CAUKIN Studio

Project Name: Naidi Community Hall
Location: Vanua Levu, Fiji
Date Designed: 2018
Date Completed: 2018
Size: 130 sqm
Client: Naqaqa Giving Foundation
Programme: Public Space

ABOUT CAUKIN Studio
CAUKIN Studio approaches architecture as a tool of empowerment that every individual and community should have equal access to. The organisation’s take on social architecture seeks to create better quality spaces for marginalised communities by minimising the economic barriers involved in the undertaking of such projects.

Designs are conceived around United Nation’s sustainable development goals such as quality education, climate action and responsible consumption, and like the Naidi community hall, holds significant cultural value for the communities involved.

Ultimately, CAUKIN studio is a for-profit organisation, but it successfully proves that pursuing architectural projects that champion social causes need not necessarily be mutually exclusive with the economic goals of a private design firm.

ABOUT Naidi Community Hall
In the Naidi village of Vanua Levu, a community hall that previously served a total of 400 people from 75 households in the community have been deemed unsafe for use for 7 years. The new community hall by CAUKIN studio took the form of a theatre stage in lieu with the community’s common passion for the performing arts, and seeks to satisfy both the functional needs and preserve cultural continuity for the Naidi villagers.

Naidi Community Hall

Interview with PEASLEY Joshua and MARSHALL Harrison of CAUKIN Studio
Insights and Takeaways
1. HOW HAS THE CURRENT COVID-19 PANDEMIC AFFECTED THE STUDIO’S ONGOING PROJECTS? HAS IT ALSO SPURRED YOUR TEAM AS A WHOLE TO RETHINK THE WAY SOCIAL OR COMMUNITY SPACES ARE BEING DESIGNED?
The situation has definitely affected us, such that we have postponed all our international projects for the next year and by doing that it has given us a lot more free time to think about how we practice as a company as an organization, how we can increase our impact, how we can present ourselves in a more fluent manner which is more reflective of our ethos, so we spent the first few months of that doing a lot of work to improve our way of thinking, and our approach to architecture, moving back into designing spaces when everything sort of picks up again. In terms of how that influences built spaces now and community spaces, I think it will have an influence on certain practices and the way they are being designed and how they put in that emphasis of how a well-designed space can influence your mental health is quite important as people are becoming more aware of it now after spending months and months inside of their own homes, suddenly you cannot really escape and spend all your time outside or doing whatever. The mindset is that I am stuck in a space now for a few months, let us try and make it as nice as possible. A lot of people are aware of their living conditions now as compared to previously, shining some light on the importance of mental health, causing us to question how you perceive your surroundings and how does that make you feel, the need to have a clear space that is not cluttered or very claustrophobic. Something people are really starting to value is the access to exterior spaces, outdoor spaces and how they connect to the outside and wildlife. Most of the communities we work with are rural already so a lot of things we are discussing in the UK with our colleagues and friends may not be directly applicable but as we start to move forward into working in more urban settings, where next year we have a project in Argentina and Buenos Aires, that will be a very dense urban setting area, and that will be probably where it will affect most of our design strategy and making sure that the project has that kind of access to open air spaces, roof terraces, garden spaces, places for people to spend time together when possible but also breakout spaces where people can be in much smaller groups and have their own individual conversations or have some alone time as well. It has definitely highlighted the need for connectivity and what happens when you don’t have that connectedness anymore and the importance of having phases. Once the coronavirus starts to ease up, and hopefully we find a vaccine, there will definitely be a real urge to reconnect and I think as great as it is having Zoom and Google Hangouts, there is still kind of something that is missing, it is never going to be the same as a face to face interaction and if architecture as a part of design can provide a way to provide that, then that would be an ideal situation.

