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DESIGN FOR
FRAGILITY
The demand is now urgent for
architects to respond to the design
and planning challenges of rebuilding
cities and landscapes being destroyed
by civil conflict, (un)natural disasters,
political instability, and poverty.
The number of people fleeing their
homes and being displaced by such
conflict now totals almost 100 million.
Despite the massive human and
physical costs of these crises, the
number of architects, planners, and
landscape architects equipped to
work with disaster and development
professionals in rebuilding in the
aftermath of conflict, floods, fires,
earthquakes, typhoons, and tsunamis
remains chronically low. Design for
Fragility expands the nascent, but
rapidly growing field of humanitarian
architecture by exploring 13 design
responses to such conflict and
displacement across 11 countries,
including Australia, Bangladesh, Fiji,
India, Iran, Pakistan, and the USA.
Linked to this displacement is the
systemic poverty that often lingers
from previous colonial territories and
eras, in which many of the featured
projects in the book are located.
This book follows Charlesworth’s
Humanitarian Architecture: 15 Stories
of Architects Working After Disasters
(Routledge 2014), which analysed the
role for architects in exercising ‘spatial
agency’ while designing shelter and
settlement projects for communities
after conflict and disaster. Since that
time, the humanitarian architecture
movement has expanded globally
with the prominence of design
agencies including the MASS
Design Group and Architecture
Sans Frontières (ASF) International.
Design for Fragility analyses this
role of spatial agency in architecture
by addressing diverse conditions of
fragility across 13 built projects – from
refugee housing in Uganda and an
orphanage for teenage girls in Iran
to a residential centre in Northern
Australia for people with acquired
brain injury.
Each of the projects profiled in this
book explore:
X The experiences and perceptions
of fragility – or precarity – that
provided a design challenge and
directed the particular spatial
response.
X The specific typology of the
project, whether that be a
housing, health, children’s, or a
First Nations project.
X The personal values that
influenced the architects to work
on humanitarian/community
projects and how consultation
occurred with diverse and often
contested project stakeholders.
X The experiences of the
design team as well as project
managers, occupants, and
donors of the built project,
exploring what they deemed
successful about the project, and
what, if any, were its limitations.
Beautifully designed with over 150
illustrations, this practical and inspiring
book is for architects, landscape
architects, design educators,
humanitarian and development aid
agencies that are involved, or seeking
to be part, of future disaster mitigation
and reconstruction strategies and
projects, globally.
Esther Charlesworth is Founding
Director of Architects Without
Frontiers (AWF), the largest design
not-for-profit agency in the Asia Pacific
region. Esther is also Professor in the
School of Architecture and Urban
Design at RMIT University, Melbourne,
where she founded the Master of
Disaster, Design, and Development
program degree (MoDDD).
John Fien is Professor in the School
of Architecture and Urban Design
at RMIT University in Melbourne.
He has led large-scale climate and
sustainable development education
projects for organisations that
include UNESCO, UNEP, and WWF
in Southeast Asia, Africa, and the
Middle East.
DESIGN FOR FRAGILITY

13 STORIES OF HUMANITARIAN ARCHITECTS

ESTHER CHARLESWORTH

JOHN FIEN
Designed cover image: Studio Anna Heringer, Anandaloy
Centre, Photo: Kurt Hoerbst; MASS Design, Kasungu Maternity
Waiting Village, Photo: Iwan Baan; Rural Studio, Dave's House,
Photo: Tim Hursley; Architects Without Frontiers, Cakaudrove
Women's Resource Centre, Photo: James Mepham; Urko
Sanchez, SOS Children's Village, Photo: Javier Callejas; People
Oriented Design, SAIF, Photo: Michael Marzik; The Anganwadi
Project, Harivillu 1 Preschool, Photo: Roberto Rodriguez Reyes;
Localworks, Gahinga Batwa Community Centre, Photo: Will
Boase Photography; Yasmeen Lari, Women's Community
Centre, Photo provided by Yasmeen Lari; ZAV Architects,
Habitat for Orphan Girls, Photo: Aidan Gilandoost; Breathe,
Cobargo Santa House, Photo: Pablo Veiga; Iredale Pedersen
Hook, Bilya Koort Boodja, Photo: Peter Bennetts; Phoebe
Goodwin (UNHCR), Kutupalong Rohingya Settlement, Photo:
Philipp Hübner.

First published 2023

by Routledge
4 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon,
Oxon OX14 4RN

and by Routledge
605 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10158

Routledge is an imprint of the

Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business

© 2023 Esther Charlesworth and John Fien

The right of Esther Charlesworth and John Fien

to be identified as authors of this work has been asserted in
accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright,
Designs and Patents Act 1988.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or

reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic,
mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented,
including photocopying and recording, or in any information
storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from
the publishers.

Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be

trademarks or registered trademarks, and are used only for
identification and explanation without intent to infringe.

British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data

A catalogue record for this book is available from the
British Library

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Names: Charlesworth, Esther Ruth, author. | Fien, John, author.
Title: Design for fragility: 13 stories of humanitarian architects /
Esther Charlesworth, John Fien.
Description: Abingdon, Oxon: Routledge, 2023. | Identifiers:
LCCN 2022031168 | ISBN 9780367555368 (hardback) | ISBN
9780367555375 (paperback) | ISBN 9781003097037 (ebook)
Subjects: LCSH: Architecture—Human factors—Case studies. |
Disaster relief—Case studies.
Classification: LCC NA2542.4 .C485 2023 | DDC 720/.47—
dc23/eng/20220720
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2022031168

ISBN: 978-0-367-55536-8 (hbk)

ISBN: 978-0-367-55537-5 (pbk)
ISBN: 978-1-003-09703-7 (ebk)

DOI: 10.4324/9781003097037

Typeset in Avenir
by Apex CoVantage, LLC

Every effort has been made to contact copyright-holders.

Please advise the publisher of any errors or omissions, and
these will be corrected in subsequent editions.
DEDICATION

We dedicate Design for Fragility to the late

architect Amir Păsić, who established the
international rebuilding program, ‘Mostar
2004’, through the Aga Khan Trust for Culture.
Amir’s brave vision for his destroyed city (and
many other destroyed cities, including Aleppo)
inspired Esther and other architects who
worked with Amir 1996–2004, to understand
the extraordinary power of architecture in
rebuilding peace and stability after disaster.
FOREWORD Brett Moore, A Letter from Ukraine viii
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS xiii
SUPPORTED ACCOMODATION INNOVATION
FACILITY Esther Charlesworth + John Fien xv

PART ONE PART TWO

DESIGN FOR FRAGILITY +
CHILDREN
SOS CHILDREN’S VILLAGE
Urko Sanchez Architects,
Djibouti
HABITAT FOR ORPHAN GIRLS
Zav Architects, Iran
BHOLU 16
The Anganwadi Project, India
DESIGN FOR FRAGILITY +
HEALTH
11 MATERNITY WAITING VILLAGE 55
Mass Design Group, Malawi
ANANDALOY CENTRE 73
21 Studio Anna Heringer, Bangladesh
SYNAPSE SUPPORTED ACCOMMODATION
37 INNOVATION FACILITY 87
People Oriented Design, Australia


vi
contents
PART THREE PART FOUR
DESIGN FOR FRAGILITY + DESIGN FOR FRAGILITY +
HOUSING JUSTICE
THE SANTA PROJECT 105 GAHINGA BATWA VILLAGE 161
Breathe, Australia Localworks, Uganda

GREEN SHELTER PROJECT 117 BILYA KOORT BOODJA 177

Yasmeen Lari, Pakistan Iredale Pedersen Hook, Australia

THE PILOT SHELTER PROGRAM 129 CAKAUDROVE WOMEN’S

UNHCR + CRS, Uganda RESOURCE CENTRE 191
Architects Without Frontiers, Fiji
20K PROJECT | DAVE’S HOUSE 143
Rural Studio, USA

EPILOGUE Rory Hyde, All Architecture Is Humanitarian Now 195

HUMANITARIAN DESIGN AGENCIES198
PHOTOGRAPHS + DRAWINGS204
INDEX205


vii
contents
FOREWORD
A Letter from Ukraine

BRETT MOORE
GLOBAL SHELTER CLUSTER LEAD
UNHCR
 people are displaced due to war and
Figure 0.2 Destroyed bridge in
Irpin, Ukraine 2022.
I write this foreword to Design for
Fragility while on mission in Ukraine,
developing the shelter response
for Ukrainians displaced by the
war. After three months of war, the
devastation and terror unleashed on
the people and country continues.
As an architect working with the UN
on emergency shelter response and
recovery, what can we realistically do
to provide even basic humanitarian
relief amidst the chaos? Can we even
start planning recovery, or reconstruc-
tion, during a conflict?
Although the context in Ukraine is
specific, the daily questions I deal
with around shelter, disaster, and
refugees are more than familiar. Cur-
rent global estimates from May 2022
indicate more than 100 million
disaster, with more than half being
displaced internally, while others are
forced across international borders
to seek safety as refugees. Finding
appropriate design, logistics, and
shelter responses to these challenges
are now urgent. The contributions of
design professionals, from archi-
tects to landscape architects and
planners, are now critical as these
challenges have moved from niche to
mainstream, heightened by climate
change and protracted conflicts that
are having catastrophic regional and
global impacts.
What is clear is that what was once
the role of humanitarians, like me, is
now more mainstream, and govern-
ments, private sector, and civil society
are all seeing how precarious our
cities, economies, and systems are
to disruption. A new era of uncer-
tainty and fragility is upon us, and the
tools and resources to comprehend,
plan and act are now core skills and

