Meet Karl Johnson

Well I guess I should talk about myself. I've been working on the Haiti program with Architecture for Humanity since February. The headquarters in San Francisco was getting a lot (a LOT) of calls and emails about the earthquake at that time and a friend of mine volunteering there told me they needed help...French-speaking help. Et alors j'y suis allé, me presenté mes compétences et on m'a demandé rester.

My background is in architecture (a B.Arch from Cal Poly San Luis Obispo) and interdisciplinary design, from the Institute without Boundaries in Toronto. For this unique graduate program 11 folks designed a sustainable rural renewal plan for Costa Rica that offered some keen insight to the kind of work Architecture for Humanity's now doing in Haiti.

I'm not designing so much these days as running communications, blogging, doing support work for our team in Port-au-Prince, which has been to date extremely busy, and coordinating volunteers for our office there. I was down there just now for a few weeks to do some extensive "co-orientation"–experiencing our work first hand and setting up some digital infrastructure for the team, conducting some training sessions on the Awesome power of the Open Architecture Network, etc. I saw so much down there I think I'll have enough to talk about before I get to go back (with any luck!), so keep an eye out for more insider info–and volunteer contributions–on Haiti, its people and of course its recovery. Thanks for reading!

Photo by Tamsin Ford