Sant Lespwa Center of Hope in Haiti wins one of the 2015 AIA Honor Awards

A few days ago, the American Institute of Architects announced the winners of the 2015 Honor Awards. One of these was Sant Lespwa Center of Hope in Haiti, designed by Rothschild Doyno Collaborative and commissioned by World Vision, the international aid organisation.



Rothschild Doyno Collaborative is a Pittsburgh-based architecture and urban design firm, and designed one of the 2015 AIA Honor Awards winners – the Sant Lespwa Center of Hope in the central plateau area of Haiti.



The Sant Lespwa Center of Hope was constructed in the central plateau area of Haiti, devastated by the 2010 earthquake. This community centre is the first stage of a Master Plan intended to improve the living conditions of the people in this region, focusing in particular on providing educational opportunities.

Because the site has no utilities or infrastructure – so no power or drainage – and Rothschild Doyno Collaborative got around this with an approach based on sustainable design: the community centre is completely self-sufficient and fully exploits all the passive architectural solutions to improve the comfort of users – daylight, natural light, rainwater collection and sewage treatment, plus a 15 kW solar power array that meets all the centre’s power needs.

Environmental sustainability is not the only thing that makes the Center of Hope special – the architects also engaged with children, adults and village elders in a participatory design process. They involved the community in everything, from the early planning and decision-making stages through to actually building the centre, with the three small buildings constructed around a central courtyard protected by trees. They went with vernacular materials and construction techniques and supplemented these with earthquake/hurricane-resistant engineering. The centre is therefore seen as a real community resource and for now the children can play on the soccer field and soon attend school here, while the adults and village elders can enjoy the social spaces and take advantage of special training and prevention courses.

We’ll leave the final word to the AIA jury, which perfectly sum up the Sant Lespwa Center of Hope in Haiti by Rothschild Doyno Collaborative: “The representation of what design can do and how it can build community is evident for this climate and this community. The way this project sustainably translates energy and architecture to this community is praiseworthy.”

(Christiane Bürklein)

Project: Rothschild Doyno Collaborative, http://www.rdcollab.com/
Client: World Vision International, www.wvi.org 
Loacation: Hinche, Haiti
Year: 2014
Photography: © Sarah Spanagel, AIA Convention
Recipient of a 2015 AIA Institute Honor Awards
Link: The Iron Market, Ceverine School, École La Dignitè