2. ON A MORE PERSONAL NOTE, OVER THE YEARS WHAT KIND OF ARCHITECTS HAVE HAD AN IMPACT ON YOU? AND WHAT LITERATURE DO THE BOTH OF YOU GET YOUR INSPIRATIONS FROM?
"When we were starting out and even now we are continually there is a network of architects and practices which inspire us. One thing which we are doing during this coronavirus period is sort of this digital workshop that enables us to be looking at our educational side of things and allowed us to get the architects which inspire us and to get them to take part in the workshop. To name a couple, ASSEMBLE has always been very inspiring, they started out in a very similar way to us, as a group of young graduates and they do a lot of projects which were self-initiated in London, and off the back of that project, they decided to actually formulate themselves into an actual organization, creating bigger and all these amazing projects. So for us as students to see somebody else who have already done it and done it very successfully, it was really inspiring how they continue to push themselves to adapt, and to look at new ways to organize their business structure, making sure they have not just plateaued at a certain stage and continue to implement different kinds of community projects. Other practices which inspire us are Matt+Fiona who are also based in the UK, they do a lot of work with children and young people, and initiating the architecture education at a much younger stage, getting young kids involved in creating spaces around them, so they work really heavily doing design workshops at school with the kids, designing the playgrounds or playscapes and then they will get to design a building as well which is a process that is very aligned with our ethos whilst targeting a slightly different demographic, which has been interesting to see their techniques and their methods of doing that. In terms of a more international development sector, there have been a few which have inspired us, from the start of Article 25 they have been very supportive of us and it is quite interesting to see their route, having been working for a long time, they have expanded to so many different countries, something like 90 different countries, which is crazy to think that a single organization can tap into so many different communities and work with so many different characters. And along a sort of similar line, BC Architects and studies, what makes them so interesting is their research branch. Apart from operating as architects in their home country and internationally, they also do a lot of research into materials and vernacular processes, especially the medium of rammed Earth, that is something we would love to do moving forward in the future, into having a sort of a research branch where we are able to explore into a lot of depth an area of interest and apply that into our buildings later on in the project. In a sense having a wider impact on a single building providing a body of knowledge and experience of the material which could be applied to thousands of projects. That is kind of an overview into the practices which kind of inspire us.
In terms of literature, they are usually related to other practices into other ways of practicing architecture, there is a book that always comes up in conversations when we were still starting out and it still does now called spatial agency, and which provides insights on how a network of interesting practices run their business and that again is a good reference point to get inspired by and find new practices that are like minded and have similar ambition.

3. WHAT ADVICE DO YOU HAVE FOR ARCHITECTS WHO ARE ABOUT TO GRADUATE SOON?
For architects who are graduating now, I would encourage them if they have an ambition or idea which can be related to architecture, where they are community based or dealing with social impact groups or it is setting up your own installation artwork. I would encourage you to pursue those aspirations instead of falling into the traditional route, I think people often doubt themselves by having not enough confidence or enough experience, and always think that they should just start working in practice for a few years first and then pursue it later on. But one year becomes five and becomes ten, and they never end up starting whatever their initial dream was and I would probably say that being young as a fresh graduate is probably the perfect time for you to start something, and yes you would not have the experience as you would do later in life but, you would have more time, energy and passion if you were to do it now, and you will learn so much from doing that, you will learn from being on the job in pursuing those different routes and different practices. But if your aspirations is to go to the more traditional route, that is perfect as well for you to create your own career path and aspirations. There is always a way, and I would also recommend you trying to find a group of like-minded group of people, it would be hard for you to self-motivate if it is just you on your own. What made CAUKIN successful and allowed us to continue is because we started as a group with the five of us at the start which was quite large, but it meant that we could distribute the workload, we all had different ideas, all were accountable and everybody kept their motivation up and enthusiasm. But if it was just me on my own, it would be very easy to push tasks off to the side and eventually it never happens. So if you know people that have the same ideas, it would be a good way for you to start things.

Interview Transcript
Q1: We would like to start off by asking the both of you a little about how your studio came about – we understand that the both of you were still architecture students when the studio was founded, which seems to be rather unconventional as we typically see the idea of starting a practice to be mainly reserved only for a more mature stage of our careers. Having said that, what were some of your experiences in the early years of the practice?

