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How did the commission for the Oceana Innovation Hub come about?

XQ Institute, which is part of the Emerson Collective, Laurene Powell Jobs’s impact-investment group, reached out to me. XQ is working with Mia Mottley, the prime minister of Barbados. Mottley, a total rock star, is trying to rethink how her small island nation deals with climate change, sea level rise, and extreme weather.

The innovation hub is a prototype—part of a larger transformation of the school system. It is also where Mottley is reintroducing timber construction, in a country that has been deforested and where timber sourcing is now illegal. She’s thinking, “How do we do so, with a supply chain that we can manage and that can contribute to political agency and economic independence?” Architecture is an answer. But we also must design the system underlying it to be successful.

If the timber isn’t from Barbados, where did it come from?

I called Antón García-Abril and Débora Mesa from Ensamble Studio, who are friends and amazing innovators. They have a new initiative, WoHo, which is about prefabrication. I said, “Could you guys help?” And they jumped in and assisted. The project uses wood from Spain, because that is where Antón and Débora are based.

As the prototype is adapted to other sites in Barbados, is the idea to continue sourcing the wood from Spain?

The goal is to use wood from the Caribbean. We’ve started conversations with Guyana, which is deeply interested in creating that supply chain. So, some of this is about being a catalyst, about showing the way we could drive a new market. But we have to develop that market. And we have to have the middle tier of production, including cut shops, fabrication, and shipping. It is a multiyear initiative.

How is the design and delivery of the innovation hub different from a typical architecture commission?

The Oceana project, like almost every cultural project architects work on, is paid for by a mix of philanthropy, private dollars, and government investment. The difference here is that XQ’s vision is for a prototype for schools nationally, regionally, then globally. It is best seen as a pilot of a multiphased, multisite project. The economics of the prototype are different from a typical architectural commission, so should be thought of more as a product than the time-and-materials compensation that architects usually receive for their labor.

Our goal at AMMA, shown in this first phase in Barbados, is to make projects that shift and redesign entire systems. Ultimately, we need to think about the role of the architect as owner, developer, designer, and fabricator. Instead of responding to an RFP for a typical fee, we created the RFP.

Can you talk about the genesis of the prototype’s form?

There’s an incredible history of this type of construction in Barbados. Chattel houses are small wood structures that were built largely by migrant labor. They could be flat-packed and put on donkey carts and moved from farm to farm. They had pyramidal or jagged gable roofs, and were incredibly porous, letting the air move through them. So, during hurricanes, they wouldn’t collapse. They have elements of modularity, movability, breathability, and environmental resilience.

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The furnishings extend the building’s modular logic, allowing the interior environment to be continuously reconfigured (1 & 2). Photos © Iwan Baan

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The prototype also takes inspiration from Aldo van Eyck and others in the late mid-20th century who were creating adaptable and adjustable systems. The triangle is a fascinating form because of the infinite variety that can emerge from its assembly, as opposed to the standard rectilinear prefabricated module.

Could the module be adapted for other project types?

One idea for Barbados is to build a residential tower out of the modules that would be the economic engine to fund future schools.

Could it work in other parts of the world?

Two dozen schools were burned in the LA wildfires earlier this year. This model is applicable there. How would it work in the LA climate? Pretty well, especially for natural ventilation. Fire risks would have to be addressed, but a lot of fire mitigation is about treatment of the site around the building.

Paired with operable skylights, louvered shutters control the sun while allowing natural ventilation. Photo © Iwan Baan

An 800-student school based on the prototype is under construction at Chelston Park, not far from the innovation hub, but what else is AMMA working on?

I’m working on a memorial in Boston’s Back Bay to Travis Roy, who was an incredible disability-rights activist. I’ve also been working on a master plan for North Adams, Massachusetts, to take down an urban renewal overpass, which basically decimated the downtown. My partnership is not just in the master planning, but also in imagining new development and the financing of that development once the overpass comes down. The arts center MASS MoCA has also brought me on to rethink housing. It has acquired a 1960s school to create living spaces for artists, to give them places to work on their craft and own a portion of their housing. It goes back to that original premise—in the creative industries, we don’t really own our means of production. If we could own it, we could have skin in the game.

Image courtesy AMMA