viii
not just the domain of humanitarian
actors and UN agencies.
After more than 20 years working in the
humanitarian system (while I was origi-
nally trained as an architect) and having
worked in post-disaster and post-
conflict response and reconstruction
for most of those two decades, much
of that time with the UN, there is still
an urgent need for more professionals
from design and built environment
disciplines to work in the humanitarian
and international development sectors.
While the professionalism, speed,
and effectiveness of disaster response
mechanisms has improved, the horizon
from here looks unclear: there have
been some vast improvements, some
lukewarm impact, and some spectacu-
lar fails in rebuilding after both conflict
and disaster.
While the humanitarian system tries
to cope with escalating needs, limited
budgets, and often impossibly com-
plicated situations, responders, like
me, are certainly faster, more savvy
and tech-equipped than ever before –
being in constant communication
to mobilise support, resources, and
coordinate efforts with more agility
than a decade ago. We are now much
more inclusive of the needs of disas-
ter-affected people, accountable,
and transparent, but are we becom-
ing distracted from the core issues?
Emphasis on development outcomes
is essential, but the path is unclear –
connecting our humanitarian work to
a better future for those in need is a
process that is fraught with political,
financial, and social challenge.
Meanwhile, for the rest of the world,
architects now understand that their
operational space is more diverse and
must respond to a world of need and
fragility, as urbanization and climate
change have challenged the profes-
sion to remain relevant and inclusive of
the needs of a wide group of stake-
holders – broadening the definition
of ‘client’ far outside the norm. As we
build for the future, our work must
meet the needs of a fragile ecosystem,
subject to shocks and stresses, and we
must also ensure future professionals
have the technical design and strate-
gic skills to cope with uncertainty.
Humanitarian Architecture
Esther Charlesworth published
Humanitarian Architecture in 2014,
mapping 15 architects working on
the frontlines of humanitarian disaster
(me being one, profiling post-tsunami
reconstruction in northern Sri Lanka
from 2005–10). The key message of
Charlesworth’s book was a call to
action for the design profession to
respond to such catastrophes. At the
time, I was convinced that this book
through its similarly featured design
and disaster projects would help
galvanise nascent interest of young
designers to enter the system, help-
ing bridge gaps and offer challenging
and rewarding career opportunities
that respond to the needs of disaster
and conflict affected and displaced
across the globe. In the decade since,
few would have thought that dis-
placement would increase so greatly
and catastrophe would envelop many
countries in quite the way it has. The
message has gone from being perti-
nent to imperative – even desperate.
Ironically, as capacity has been built
and a new generation of architects
have forged pathways into the human-
itarian system, the needs have grown
and clearly not relegated to only the
global south. The needs are every-
where – in our cities and towns, rural
areas and country-wide. Nobody is
immune to the current and projected
future impacts of climate change.
Over time, with staggered progress
and frequent political impasse, there is
now a widespread recognition that a
‘business as usual’ approach won’t get
foreword
a letter from ukraine
us where we need to be – fragility is
now endemic across all global regions.
Esther Charlesworth’s and John Fien’s
new book Design for Fragility frames
the complex issues of fragility and pro-
vides a selection of 13 design projects
and practices, from Alabama to Dji-
bouti, to demonstrate how innovative
design approaches can be applied in
diverse geographic and social con-
texts. These case studies reveal how
deep engagement with community
and designers can create empowering
women’s centres, refuges, schools,
and villages that open opportunities
for design and humanitarian profes-
sionals to engage with damaged sites
and communities, thus creating hope
and resilience at the local level.
What Has Led Us to the Fragile
Scenarios We Find Ourselves In?
Certainly, global population dis-
placement, as mentioned, is both a
product of and factor exacerbating
ongoing and elevated fragility. In
the last decade, the Syrian con-
flict has dragged on, with millions
displaced, the country destroyed,
and misery for civilians now scat-
tered across numerous countries.
Disasters, drought, fires, and floods
have wreaked indiscriminate havoc
on millions, regardless of rich or
poor nationhood – evident in Nepal,
Philippines, Australia, and the USA,
to highlight a few of many countries
at the frontline. A combination of cli-
mate change, political instability, and
decades of unresolved poverty has
fuelled regional violence, across the
Sahel and East Africa, for example.
The tumult is now in our own back-
yards as well rather than only in
far-flung poor countries, presenting
a shocking and confronting vision
of escalating fragility that is still to
be adequately conceptualised in
terms of impact, remedies, and what
preparedness really means to prevent
such contagion from spreading. The
ix
impact, in lives, economies, business,
and politics, now paints a picture
of complexity and even confusion –
where old systems, seemingly unchal-
lengeable and interconnected across
globalised economies, are weakened
and disillusioned, and non-democratic
political regimes are rising while estab-
lished ones fall. The idea of fragility
permeates our politics and economy,
leaving some damaged and exposed
to recurring shocks and stresses.
This impact is worse for the most
vulnerable and displaced, not able
to rely on functioning or inclusive
governments, strong social services, or
an affluent state to meet their needs.
Worse, they are often relegated to
living in the most marginal parts of
cities and regions subject to recurring
disaster and social unrest. The global
asylum system for refugees is under
serious threat, where countries with
the means and affluence to support
solidarity and hosting mechanisms
have in many cases exhibited the least
willingness, leaving generations of
asylum seekers and refugees in limbo,
with more than three million in hun-
dreds of refugee camps across dozens
of countries. Here, fragility has a very
human face, with lost generations
unable to reach their potential, the
dreams of millions for a life of success
and contribution to their families and
communities tragically undermined.
While the Mediterranean is awash with
thousands of dead each year who left
their homes in search of security and
a better life, indolence of many states
catalyses and amplifies the fragility of
life and destroys the hopes of many,
unrequited, silenced.
The picture is however mixed, and
breakthroughs are occurring – many
communities are mobilizing with new
approaches to address their own
needs and aspirations. Many have
made strides in building resilience
through new ways of working and
collaborating in cross-sectoral
x
approaches to create new processes
and knowledge. The 13 projects and
architectural practices profiled in this
book offer a broad selection of such
successes, grass-roots approaches
that change the way people live,
work, and seek to achieve their
dreams and potential. These projects,
through new collaborations, ulti-
mately allow communities to share
power in a different way, creating new
narratives that have forward linkages
and impacting on how the archi-
tectural profession can grow in new
ways. Fundamentally it is a question
about the quality of the profession –
including the ideas and values we
promote, the issues we choose to
address, the solutions we want to
become part of, and those that we
choose to ignore.
Doctors and Lawyers, Hello! But
Where Are the Architects?
While other disciplines (such as law
and health) have historically been
central to the humanitarian sector,
articulating rights-based and life-
saving approaches, respectively, as
foundational to disciplinary practice,
architects have lagged behind in
promoting and striving for adequate
habitation and living conditions as a
human right. Why aren’t architects
activists for these issues? Has our
social agenda been lost? Certainly,
social, ecological, and inclusive
approaches are not new to the dis-
course of designers, and change is evi-
dent, reawakening core principles of
good design and responsible practice.
Disaster response and preparedness,
climate change and issues of global
responsibility have become part of
mainstream architectural conversa-
tions. A committed young generation,
enabled by social media and frus-
trated by the limitations of commercial
design practices with tight margins,
have been vocal in demanding new
opportunities, forged initially on the
periphery of architectural practice but
brett moore
increasingly commonplace and gaining
attention. The impetus is growing for
a more socially responsive profession,
rekindling modernist egalitarian ideas
of quality habitation and accessible
housing for all – ideas and ideals that
in recent decades had been subsumed
by an obsession with form-making and
high design for the few and not the
many. With neoliberalism driving busi-
ness models based around profits and
speculative development, the com-
modification of precious landscapes
and the treatment of much housing
production as an investment vehicle,
disillusionment has grown.
Change has also come from the
bottom up, fuelled by frustrations
with tertiary institutions that maintain
narrow perceptions of what should
be taught. In many countries, socially
aware students are the greatest
proponents of redefining the poten-
tiality of the profession, recasting
assumptions and challenging the
old guard of established institutions
by demanding that design teaching
responds to pressing social issues and
global crises by expanding architec-
tural curricula on offer. Progressive
tertiary education that spans the
design, social science, and interna-
tional development disciplines are
now becoming more commonplace.
Many universities across Australia
and Europe are now at the forefront
of this multidisciplinary approach.
Such programs include the Master of
Disaster, Design, and Development
degree [MoDDD] at RMIT in Aus-
tralia, the WiTLAB World in Transi-
tion initiative at Aalto University in
Finland, the emergency architecture
degree at Universitat Nacional de
Catalunya [UIC] in Spain, and the risk
and resilience program at the Harvard
Graduate School of Design.
The new horizons thus evolving in
both design institutions and the pro-
fession are helping to prepare the next
generation of architects to be more
adept at dealing with fragility. At the
heart of the issue, it is about politics
and the systems we have created.
Brett Moore
Architects traditionally aren’t taught
Brett Moore is an Australian architect
how to work with systems – they are
taught design and construction and and humanitarian, working for the United
expected to work out how to deal with Nations High Commissioner for Refugees
the structural imbalances in systems (UNHCR) as chief of the Global Shelter
that lead to the poverty, conflict, and Cluster. He works with UN and humanitarian
displacement that is the context of agencies, donors, and government actors
our work. The structural problems
that have created social and political
responding to the shelter needs of people
challenges that leave many behind, displaced by disaster and conflict. Prior to
marginalised, and susceptible to his current role, Brett worked with NGOs
the worst impact of climate-induced and with the UN, focusing on post-disaster
disasters and prolonged displacement and post-conflict response, recovery, and
are the challenges most opaque to
reconstruction.
understand and resolve.

Many of those impacted, often with In recent years Brett has been involved
the least coping mechanisms and in teaching and research and in 2015–16
resources at their disposal, are the was awarded a Loeb Fellowship at Harvard
same groups of people that human- University in the USA. He originally held a
itarians work with. Without fully Bachelor of Architecture from the University
comprehending their needs, the root
causes of issues, and fully including
of Melbourne and is now an adjunct pro-
them in finding the solutions through fessor with the MoDDD program at RMIT
meaningful participatory approaches, University, Melbourne.
the best architectural projects are
doomed to fail or at least have lim-
ited success. The ‘build back better’
mantra is admirable and essential to
guide our work, but so is the ability
to rethink and reshape how we work,
for whom, and why? The case studies
in Design for Fragility open a window
into the thinking, practice, and
approaches of a selected group of
designers who have created a path-
way to addressing these issues.

In this book, through examining 13

projects and design practices working
with communities marginalised by
war, disaster, and poverty, we are
offered a variety of spatial and design
practice alternatives that no doubt
will inspire future architects to con-
sider working, like I do, in the context
of fragility. This is a story of hope and
opportunity for us all.

xi
foreword
a letter from ukraine
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
Writing this book during the cascad-
ing crises of the COVID pandemic,
unprecedented bushfires and floods
in Australia, and more recently, the
Ukraine war, has been both timely
and apposite. While we as authors
were not directly impacted by any
of these disasters, maintaining focus
amidst this chorus of tragedy was
highly challenging in every sense of
that word.
Despite this series of chaotic events,
our journey to complete the book
was made far easier through listen-
ing to the 13 extraordinary stories
of architects working within com-
munities beset by the fragilities of
our time. The spatial transformation
of their briefs into highly functional
and, often bucolic buildings was an
amazing journey in understanding
how the forces of global fragility can
be both a negative but also powerful
force in delivering such exceptional
­architecture.
Completing Design for Fragility
would have been impossible without
the extraordinary commitment,
design, and editing expertise of our
friend and colleague Sarah Schoffel.
Without any ‘noise’, she came into
the book editing process 18 months
ago to help us pull together the 13
case studies across 12 countries,
including the voices of the multiple
beneficiaries of those built projects.
Sarah helped us sort, record, and
file hundreds of pages of interview
transcripts, drawings, and photo-
graphs – and then miraculously find
them whenever they were needed
in the analysis and writing process.
Without Sarah, this ambitious project
would have taken endless more years
to complete.
And so it is Sarah, the wonderful
team at Routledge (Trudy Varcianna
and Fran Ford), and RMIT Universi-
ty’s Dean of Architecture and Urban
Design, Professor Martyn Hook, that
we thank from the bottom of our
hearts.
Esther Charlesworth + John Fien
October 2022
xiii
SUPPORTED ACCOMODATION
INNOVATION FACILITY
Design for Fragility
ESTHER CHARLESWORTH Fragile Times
More than two decades ago, after
RMIT UNIVERSITY + working in Mostar in the after-
ARCHITECTS WITHOUT math of the 1990’s Balkan conflict,
FRONTIERS Esther began her research on cities
destroyed by conflict, disasters, and
poverty. Since that time, the themes
JOHN FIEN
of war, terrorism, and rebuilding
after floods, fires, and tsunamis have
RMIT UNIVERSITY grown exponentially in the public
consciousness. This has been driven
by the enduring impacts of colonial-
ism, worldwide increases in inter-
ethnic conflict, and the devastating
impacts of climate induced disasters.
Twenty years ago, we also saw the
destruction of the World Trade Centre
in New York and the Bamiyan Bud-
dhas in Afghanistan. The following
years witnessed wars in Iraq, Afghan-
istan, Sudan, Syria, and Yemen, and
since the Indian Ocean Tsunami of
2004, we have experienced devastat-
ing earthquakes, floods, and tsunamis
from Haiti to Japan, the Philippines,
Mozambique, and Germany. It
seemed almost inconceivable that
yet another ‘un-natural disaster’,
the 2020–22 COVID-19 pandemic,
could further deepen already existing
social, economic, and environmental
fragilities, globally.
 As we complete this book in late
Figure 0.4 Maternity waiting village, 2022, Ukraine is still under siege from
Kasungu, Malawi – MASS Design Group. Russian troops with over 12 million

