About Us

NGO Building 4Humanity

Designing and Reconstructing Communities Association     I   Portugal

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Building 4Humanity (B 4H) is based in Coimbra, Portugal, at the Universitary Institute for Peace and Justice (IUJP),  and was founded in 2013 in the aftermath of the Hayti earthquake reconstruction by a set of 17 practitioners and academics coming from different areas and with a diverse background.

 

Employing an interdisciplinary approach to architecture, joining architects, disaster scientists, sociologists, psychologists, economists, engineers, ecologists, social service technicians and spiritual leaders, both practitioners and researchers, B4H tries to develop the concept of social innovation architecture or architectural design for social innovation.

 

Relying on this holistic ground B4H seeks to investigate participation models that address disaster risk reduction and community resilience and to create solutions to local challenges concerning the Well-Being and the real improvement of the Quality of Life of the population, taking a reference the World Health Organization official definitions. Additionally, B4H started the process of empowerment of men and women to acquire greater levels of expertise in resilient construction or repair of buildings.