Three years, two universities, four professors, eighty plus students, four assistants, eleven languages, eighty-nine kids, myriad partners, colleagues, and friends, one site. This is the story of a unique collaboration in Titanyen, Haiti held in place by a vision that would transform an arid, desolate hilltop into a residential school for children orphaned to the street after the earthquake in 2010. The site needed everything: master plans, models, construction booklets, material solutions, as well as buildings. Forced to completely rethink the role of architecture in recovery, we discovered the need for abiding. Abiding is listening x ten; it’s the depths of complicated, ongoing, not-at-all easy conversations that are driven by an unpredictable mix of argument, deference, opportunity, respect, and realism. Abiding also troubled our grasp of what we were responsible for, led us to question whether we knew how to provide the help that was needed, and complicated our sense of time …
