Hiya,
Great to see the continued enthusiasm for this idea.
I am writing as member, not staff here. Joel and I will do anything the Board of Directors directs us to. If the frame appears at the parking lot in Burlington and is auctioned off without the funds going through the Guild accounts and sent to SE Asia, then I'd guess the Board would support it as a grassroots effort. Without an educational component it may not be appropriate to use Guild resources (time, money).
I have a friend here who is an architect and has taught in Malaysia for many years. He knows the area well and I asked him to comment on the various initiatives proposed here. Here's what he recommends:
Sending skills is more important than buildings. Avoid the bureaucracy of USAID and send someone directly to an affected village (pick one), meet with the elders and see what they need. Come back and then mobilize the tropps. The effort expended to build something here equals the cost of one person's plane ticket and expenses for an exploratory trip.
Avoid Indonesia (Sumatra). Graft, corruption, guerrilla movements and poverty are rampant, and only the largest organizations can cope with that. Concentrate instead on places like Phuket (where English is widely spoken), India or Sri Lanka.
Sending frame(s) is the least appropriate option, in my opinion. The termites would devour non-native species. Chengal is a SE Asia native wood that is extremely rot and termite resistant, plentiful and available for framing. Finally, I am frankly surprised that such an environmentally aware group as y'all would prefer using oil to transport heavy frames halfway around the world to using native materials. I haven't seen Will T's design (but would like to - can you send me a copy?), but I hope it would pass muster as socially an architecturally appropriate. At MIT there is the Agha Khan Center for Architecture (I'm not sure of the name) with world renowned staff that know the answer to that.
Auctioning something here and sending money seems the most appropriate, since many of us would not be able to go to Asia. This is what we (the TFG) did after 9/11. The wakaf is a simple yet elegant roadside structure found throughout Muslim SE Asia. Wakaf is an Islamic concept founded on the principle of charitable giving. It can be anything from cash to an office building given for the well-being of others. In Malaysia it is a small open tiered hipped roof pavilion often given to the general public by an individual as a place for rest, prayer, refuge from inclement weather, and the like. It is often stocked with water and refreshment for the traveler.
Here's a concept: bring over a few SE Asian carpenters to teach us the framing techniques they use (the educational component - I have pictures of wakafs and they're timber framed). Build a few wakafs (once we're taught how to) in different regions and auction them off, sending the money to the SE Asia relief. Or, donate the wakafs to mosques in the US as a symbol of all that US/Muslims relationships should be. Or both. We would build a timber frame indigenous to the Muslim culture of SE Asia at the same time sensitizing people here to much more than just the tsunami disaster.