Ukrainians internally displaced or ref-
Figure 0.5 Gahinga Batwa Village, ugees in neighbouring countries. At
Kisoro, Uganda – Localworks. the same time the small island states
of the Pacific and the Caribbean,
including Tuvalu and the Bahamas,
are preparing for permanent cli-
mate-induced displacement. While
each conflict, famine, and disaster
is radically different in its scale and
wider impacts, feelings of helpless-
ness seem to pervade us all, watching
the news up-close or from afar.
Yet there are signs of hope that offer
us light amongst the sheer human
bleakness of war, disasters, and pan-
demics – and architecture is emerging
as one of the elements in that light
through its capacity for spatial and
social transformation.
This might seem a grand claim about
the capabilities and potential of
the architecture profession. Indeed,
ten years ago, when working in the
Philippines after Typhoon Haiyan, for
World Vision, Brett Moore lamented,
‘[T]he number of architects, planners
and landscape architects equipped
to work with disaster and develop-
ment professionals in rebuilding in
the aftermath of conflict, political and
social instability, floods, fires, earth-
quakes, typhoons and tsunamis is still
chronically low.’1 Yet Brett Moore’s
foreword to this volume acknowl-
edges the light that architecture is
offering to deal with these ‘wicked
problems’, through the emergence of
new models of architectural practice
and innovative design education pro-
grams. Design for Fragility: 13 Stories
of Humanitarian Architects analyses
xv
13 housing, health, and community
rebuilding projects from Rwanda and
Iran to Bangladesh, Fiji, and Australia
as evidence of the transformational
changes underway in the broader
design profession, as it responds to
the challenges of our increasingly
fragile planet.
Why Fragility?
‘Fragility’ might appear to be a
non-academic term to use in the title
of this book and as the focus of future
directions for architectural practice
and education, especially when words
such as ‘marginalisation’, ‘hazard’,
‘risk’, ‘vulnerability’, and ‘resilience’
are now de rigueur. We chose to
use ‘fragility’ deliberately in order to
propose a spatial perspective on the
concept of the ‘fragile state’ and to
demonstrate in a practical way how
architecture can be used as both a
political and spatial tool for building
community resilience, before, during,
and after crises.
The OECD defines ‘fragile states’ as
countries experiencing increasing
exposure to serious risks and where
insufficient coping capacity prevents
governments and/or communities
from managing or mitigating those
risks.2 In this definition, fragility is
both caused by and, in turn, intensi-
fies crises related to poverty, conflict,
displacement, the breakdown of civil
institutions, and extreme environmen-
tal hazards. This reflects a ‘systems
thinking’ approach to the concept of
fragility in terms of its multidimen-
sional properties across economic,
environmental, political, cultural, and
social causes and impacts.
These systemic properties of fragility
are found in the diverse geographic
and cultural contexts of all 13 case
studies in this book. However, all the
design projects profiled demonstrate
how appropriate design interventions
xvi
at key crisis points can redirect a
community’s recovery from a state
of fragility to a state of stability and
resilience. This involves identify-
ing the complex drivers of risks in
the social and ecological setting
architects are working within, and
then developing design projects to
address the specific impacts of those
risks on people’s lives. This can also
be achieved through developing
design and infrastructure projects that
mitigate exposure to future ecolog-
ical or social threats in such a way
that the adaptive coping capacities
of communities and families are
strengthened.
To take but one example of the 13
case studies: the Gahinga Batwa
Village designed by Felix Holland and
Localworks. The village was designed
as a settlement for 18 Batwa families
dispossessed from their culture and
livelihoods of shifting cultivation in
the mountain forests of Rwanda to
make way for a national park and
gorilla tourism. The village and
houses not only replicate a cultur-
ally appropriate shelter typology for
the Batwa but also provide the land
tenure and economic security needed
to help build their own homes and
develop skills to live in a sedentary
agricultural economy.
This is what humanitarian architecture
has the capacity to do for commu-
nities impacted by disaster, conflict,
and poverty. Traditionally, interven-
tions in fragile states have been of
the ‘macro kind’ – building integrity
and transparency in government,
managing the causes of violence
through legal mechanisms for con-
flict-resolution, and building bridges,
roads, and other ‘hard’ infrastructure.
A humanitarian approach to architec-
ture is more modest in scale but is the
same process. Critically, this involves
viewing the communities with whom
esther charlesworth
john fien
we work as partners, not clients, and
collaborating with them from the
initial schematic design phase of a
project until long after our architec-
tural work is actually completed.
Why Design Matters
The case studies in Design for
Fragility are geographically and
spatially diverse, ranging from the
Gahinga Batwa Village in Rwanda to
a maternity village in nearby Malawi
to a home for orphan girls in Iran
to low-cost housing or poor rural
communities in the rural south of the
USA. Together, the projects exemplify
the growing cadre of architects using
design to facilitate the transition from
fragility to resilience. The chosen
case studies also represent diverse
business models of architecture, rang-
ing from traditional design practices
(e.g., Iredale Pedersen Hook [IPH],
Breathe, Localworks, and People
Oriented Design [POD]) to architects
who have largely shifted their projects
into the international development
and humanitarian fields (e.g., the
MASS Design Group, Yasmeen Lari,
and Phoebe Goodwin). What unites
the selected architects is a desire to
exercise what Jeremy Till3 calls their
‘spatial agency’ to choose to work
with and for communities impacted
by war, poverty, fires, and floods––and
to rebuild their livelihoods through
modest scale housing and civic infra-
structure projects.
These are not ‘one off’ or token
‘do-good’ projects by the architects
that we have interviewed. Rather, they
represent critical choices for design
collaborations that create long-
term social, ecological, health, and
economic benefits for the disaster or
poverty-impacted communities, into
which they were invited to work.
This book is a companion to Human-
itarian Architecture: 15 Stories of
 xvii
introduction
design for fragility
Architects Working After Disas-
ter, which analysed the origins of
humanitarian architecture and the
expanding role for architects in
designing projects for communi-
ties after disasters. Since then, the
humanitarian architecture move-
ment has rapidly expanded with the
prominence of firms including the
MASS Design Group (awarded the
2021 Collaborative Achievement
Award by the American Institute of
Architects) and the rise of the 20
national organisations now associated
with Architecture Sans Frontières
International. Supporting this rise in
the exercise of spatial agency is the
body of theory developed since the
Indian Ocean tsunami in 2004 by
architects such as Jeremy Till, Marie
Aquilino, Cynthia Smith, Cameron
Sinclair, and Eric Cesal.4 Their books
and projects have variously identified
the relationship between design and
emerging theoretical constructs of
spatial agency, design responsibility,
and urban resilience.
Design for Fragility expands on these
concepts and seeks to widen our
understanding of the humanitarian
architecture movement through ana-
lysing a broader range of causes of fra-
gility, geographies, and voices beyond
architects to include the beneficiaries
and staff of the 13 featured projects.
Design for Fragility aims to inspire
new pathways for architects seeking
an alternate career path to work in
corporate design towards working
in practices that are multidisciplinary
and/or dedicated to pro bono design
as part of their larger remit.
Through Postcolonial Eyes
In April 2022, British architect
Norman Foster visited Kharkiv in
Ukraine to discuss the city’s rebuilding
through a master plan, to be devel-
oped by ‘the best minds with the best
planning, architectural, design, and
xviii
engineering skills in the world’. How-
ever, with most of that city’s residents
still displaced by the Russian invasion,
exactly who the future city is to be for
and what housing, health, education,
and civic infrastructure they will want,
or need, is far less clear. Can design
be effective on an almost tabula rasa
site such as Kharkiv? Apparently so
because Lord Norman is but one of
a long list of architects signing up for
potential recovery projects in Ukraine,
just as they were in Sri Lanka after the
Indian Ocean tsunami in 2004 and in
Haiti after the 2010 earthquake.
This ‘trauma-glam’ syndrome5 is a
strong reminder of the failings of the
Marshall Plan developed to rebuild
Europe after World War II and the
zeal to rebuild cities like Warsaw,
even when the bombs were still
falling, before that war had actually
ended.6 While it is deeply admirable,
and even often necessary, to create
a spatial footprint of a city’s future
beyond war or disaster, the architects
in this book would no doubt stress
a need for caution and humility in
the ways we work with vulnerable
communities and understand Bruce
Nussbaum’s question, ‘Is humanitar-
ian design the new imperialism?’7
Are designers the new anthropolo-
gists or missionaries come to poke
into village life, ‘understand’ it, and
make it better, their ‘modern’ way? Is
the new humanitarian design coming
out of the US and Europe being
perceived through postcolonial eyes
as colonialism? Are the American and
European designers presuming too
much in their attempt to do good?
How Do We Know What We
Know and According to Whom?
Design for Fragility seeks to illustrate
both the beauty and the troubled
contexts of the 13 profiled projects
through a familiar format of interviews,
esther charlesworth
john fien
photographs, sketches, and site
plans. However, we have sought
to go beyond the standard design
­‘coffee table tome’ in two ways. First,
we asked the architects to reflect on
the contexts of their projects and
explain where, and if so, how, their
designs addressed the structural
foundations of fragility. This is a sig-
nificant point as it shows that fragility
and the resultant vulnerabilities of
communities often reside in the social
and political contexts in which people
live. These contextual conditions also
help us realise the limits of design in
‘changing the world’.
The second contribution of the case
studies is a focus on understanding
the demonstratable impacts of the
projects on the communities for
whom they were designed. As well
as asking the architects, this was
undertaken by interviewing local
stakeholders who contributed to
the project and/or managing day-to
day activities once the project was
built. These stakeholders variously
involved the builder, project man-
ager, residents, and/or staff of the
finished projects. For example, in the
chapter on the MASS Design Group’s
maternity waiting village in Malawi,
powerful evidence of that project’s
impact is provided through the voices
of maternal nurses dealing with the
life-and-death challenges faced by
extremely poor rural women giving
birth in the village.
However, architecture is not usually
regarded as an evidence-based
profession, unlike law or medicine.
Thus, in an evaluation commissioned
by the MASS Design Group, Ariadne
Labs found that health care and
other designs ‘are rarely informed by
empirical evidence of what does and
does not work. The consequences
of a limited evidence base include
propagation of designs that are low in
value, expensive and even potentially
harmful to patients’.
Similarly, Brett Moore (chief of shelter,
UNHCR) has often lamented to us
regarding the lack of evaluation
data on the impacts of innovative
designs for refugee shelters com-
pared with the extensive data sets
on the impacts of health, education,
social protection, and legal support
for refugees. This situation makes it
comparatively difficult for the shelter
sector to argue for increased agency
budgets, even though the health,
education, and family stability of
refugees depend upon adequate
housing. Likewise, the late IFRC
(International Federation of the
Red Cross) chief of shelter, architect
Graham Saunders, often emphasised
the critical need to evaluate shelter
programs as a basis for them to be
‘scaled up’ so that the design of a ref-
ugee settlement, a typhoon-resilient
house, or a shelter for dispossessed
children could be recontextualised for
potential use elsewhere.
The issue of the need for evidence-
based design in architecture is a
complex one, unlike in medicine, law,
or engineering, where it is non-
negotiable in developing future
health, legal, or structural policies
and solutions. Our effort to analyse
the impacts of the 13 case study proj-
ects was frustrated by the lack of any
systematic evaluations except for the
maternal waiting village in Malawi.
Strong anecdotal evidence was pro-
vided for the other 12 projects. This
was rich and authentic and reflected
the lived experience of the benefits
of the projects. However, it was not
comprehensive or independent and
often offered little evidence to guide
architects in the design of future
projects or for reporting to clients or
funders in ways that could encourage
future architectural commissions.
In this era of strong cost-control in
the built environment sectors, there is
often little budget or will to under-
take independent evaluations of the
impacts of projects. Maybe, it is also
part of the impact of neoliberalism on
the design professions, which several
of the architects in this book critique.
Nevertheless, the COVID-19 pan-
demic has taught us that numbers do
count, such as in determining what
is the best vaccine or policy directive
to deal with the consequences of the
disruption it caused to both rich and
poor, globally. However, the wisdom
of transferring the concept of ‘vaccine
treatments’ to architectural practice
is far from wise and indicates that
newer, qualitative, and community-
design based approaches to evalua-
tion are critically needed.
Poverty Does Not Exclude
Aesthetics
‘You are not a “real architect”!’ We
have often heard this throwaway
line from design colleagues regard-
ing why one would choose to work
as an architect in the humanitarian
field. Many see working for vulner-
able communities, whether paid or
pro bono, as something to do ‘after
hours’ or as marginal, at best, to the
mission of corporate architecture.
This perception is slowly changing
through the rise of design practices,
such as the MASS Design group that
deliberately undertakes pro bono
design work as part of their organisa-
tional remit. None of the 13 projects
in this book ‘cut corners’ because of
the nature of the brief or community
involved. Rather, a respect for local
community-design processes was one
of the key drivers of all the projects.
Many of the architects featured in
this book, including Anna Herringer,
Urko Sanchez, MASS Design, and
Iredale Pedersen Hook, have also won
esteemed design awards, including
the Aga Khan Award for Architecture
introduction
design for fragility
and other notable awards from the
American and Australian Institutes of
Architecture.
However, in addition to such
accolades, the sheer beauty of the
designs of these complex projects
has significantly transformed the
lives and livelihoods in the commu-
nities where they were built. Indeed,
if the aesthetics of architecture can
do so much culturally, mentally, and
spiritually for the tiny percentage
of the population able to afford
architects, then it is easy to imagine
the significant impacts that architec-
tural beauty can bring to the lives of
the poor and displaced. Without the
embedding of visceral and spatial
delight in our housing, health, and
civic buildings, they could be seen
to become structures to exist in
rather than buildings that exalt us.
Robert Hughes’ famous quotation
from Shock of the New sums up this
sentiment:
Building is the art we live in; it is the
social art par excellence, the cara-
pace of political fantasy, the exoskel-
eton of one’s economic dreams. It is
also the art nobody can escape.
Design for Fragility: Structure +
Narratives
This book is divided into four parts:
Design for Fragility + Children;
Design for Fragility + Health; Design
for Fragility + Housing; and Design
for Fragility + Justice. Each section
covers three to four case studies
based upon interviews with architects
who have developed and designed
projects that broadly fit into these
building typologies. Each chapter
combines the architect’s narrative of
the selected projects together with
an account of the impacts of the
projects. The architects then chose
appropriate photos and drawings to
illustrate the built projects.
xix
Every effort was made to also cover
the wider design disciplines of
landscape architecture and urban
planning in the original selection of
case studies in the book. However,
with the onset of COVID during
the book’s completion, many of the
broader disciplinary cohort originally
slated for interviews simply dropped
off in the rush to just keep their often
fledging, or indeed fragile, design
practices alive.
NOTES
1 Esther Charlesworth (2014)
Humanitarian Architecture: 15
Stories of Architects Working
After Disasters, Routledge,
London.
xx
2 OECD (2016) States of Fragility
2016: Understanding Violence,
OECD Publishing, Paris.
3 T. Schneider & J. Till (2009)
Beyond Discourse: Notes on
Spatial Agency, in Special issue
on Agency in Architecture:
Reframing Criticality in Theory
and Practice, Footprint: Delft
Architecture Theory Journal, 4,
97–112.
4 N. Awan, T. Schneider & J. Till
(2011) Spatial Agency: Other Ways
of Doing Architecture, Routledge,
London; M. Aquilino (2012)
Beyond Shelter: Architecture and
Human Dignity, Metropolis Books,
New York; C. Smith (2007) Design
for the Other 90%, Cooper Hewitt,
New York; C. Sinclair (2006)
Design Like You Give a Damn,
esther charlesworth
john fien
Metropolitan Books, New York; E.
Cesal (2010) Down Detour Road:
An Architect in Search of Practice,
MIT Press, Boston.
5 See www.dezeen.
com/2022/04/21/nor
man-foster-reconstruction-
kharkiv-ukraine-war/.
6 Esther Charlesworth (2006)
Architects Without Frontiers:
War, Reconstruction and Design
Responsibility, Architectural
Press, Oxford.
7 B. Nussbaum (2010) Is Human-
itarian Design the New Imperi-
alism? Does Our Desire to Help
Do More Harm Than Good?
www.fastcodesign.com/1661859/
is-humanitarian-design-the-new-
imperialism.
Esther
Charlesworth
Esther Charlesworth is the founding director
of Architects Without Frontiers (AWF). Esther
is also a professor in the School of Architec-
ture and Design at RMIT University, where
she founded the Master of Disaster, Design,
and Development degree [MoDDD] in 2015.
Since 2002, AWF has undertaken over 48
health, education, and social infrastructure
projects in 12 countries for vulnerable com-
munities and has been described by ABC
radio broadcaster Phillip Adams as ‘destined
to develop into one of the greater forces of
good on this battered planet’.
Charlesworth has also worked in the pub-
lic and private sectors of architecture and
urban design in Melbourne, Sydney, New
York, Boston, and Beirut.
Esther has published seven books on the
theme of social justice and architecture,
including Architects Without Frontiers
(2006), Divided Cities (2011), Humanitarian
Architecture (2014), Sustainable Housing
Reconstruction (2015). In 2020, she was
awarded to be a Member of the Order of
Australia (AM) for her ‘significant service to
architecture, to education and to the com-
munity of the Asia-Pacific region’.
introduction
design for fragility
John Fien
John Fien is a professor in the School of
Architecture and Urban Design at RMIT
University in Melbourne and teaches in
the RMIT MoDDD degree. He has also
held professorial positions in environmen-
tal education, sustainability, and lead-
ership at Griffith, RMIT and Swinburne
Universities, Australia.
John’s core expertise is in disaster risk
reduction and recovery, focusing on
climate change and how systemic design
can help protect communities vulnerable
to bushfire, flooding, and coastal dam-
age from severe storms. He has written
120 publications, including the book
Ethical Cities, and numerous articles on
design for disaster displacement and for
disaster resilience.
John has also led development and
evaluation projects in Kenya, South
Africa, Thailand, Vietnam, the Maldives,
the Philippines, and Indonesia on behalf
of The World Bank, UNEP, UNESCO,
UNICEF, OECD, and WWF International.
xxi
PART ONE
DESIGN FOR
FRAGILITY
+ CHILDREN

DOI: 10.4324/9781003097037-1
DESIGN FOR FRAGILITY + CHILDREN
explores projects by three architectural
practices that have created dramatic
improvements in the health and
education of children across diverse
countries and cultures.
They range from a children’s village in
Djibouti (on the Horn of Africa) and the
Anganwadi (preschool) projects in India
to a refuge for orphan girls in the city of
Khansar, Iran. The projects were designed
and built for and with local communities
and have each created much more than
just a school or an orphanage.
In facilitating new models of education
and care, these projects provide safe and
beautiful spaces for vulnerable children
and have substantially contributed to
rebuilding the fragile social, economic,
and gender capabilities of their respective
societies.

