Sustainable Design Update

John Barrie + Gaialux Light

The Ann Arbor News had a nice article about the Appropriate Technology Collaborative on Sunday, Dec 16th.

ATC is a new tech firm working on creating affordable technologies that solve problems for the 2.1 billion people who live on less than $2.00 per day. In the interest of full disclosure, I am the Executive Director of the Appropriate Technology Collaborative.

From the Ann Arbor News:

Helpful inventors give away ideas

Architect spearheads nonprofit

John Barrie is interested in a different kind of client.

Oh, it’s not that the folks who’ve hired his Ann Arbor architecture firm haven’t been great - and let him pursue his passion for environmentally sound design.

But, well … there are people who are in a position to pay a whole lot less - in fact, nothing - and who need a whole lot more.

With his family’s blessing, Barrie is transitioning from his life as the principal at the firm that carries his name to full-time executive director of the nonprofit Appropriate Technology Collaborative.

When he talks about it, it’s easy to believe that this is a man who’s eager to get up each morning.

“We can reach 1 million people in five years,” Barrie says. “It’s absolutely realistic.”

Those people are the low-income residents of places in the developing world where there’s little or no electrical service, clean water or sanitation; where health suffers because vaccines spoil and the available fuels foul the air.

They are, in other words, people not served by appropriate technology.

Barrie and his cohorts have a plan to change that.

And it’s elegantly simple.

Working individually and cooperatively, designers, engineers and other like-minded, inventive souls can devise solutions to what are, in the end, technology problems. Let’s say lighting in a place where power is intermittent or nonexistent.

A solution deemed appropriate - that is economically feasible, environmentally sound and sustainable - is given away.

Right. It’s free.

“You can have the plan and make the device for yourself,” Barrie says. “You can use it to go into business and provide these technologies to your community.”

The drawing will be on the Web. “We’re just going to ask people to let us know they’re using them,” Barrie says.

More at the Ann Arbor News

Ann Arbor News article by Judy McGovern

Photo Credit: Lon Horwedel, The Ann Arbor News

This entry was posted on Monday, December 17th, 2007 at 5:20 pm and is filed under Appropriate Technology. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.