It was definitely not the most conventional way of starting a practice –when we started out, we did not have the intention of it turning into our full-time job. It started off with one-off projects, and the ambition to start a practice came from an urge to gain experience but in a way that wasn’t just sitting behind a desk throughout our summer and doing an internship in the more traditional way. The idea came to contact charities or NGOs all over the world and see if there are any opportunities to get in contact with them and put our architecture education in good use. Back at the time we obviously had very limited experiences, qualifications, or portfolio works, so it was definitely very naïve of us to have this ambition; but luckily we came across a charity that put their trust in us and from there we began this project as a group of friends and architecture students. It went quite successfully, and I think the most we learnt from that project was the value we could add to the project because of what we can learn from working with the community, and the local skill and knowledge that the community has. We found that there was a really great knowledge experience for everybody involved, and this is something that we wanted to offer other students. We also knew that it was something we really enjoyed and wanted to keep doing and progress into more projects, to make bigger and better things. From there, we decided to start running more projects each summer, and to find a way in which we can do them in a more sustainable way, that wouldn’t force us to spend most of our time fundraising or doing a lot of logistical work. It evolved quite a lot from the first project which was quite informal to a more organised approach where we have 6 key stakeholders that allow us to run these projects now in a more successful manner. So the first of which is a local NGO partner; we would partner with a charity within the host country and they would be responsible for identifying the needs of the community, building up that sort of trust and network within the local country, organising local logistics, also funding raising for materials and equipment. The second stakeholder is the local community itself, who are involved right from the very beginning, from the brief making process and the design process, making sure that they have the sense of ownership over the building, inputting all their knowledge and skills into making sure that the building is actually what they want and need. We then got the sponsors and owners who are an extension of our network and the NGO’s network, and the other people are involved either in person or financially, such as helping with the costs of materials, or it could be people providing their services such as engineers or environmental design specialists. Then there’s the international design participants of the design workshops and the construction workshops, and the architecture teams all over the world. They bring their own knowledge and experience from their education, and in return they gain on-site skills and see that process from laying the foundation to a built project. Then there’s the local skill workers – we work with the NGOs to identify who in the community would be best based to act as site project managers, people who already have the experience and competency, and their job would be to both educate us, the students and younger members of the community, to make sure that everybody is competent with the skill level and employability (to participate in the project). Finally there’s us, who act as facilitators, and our role in the project then really becomes the overseeing of the stakeholders, the design process, the construction process, making sure everybody is involved, that the community is heard, the NGO is heard.. and to put all of those pieces together. ,br>

Yeah I think as Harrison has said it was quite an unconventional way to start a practice, and as he has also mentioned that it wasn’t exactly that intentional. I think that because we were young and fairly inexperienced and naïve, that it meant that we did not let some of the risks get in the way or even considered what they were - so that naivety kind of helped us break the mold and get started.

First of all, the building we emphasize is production behavior and participatory rather than consumer behavior. Especially in post-disaster reconstruction, the matter of allowing residents to participate is beyond the general mainstream idea. We didn’t know until we entered the disaster area that 70% of human housing has nothing to do with what we generally call the construction profession. What the existing construction system in the market can do is not aimed at the 70% of human beings. That field is blank.

The so-called 70% of human settlements, regardless of post-disaster or non-disaster, the problems encountered are the same, but the problems of housing in the disaster area must be solved in a short time, which makes it more compressed. Most of the houses of mankind are built by residents, but there is no such thing in our knowledge and education system.

Q2: The studio has a mission statement “democratic education, quality design, accessible for all”, which reflects the broad focus that you guys have with regard to the community-focused, bottom up approach towards design. How did the firm arrive at this common goal and vision, and how has this been carried out in your past projects?