Figure 1.0 A child plays in a playground
being constructed at an Anganwadi
preschool in southern India.
Urko Sanchez
Fragility: I think it says a lot
about the current situation of
the world and many people.
Another word related to
fragility is ‘balanced’. I think
those areas in life which are
balanced are more solid.
Mohammadreza
Ghodousi
In the best circumstances, we
make community to over-
come fragility. We culminate
our objectives by coming
together.
Jane Rothschild
I’d have to say that I think
one of the greatest sources
of fragility today would have
to be climate change and
all its related impacts. That
is clearly one of the most
pressing issues impacting us
socially, politically, environ-
mentally, and economically.
1
 DESIGN FOR FRAGILITY + CHILDREN
URKO SANCHEZ
FOUNDER + PRINCIPAL
URKO SANCHEZ ARCHITECTS
www.urkosanchez.com
 projects throughout the region (Ethiopia, Djibouti, Somalia,
Figure 1.1 Urko Sanchez.

Figure 1.2 Entrance to the SOS
Children’s Village, Djibouti.
Urko Sanchez Architects
SOS Children’s Village
Tadjoura, Djibouti
Urko Sanchez is the principal of Urko Sanchez Architects – an
award-winning architectural firm based in Kenya and Spain.
Urko graduated from the Madrid School of Architecture
in 1998. After traveling and working around the world, he
established his own architectural practice in 2003 in Lamu,
Kenya, for eight years and then moved to Mombasa for
another five years and now has branches both in Nairobi and
Madrid.
Urko Sanchez Architects is committed to social impact,
contributing as often as possible to projects targeting dis-
advantaged communities with innovative and transformative
interventions. In addition, the firm prioritises environmental
stewardship and, for each project, considers the cultural
roots of the structure and how the building will be best inte-
grated into its environment: the view, the indigenous materi-
als, and the flow of the surroundings.
Urko’s long history of involvement in design and construction
projects in Africa and the Middle East has led him to develop
Sierra Leone, UAE). His works have received international
awards, such as Young Architects in Africa, AAK Awards of
Excellence, Archmarathon, Architecture for Social Gain, Inter-
national Property Awards Africa, and he was a finalist for the
Aga Khan Award for Architecture in 2019.
Q+A
URKO SANCHEZ How do you describe the
FOUNDER + PRINCIPAL mission or main philosophy of
URKO SANCHEZ ARCHITECTS your practice, Urko Sanchez
Architects?  We say that we
work in ‘conscious architecture for
a responsible future’. This means
that, as architects, we need to be
conscious of what we are doing
because the impact of our work
on the people around us and the
environment is so great. We have
to know what a responsible future
is – and design with that in mind.
This is the only way that truly great
architecture can be made.
How did you develop this vision for
architecture?  As I was growing
up, as a teenager, I had the chance

Figure 1.3 A typical child-friendly ‘street’ to travel and get exposure to some
within the medina of the SOS Children’s of the realities in the world. I became
Village. aware of the differences of the world
4
urko sanchez
and how those differences were
unjust in many ways. I became very
committed to equality and wanted to
do something personally. I put effort
into using my profession to make
things a little bit better. So that’s how
it grew. My passion, my interest, lies
in doing something for those who are
not so lucky in the world.
Also, when I began working as
an architect, somehow, maybe by
chance or through business-conscious
decisions, I moved towards working
for high-end clients. However, the
contradictions I was living made me
feel that I should try to do more on the
social aspects of my business. If I only
focused on the business side, in terms
of economic profit, then I would be
unbalanced, neglecting the social side,
which I believe is equally important.
I believe that the success of my design
business should not be measured by
its economic profit alone. I want to bal-
ance this with social and environmental
impact. Only by measuring those
aspects can we really know whether
the business is successful or not.
Absolutely. And you have
worked for a variety of
organisations as a result? 
I first volunteered for Architects
Without Borders and then a small
Spanish NGO. Then, I started
working with Médecins Sans
Frontières in a village on the
border of Somalia and Kenya,
where I stayed for a year. From
there, I worked in Albania and
Angola, twice, and then with the
International Rescue Committee in
East Timor in 2000.
After these years of international
work, I returned home and started my
own design business based on social
values. Businesses that contribute to
improving the lives of others can have
very positive impacts. They are not
NGOs, and they do not need to be
funded externally. They do whatever
their activity is for profit, provided it
does minimal harm to the planet and
the communities in which our buildings
are sited. We can then invest in other
projects that have a wider social and
environmental benefit.
Urko, is the notion of fragility, or
vulnerability, relevant to these
kinds of projects that you are
doing?  Yes. Fragility motivates
me. It says a lot about the current
situation in the world and about
the lives of so many people. There
is a book about anti-fragility,1 isn’t
there? But to me, the opposite of
fragility is ‘balanced’. I think those
areas in life which are balanced
are more solid. If you have them
balanced in whatever situation,
things become less fragile, but but in the end, it is always the most
there are so many things that need vulnerable or fragile communities that
better balance in today’s world. suffer the most.
For example, the balance of environ-
mental versus economic vulnerability. This leads to the SOS Children’s
In the communities we have worked Village in Djibouti. What were
in, in countries like Djibouti, the the challenges for the children,
problems that give rise to some of my and how did the project come
about?  The challenges for the
architectural projects are often related
children were huge in Djibouti.
to environmental conditions, such as
They were children in distress –
drought, which intensify poverty and
either orphans or from terribly
lead to social dislocation. Many people
poor families. They were living
are also displaced by war or political
in really desperate conditions in
violence. Again, that comes from an
a community that was already
unbalanced situation. It can start from
very poor. The children were the
an environmental crisis, or it can be
worst affected by the ongoing
something political. Many times too
conflict in this region, the most
these crises are mixed because in
vulnerable.
today’s world, everything is chaotic,
‘‘
There were multiple challenges and
vulnerabilities to the project, which I think the
project managed to resolve.
There were the architectural challenges in the
design to create a ‘home’, a ‘village’, a ‘community’
from scratch and then there were the building
constraints in having to build on a half built urban
plot. There was also the social challenge of the
‘orphans’ which was overcome on the one hand
by the ‘Mother/Aunt/Father’ concept of SOS
Children’s Village and on the other hand by the
design itself.
This was a delicate issue to deal with as the project
was being funded by a German NGO and destined
for a Muslim community who were not used to the
idea of an orphanage. So, in this sense it was also a
vulnerable and fragile situation that the project had
to address whether seeking to or not.”
—John Andrews, Ugandan Project Architect based in Djibouti
5
part one
design for fragility + children
 ‘‘
What imbalances or Indeed, the word [fragility] is very
vulnerabilities were you
responding to in this project? appropriate, as the north of Djibouti and
It’s obviously poverty, but Tadjoura in particular had suffered from a
Djibouti is quite a sensitive
political area as well.  Yes. It
civil war in 1991 and therefore was isolated
was really a situation of war where and their economy heavily impacted. Of
these children were living. We had course, families were separated, and conditions
worked with this kind of situation in
East Timor and Somalia, previously. became very difficult in general during this
It was even more difficult war. The SOS project was one of the first
for people in this case. Even
without the war, the harsh desert
projects undertaken after this difficult period
environment makes it even harder and therefore one project that helped rebuild a
for people living below the poverty
line. These were needy people,
fragile town.”
needy children.
—John Andrews, Ugandan Project Architect based in Djibouti

What was the purpose of the

SOS Children’s Village?  The
project aim was firstly to provide
shelter. Very important, yes, but of
little value without a whole family
and social structure for those
children who were orphans. There
was an educational and economic
side too. We designed and built
a kindergarten not just to provide
education for young children but
also to enable their mothers to
find work.
What were the interior design
features that helped to create
that family atmosphere or
experience?  The structure of
the village was a given in the sense
that it was to be for 15 ‘families’ –
ten mothers, with each mother
looking after up to ten children.
Now, we wanted those children to
be integrated in the community,
right? So architecture-wise, decision
number one was about the density:
the need for space in relation to the
size of the plot we had.
We had to decide whether to design
a building with multiple floors or to
spread it out. That decision was one
of the easiest for us. As there was not
a single building over one story in the
region, we didn’t want to build a three-
or four-story building. Such a building
wouldn’t be in line with the rest of that
community. So we decided to keep
it low.
Second, the city of Tadjoura, where the
children’s homes were to be con-
structed, has some of the hottest tem-
peratures on Earth. This had a major
impact on the design. We adopted
local design features, particularly the
passive ventilation systems of north
Africa and the Middle East. We also
took advantage of the nearby coast
and the resulting sea breezes.
We also adopted the urban form of
the medina because of these climatic
conditions. We said, ‘Okay. Let’s create
a medina for children.’ We enclosed
the medina with a wall to protect the
children and define the limits of the vil-
lage, but we also designed small holes
in the walls to allow interactions, at
different heights, between the children
inside and the children outside. These
windows also established a visual
dialogue with the city and cemented
the relationship between the children’s
village and the city around it. This
symbolised the sharing of several social
and medical services with the rest of
the city.
Then we said, ‘Okay. These families,
they don’t know each other, they don’t
know the children, but they are the
common SOS family. So let’s create a
common space, a public space within
the village to be shared amongst all the
children and make it like a playground
for all of them. Let’s make it in such a
way that children are invited to go from
one house to the other – by breaking
down the limits of the houses and
working with these open and enclosed
spaces. Let’s make the design of the
inside and outside of the houses in the
SOS village in a very similar way so the
children can play without fear.’
And that has worked out very well, in
the sense that those little streets and
playgrounds really make the children
interact a lot amongst themselves,
moving around in the houses, outside
in that public area, which is still
enclosed. I think that strengthens

6
urko sanchez
the community or the family identity
amongst all of them. They are part of
something unique, which at the same
time is well integrated with its sur-
roundings, so they are not like aliens,
they are not special. They are special
for what they are, but they are part of a
larger community, and they belong to
a very strong family group.
The typological reference is
clearly the Medina, the old
quarter typical of Islamic cities.
Were there other Islamic design
features?  Yes, the village is
surrounded by walls and criss-
crossed by numerous narrow
alleyways – and the ochre colour as
well as a vast number of decorative

Figure 1.4 The houses include both western-style kitchens and external courtyards where traditional cooking methods can be
used.
elements such as fountains,
gardens, and monuments.
Within the wall, the area is shut off
to cars, and the homes are arranged
to face one another, rarely facing the
world outside. This provides a sense
of privacy. Yet each house was also
designed to have well-defined angles
of view into small open-air shared
‘squares’. These serve as an outdoor
extension of the homes and have
plants and furnishings that encourage
people to socialise and form relation-
ships. Some have playgrounds too.
We found that these ‘squares’ were
also culturally very significant. Most
people in Djibouti are, or at least
were, nomadic and thus have a strong
part one
design for fragility + children
relationship with open space. The
squares provide this too.
Urko, how was the design of
each house developed, where
you had to accommodate the
mother and ten children? How
many rooms or different types
of rooms are in each house? 
There is a room for the mother,
a self-contained room, and then
there are three other rooms, each
with either three or four beds. All
the houses have the same layout.
And they each have their own
individual kitchen and eating
space?  Yes, exactly. Each house
has its own kitchen. The kitchen was a
7

Figure 1.5 Ground-floor plan of the village showing the complex arrangement of the houses around public and private open spaces.
kind of experiment in a way because,
you see, the local people mostly live
outdoors. Their shelters are minimal.
They were originally tents. When
they wanted or needed to move
somewhere else, they put everything
on top of a camel and moved.
Now, in towns and cities, the houses
are quite small huts. Their life is still
conducted outdoors, and most cook
outdoors. The people are also used
to having animals, chickens, and the
goats from which they get their milk.
We decided to design, let’s say,
western-style kitchens because we
wanted a spacious house, which was
very important for the family to all be
together. So they have a kitchen where
they cook and eat inside. However, the
8
design relates that kitchen to an open
space, such as a courtyard with a tree.
Djibouti people also prefer a grilled,
charcoal taste in their food. This is
possible in the courtyards.
With any of your design projects,
particularly this one, how do you
measure the success, in terms
of the impact of the project? 
Actually, we don’t have such a
procedure in evaluating our design
projects. It’s more of a feeling, to
be honest. So how do we measure
the impact? I mean, if I had the
chance of going there, I would
like to see that the buildings were
being used. I think I could tell the
impact in the faces of the users.
Happiness is so important.
urko sanchez
Sadly, I’ve never had an opportunity to
go back to Djibouti myself, but I have
regular emails and phone calls with
the local architect who worked with us
on the project.
He and others have told me that the
house mothers maintain involvement
with the children long after they leave
the village – and the children do too,
with each other. So I know something
must be working well.
So to answer your question about
evaluation, we don’t really have a
methodology to measure impact. It’s
more anecdotal, more of a feeling.
However, I think that we should be
asking more questions to measure the
impact in architecture, generally.

Figure 1.6 Semi-public spaces shared between houses offer opportunities for play.

‘‘
Has working on these kinds of Very early on in the SOS project, it started to
projects over many years led you
to think about how architects have an impact as there was no other activity
should be educated? I don’t in the area. As construction started, small shops
know about your architecture
degree, but mine was a very
started to open up to service the site and workers.
modernist course. Frank Gehry After that, houses started to be upgraded and
and I. M. Pei were some of the generally there was a positive atmosphere once the
leading architects in my day,
and that’s who we aspired to village began to interact with the town and visitors
be or, at least, at the ‘top of the alike who heard of the project and made a stop to
pyramid’ with them.  I’ve never
been deeply involved in design
visit.”
education. I had the same kind
—John Andrews, Ugandan Project Architect based in Djibouti
of education as you, in terms of
architecture: learning how to be
like the star architects.

