To mark World Humanitarian Day please join CSU as we welcome our guest speaker Phoebe Goodwin, M.Arch. and moderator Anna Rubbo on Thursday, August 22, 2024 from 12 PM – 12.45 PM ET for our next Green Cities Event of 2024!

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Talk abstract

In this talk Phoebe Goodwin will explore the history and mission of UNHCR and the contribution architects can make to the desperate conditions in which refugees and other forcibly displaced people often find themselves. UNHCR (the Office of the High Commissioner for Refugees) is the UN refugee agency that leads international action to protect people forced to flee conflict and persecution, as well as stateless individuals who are denied a nationality. According to UNHCR, at the end of 2023 the number of people forcibly displaced reached over 117 million, of which 31.6 million were refugees under UNHCR’s mandate and of which another 6 million Palestinian refugees under UNRWA’s mandate.

Through her experience in various countries, Phoebe will highlight the challenges, successes and limitations she has witnessed as a site planner and shelter officer, as well as the rewards of such work. Phoebe’s frontline field experience has ranged from refugee to internally displaced and mixed migration crises, allowing for broad exposure to diverse and complex humanitarian contexts. She has worked in sudden onset emergencies and protracted conflicts in both rural and urban contexts.

With the growing population of forcibly displaced communities through conflict, but also climate change, she will also discuss how design education might better prepare professionals for this work, as well as mitigating the personal challenges it poses.  Participatory planning and design skills that were acquired during Global Studio in 2008 have been key to her subsequent work with various NGOs and with forcibly displaced and stateless people through UNHCR.

Speaker: Phoebe Goodwin, M.Arch

Credit: Phillip Huebner

Phoebe Goodwin (M.Arch., University of Sydney, 2011) has worked in the private sector in Australia and Switzerland. Phoebe’s interest in humanitarian work dates to her childhood in Sydney Australia but began to take focus after she joined the Global Studio program in Johannesburg 2008, where students worked with township residents, on projects residents said could improve their lives. Her experience in Johannesburg prompted volunteer work with Emergency Architects Australia (EAA) in the Solomon Islands, the Jack Thompson Foundation in the Northern Territory Australia and Global Studio Bhopal. Her post-graduate work experience includes Health Habitat Pty Ltd in Australia and Sticky Situations in South Africa. In addition to her architecture degree, she has completed trainings offered by the International Red Cross and Red Crescent Movement and UNHCR, as well as a master’s short course with Oxford Brookes University to equip her with the additional skills needed in the field of humanitarian shelter.

Since 2016, she has worked with UNHCR as a Site Planner and Shelter Officer in Mexico, Uganda, Bangladesh, Jordan, Greece and the Democratic Republic of the Congo. As the mother of a young child, she is currently based in UNHCR’s headquarters in Geneva where she has shifted from a technical architectural role to general program management at a global scale.

Moderator: Anna Rubbo, FRAIA

Anna Rubbo, FRAIA, is on the Board of the Consortium for Sustainable Urbanization and is a Researcher at the Center for Sustainable Urban Development (CSUD) in the Climate School, Columbia University. Previously Associate Professor of Architecture at the University of Sydney, in recent years she has focused on accelerating the take up of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) in design practice and education.

Learning Objectives:

1. An understanding of the scope of the global forced displacement problem, how UNHCR defines and addresses the challenges, and the role architects can usefully play.
2. An understanding of the practical skills architects need to gain in order to be effective in contributing to humanitarian shelter and settlement solutions.
3. An understanding of the personal challenges in working in crisis conditions.

CO-SPONSORING ORGANIZATIONS FOR GREEN CITIES 2024

Consortium for Sustainable Urbanization (CSU), UN-Habitat, AIA New York, AIANY Planning & Design, the NGO Committee on Sustainable Development-NY, Habitat Professionals Forum for Sustainable Cities, Creative Exchange Lab (CEL), Global Urban Development (GUD), and the Columbia University Center for Buildings, Infrastructure and Public Space (CBIPS).

IN COLLABORATION WITH UNHCR