It was something that has definitely evolved over time and we’ve always had this idea as our ethos, but it has changed and morphed as the years have gone on. This version of it is fairly recent, but we’ve right from the very beginning of the first project, being a charitable project and working with an NGO… we straightaway realised how much architecture and design and engineering could help enhance the sort of spaces that people live in, in communities where people do not necessarily has the access to these skills or these resources. We knew that we wanted to tie that common theme throughout all of our projects and making sure that we maintain that kind of identity with all the communities that we are working with, and I think the three points – education, design and access, kept recurring and coming up in conversations, becoming a core part of our projects. The first theme is education, and for us to really scale the amount of impact we have, there needs to be a knock-on effect more than just the physical building itself. Through education we are able to do that, and we can use our projects as a vehicle to run these workshops to upskill people, such that beyond the individual project we can continue to have a knock-on effect for whatever future building that is constructed in that area, which increases the mobility of the community and increases the sustainable income. That goes on to causing further impacts on children who are studying at the schools and hopefully inspire some of the younger generation to take on careers in engineering or architecture – so the possibilities are endless as we hope. In terms of the quality design statement, I think that’s a reflection of how we try to add value to a project, to rather than simply building the typical standard facility that they would otherwise do themselves. It’s really about challenging how we can use our network, people and resources to add as much value as possible, so it may be looking at engineering to make our structures stronger against natural disasters, or working with environmental design specialists to use passive design methods to improve lighting in a classroom. So that is where the quality design statement is coming from and reflected on what we are interested in over here. Finally, the access to all statement is a reflection of how was want to make sure that quality design should not be something that is just for 1% of the people. I think a lot of architects and students fall into the trap of working for big practices that are designing these luxury homes that cost millions of pounds for a very small percentage of people around the world. This wealth of knowledge and experience that (architects) have; only a small percentage of people are can really experience it. That’s why we talk about broadening that reach and make sure that people are gaining access to this kind of knowledge and experience.

It is essentially to give as many people as possible the tools to shape the spaces around them through educating them and designing the structure, and yeah that is kind of our mantra. It’s something that has always been done through our projects but we’ve never really put it into words until more recently, and the lockdown has given us more opportunity to do that, to think more critically about what we want and how we want to present ourselves, and how words can be used to do that.

Q3: We have noticed that most of your projects have aspirations that are aligned with the United Nations sustainable development goals – Is there an evaluation criteria set for the projects, to access the degree in which the goals have been met?

Yeah that’s a good question – definitely as we’ve developed as a practice that has become much more important to us, which is how we measure the impact of a project, and how we select projects. As we started out, especially as a very young practice with very little experience, we had to take on as many opportunities as possible as they came to us, and the amount of thought that went into sustainable development while doing it was probably quite low on our agenda. Now that we’ve got more opportunities and more projects coming our way, we are able to be a lot more selective and work out where we have the most impact and the most value as well. For us we have three main things that we look for in a project: one of which would be the social impact – how it would impact the wider community and have a improve the general quality of life, so that would be something more like education , a health centre or a community hall. The second thing we look for would be economic impact –something that could increase the economic independence or sustainable income for the community. In 2019 last year we built an oil processing plant in Fiji in a small island called Batiki where they are now able to increase their manufacturing of coconut oil in a dedicated facility and Increase their efficiency rate, which therefore increased their sales and increased the sustainable income for the island as well. That’s something we are looking at increasingly to implement on our projects, and make sure to have an impact that is wider and bigger than just the project itself. The third thing that we look to do is to either have a lower economic impact on our buildings, or a positive impact. So that’s making sure all our materials are sourced sustainably and locally, making sure that they have a very low embodied carbon energy, making sure that our building when being used does not require a lot of energy or upkeep or maintenance. We make sure to take on projects that have an environmental agenda – so last year we did our first major project in the UK, where we were looking to conserve the native dark honeybees. It was a pavilion structure that has live beehives, 25 000 bees, sitting on a site called the Eden project. The purpose of the structure was to increase the awareness of the public about some of the issues, and to demonstrate some of the ways that they can help as well. That’s something that we want to try and push increasingly as we move forward, as we take on more projects that will have an impact on the climate crisis. Something that we are always battling with as architects and the people that build is that it is so difficult to make sure that you are having a positive environmental impact, that’s worth having a conversation about.

