In the wake of the Port-au-Prince earthquake, Haitians have sustained an immense loss of life, with numbers still climbing, and the collapse of physical structures signifying the collapse of the governmental, social, economic, and infrastructural institutions those structures housed and represented. Many of those institutions and infrastructures were weak before the quake, as Haiti is among the world’s poorest nations, reliant on international aid and subject to severe economic disparity.

This earthquake was no typical disaster, and Haiti is no typical disaster-struck region. In many ways, Port-au-Prince and its institutions required rebuilding before the buildings collapsed. The relief effort of this particular disaster goes beyond air-dropping supplies and building emergency housing. Haiti also requires an emergency economic system (the banks and tax office have collapsed), an emergency medical system (hospitals have collapsed), an emergency justice system (courthouses and the federal prison have collapsed), emergency education (schools have collapsed), and an emergency government (the parliament and many ministry buildings have collapsed). People talk about emergency shelter. What about emergency institutions, only one of which is housing?

Participants in February’s Spontaneous Architecture competition are invited to take this question seriously, enacting a response onto the site included below. The site includes multiple institutions and social, economic, and governmental infrastructures as well as residential areas and open space parks currently being used as campsites for those in need of housing. Participants are asked to consider one or all of the institutions present and can operate on the entire site or a specific portion thereof. Responses can be strategic, organizational, institutional, and/or architectural.

Enter the competition here>

Read about the posture study here.

Brinol et al. (2009) divided 71 students into four groups, then fed them a cover story about why they had to adopt two different poses: half slouching, the other half sitting up straight, chests puffed out. These two groups were then split again, and half were asked to write down three positive personal traits, the other half three negative personal traits.
…
The results showed that people who had been sitting up straight were much more likely to believe the positive things they’d been writing about themselves, whereas those who were slouching weren’t so sure. Meanwhile a doubtful posture had very little effect on the half who were thinking negatively about themselves.

It showed a 7 per cent increase in overall cheerfulness after the experiment.
”The figure is statistically significant,” said Prof Wiseman. ”I thought with a representative sample you wouldn’t see a change, but we got a 7 per cent rise. There was no big improvement in the weather or anything in the news that could have accounted for it, and we looked for that. Who knows, but I like to think we might have cheered up the nation.”
Participants were asked to carry out the tasks every day for a week and report any changes in their happiness, as well as that of people around them.

“These results provide compelling evidence that optimism is a universal phenomenon,” said Matthew Gallagher, a psychology doctoral candidate at the University of Kansas and lead researcher of the study.
At the country level, optimism is highest in Ireland, Brazil, Denmark, and New Zealand and lowest in Zimbabwe, Egypt, Haiti and Bulgaria. The United States ranks number 10 on the list of optimistic countries.

On waking

With less time spent working, the choice is yours — sleep in, go for a run, read a novel. Having rediscovered the real meaning of a good life, previously overconsuming rich countries have now cured most cases of work addiction. In this “downshifted” world the phrase “rush hour” has become a half-remembered curio. Our society has begun to get the hang of how computing and IT can make for smart work, rather than generate slave work.

Those choosing the early morning run enjoy fresh air and clear paths as dramatic reductions in traffic have transformed city air and streets.

Some selections from the list:

1. Coach travel is the safest form of road transport in the country.
6. Dishcloths are purged of 99% of their bacteria during two minutes in a microwave.
26. Harvesting rhubarb in candlelight helps preserve its flavour.
35. Denmark is the happiest country in Europe; Italy the unhappiest. (The UK was 9th out of 15.)
54. The Australian town of Eucla has its own time zone.
74. Sheffield FC is the world’s oldest football club.
91. In Iceland, 96% of women go to university.

From heartwarming classics to instant blockbusters, these are the on-screen scenes that never fail to fill you with joie de vivre.

The list is rather simple as it includes things like recycling (who doesn’t?) and not buying bottled water.

It’s good to remind ourselves that there are simple everyday things we can do to protect the planet.