surely, as a species, we're capable of figuring out how to design better for increasingly bad natural events.
So, as much as there might be this kind of negative doom and gloom, emotional turmoil of climate change to climate crisis, I'm still hugely optimistic that there's solutions out there. And, what I won't do though is sit back and think, okay, somebody has to come and save me. When I read comments like that, I am extremely aware that people don't always do things out to the goodness of their heart.
It needs to make financial sense for most people. Our world is driven by this economic circumstance that we're in. So, I think being small, understanding the power in our past, and being able to influence the world at a global scale, despite that size, pulling technology in, because that gives us the limitlessness that kind of counteracts the size that we do have, the size constraint we have, all of those things together to me is endless opportunity to come up with our own solutions.
If someone asks me if a safe home is the equivalent justice, reparations wise, I would say no. But, for me, we cannot wait for anyone to save us because there's no guarantee anyone will. There are countries out there that have kind of led the way in terms of industrialization and quite frankly, you know, have landed us in the situation that we're in, in terms of consumption.
A 300,000 person country does not, in my opinion, carry that same weight of, of burden. So, is it our burden now to be they ones to overcompensate for what that looks like? Those are conversations we could have for decades to come still. What I focus on is understanding the climate that we're in, the science around it, understanding from a contextual level the issues that we have nationally because we know them better than anyone else, and designing our way out of it as best we could.
[00:20:27] Chris Duffy:
We are gonna take a quick break, but we'll be back with more from Alyssa-Amor in just a moment.
We're talking with Alyssa-Amor Gibbons about the future of architecture and what that's gonna look like in a world where the climate is changing and becoming more unpredictable and extreme. Here's another clip from Alyssa-Amor’s TED Talk.
[00:21:16] Alyssa-Amor Gibbons:
We really need to depart from this more global convention of designing our buildings to close themselves off from nature so that architecture, for us, becomes less about the external expression, aesthetic and shape of the building, but more about its holistic performance in concert with the environment. And, because we have started from these indigenous references, we end up with well performing modern yes, but accessible architecture that is not alien to its cultural or climatic context.
Architecture that is not alien to the people who must build and live in it.
[00:21:55] Chris Duffy:
Why are indigenous references so important when creating good design?
[00:22:00] Alyssa-Amor Gibbons:
I think it's relative what people draw inspiration from, to each their own. But, for me to really unlock new levels of meaning, understanding sensitivity to culture is important to reference. Even at school, architectural school, one of the first things you do is a precedent analysis to understood what has been done before similarly, and dissect what worked and what didn't. You know, you don't want to repeat the same mistakes, so even at a, a cultural level, if you want to understand what works, even at a climate level, if you want to understand, okay, this house was built in this way, and everyone complains about how hot it is.
Some very basic example. You have a plot of land. Your neighbor already has their house built. They know all of the problems they went through in building on the site. How could you not ask a question? It only makes sense. Like you, you want to arm yourself with as much knowledge as you can about the space that you're going to create in. So, I think referencing and understanding, um, precedents, whether it be heritage based, social, economic, geology, soil is really your first step to be done.
[00:23:21] Chris Duffy:
I feel like I have such a clear sense of what someone should take away if they are starting a construction project and wanting to like think about the principles that they should use when they're, they're building their own home.
And, I also feel like no matter where you are, whether you own a home, don't own a home, plan on ever building something or not, I think everyone clearly has this idea of the like philosophical and intellectual framework and why that is so important. What are some of the practical things that someone should do if they're not directly in this process of designing and building a home? What are things that people should apply to their life?
[00:23:58] Alyssa-Amor Gibbons:
Architecturally, right, for anyone listening, go to the source. Go to the sites. Go to the place that you're looking to create this new thing. Sit there for a while, you know, watch the sun pass. You know, feel the winds. See how the rain falls. Is there a bird's nest somewhere and birds are chirping?
Who else is occupying this space? What's the ecology of this place, this personality? Only by doing that, I think can you really get an understanding of the energy, the spirit, the vibe of the place. So, if you can, always go. Sit there, stand there for a little bit, and just take it in. If you apply that to life, again, go to source.
If that is something deep inside you, if that is god, an external entity, sit with it and try to listen to what is telling you or go within yourself and listen to what your voice is telling you. Get still for a moment. And, so I'd say that's number one. Um, number two: I think having the courage to plot your own course, design your own workflow, design your own approach to a project or to life.
What, what I've learned is that there are no rules really. It is up to you to decide where you want to stick your claim on dignity, you know, where does your authenticity lie? What drives you as either designer, a dad, a kid that's trying to figure it out wherever you are in life. There really are no rules.
And, if someone tells you there are rules, there are rules have been fabricated and put in place, maybe for organization or whatever, but underneath all of that, there's you deciding what you will and won't do, how you will do it, and how you won't do it, what you envision the outcome to be and what you don't want it to be. That’s on you. That's up to you to create that process. And, I guess three, since you said three, be open and flexible to how you get to that angle. Again, even in architecture, I might have this beautiful vision. It's so holistic. It makes sense. It impacts positively so many different people. It's sustainable is is everything you could ever want in a project.
It might be too expensive or it might just not be what the client wants to do. So, it's my job to understand that this is the end goal we want to get to, but there are many ways that that can happen. A hurricane can come knock you over. Somebody could come do something bad to you. These things happen and they're terrible and they hurt and they devastate. But, if we can find that resilience in ourselves to remember the vision, we always find our way back.
[00:26:55] Chris Duffy:
When it comes to thinking about some of these unpredictable disasters and ways in which our lives are gonna get affected, is there anything that non architects can do to use design to make their world or their specific homes better and more resilient?