Yeah generally as a practice as well, from a project to project basis we want to make sure that there are impact targets, to try and measure the progress and successively on the practice itself. Maybe it is not such an official measure but its looking at things like how many projects we are working on, what is the scale of the projects, where are they located, all these sort of matrix that form ways on how to understand the practice is going and in what direction it is going. We keep track of these things quite closely, so even things like numbers of participants that have worked on our projects both locally and internationally, where they come from.. these are some of the points that we keep track of regularly

This year we started on the impact report - it is something that we are going to look for every single year out so that we can keep track of what is well, whether we have reach our targets from the previous year, and if we have not, why that might be, and also to team up with external bodies to conduct their own evaluation of our projects as well. It is one thing to do an internal impact report, but it is so much more valuable to get an external body to take their independent research and going into much more depth than we would have time to do.

Q4: After some researching, we have seen that the studio has a history of working on with projects of unique cultural context, notably in Fiji (eg. Batiki coconut oil process plant, Naweni kindergarten, unique air bnb) - how are these communities identified? We would also like to find out if most of the studio’s projects are self proposed, or are they conducted in response to a client’s brief?

It is a mixture - the majority is through NGOs, so typically, especially when we started out we would stick to contacting NGOs and charities, and start a discussion with them about what we do, what they do, and work to find out where we can have the most impact in the communities that they currently work with. So by partnering with the charities, they would have the kind of broad knowledge and extensive research of wherever they are working be it at Fiji or Zambia, so they will know where is in the most need, what they need, have the trust from the community already built up from their years of working there. Then we will work with them to come up with a brief making or design workshop at the start of the project, and that would really help us understand the way they currently live, what systems are in place, and where architecture could play a role in increasing their quality of life. There are also projects which we have self-initiated. In Fiji about two years ago, we did a post occupancy survey on one of our kindergartens that we built in 2017, and we have seen that the attendance had gone from 8 students all the way up to 35 students and that they are now turning away potential pupils. That obviously proved to us that our project was successful, but it also highlighted that it could have been more flexible and bigger. So we went back to the NGO and discussed this issue with them on what we can do moving forward in terms of inclusion: we can build a second classroom that utilised the second teacher that they hired and they can run two classes simultaneously to increase their attendance. That was I guess a semi self-initiated project in partnership with a charity, and then the even further stage where we have come up with an entire idea ourselves would be more in relation to how we started working in the UK. I think there is a common idea that working with charities and global issues in different areas in the world or different countries, but right now here in the UK there are plenty of issues as well that needs to be addressed such as mental health or homelessness, so that’s really where we are looking to self-initiate projects where we already have a good idea of the context, the locations and the issues. Even in that scenario we will come up with a brief and some grand ideas and then we would go and take that to a charity or to a funding body or a potential partner, and so there is always going to be that network of stakeholders involved in the project. It just depends on what comes first, if the charity contacts us with an interesting project that they want to do, or if we contact them with a project that we’ve been working on. I think there needs to be a mixture as we move forward, although increasingly it is charities that is reaching out to us first with something that they’ve got in mind.

Q5: More specifically, we are currently doing a case study on the Naidi community hall, was it self-proposed or if not, who was the client?

That was in partnership with the Naqaqa Foundation Charity in Fiji. We previously worked with them on two projects in 2017, and at the end of the projects in 2017, we spent a few days travelling around other villages to identify where we can have an impact and on a few projects in the following year of 2018. So we came across Naidi Village which is very close to the charity headquarters and somewhere which they have worked with quite extensively beforehand. So they have already had that connection and knowledge, and have already identified that community seven years ago, looking to construct a new community hall for a long time but they did not have the funds to do so, so that’s where the idea of the project came about. Then the Naqaqa Foundation partnered up with the Jazmin fund which is an extended branch of their charity to help fund it and fundraised for that build. Essentially, the clients were the Naqaqa Foundation and the Jazmin Fund on the charity side of it, also the Naidi village who are the people who are ultimately going to be using it, and it has to be perfect and right for them. In essence, most of the interactions with the clients and community, are done in the capacity as the end users. While things that relates to the funding and fundraising would be with the NGO and charity departments.