9
part one
design for fragility + children
What changed my life was travel-
ling and seeing things with my own
eyes and directly experiencing other
cultures, other places, and seeing
other ways of living and other ways of
doing things. Travelling is critical for an
architect during their training because
you can learn so much from the small
things, not only from the big architects
and the big buildings.
We can learn a lot from little things,
small details of small buildings from
architects that nobody knows, or even
from buildings that were done without
architects. We can learn so much if we
are taught to have the right eyes and
sensibility and then apply those things
into our own work, right? You can,
of course, learn a lot from the great
architects, but we shouldn’t neglect
the importance of small unknown
buildings in the lives of many people.
In the end, for me, the important thing
which connects back to the beginning
is consciousness of our work for the
10
future that we want. I mean, we must
be conscious of the impact of our
buildings.
We architects, we leave structures
behind that live beyond us after we
die. They remain for years and years.
The impact of our work is not neutral.
It may have positive aspects and
negative aspects, but it’s never neutral
in our work.
The more we can be conscious of the
future that we want, the better we will
do our work. It doesn’t have to neces-
sarily be amazing shapes, engineering
fantastic stuff. We can design for
people who don’t have anything, or
we can design a children’s playground
or an open space, a park, for people.
There are so many ways of contribut-
ing to that future and being aware of
the need for balance in this world.
Urko, do you have final
reflections on the value for your
urko sanchez
practice of undertaking projects
such as the SOS Children’s
Village?  Every architectural
project we do, from Africa to
Europe, benefits the practice of
Urko Sanchez Architects. This
SOS Children’s village project
connected us to that region
and its particularities. It has also
opened opportunities in the
Arabian Peninsula, where we have
been working on several design
projects lately. I don’t think this
is a coincidence as everything is
related.
It has also made our architects office
well known in different disciplinary
fields and regions and brought us
international exposure and recog-
nition. I feel very fortunate to have
had the opportunity to develop and
design the SOS Children’s Village
in Djibouti as it has enabled these
children and their families a much
better life.
URKO SANCHEZ ARCHITECTS

SOS Children’s Village

Tadjoura, Djibouti

Figure 1.7 A view of the external wall Project Type End Client
shows the location and context of the Children’s Village Beneficiary children
village and its proximity to the ocean.
Implementing Agency Location of Project
SOS Children’s Villages Tadjoura, Djibouti

Architect Size
Urko Sanchez Architects 2,600 m2

Project Team Year Completed

Urko Sanchez 2014
Estrella de Andres
John Andrews Cost
Fritz Bachlechner US $1 million
Oliver Kabure
Di Fu Fragility Context
Orphaned children, families
Donors/Funding in need
German Cooperation Aid

11
part one
design for fragility + children
 SOS Children’s
Village is a medina
for children. A safe
environment, with
no cars, where the
narrow streets
become places to
play. It is a medina
with plenty of
open spaces –
public and private
spaces are clearly
defined and inte-
grated.

In the private
spaces, the inside
and outside areas
melt together,
allowing residents
to maintain a level
of outdoor living.

It is a medina with
vegetation – where
the inhabitants
are encouraged to
take care of their
plants and benefit
from the result.


Figure 1.8 Courtyard play
area within the rooftops of
the medina.

12
urko sanchez
SOS Children’s Village
Tadjoura, Djibouti

13
part one
design for fragility + children

Figure 1.9 The design uses north African design devices such as ‘wind catcher towers’ incorporated at critical points in the project
to capture cool air and convey it to the lower levels, maintaining a flow of refreshing air throughout the interior spaces.


Figure 1.10 Elevation drawing showing the interplay of courtyards, terraces, and rooftops within the village.

14
urko sanchez
 DESIGN FOR FRAGILITY + CHILDREN

MOHAMMADREZA GHODOUSI
ZAV Architects
CO-FOUNDER
ZAV ARCHITECTS
Habitat for Orphan Girls
www.zavarchitects.com Khansar, Iran
ZAV Architects is an award-winning Iranian architecture
firm based in Tehran founded in 2006 by Mohammadreza
Ghodousi and Parsa Ardam. ZAV seeks to generate socio-
economic change. It does this by employing architectural
capacities to create designs that match the contemporary
needs of the Iranian people and architectural forms that
adapt to the present-day reality of design and building
processes.
ZAV Architects has won multiple awards for the Habitat
for Orphan Girls, including the World Architecture News
 Award for Affordable Housing, an Architzer A+ Award for
Figure 1.11 Mohammadreza Architecture and Community and the AR House Award.
Ghodousi.
Mohammadreza Ghodousi has a master’s degree in
 architecture (M. Arch) from Shahid Beheshti University,
Figure 1.12 Habitat for Orphan Girls, Faculty of Architecture and Urban Design in Tehran, and is
Khansar, Iran. currently based in Vancouver, Canada.
Q+A
MOHAMMADREZA GHODOUSI
CO-FOUNDER
ZAV ARCHITECTS
 but we cannot even export our oil
Figure 1.13 The Habitat for Orphan Girls
provides private rooms combined with
shared public spaces. This enables the
girls to feel like they’re living in their own
homes when they leave their rooms to
enter their shared hall and library.
16
Tell me about the mission of ZAV
Architects.  We developed our
approach to architecture from the
context of our practice, and in the
context of Iran, this is in a Third
World country. Our economy and
our society are in a difficult situation.
This is an oil-driven country. We sell
oil, and we import everything else,
from ideas to products.
Manufacturing has mostly ceased; our
factories no longer make anything.
Everything we consume comes from
somewhere else. This is the way we
live – no production, only extraction –
because of international sanctions.
Thus, our GDP is very small compared
to other countries. With such a limited
economy, we can’t live in proud and
confident ways.
mohammadreza ghodousi
Free and open attitudes are difficult.
Iran used to be a secular society, but
now it is very, very difficult to express
ideas openly. This relates to politics, to
religion, to almost every aspect of life.
We have a hard-line government, and
many people have strong religious
roots.
However, underneath, there is also
something else, an unease, if you like.
We feel that our dominant ideologies,
such as the strict Islamic ideology, are
coming from other Arabic countries;
they are not really our own. And all the
goods in our markets come from there
too and, more lately, China. So there is
this unease, a sense of being power-
less to change or do anything.
Now, putting these two ideas together,
you see that we live and work in a

country that doesn’t produce new
ideas or goods and products. Most
of us are poor; we are no longer a
productive people.
At ZAV Architects, we want to change
that. We want to raise the level of
awareness of the social and economic
aspects of what is possible in life – and
we try to do that through architecture.
‘‘
It was an important consideration, about the
girls in this project through two basic issues;
how they are present in the society and their life
and how they can have a quality future in their
private and public lives, while still having equal
rights.”
—Javad Mirbagheri, ZAV Financial Consultant and Technical Supervisor

That is a tall order for

architecture, isn’t it?  No, as
Hans Hollein said, ‘Everything is
architecture’.2 We see architecture
as a platform, a medium, through
which we can convey a vision, a
vision that brings out this forgotten
part of life – production. Production
of thought, production of space,
and production of materials.
So you see architecture as
both economic and social in its
impact?  For so many years,
architecture was a neutral practice,
something based on aesthetics
and functionalism and modernism.
This view predominated in this
region and in my country too.
However, we have to break this
shell, this hard shell of architecture
for architecture, or architecture for
architects. You know what I mean?
Architecture can have social
agency, economic agency.
In Iran, with our deteriorating econ-
omy, nobody knows what to do. Every
two or three years, our rial drops down
compared to dollars. It means we are
losing everything. When you are poor,
you are trapped in social fragility.
And you know what? Maybe 30 or
40% of the country’s workforce is
involved in the building industry.
So by working through the building
industry, with the agency of archi-
tecture, you can have a great impact
socially too.
Do many architects in Iran think
this way?  At ZAV, we have
been practicing this idea for more
than ten years. We are getting
supporters in other practices. Other
people are starting to walk the
same path because they see we are
in survival mode. We have to. We
have to do this to survive.
Can you please explain how you
developed these ideas about the
mission of architecture?  The
journey started from when I was a
kid, literally, when I was 8 or 10 years
old. My father was a businessman.
He took me to Europe. He was
dealing with the export of Iranian
products like dried fruits and nuts,
and I learned that everybody should
be familiar with the concept of cost-
benefit analysis.
That was one point. The other point was
the Iran-Iraq War. As a kid, I was really
affected by the war. I had a lot of fear
of war during the bombardment. It was
like, ‘What’s going on? I’m going to die’,
and afterwards, our home was hit by
rockets, and I saw my room devastated.
Near the end of my architecture
course, I went to Khorramshahr, a city
on the border of Iran and Iraq. The city
was dominated by Saddam Hussein.
We couldn’t bring it back as part of
Iran, and it was completely devastated
by the war. When I went to Khorram-
shahr, I saw nobody was working. The
city was kind of dead. I saw a woman
go to a shop and buy just a little
part of a can of something. The can
was open, and the man was selling
portions of food, spoon by spoon. It
couldn’t be worse. It felt like vampires
had attacked the city.
I developed a proposal for revital-
ising Khorramshahr but knew that
we couldn’t do large-scale projects
because the people were so poor.
So we chose little interventions with
productive scenarios, socio-economic
scenarios, to revitalise the city.
The plan was based upon six nodes
of the city connected to each other
and with a scenario for each one. Each
one was a productive project. It was
important to generate work for people
to be economically secure. They had
to re-stand on their own feet to make a
community again. Otherwise, the gov-
ernment or another country could come
and take everything from them again.
Everything started from Khorramshahr.
I was overcoming my childhood fears
of war, curing myself by trying to inject
confidence and power into that society.
The mayor of Khorramshahr was able to
obtain some funding, and we worked
there for two, nearly three years. We
started our practice from there.

17
part one
design for fragility + children

So ZAV Architects has been
focused on overcoming fragility
right from the start – and you
have been using architecture to
address fragility ever since? How
do you see fragility?  Yes, but
first of all, I have to say that I have a
special, unusual view of fragility.
Every one of us, every human being,
is fragile. Back in the hunting and
gathering age, we were fragile, and
we have remained fragile and insecure
ever since. And today, mostly we try
to overcome our fears through work,
through income, through slowly
building wealth. We use what wealth
we can obtain, however small, to buy
security.
However, there are other ways, better
ways, to find security. In the best
circumstances, we can build commu-
nity to overcome our fragility. We can
achieve our objectives by coming
together. We can empower ourselves
by living and working together in a
group. This is how ZAV Architects tries
to overcome fragility.
Could you elaborate on how
architecture helps you to do
this?  Let me give you an
example, our Habitat for Orphan
Girls project.
We had many goals with this project,
but two stood out on the point of
building community. Orphans, espe-
cially girls, are often stigmatised, kept
out of sight, on the edge of town, out
of city to make them forgotten. We
changed that. We brought them into
the historical district of Khansar, right
beside its famous mosque.
Second, orphanages traditionally are
built as dormitories, where the children
and young people live in a large room
with double-height beds. Instead,
18
‘‘
More than just sunlight, by creating suitable
windows in the Habitat for Orphan Girls
project and having dedicated spaces for living,
the possibility of having private and semi-
private rooms was realised by ZAV Architects.
This was achieved by designing a building and a
space with up-to-date architecture which might
normally be suppressed in the girls’ way of life
for ideological or social reasons. In particular,
their presence and visibility were an excuse
to shut the windows from inside, which very
cleverly became the whole focus of the design.
The public was then placed in a dilemma to
have to react to the outdoor curtains and
the veil.”
—Javad Mirbagheri, ZAV Financial Consultant and Technical Supervisor
we offered them a house where they a room with limited facilities. So
could live together in bedrooms, like in Dr Maleki said, ‘Let’s go and help
a family, and the shared spaces are just them.’
like the ones found in a typical family
Dr Maleki was a very good negotia-
home. We wanted to design a home
tor. He talked with key people in the
where the girls could live in safety. Like
city for a long time and convinced
in many countries, the situation for
them to approve the girls’ orphan-
young women without families can be
age for this site. The location is
extremely fragile.
historical and is part of the fabric of
How did the prominent the City of Khansar. It lets everyone
location and building design know that the girls who live here are
come about?  My parents important. They are central to life in
are from the city of Khansar. the city.
Dr Maleki, who donated the
land, was my mother’s second You said that the actual design of
cousin. He was initially thinking the orphanage was important in
about a small clinic, which was conveying this message too. Was
what the government wanted. the projected balcony design a
However, I told him about the part of this?  Yes, the balcony
dire housing situation of orphan was very radical. Believe it or not,
girls in the city. They were living it is still being debated on social
in a very cheap place and kept in media today.
mohammadreza ghodousi

Figure 1.14 Coverable balconies enable the girls to have inside-out spaces, without breaking the rules of a strictly religious
context and also project an idea about the public status of the girls within in society.

19
part one
design for fragility + children
The balconies were designed to
project out from the building. They say
that the girls are not hiding away. The
fabric covers that can be put up over
the balconies are an important part of
the design too.
With the covers on, the girls do not
have to live inside all the time and
wear a hijab when they go outdoors,
as is the law in Iran. They can sit
outside without a veil and headscarf.
This says that women have the right to
wear hijab or not.
Have you found that the
alternative design – of a house
or, rather, a home compared
to a dormitory – has had any
impact?  Over the years, when
we go there, the first thing we see
is that they are really happy. They
have privacy, just two or three of
them sharing a room together.
They have their private spaces,
and they have the public courtyard
spaces. They hustle and bustle
over each other, and they can be a
community together.
What’s very interesting is that they are
proud of their building: they know it
is famous all around the world. Once,
one of the staff suggested they paint
an interior wall. They said, ‘No, no,
no. We want this raw brick here. It is
So there’s a good flow between
the home and the town? 
Yes. With their new-found
confidence and their location near
the mosque, they feel like they are
a part of the city.
With this project, or with any
of your other projects, are
you able to make any kind of
measurement of impact? 
Yes, we do try to measure. We
have indicators and measure
them on spider diagrams to see
if we are being successful or not.
We use concepts like income,
social awareness, the relevance
of the building typology, and so
on. But to measure these, to be
honest, we just use observation
and interviews. They have good
relationships with staff, and
when we talk with them and
interview them deeply – not just
a questionnaire where you usually
know what you’re seeking – we
talk to each other as friends.
They are very happy in the house. Two
years ago, they asked for a small reno-
vation to enlarge a dining room. So we
converted another room for that. The
place is alive. The design is working
after six, seven years, maybe 100%,
certainly a lot more than 50%.
That is a real credit to ZAV
Architects, isn’t it? It is such a
beautiful project. I’m sure it is
having a transformative impact
for the girls not only for the
period of time they live there but
also the rest of their lives. As you
said, it is changing their sense of
security and belonging through
being a community, reducing
that fragility you spoke about
earlier.  Unfortunately, the sad
point is the government doesn’t
like our project very much. This is
because we do not emphasise hijab
and censorship, which they treat as
kismet, as fate, or destiny, things
that they believe are just ‘meant
to be’.
Well, maybe that’s a sign of its
success.  Yes, you could say
that. [laughter]
Summing up here, what do you
see as the main learnings of the
Habitat project?  We learned
that what is behind architecture
can be more important than the
architecture that you look at,
but I think it is also possible, as
in this project, for the outward
appearance to be a product of the
ways young girls are supposed to
be treated.

