INSPIRING ISLANDER - JOHN BELFORD-LELAULU
From South Auckland to New York, the Philippines and Chile - a young Samoan architect and his group ‘MAU’ have been working on new ways to house communities of colour around the world.
Raised in South Auckland as one of twelve siblings, New Zealand born Samoan, John Belford-Lelaulu, is one of the youngest Polynesian architects to use his skills to bring positive change to indigenous people in need.
With a big heart for his Samoan heritage, strong ambition to learn and the desire to help the community and people he grew up around; John’s goal was to use his specific skills to make a social impact for his people.
“Poverty is a real thing. It’s happening in our own back yard’s and a lot of us aren’t even aware… …I feel it’s important, as a young Pacific Islander, to bring solutions to these situations because we see these issues through the same lens that our people see it”.
In 2015, as a fresh architecture graduate, John started to explore a variety of architectural approaches that different organisations were using. He was first exposed to social intentions whilst working with ‘The Roots’ on a project that allowed them to create mobile education labs for youth groups in South Auckland. This experience challenged him with the idea to integrate creativity and design for a good cause. “It made me think, if we’re doing this here in New Zealand, I’d love to learn from different organisations abroad; which was always my intent after studying.”
He did just that. Weighing up options on whether to travel to Scandinavia, Sweden or New York City for research and volunteer work, John stumbled across ‘Open Architecture’ (previously known as ‘Architecture for Humanity’), an international organisation. “I thought if I wanted to do it, I’d better dream big and do big.”
With no guaranteed work before he bought his one way ticket to New York, he found a role as a ‘Project Coordinator’ for mobile shelter facilities created for the chronically homeless in New York City; 100% voluntary.
“I was like - Boom! That’s what I want to do. The project masterplan was a network of community gardens in homeless shelters that provided agricultural educational training for adults and open markets that allowed homeless residents to sell their product as a means of income, but also an income to upkeep, maintain, and extend the community gardens. That network was then connected by a number of "mobile education trailers" that provided, fun, lively, education outlets for children living with the homeless system.”
Whilst volunteering in New York and working in hospitality as a local bar tender, an opportunity came up for a workshop in Los Angeles with 72andSunny, a marketing and advertising agency. “It was a week long workshop around creating an online tool that exposes the creative classes to underprivileged communities and also communities of colour. They were targeting how to diversify the creative class. We came up with an online tool that broke down each of the creative roles within a cultural moment."
With another cup of knowledge at hand and an even bigger vision ahead, John then went on to accept an invitation to the Phillipines as part of an international outreach programme. As they embarked on this spontaneous trip, they encountered many villages that sparked inspiration to create youth dormitories, island cultural centres and other similar hubs that would be beneficial for the locals.
Having seen the lifestyle they lived with his own eyes, the trip evolved into a passionate life changing moment for John in wanting to improve the living conditions of the poverty stricken locals.
“The experience was absolutely humbling. It was then and there at that moment, while I was standing on top of these rice plantations and looking down at the rest of the village; that was like my clicking moment. That clicking moment where I knew that this is what I want to be doing for the rest of my life.”
He describes it as Humanitarian Architecture (or more commonly known as ‘Social design’). This meant more holistic and systemic approaches to social issues such as poverty, inequality and natural disasters.The drive to create an environment for people to use their own knowledge and skills within architecture and design was something that he committed to kicking off.
Fortunately around the same time, Unitec had created a scheme they were running called the “Unitec Bold Innovative Scholarship”. The scholarship entailed 5 thousand dollars, an additional 5-6 thousand dollars for operational costs and ran for 3 months for anyone that had an innovative idea. Without hesitation, John took the opportunity, pitched his idea and from that, ‘Mau Studio’ was born.
“The innovative idea was not necessarily starting up a studio, but about coming up with an innovative methodology. It’s more about ‘how can we come up with more a collaborative environment and how can we start learning from each other?’”
In between laying the foundation for Mau, John went to Chile to work with Habitat for Humanity who partnered with an organisation called ‘Bringing our children home’.
That organisation worked closely with hospitals, different institutions and social support networks who also work closely with families that have children with physical and mental disabilities. Habitat for Humanity worked with these families to provide better living conditions.
The project/house John volunteered to work on was for a single mother with two children living at home; one of which was diagnosed with Asperger’s; a developmental disorder affecting ability to effectively socialise and .communicate.
“Essentially there were 11 volunteers that were on board and we were planning on extending the house by two bedrooms. Throughout that week we put a concrete floor down, the walls, the roof and the interior lining.
The way we set it up was in groups that would volunteer to complete different parts of the project. They phase everything out in different stages, which is very similar to what we want to be doing with Mau Studio in the Phillipines.
That was why I went over to Habitat for Humanity; to learn about how they worked as an organisation and it ended up being a lot more than that for me. It just showed me, deep down, that these are the reasons why we should be doing this Humanitarian work. Not only for that family, but also for the volunteers too.
These people showed humility, empathy, and a willingness to actually help. As much as I learnt from the actual build itself, I actually took away a lot of life lessons. It really re-instilled my faith into humanity.”
Acknowledging that humanitarian architecture/design hadn’t yet been supported within the educational system, it encouraged John to plant that seed and to plant it in the ‘non-profitable’ side of architecture.
“Something we said right from the beginning was that it’s a lot bigger than Mau Studio, it’s our future. How do we start influencing, inspiring and teaching the next generation of designers?”
The methodology at Mau was created to provide incubators for high school students and professionals to begin designing and building humanitarian projects both here in New Zealand, Samoa and in the Philippines.
“I feel like that’s what we need. Especially us as Pacific Island people. It’s more in tune with how we think which is more experiential, more culturally driven and has more of a meaningful social purpose. We think family and community and our education system doesn’t encourage us to do that or at least doesn’t support that kind of thinking.”
With a support system in place, Mau Studio is now currently in the process of imbedding these into the curriculum, starting with De La Selle College, and Unitec, 2018.
“In all my schooling years I’d heard of a number of academy’s; sports, trades, dance, you name it. There just wasn’t anything for the creative’s.”
This means investing time and a sense of hope into relationships with communities in need and working closely with them to create improved environments and living situations.
“For now, it’s a matter of being able to bring the people, projects and places together in order for the system to work, not only here in the heart of New Zealand, but also internationally, starting in Samoa and the Philippines.”
John is currently in the Philippines discussing Mau’s first construction phase of a learning and play area at a church in Baguio. Pastor Lonzo and his team have already started excavating so the discussions around the cost and which local contractors and engineers will lead the build are well under way.
A new approach to architure couldn’t be more timely than this one.
“It started off big. And it’s still very big. But this is only the beginning.”
Don’t blink when watching this space!
Go and check out maustudio.org.
By Hanalei Temese