And, just to make it even more specific, one of the producers who works on this show, Noor, every time it rains really hard in New York City, her basement floods.
[00:27:21] Alyssa-Amor Gibbons:
Right.
[00:27:21] Chris Duffy:
So, as a someone who can't like, you know, make a big construction project, are there things that you can do to avoid situations like that or to make it so that they're less extreme or less damaging?
[00:27:32] Alyssa-Amor Gibbons:
Yeah. I think that's such a beautiful question because it could, we could go in like so many different extremes, but for me it's about, you know, I enjoy sleeping at night. You know, I take great joy in being able to lay my head on a pillow and feel like I've done as least harm as I can to as many people as possible.
Even if I start there, what does that look like? I think the first thing that you could do as a person is design, decide how do I want to live my life, you know? Where does my line stop? Very simple things could be catching rain water when it falls. It could be having a garden at home and I have like my fruits and vegetables here without pesticides that I grow with compost.
It could be, I choose to get low flow water fixtures in my home. You know, I choose to put an aerator on my shower, so that is less gallons per minute, you know? It could be that I am developing 20 acres of hotel property on this site and I'm gonna implement ecological practices that I don't cause any harm to the marine protected area, you know, two miles off the coast. It could be anything, but it should be something.
[00:28:50] Chris Duffy:
It, it feels to me like the. Caribbean and Barbados and many of the other islands have obviously experienced so much of the, the dark history of colonization and of, uh, slavery and of inequality. But, there's also so many people yourself, high among them, who are really designing this like hopeful future and coming up with new alternatives and new ways that we can move forward.
One of the other things that I found really interesting is, you know, the way that you think about architecture and design, but also in the, on the island of Barbuda, right, on Barbuda there, they have a whole different approach to land, to the idea of like communal ownership and that maybe we don't have to think about like private property in exactly the same ways.
And, so I wonder if you have any thoughts on that, on the Barbuda Land Acts and, and that whole idea of like, maybe we actually shouldn't own private property and instead it should be communal.
[00:29:45] Alyssa-Amor Gibbons:
I think the one thing that people tend to overlook when they talk about slavery and the impacts of slavery and wanting to move on and change the conversation is that because it's not physically happening, there's still a legacy of the impact that that has had.
And, I’ll, Barbados, for example, Barbados was, the slave codes were written here. The policies that went on to become successful in the rest of the Americas, they were formed, tested, optimized here. So, there's a deep level of healing that is subtle, but needs to happen, particularly in my country, I think because we were in the English speaking region, you know, even down to South America, North America.
Everyone passed through Barbados first before they were disseminated across the other countries. That legacy of being ground zero, of being the headquarters of like the policies that still exist, are rooted in this. The issues that we have around land ownership, there is still a legacy of slavery. There are still plantations here owned, you know, by families that have ties to slavery.
So, there's this whole complex issue that we still have that I don't know if a change in policy would one be easy, two, easily accepted, or three even welcomed. You don't know until you start to ask the questions, but I think before we get to that point, there's a level of national healing and, and conversation, open conversation that needs to happen.
I think, currently, our Prime Minister has started those conversations in the form of reparation request, but of course that word in itself brings a huge other, you know, set of contention. But, I think having the conversations openly, understanding that yes, we are generations removed from that, but there's still legacies of it that are unjust and having that in a way that people don't feel, people will feel offended, but are still open to listening and responding and taking accountability for it.
I think before we get to that point of policy around it, that has to happen first.
[00:32:22] Chris Duffy:
It's so clear talking to you and having done research and listened to other talks and, and interviews that you've given, it's, it's so clear the pride of place that you have in being from the Caribbean, in being Bajan in living in the place that you do with your family around you. And, so I, I'd love to just hear what are some of your favorite parts of Barbados and of living in the specific place where you live?
[00:32:46] Alyssa-Amor Gibbons:
I love, well, the whole island, I mean. But, I, I got a special soft spot for the East coast. The West Coast is a lot more developed now. We call it the Platinum Coast. You'll find like really luxury houses. You know, lots of celebrities come and they, they have houses there, but I always have a soft spot for the East Coast. It’s a little more rugged.
You, you know, you could feel, feel the earth beneath you. One of my favorite things about Barbados is just knowing how it came to be. It’s not volcanic like the other islands, and we were literally pushed from the bottom of the ocean floor. You know, we sit on a different tectonic plate being so easterly to the rest of the islands that we've literally been pushed from the bottom of the ocean. I mean, how poetic is that? And, you can see in our layers of geological makeup, the history of the ocean. You know, we're like 85%, um, Pleistocene limestone or something like that. So, talking about being from the water, being born from new water, the connection, particularly as black people that we have to the water, we were brought across the ocean. There's this, this whole language around water that permeates our culture. Just understanding all of that and how connected I feel to it is probably one of my most favorite things.
[00:34:16] Chris Duffy:
Well, uh, listen, Amor, it's such a pleasure to talk to you. I really genuinely, we could do like 17 more episodes just talking. But, but I'm really glad that we got to do one, so thank you so much.
[00:34:25] Alyssa-Amor Gibbons:
Yeah. Yeah. Thanks for having me. This was what I needed right now.
[00:34:33] Chris Duffy:
That is it for today's episode of How to Be A Better Human. Thank you so much to today's guest, Alyssa-Amor Gibbons. I am your host, Chris Duffy, and you can find more from me, including my weekly newsletter and other projects at chrisduffycomedy.com.
How to Be A Better Human is brought to you on the TED side by a team that metaphorically opens the windows to let the wind blow through safely, Daniella Balarezo, Banban Cheng, Cloe Shasha Brooks, and Joseph DeBrine.
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