‘‘
on cover of some magazines.’ They’re
really proud of themselves. They are If fragility considers socially vulnerability,
no longer hidden away from society, then, entering into women’s issues culturally
compared to before, and a lot more
confident. in the region reflects their fragility, and the
situation was and is much more difficult for these
How old are the girls in the girls. Another thing that is desirable for them is
centre?  Between 8 and 18.
to be in a building like a house that has better
Do they have education inside facilities in practice than a normal house in
the home, or do they go outside
for education?  They go to
Iran.”
school like everyone else.
—Javad Mirbagheri, ZAV Financial Consultant and Technical Supervisor

20
mohammadreza ghodousi
ZAV ARCHITECTS

Habitat for Orphan Girls

Khansar, Iran

Figure 1.15 The girls can express Project Type End Client
themselves through seasons of Home for orphaned children Orphaned girls
mourning and celebration by changing
the ‘hijab’ of their balconies. Architect Location of Project
ZAV Architecture Khansar, Iran

Design Team Size

Mohammadreza Ghodousi, 800 m2
Parsa Ardam, Fatemeh
Rezaie Fakhr-e-Astane, Year Completed
Mahshid Gharibi, Seyed 2014
Hossein Hejrati, Golnaz
Bahrami, Sara Jafari Cost
US $200,000
Donors/Funding
Ahmad and Parvin Maleki

Fragility Context
Orphaned children

21
part one
design for fragility + children
 Habitat for Orphan
Girls is located
within the historic
fabric of the city
of Khansar and has
distinctive balco-
nies with covers
designed to enable
the girls not to
wear their hijab
while occupying
these ‘outdoor’
spaces. With the
covers in place, the
girls are free to sit
outside without a
headscarf on.

Inside, ZAV Archi-

tects designed the
layout to create a
sense of homeli-
ness for the girls
who live there.
Rejecting the typi-
cal dormitory style
layout, the girls
share private bed-
rooms with one or
two others. Shared
public spaces are
designed to be
like those found
in a typical family
home.


Figure 1.16 This project has
brought the girls into the histor-
ical district of the city beside the
famous mosque of the City of
22
mohammadreza ghodousi
Khansar.
Another random document with
no related content on Scribd:
rapporte de la caserne et dont on ne se débarrasse pas aisément.
Toute sa vie lui remontait au cerveau par chaudes bouffées. Il se
souvint de l’absinthe prise quelques années auparavant un soir
d’hiver dans sa petite ville, de son enthousiasme qui n’avait pas tenu
longtemps. Ces rêves devenaient donc une réalité ? Il allait donc
connaître la gloire ? Il se souvint de Lucie. Quel dommage qu’il ne
pût lui faire part de ce triomphe ! Il ne doutait pas qu’elle n’y eût été
sensible.
Quand il rentra Jeanne ne l’interrogea même point. Devant la
glace elle achevait de se coiffer. Il allait être midi et demi : à cette
heure le dimanche ils se mettaient à table. Il dut lui dire :
— Eh bien, tu ne me demandes pas comment j’ai été reçu ?
Elle eut un geste qui signifiait :
— Oh ! tu sais, pour ce que ça m’intéresse !… Je te laisse faire
ce que tu veux. Je ne t’empêche pas de faire de ta poésie mais
laisse-moi tranquille le plus possible avec ça.
Comme il avait besoin de parler il lui raconta tout de même
l’entrevue par le menu. Pour lui ce fut une belle journée.
Il fallut aussi que le lundi matin il en fît part à Dominique. Mais
celui-ci fit la sourde oreille d’abord et dit ensuite :
— Moi je ne me suis jamais occupé de ça !
Dominique avait sur la dignité de l’écrivain des idées très
arrêtées. Il eût pensé forfaire à son génie s’il avait été proposer à
quelque revue les vers issus de ses méditations : depuis dix ans il
attendait qu’on vînt les lui demander.
La joie de Vaneau était trop grande pour que ces indifférences
pussent la diminuer. Il écrivit beaucoup avec plus d’allégresse
encore.
A cette revue il serait retourné le dimanche suivant n’eût été la
crainte d’être importun. Mais quinze jours après ce fut plus fort que
lui. Il entrait, son chapeau à la main avant même d’avoir sonné. Un
peu plus il se fût découvert dès la porte cochère pour passer devant
la loge du concierge. Tout de suite il s’excusait.
 — Je vous demande pardon de vous déranger, disait-il.
Il hésitait à s’asseoir. Il n’était venu qu’en passant et resterait cinq
minutes à peine. Malgré ses fermes résolutions il manquait
singulièrement d’assurance.
Ce dimanche-là comme il était assis depuis un quart d’heure — il
ne parlait plus de s’en aller, — la porte s’ouvrit ; un grand monsieur
— barbe grisonnante, cheveux blancs, ruban rouge à la boutonnière,
— entra mâchonnant un cigare d’un sou.
— Le maître Albert Detroyes ! dit le directeur. Et présentant
Vaneau :
— M. Louis Vaneau, un jeune poète de talent.
Le maître lui serra la main. Vaneau fut si ému qu’il s’en fallut de
peu qu’il ne retombât assis. C’était un des derniers survivants du
Parnasse. Vaneau se rappelait avoir admiré de ses œuvres, fins
sonnets précisant d’un trait de plume le pittoresque de la banlieue,
strophes exaltant les rochers des Alpes, le marbre des villes d’Italie.
Religieusement il l’écouta parler. Comme s’il n’avait pas suffi qu’il eût
pénétré dans une revue littéraire il y était en contact avec un grand
poète pour qui l’âme des paysages et les sensations des hommes
n’avaient plus guère de secrets.
— Avez-vous déjà publié un volume de vers, monsieur ?
demanda-t-il à Vaneau qui, obligé d’avouer que non, se hâta
d’ajouter :
— Mais j’ai beaucoup écrit.
Vaneau en cet instant attendait que Detroyes lui dît :
— Apportez-les-moi. Je les présenterai à mon éditeur qui vous
les publiera.
Il devait en être ainsi dans la pensée de Vaneau. Du jour où l’on
a respiré près d’un homme illustre qui vous a serré la main, toutes
les portes vous sont ouvertes ; vous n’avez plus qu’à vous laisser
vivre. Il ne doutait pas qu’il ne fût seul dans le monde entier à avoir
écrit beaucoup de vers, des milliers peut-être, ni que cela ne dût
vivement impressionner le vieux maître. Il ne doutait pas que le
premier sonnet écrit par Detroyes voici plus de trente ans n’eût été
un chef-d’œuvre immédiatement acclamé. Detroyes ne pouvait point
n’avoir pas toujours été même à vingt ans cet homme grave et
décoré, et mâchonnant des rimes riches avec son cigare d’un sou.
Mais il ne prononça point la phrase qu’attendait Vaneau. Il se
contenta de lui donner quelques conseils sur le choix d’un éditeur.
N’importe : aujourd’hui encore Vaneau était heureux. Dans la rue le
maître dut l’obliger à se couvrir.
Cette fois Jeanne l’attendait de mauvaise humeur parce que la
viande allait être trop cuite et que les légumes ne seraient plus que
de la bouillie.
— A quoi penses-tu donc ? dit-elle. Il va être une heure !
C’était une autre vie qu’autrefois il avait rêvé de vivre avec Lucie.
Il n’y serait question que de s’embrasser en riant et de pleurer en
lisant de beaux vers.
— Voyons, Jeanne ! s’exclama-t-il. Tu n’as pas l’air de te douter
que je viens de voir Detroyes !
Comme elle ne lui demandait même pas qui c’était il dut
continuer :
— Mais oui : Detroyes… Je t’en ai déjà parlé… C’est un des plus
grands poètes, des plus grands écrivains d’aujourd’hui.
Il avait même envie de dire :
— Le plus grand ! dans cette première griserie qui persiste
longtemps après notre première entrevue avec un homme à qui,
parce qu’il nous a serré la main et pour nous grandir nous-mêmes,
nous accordons d’emblée du génie.
— Il va te faire gagner de l’argent ? demanda Jeanne. Vaneau
sentit s’effondrer son rêve.
— Il n’en a pas été question ! répondit-il doucement car il n’aimait
point les mots aigres. Mais cela viendra.
Il l’eût juré que cela viendrait. En attendant, de dimanches en
dimanches, il vit d’autres poètes moins illustres, — quelques-uns
avec orgueil portaient cependant les palmes, — mais qui avaient
déjà publié des volumes de vers. Vaneau commençait à se rendre
compte qu’il n’était point seul à avoir écrit comme il l’avait dit à
Detroyes beaucoup de vers. Eux aussi peut-être autrefois avaient-ils
appris à l’école tout ce qu’ils voulaient, peut-être avaient-ils toujours
été les premiers. Il se faisait près d’eux petit et se fût gardé d’avoir
d’autres opinions que les leurs. Il pensait leur plaire par son
amabilité respectueuse. Il espérait qu’au moins l’un d’eux lui
enverrait dûment dédicacées ses œuvres complètes qu’il pourrait
montrer à Jeanne, à Dominique dût celui-ci en jaunir de dépit. Mais
Vaneau n’avait pas besoin de se faire petit ; personne ne faisait
attention à lui sinon pour se dire sans doute :
— Qui est-ce donc celui-là ? Jamais je n’ai vu son nom.
Ils se plaignaient entre eux en porte-lyres qui dépassent la
multitude de toute la hauteur de la Tour d’Ivoire, de l’indifférence que
leur témoignait le public. On citait la voix tremblant de sainte colère
le titre d’un de leurs volumes dont trois exemplaires seulement
s’étaient vendus. C’était la gloire, ça ? N’importe : Vaneau l’enviait,
ce poète aux trois exemplaires.
Il vit aussi des poétesses — jeunes filles et jeunes femmes, —
non point échevelées de délires éperdus mais qui se tenaient
assises bien sages en s’efforçant de paraître jolies. Quelques-unes
vraiment l’étaient et Vaneau songeait :
— Quels beaux vers elles doivent écrire ! Aussi beaux qu’elles-
mêmes !
Les jeunes filles étaient accompagnées par un père, une mère,
une tante ; les jeunes femmes étaient assez grandes pour qu’on les
laissât sortir seules. Elles fraternisaient entre elles et même avec les
jeunes gens, les hommes mûrs et les vieux maîtres en une
commune adoration pour le Beau. Le zèle le plus saint les poussait
vers toujours plus de perfection ; âmes d’élite que ne pouvaient
entamer la jalousie puérile, les mesquines rivalités. Vivre avec l’une
d’elles la plus jolie si possible, n’aurait-ce pas été le paradis sur
terre ? Il regrettait de n’être pas ce vieux petit homme voûté,
tremblotant et décoré comme Detroyes, autour duquel elles se
pressaient avec des « cher maître ! » Il était trop tard et trop tôt. Il se
répétait :
— Il fallait que je me marie. C’était nécessaire. La vie m’a déjà
classé.
Il se mit en relations aussi avec ces petites revues qui se
multipliaient dans les bourgades les plus ignorées et dans tous les
arrondissements de Paris. Une, se disant organe de jeunes, des
plus anciens et des plus répandus en France, insérait gratuitement
les envois de ses abonnés. Une autre publiait les sujets et les
résultats de tous les concours littéraires. Nulle part on n’était chiche
de louanges. A propos de la mort d’un lauréat du dernier concours
de la Violette on affirmait :
— Ce n’est pas seulement un homme de talent, c’est un grand
homme de cœur qui disparaît.
Cet homme Vaneau regrettait de ne l’avoir point connu. N’est pas
qui veut lauréat d’un concours poétique. Il avait si grande soif de
gloire qu’il eût souri à la mort pourvu que son cercueil fût couvert de
lauriers.