Q6: With the international nature of many of your projects, what are some of the challenges you have had to overcome? For instance, language or cultural barriers that the team has had to get accustomed to or work around?

We have been quite fortunate in a sense that a majority of places that we have worked there has been a level of English which is fairly good, good enough for us to get by. But on some projects it has helped massively to have somebody who can speak both English to me and the local language to the community. One of our projects in Vanuatu last year, we had our charity partner from the Tanbok Project, Rachel, she was on the project with us for the entire duration, and she previously lived in Vanuatu for a few years and had learnt the local language fluently. And even though the community could speak English at a fairly good level but having her there with the command of the native language, it has helped her to be able to really breakdown any kind of barriers there might be and build up that relationship much quicker. As well as getting a much better insight into exactly what their needs were and exactly what were their thoughts on the project going forward. That was really invaluable to have, and ideally in any project it would be helpful to have somebody like that. I think in a more extreme scenario was during a research project in rural India, where we had stayed in a small village for a few nights where there was completely zero English whatsoever. That was our very first experience working with a community that had no English (speakers) at all, that was definitely interesting and a sort of a learning curve, luckily we had a translator with us, but during the communication process so we were able to find out about their experiences through the translator, we did not know if this put up any barriers. They are still able to express their thoughts and wants to the charity directly as well which will then be relayed to us, but it does make the process a little longer.

Q7: Could you share some of the instances where conversations with the community have directly inspired the design of the project? Does this usually occur organically, or through structured design workshops conducted by the studio?

It certainly happens both organically and through the workshops. Typically, it happens more often organically. Usually it happens from us being there ourselves, especially when revisiting old projects time and time again. In terms of the design workshops, this time last year in late September we finished a project in Ranwas village in Vanuatu, we travelled up to Tanbok area which was where we were supposed to be building this summer but has been postponed to next summer because of the coronavirus. We conducted a design workshop with the community there to work out what they needed. We knew they needed a school building, and we knew it was going to be a classroom library space but we wanted to know if there was anything else which we could add to it and also where it was going to go on the whole site, what they wanted it to look like, what kind of materials they were expecting. And quite interestingly the site that was selected wouldn’t be your first assumption as the best site of the build. It was right on a big drop on the edge of a hill and even though there are flat spaces around but I think they sort of quite like the idea of having more than one storey, having a double level space, which was something that was quite rare and unusual to really find that in any village. Especially something that is home built, or self-built rather. I think that they may have taken a liking to a recent building which was constructed a few miles from their village which was a slightly bizarre multi-storey structure, and they must have seen it and been like “oh it would be quite cool to have something like that”. So that was the site that was selected because by having that sort of split level already there on the ground level. And you could utilize the classroom up on the top floor and then a set of stairs onto a larger space. And sort of where a mezzanine level can sort of be, with people walking below it, creating a few playful elements which we could explore. Another benefit to that site as well, was that there was a lot of space underneath the building for the kids to have their lunchtime space. Something which they talked about was that during the event of raining during lunchtime, they will have a place to chill there to have their lunch or between lessons. So that was something I wanted to include in my design, to have the overhang which meant that we could incorporate that with no extra cost. As the budget of the project is extremely tight so it is about getting as much space out of these buildings and materials as we can. That is quite a good example of how a design workshop specifically influences the design and when it happens organically it is during the construction process. We typically only design about 70 to 80 percent of the actual project and that would be things like the structure and engineering side, any materials which we will need to order in advance and those kind of bigger picture ideas. And then we will leave the rest to be designed on site, like the doors, windows, stairs or whatever it may be and that allows us to handover ownership to the community, where people will come up with all kinds of interesting doors or cladding or interiors, and that’s where all of the organic decisions really happen.