BaSiC Initiative is a nonprofit organization that provides communities with creative building solutions to meet locale-specific challenges. Co-founded by Portland State professor of architecture Sergio Palleroni, BaSiC Initiative—which stands for Building Sustainable Communities—provides students with the opportunity to do hands-on fieldwork while simultaneously providing assistance to populations in need.
BaSiC Initiative is a nonprofit organization that provides communities with creative building solutions to meet locale-specific challenges. Co-founded by Portland State professor of architecture Sergio Palleroni, BaSiC Initiative—which stands for Building Sustainable Communities—provides students with the opportunity to do hands-on fieldwork while simultaneously providing assistance to populations in need.
The organization’s roots date back to the mid-1980s when it began as a program to improve the living conditions of Mexican farm laborers. The initiative formally became a nonprofit in 1995, and has since grown to include over 95 different projects in countries around the world, including India, Haiti and Argentina. BaSiC has built schools, clinics, libraries, urban gardens and even solar fields—whatever the specific community needs.
“BaSiC Initiative was a way to provide students with a service learning opportunity to see a different view of the professions of architecture and engineering,” Palleroni said.
He explained that one of the program’s main goals is to force American students out of their comfort zones and confront their preconceived notions about what an architect or an engineer really does. The work students do allows them to formulate their own conclusions about the capabilities and purposes of each profession.
“Our belief is that it is not just about making someone a competent engineer, but an engineer that can understand the social dimension of what they are doing and its broader impact on society,” Palleroni explained.
Architecture graduate student Caryn Mudge first learned about BaSiC Initiative through one of Palleroni’s classes. “During the course he introduced us to a lot of sustainable methods and different building technologies from all over the world,” Mudge said. “He also introduced us to some of the work he had done previously with BaSiC Initiative, and I thought it sounded really interesting.”
Mudge received the opportunity to work on a project in Argentina that focused on providing a master urban planning guide that would help a community better integrate public services over time. The BaSiC team also designed and renovated a library and community kitchen.
“It was extremely work intensive—long nights and long days with a lot of group collaboration, which can be exhausting—but in the end it was really rewarding,” Mudge said.
Alan Finch, also a PSU architecture graduate student, worked on a BaSiC project in Ladakh, India. Finch helped design and build shade structures and a visitor center for a remote school located high in the Himalayan Mountains.
“I was really excited because I was having issues in my architectural education,” Finch said. “I didn’t want to design more skyscrapers, I didn’t want to design large housing tracts, I wanted to actually do something and potentially help someone else.”
Finch said in a phone interview that working with the initiative forced him to use the education and training he received at PSU in new and creative ways. The experience also made him reexamine the goals behind higher education as well as his own value system.
“I feel like I got to the heart of my education. I feel that I was shown, through BaSiC Initiative, the core value of service learning; I learn, but I’m helping someone while I’m learning,” Finch said. “I think it gets to the core of what more education should be like.”
According to Palleroni, there are about 56 universities worldwide that are part of the initiative. Some universities, like PSU, take a leadership role. Because Palleroni is now a professor at PSU, the university has become a hub for the initiative’s activities, meaning that PSU students are given priority to be a part of the organization’s projects.
The competition, however, is steep. Palleroni said that only about one-third of applicants are chosen to participate in initiative projects, and PSU students must be able to hold their own against students from MIT, Harvard and top universities in Europe and Asia. Given the initiative’s multidisciplinary approach to community development, roles within the program are not limited to engineering and architecture students, and even undergraduates can apply.
Finch said that the initiative seems to match PSU’s own objectives and goals for students’ educations. “BaSiC Initiative, even though it was started at another school, fits so well at Portland State because PSU’s whole motto is ‘Let Knowledge Serve the City,’ and that’s a direct application of what BaSiC Initiative does,” he said.
Palleroni and his team are currently working on a project in Haiti. The initiative is building an orphanage and a school for more than 800 street orphans, what Palleroni called the “untouchables” of Haitian society. The team also has an Argentinean water-treatment project slated for this summer.
“I actually find the community-based design process exhilarating,” Palleroni said. “I’ve worked for high-end firms and world-leading architects, but the thing I enjoy most is sitting down with a community and figuring out how to build a school out of nothing.”