Jeanne tenait ferme les cordons de la bourse et Vaneau ne
pouvait s’abonner à aucun de ces « organes de jeunes ». Mais
comme il suffisait de demander un numéro spécimen sa table en fut
bientôt presque encombrée.
Le jour où il vit son nom au sommaire de la revue il crut que le
ciel s’ouvrait pour laisser pleuvoir sur lui les bénédictions de Dieu. Il
rentra triomphant et jeta l’exemplaire sur la table comme pour dire à
Jeanne :
— Lis-moi un peu cela ! Me voici tout vif imprimé dans une revue,
et une revue de Paris ! Mon nom se lira sous les galeries de l’Odéon.
Toute la jeunesse ardente va le connaître, se le répéter. Écoute : à
partir d’aujourd’hui je suis célèbre. Un peu de ma gloire rejaillira sur
toi. Tu n’en es pas fière ?
Elle avait une petite moue de dédain. Elle demanda :
— Combien est-ce qu’ils vont te payer cette machine-là ?
 Vaneau ne put que balbutier indigné :
— Me payer !… Me payer !… Mais il n’a pas été question de ça !
Il n’ajouta point :
— C’est déjà beau que je n’aie pas payé, moi !
Jeanne n’eût pas manqué de répondre :
— Oui ? Eh bien essaie donc un peu !
Mais il était « lancé » dans le mouvement poétique. Il était un de
ces innombrables poètes qui courbés tout le jour sur des chiffres
prennent la nuit venue leur essor vers l’idéal du fond d’une
mansarde, d’un logement sous les ardoises.
D’autres événements de plus d’importance encore n’allaient pas
manquer de se produire. Il recommençait à se bercer de chimères.
On ne pouvait plus guère tarder de reconnaître son talent. Il ne
savait quel homme infiniment riche allait lui écrire, peut-être même
frapper à sa porte le soir pour lui dire :
— Vous êtes pauvre, mon ami ? Me voici.
Il suivait des rues, le front haut, sûr de lui-même tant qu’il était
seul, semblant mettre au défi les gens qu’il coudoyait et qui ne se
faisaient toujours pas faute de le bousculer. Il avait l’air de leur dire :
— Prenez garde à ce que vous racontez en passant près de moi,
aux gestes que vous faites. Il suffit que j’écrive une satire
vengeresse pour qu’éternellement vous restiez couverts de ridicule.
Pour se distinguer de ceux que dans son dédain d’artiste il
appelait, lui aussi les bourgeois, il laissa croître ses cheveux ;
Jeanne trouvait cela ridicule. Elle n’alla point jusqu’à les lui couper
pendant son sommeil.
Les jours cependant passaient. Le soir quand il rentrait il n’y avait
rien pour lui chez le concierge ; personne ne venait frapper à sa
porte. Mais il ne perdait point sa belle confiance.
La réalité c’étaient les heures de présence et de travail au
bureau. Jeanne ne s’y ennuyait point. Elle aimait les après-midi
d’hiver dans une salle surchauffée, tous les becs de gaz allumés, les
papotages, les discussions, les rires étouffés, les coups de règle de
la « cheffesse » qui criait :
— Voyons mesdames, un peu de silence s’il vous plaît !
Le soir en dînant elle lui racontait par le menu tout ce qu’elle
avait entendu et vu, dit et fait. Il l’écoutait sans l’interrompre
autrement que par un geste, un « oh ! » de stupéfaction, un « ah ? »
interrogatif. Elle n’en demandait pas davantage. Tous les soirs ils se
retrouvaient face à face à la même table tandis que de plus en plus
leurs âmes s’éloignaient l’une de l’autre. Leur vie était monotone,
dure. Mais Jeanne répétait :
— Dans dix ans d’ici tu gagneras deux cents francs par mois et
moi cent. Avec les économies que nous aurons faites nous ne
serons pas malheureux.
Quand ils avaient achevé de dîner elle ne l’empêchait pas de
s’enfermer dans sa chambre tandis qu’elle s’occupait de la vaisselle.
Peut-être n’était-elle pas très sûre qu’il ne dût pas arriver à gagner
de l’argent avec « sa poésie ». Ils ne sortaient jamais. Aller au
théâtre coûte cher. L’hiver dans la boue sous la pluie et le grésil ce
n’est pas agréable. Il ne fut pas davantage question de réveillonner.
Vaneau qui ne voulait faire de peine à personne lui avait dit quelques
jours auparavant :
— Nous pourrions peut-être si cela te faisait plaisir aller voir tes
parents cette nuit-là ?
— Plus souvent ! avait-elle répondu. Pour que maman nous fasse
la tête et que papa bougonne ! Ils se passent bien de nous, sois
tranquille ! Nous irons pour le premier Janvier, parce que nous ne
pouvons pas nous en dispenser.
Un soir cependant, entre Noël et le premier Janvier, ils allèrent
voir les grands boulevards.
Vaneau se rappela les baraques faites de quatre piquets et de
traverses qui les jours de marchés et de foires se montent en un tour
de main sur la place de sa petite ville. La toile à peine tendue résiste
mal au vent. On y chercherait vainement autre chose que des
pelotes de fil, des paires de bas, de la toile à chemises et à
mouchoirs. Les petites villes n’ont pas besoin de luxe. Quand elles
achètent le Supplément du Petit Parisien elles collent à leurs murs
les deux images de la couverture et elles passent le reste de leur vie
à les regarder.
C’étaient des baraques qui sont des maisons. Elles aussi on les
monte en un tour de main. Elles ont l’air d’être posées à même les
trottoirs des grands boulevards : une rafale pourrait les renverser.
Mais solides elles pèsent sur l’asphalte de tout le poids de leurs
jouets. Et ce ne sont point des baraques ordinaires ; elles viennent
toujours d’être repeintes ; plusieurs même sont neuves.
On a beau passer, l’air indifférent ou supérieur à la foule. Vaneau
faisait comme tout le monde, comme Jeanne qui s’amusait
beaucoup presque autant qu’au bureau. On en regarde une. On les
regarde toutes. On voit les marchands et les marchandes. Il y en a
de jeunes avec des regards qui semblent dire aux passants : « Nous
n’avons pas besoin de vous. Gardez votre argent ! » ; de vieux,
résignés, de pauvres et de riches. Il y en a qui certainement ne sont
venus là que pour se distraire, pour regarder à leur tour la foule qui
les regarde. Ils ont des pardessus à cols d’astrakan, des doigts
entourés de grosses bagues, l’air distingué. Des tréteaux sont
installés en plein air : une lampe y brûle dont la flamme ne vacille
point. C’est un soir de Décembre à Paris où il fait doux. Mais les
chemins des villages, les rues des petites villes sont à cette heure
encombrés de neige dont les cantonniers avec leur traîneau
n’arrivent pas à avoir raison. A huit heures du soir les verres des
lampes sont froids, les mèches des bougies ont cessé de
charbonner. Tout le monde dort. Ici toutes les tables aux terrasses
des cafés sont occupées par des milliers d’oisifs. Sur deux lignes
parallèles deux interminables files de fiacres et d’autos vont de la
Madeleine à la Bastille et reviennent de la Bastille à la Madeleine
comme sur une piste longue d’une lieue et large de dix mètres. Ce
soir encore comme autrefois, comme toujours, Paris est descendu
dans la rue.
Il songeait à descendre lui aussi dans la rue, las d’écrire des vers
d’amour et des sonnets sur l’antiquité. Il éprouvait le besoin de se
mêler à la foule, non pour sympathiser avec elle mais pour la
regarder vivre simplement à la façon des réalistes. Il ne pouvait
s’enrôler dans les avant-gardes parmi ceux qui partis dès l’aube se
reposent sur les positions conquises. Jeune homme hésitant il
n’aurait pu que faire partie du gros de la troupe où l’on ne court pas
le risque d’être trop remarqué, de la foule de ceux qui rêvent d’après
d’autres et regardent pour le décrire ce qui bien des fois déjà fut
regardé et décrit.
Dans cette chambre dont il lui fallait fermer la fenêtre à cause de
l’hiver, il étouffait le soir. Il eût aimé rentrer tard à deux heures du
matin après avoir discuté des heures durant avec des musiciens,
des peintres, des poètes, en buvant des bocks ou des liqueurs
fortes. Les vieux maîtres décorés lui faisaient peur, il ne pouvait
guère que balbutier ses réponses à leurs questions comme un
enfant. Il n’irait point frapper à la porte de Detroyes. Les jeunes filles
qui écrivaient des vers lui étaient prétextes à d’indicibles nostalgies
d’une existence qu’il ne pourrait jamais vivre puisque Jeanne était là.
Nul ami ne lui tendait la main, nul sauveur la perche. Même
imprimés ses vers n’avaient eu aucun écho. L’amertume de tomber
d’un sommet d’où l’on voyait le monde à ses pieds, où l’on s’est cru
transporté comme un autre dieu, il la connaissait.
Il ne lui venait pas à l’idée de se confier à Jeanne en ces
moments de détresse. Qu’y eût-elle compris ? Elle était toujours la
même petite femme ordonnée, affairée, ayant le souci de faire
marcher ce qu’elle appelait « sa maison ». Elle répétait :
— Si tu crois que c’est commode, toi, d’arriver à joindre les deux
bouts à la fin du mois avec cent quatre-vingts francs !
Ce n’était pas commode mais elle y réussissait invariablement.
Ils trouvaient lourd leur loyer de cinq cents francs. Ils auraient pu se
contenter d’une pièce et d’une cuisine. Mais la faute en était à ces
meubles dont les Lavaud avaient débarrassé leur appartement qui
en regorgeait, souvenirs d’une période d’opulence. Les revendre ?
Sans doute mais à si bas prix ! Mieux valait les garder et se
restreindre un peu sur le vin par exemple et sur la viande.
 Elle n’était pas coquette ; Vaneau pouvait être tranquille : elle ne
penserait jamais à le tromper. Des jeunes femmes près desquelles
elle travaillait se racontaient entre elles à mots couverts des
ébauches d’intrigues. Les suiveurs ne manquent pas à Paris. Il faut
seulement ne se point montrer trop farouche. Elle, quand elle passait
courant presque, les yeux baissés, pas un homme n’aurait eu l’idée
de l’aborder.
Ils n’avaient pas encore d’enfant. Vaneau n’adressait point de
vœux au Très-Haut comme faisaient les patriarches qui pour vivre
n’avaient qu’à planter leur tente au beau milieu d’une immensité de
pâturages vierges.
Ils virent lors de leur visite que chez les Lavaud tout s’en allait à
la dérive. Cette après-midi de premier Janvier c’était chez eux une
désolation. Lui sommeillait congestionné près du poêle, un journal
déplié sur les genoux. Il sursauta quand il les entendit entrer. C’était
peut-être de la clientèle ?
— Ce n’est que nous. Ne te dérange pas, dit Jeanne. Et maman,
où est-elle ?
— Elle n’est pas loin ! bougonna-t-il. En effet elle arriva de la
cuisine. Du bout des lèvres ils se souhaitèrent bonne année, bonne
santé et se posèrent des questions.
— Qu’est-ce que vous devenez donc qu’on ne vous voit plus ?
demanda-t-elle à Jeanne. Et parce qu’elle ne voulait pas de réponse
à cette question de pure forme, elle continua :
— Pour un premier Janvier il fait vraiment doux. Il y a bien du
monde dans les rues.
Elle pensait sans doute :
— Et personne ici.
Mais ils ne voulaient pas avouer leur détresse. Ils consentaient
seulement à ce qu’on la vît. Ils avaient l’air de craindre que Jeanne
et Vaneau ne vinssent leur demander de l’argent. Ils s’isolaient dans
leur misère commençante. Ils étaient secs, durs, lointains. Pourtant
ils aimaient leur fille. Mais la faute en était à la vie.
 V

