ABSTRACT

Sandra Durzo is an architect whose aim is to improve the living conditions of the most vulnerable. She began her career in the international office of Mecanoo in the Netherlands and has since worked with the NGO Architecture and Development, in Salvador, East Timor, the Philippines, Afghanistan and Palestine, and with Oxfam GB in post-tsunami housing reconstruction in Sri Lanka. Sandra D'Urzo is now a Senior Officer in the Shelter and Settlements Division at the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies (IFRC) in Geneva, where she is the focal person for shelter risk reduction and recovery and post-disaster operations and shelter programmes in the Americas. The interviews and supporting essays show built environment professionals collaborating with post-disaster communities as facilitators, collaborators and negotiators of land, space and shelter, rather than as 'save the world' modernists, as often portrayed in the design media.