Il fit la connaissance d’un jeune étudiant, petit, avec un binocle et

une moustache brune, qui sortait avec des journaux dans ses
poches. Il s’appelait Verrière et venait de réciter des vers à la
réunion mensuelle comme on en avait pris l’habitude. Vaneau par
timidité s’y refusait toujours ; personne d’ailleurs ne l’en priait outre
mesure. Quant aux jeunes filles chacune d’elles attendait son tour
avec impatience.
A la sortie il se trouva près de Verrière sur le palier, et dut se
présenter lui-même puisque pour Verrière comme pour les autres il
était un inconnu. C’est une grande supériorité de porter binocle et
d’être étudiant, et Verrière lui demanda :
— Vous n’avez encore rien publié ? du même ton que Detroyes.
— Non ! dit Vaneau. Mais tout de même il se sentait un peu plus
à son aise qu’avec Detroyes. J’ai écrit beaucoup de vers ; je travaille
depuis des années mais sans résultat.
— Peuh ! Allons donc ! dit Verrière, comme quelqu’un à qui rien
ne peut résister.
Il marchait à petits pas, s’arrêtait souvent : Vaneau faisait
attention de ne point marcher plus vite et de s’arrêter en même
temps que lui. Il voulait que tout le monde eût bonne opinion de sa
politesse, estimant que c’était la seule chance qu’il eût pour réussir.
— Mais mon cher ami, — il l’appelait déjà son « cher ami », — ce
ne sont pas les débouchés qui manquent. Les revues ! les journaux !
Mais ils ne demandent que ça, de la copie ! Ainsi, moi, regardez…
Il tira de sa poche pour le brandir comme un étendard le Journal
du treizième arrondissement. Ils passaient à ce moment sur le pont
des Saints-Pères et le vent faillit emporter la feuille tout entière
éployée. Vaneau put voir pourtant qu’un article en cinquième
colonne était signé : Georges Verrière. Alors il devint presque aussi
hésitant qu’avec Detroyes. Il marchait à côté de quelqu’un qui
« écrivait dans les journaux ».
— Sans doute ! eut-il l’audace de dire. Mais encore faut-il savoir
en écrire, de ces articles ! Je n’ai guère fait jusqu’à présent que des
vers. Pourtant je suis marié. Je suis employé dans un bureau où je
gagne cent seize francs par mois depuis le premier Janvier, et
j’aurais grand besoin…
— C’est une dérision ! affirma Verrière. Cent seize francs par
mois ! Qu’est-ce que c’est que ce compte-là, d’abord ?
— Oh ! fit Vaneau, il y a quelques centimes que j’oublie et qui
ajoutés au reste représentent quatorze cents francs par année.
— Moi, répondit Verrière, ma famille me donne cinq cents francs
par mois et jamais je n’en ai assez. Allons ! comptez sur moi. Venez
donc me voir… attendez… quel jour ?… mercredi… dans l’après-
midi… Parce que mes cours, vous savez, j’y vais quand je veux…
— C’est que, insinua Vaneau, mercredi je suis pris par mon
travail jusqu’à six heures du soir comme tous les jours de la
semaine.
— Eh bien ! alors, réfléchit Verrière, dimanche prochain à trois
heures, 50, rue Caulaincourt. Vous verrez des peintres, un surtout,
mon meilleur ami, qui a du génie… un musicien aussi… Vous
l’entendrez… Allons cher ami je vous quitte… Je déjeune en ville…
Nous vous sortirons d’embarras… Sans adieu…
Il fit signe à un fiacre. Vaneau le regarda partir, hébété.
Il allait être midi. Mais Vaneau ne pouvait point en un jour pareil
se dispenser de boire une absinthe bien qu’il en eût de nouveau
perdu l’habitude. Il était ébloui. Des chiffres, des noms dansaient
devant ses yeux, Verrière dépensait cinq cents francs par mois,
prenait des fiacres, connaissait un peintre et un musicien de génie,
était lui-même — Vaneau l’eût juré, — un poète de génie, écrivait
dans le Journal du treizième arrondissement et consentait à lui
donner un rendez-vous sans le connaître ! Il en était confus.
L’absinthe aidant il eut la certitude que dans huit jours sa fortune
serait faite et que la face du monde allait changer.
— Cette fois, dit-il à Jeanne en rentrant, je crois que ça y est !
Il lui rapporta presque mot pour mot la conversation qu’il avait
eue avec Verrière. Elle-même fut ébranlée dans son indifférence.
— Cette relation peut t’être utile, consentit-elle à dire.
Vaneau l’embrassa. Il ne se possédait plus de joie. La vie
redevenait belle. Il trouva la semaine longue.
Le dimanche suivant à trois heures précises il sonnait à la porte
de Verrière. Il aurait pu le faire plus tôt car suivant son habitude il
était arrivé rue Caulaincourt bien avant l’heure mais il ne voulait pas
courir le risque de mécontenter son sauveur en ne se présentant
point juste à la minute dite. Il fut d’ailleurs obligé de sonner trois fois
en prenant soin de laisser s’écouler entre chaque discret carillon
beaucoup plus de soixante secondes. Il allait même se décider à
partir, la mort dans l’âme, quand la porte enfin s’ouvrit. Il revint à la
joie de la vie. Verrière s’était dérangé, oui, lui-même, en personne,
pour lui ouvrir et dit :
— Excusez-moi. Aujourd’hui je suis seul. La bonne est sortie.
Mes amis ne viendront pas. Ils sont retenus.
Vaneau fut ennuyé qu’il s’excusât. Verrière ne lui devait rien,
n’est-ce pas ? Il se hâta de protester :
— Oh ! Cela ne fait rien. Votre invitation m’a fait si grand plaisir !
— Asseyez-vous donc.
Une pièce sommairement meublée et qui ne ressemblait guère à
un cabinet de travail.
— Eh bien, quoi de nouveau depuis l’autre jour ? interrogea
Verrière.
— Mais rien malheureusement ! répondit Vaneau. Il s’attendait à
ce que Verrière lui dît :
— Eh bien, avec moi, par moi il va y avoir du nouveau pour vous.
Tenez. Voici une adresse.
 Mais ce n’était que pour amorcer la conversation. N’importe. Ce
serait pour tout à l’heure.
— Vous prendrez un verre de liqueur ?
Vaneau refusa d’abord comme il avait refusé à son oncle le verre
de vin blanc le matin de son arrivée. Il ne voulait pas que l’on fît de
dépenses pour lui : c’était déjà assez que l’on consentît à le recevoir.
Mais Verrière s’était levé pour atteindre sur le rayon d’un placard une
bouteille pansue. Tout en buvant du rhum, — il n’en restait presque
plus, — et en fumant quelques cigarettes qu’offrit Vaneau, —
Verrière voulait descendre acheter un paquet de cigarettes turques,
il ne pouvait fumer que de celles-là mais Vaneau aurait bien voulu
voir ça, par exemple ! — ils échangèrent quelques aperçus sur la
poésie. Verrière parla surtout de lui-même. Il se passait
négligemment les doigts dans les cheveux qu’il portait longs,
relevant une boucle qui s’obstinait à lui retomber devant l’œil
gauche. Il disait :
— Mon cher ami je suis fatigué par la vie que je mène. Je passe
des nuits dans les brasseries du Quartier et je me couche à cinq
heures du matin. Les nerfs me font mal !
Vaneau souriait admirativement, fier de recevoir de pareilles
confidences.
Verrière sortit du tiroir de sa table un cahier qu’il agita comme il
avait brandi son journal sur le pont des Saints-Pères.
— C’est un recueil de poèmes inédits ! annonça-t-il. Plusieurs
revues déjà me les ont demandés. Mais je ne me déciderai point à
les publier avant de les avoir amenés à la perfection.
Vaneau ne se contenta point de dire :
— Je n’ai jamais ouï de vers si bien tournés.
Il se répandit en éloges hyperboliques, déclarant que jamais il
n’avait éprouvé pareille émotion. Verrière l’écoutait en jouant
distraitement avec son coupe-papier en jeune homme habitué
depuis des années à susciter par la seule lecture de ses vers de tels
enthousiasmes. Mais de Vaneau il ne fut point question. Sans doute
il avait dans la poche de son veston un carnet de vers, de ses
derniers vers, les meilleurs, et il esquissa le geste de l’en retirer ;
mais Verrière ne dut pas deviner cette intention, pensa Vaneau,
puisque tout de suite il se leva disant :
— Mais à propos je ne vous ai pas montré cette toile de mon ami
Garchizey ! Vous vous rappelez bien, le peintre…
Parbleu ! Si Vaneau se rappelait ! Il n’avait oublié aucune des
paroles de Verrière : c’était le peintre de génie !
— N’est-ce pas que c’est beau ? C’est un chef-d’œuvre.
Pensait-il que Vaneau dirait le contraire ?
Il entrait dans la vie qu’il avait si longtemps rêvée. Il avait pour
ami un poète, un vrai et qui de plus écrivait dans les journaux. Il allait
connaître des peintres, des musiciens. Il sortirait avec eux, discutant
d’art en bousculant les bourgeois dans les rues. Il irait dans leurs
ateliers. Toute son énergie lui revenait… Et toute sa timidité lui
restait.
— Eh bien ? lui demanda Jeanne quand il revint.
— Il m’a lu des vers qui sont très beaux.
— Mais, pour toi, qu’est-ce qu’il t’a dit ?
— Oh ! Il ne m’a parlé de rien. Mais je dois retourner le voir
quand je voudrai. Il est chez lui tous les dimanches.
Jeanne haussa les épaules sans rien répondre. Vaneau, lui, ne
doutait de la sincérité des autres que lorsqu’il ne pouvait plus faire
autrement.
D’autres dimanches se suivirent. Une fois il arriva juste au
moment où « les amis » venaient de partir.
— Je m’étonne même, dit Verrière, que vous ne les ayez pas
rencontrés dans l’escalier. A propos où demeurez-vous donc ? J’irai
vous voir un de ces soirs.
Dans leur logement depuis deux années qu’ils l’habitaient
personne encore n’était venu leur rendre visite puisqu’ils ne
connaissaient personne. Jeanne ne fut pas contente.
 — Pour ce que ça va te servir ! dit-elle.
Il vint un soir en traînant ses bottines dans le couloir comme
infiniment fatigué de vivre. Il portait en plein mois de Juin un gros
pardessus d’hiver.
— Je suis gelé ! dit-il.
Vaneau s’empressait autour de lui qui distraitement tendit la main
à Jeanne.
— Qu’allez-vous prendre ? dit Vaneau. Un peu de café ?
— Je prendrai, répondit Verrière, un verre d’eau.
Peu à peu cependant il s’humanisa. Il regardait Jeanne qui
n’avait pas l’air de s’amuser beaucoup et lui posa des questions.
Vaneau vit qu’elle lui plaisait. Il en fut heureux : il avait redouté que
Verrière la trouvât laide ou commune.
— Je jurerais, dit Verrière, que vous n’avez jamais dîné dans une
brasserie, au Quartier ?
Ils durent avouer que non.
— Eh bien, venez donc me prendre chez moi dimanche prochain
à cinq heures. Nous irons ensemble.
C’était une invitation en règle et faite très délicatement. Vaneau
en était si confus, si touché, qu’il ne savait comment accepter.
Il admira Verrière de parler avec cette désinvolture au gérant, au
garçon. Tout le temps que dura le dîner ils furent tous les trois très
gais.
Jeanne s’était trompée sur le compte de Verrière. Elle s’était faite
belle aujourd’hui. Vaneau l’avait voulu. Verrière s’intéressait à tous
les détails de leur vie, il apprit à quelle heure ils entraient au bureau,
à quelle heure ils en sortaient, parfois ensemble, souvent Jeanne la
première. Elle remontait à la maison à pied tous les soirs quelque
temps qu’il fît par la rue de Clichy.
— Je vous écrirai prochainement, dit-il à Vaneau quand ils se
quittèrent. J’ai quelque chose en vue pour vous dans un journal.
 La lettre arriva dix jours après. Il attendrait Vaneau demain soir à
six heures et quart chez lui. On prendrait une voiture. Vaneau se
hâta, six heures sonnées, prit ses jambes à son cou. Il sonna.
Personne ne vint lui ouvrir. Il attendit jusqu’à sept heures dans la
rue. Peut-être Verrière avait-il été retenu au dernier moment ? Il allait
arriver d’une minute à l’autre.
Verrière à six heures du soir descendait lentement la rue de
Clichy que Jeanne allait suivre en sens inverse. Il ne pouvait
manquer de la rencontrer. Elle fut étonnée de le voir là qui la saluait
d’un grand coup de chapeau.
— Bonjour, madame ! lui dit-il. Comment allez-vous depuis l’autre
dimanche ?
— Mais n’aviez-vous pas donné rendez-vous à Louis pour ce
soir ? dit-elle.
Il ne sut d’abord que répondre. Cette petite jolie femme, avait-il
pensé, doit s’ennuyer à mourir avec ce grand garçon bébête qui est
son mari. Elle doit rêver, désirer mieux. Elle sera enchantée de me
voir sans lui. Mais il se reprit vite, se frappa le front :
— Ah ! Je serai toujours le même ! J’ai de ces distractions
inconcevables ! Oui ! Oui ! Je me rappelle maintenant. Il doit
m’attendre. Mais permettez-moi de faire la moitié du chemin avec
vous jusqu’à la place Clichy.
Il essaya de l’étourdir, de l’éblouir. Elle l’écoutait, les lèvres
serrées, défiante, le laissant parler. Elle ne souriait pas. Il fut obligé
de la laisser seule poursuivre son chemin. Il la vit traverser la place
Clichy. Elle ne se retourna point. Il fit signe à un cocher, lui jeta
l’adresse d’une taverne du Quartier.
A sept heures et demie Vaneau rentra.
— Je n’y comprends rien ! dit-il. Je n’ai pas vu Verrière. Je l’ai
attendu plus d’une heure. On a dû le retenir quelque part. Mais il
m’enverra un mot.
Jeanne dit seulement :
— Tu crois ? C’est un farceur.
 — Allons donc ! Décidément, je ne sais pas ce que tu vas
chercher.
Il attendit le « mot » un, deux, trois quatre jours. Puis n’y tenant
plus il retourna rue Caulaincourt.
— M. Verrière ? dit le concierge. Il est à la campagne. Il a même
donné congé pour le terme d’Octobre.
Il allait falloir recommencer, chercher ailleurs un autre « ami ».
 VI

Jeanne lui parlait souvent de Mme Ternant avec qui au bureau

elle s’entendait à merveille. Il connaissait la vie des Ternant : lui à
l’Hôtel de ville arrivait à se faire des mois de trois cents francs mais il
ne reculait pas devant la besogne, restant pour des travaux
supplémentaires jusqu’à huit heures du soir ou rapportant chez lui
des écritures ; elle un peu plus ancienne dans la maison gagnait
cinquante centimes par jour de plus que Jeanne. Ce n’était pas
d’aujourd’hui que Vaneau avait prévu cette invitation. Il ne fut
nullement étonné lorsque Jeanne lui dit :
— Tu sais, il y a longtemps qu’elle insiste. Il faut que nous y
allions dîner samedi prochain. Son mari a ses petites manies ; il lui
faut son compte de sommeil. Et le samedi on peut se coucher un
peu plus tard parce que le dimanche on se lève à l’heure que l’on
veut.
Des mois avaient passé depuis l’aventure avec Verrière. Vaneau
était rentré dans sa vie sans issue immédiate ; il marchait comme
dans une forêt où l’on n’est pas assuré de trouver une clairière où se
reposer, avec le temps nécessaire pour choisir ensuite son chemin.
Il accepta sans enthousiasme mais il avait pris l’habitude pour
tous les détails de la vie de ne jamais rien refuser à Jeanne. Les
Ternant habitaient non loin des grands boulevards dans un quartier
d’emballeurs, d’exportateurs en gros où l’on risque à chaque minute
de se faire écraser par les camions qui sortent des cours. Leurs
deux fenêtres donnaient sur une rue où les rayons de soleil ont du
mal à pénétrer. Il vit Mme Ternant, grande jeune femme brune dont
le front était caché par les cheveux. Lui tout de suite apparaissait
précocement vieilli, voûté déjà à trente ans et portant lunettes.
 — Tu vois, disait Jeanne à Vaneau, comme c’est bien arrangé
ici !
Elle avait beaucoup d’estime pour Ternant qu’elle était heureuse
d’enfin rencontrer : un travailleur qui ne perdait pas son temps à
écrire des vers. Sa vie était parfaitement ordonnée. Il n’allait jamais
au café, jamais au théâtre, ne fumait pas.
— Avec l’argent que chaque année nous plaçons, dit-il, et la
retraite à laquelle j’aurai droit, nous vivrons tranquilles à la
campagne.
Jeanne regarda Vaneau comme pour lui dire :
— Tu entends, hein ? Tu ne pourrais pas en faire autant, toi.
Mais elle ne put se retenir de complimenter indirectement et à
haute voix Ternant :
— Ce n’est pas comme Louis qui ne pense à rentrer à la maison
que pour écrire des poésies. Et qu’est-ce que ça lui rapporte !
Vaneau rougit comme un enfant dont sa mère en public dénonce
les défauts avec l’espoir qu’il s’en corrigera. Mme Ternant regardait
devant elle dans le vague. Ses yeux rencontrèrent ceux de Vaneau
qui tressaillit et dont le cœur se mit à battre. Quand elle servit le café
elle se pencha sur lui jusqu’à le frôler. S’il ne se sentait point de
sympathie pour Ternant elle il l’aimait déjà d’un violent amour. Mais
où pourrait-il jamais la rencontrer seule ? La vie tout de suite se
dressait devant son désir qui se cabrait pour bondir par-dessus les
obstacles, mais peut-être en vain cette fois encore.
Ils avaient un piano. Elle joua quelques morceaux faciles.
Vaneau fut heureux de savoir un peu de musique : il se tenait près
d’elle, se penchant à son tour afin de tourner les feuillets. Elle n’en
paraissait pas troublée et n’en faisait ni plus ni moins de fausses
notes.
Il commença par rôder le soir dans les rues qu’elle pouvait suivre
pour rentrer chez elle. Il retrouva l’attendant à d’autres carrefours à
d’autres tournants de rues les émotions qu’il avait eues autrefois à
guetter Lucie. Elle sortait en même temps que Jeanne à six heures