Vaissnavi Shukl
Afghanistan has been identified as a post conflict country, meaning it’s a country where conflict or war has officially ended, marking the beginning of a reconstruction phase. Like several other post conflict countries, Afghanistan received foreign donations, aid and assistance in its rebuilding process and peacekeeping efforts, international organisations and troops from various countries entered Afghanistan to help with the reconstruction, often by funding and executing infrastructure projects which would benefit the Afghan society. These projects often took the form of schools, hospitals as well as police training academies and counter-narcotics centres. Our guest today, Francisco Brown has worked in Afghanistan for half a decade, building many of these projects as an architect for the United Nations, International Organization for Migration. To be honest, when I first met Francisco, or ‘Pacho’, as he likes to be called, his bubbly personality gave no clues about all the incredible work he had done during his time in Kabul. Not to be too assuming, but Pacho is quite modest about his work, so I took this as an opportunity to ask him everything I always wanted to

My name is Vaissnavi Shukl and this is Architecture Off- Centre, a podcast where we highlight unconventional design practices and research projects that reflect the emerging discourses within the design discipline and beyond. Architecture of Center features conversations with exceptionally creative individuals who have extrapolated the traditional fields of Art, Architecture, Planning, landscape, and urban design.

Pancho Brown
It’s a nice, crisp, cold morning. So it’s rather chilly. Chilly, but good. Very good, very sunny.

Vaissnavi Shukl
Tell us a little bit about your background. And what led you to Afghanistan?

Pancho Brown
Well, I’m originally from Nicaragua. I studied architecture there and my undergrad. And it’s very interesting that there’s two historical connections that actually pushed me to Afghanistan. There’s the 2008 economic crisis that destroyed the American economy, rippled down to Nicaragua, where I was a design architect working designing beach houses for rich Americans. So that business went belly up, and I was suddenly out of a job. And the second geopolitical, or like geo historical thing that happened was the 2008 China earthquake in the Sichuan Province, what, like this is very interesting, because this massive earthquake, wood, wood, dozens of schools fell down and killed hundreds of kids was a massive alarm in the humanitarian world, that we’re doing infrastructure, including projects in the Afghanistan that Americans were funding. So Americans at some point, we’re like, “Hey, aren’t we doing hundreds of schools in Afghanistan? How are those schools being built because there was just a massive earthquake in China, who killed hundreds of kids, and this will be a catastrophe, politically speaking, and in any way as well, that to have dozens of kids buried in brand new American funded schools”, right?

So they did a forensic study in all of these brand new schools in Afghanistan, they realised they were shared Americans when panicking, and they opened this huge infrastructure organisation within the International Organisation of Migration, IOM, which is a U.N. organisation for migration, but because of the good connections with the Americans, they open this massive multi million dollar infrastructure programme in Kabul, Afghanistan to design and build projects that were and this is the big key American Code compliant. Let me repeat this. Every project that we design and build in Afghanistan in the second poorest country in the world, after seven years of war, have to be American Code compliant, meaning that that hospital could easily be in Mississippi or Washington DC or in Bamiyan or in Badakhshan, right? So you can imagine the charge, like making a hospital code compliant in America is expensive and challenging. Can you imagine in a war ravaged zone? So it was a very interesting challenge. So those two massive situations pushed me to be out of a job and looking for a job and finding this guy at a Christmas party in Nicaragua. And we were just having a drink. And at some point, he was like, “What are you doing?” I said, “I’m looking for a job.” He said, “I’m really looking for architects in Afghanistan”, kind of like a joke. And I was like, Ooh, I’m interested. And he was like, for real? And I was like, Yeah, for real. Send me your CV and I sent him the CV. I was 23. So you, you cannot be more than 25 to work for the UN in Afghanistan, because Afghanistan was the what was, I mean, each country had his own category of danger. Afghanistan was like number five. Iraq and Afghanistan were the most dangerous places on earth, according to the United Nations system of safety and security. Bottom line, I apply. I couldn’t get a job as an architect, but I got a job as an intern. And I…off I go on February 29, 2009 to Kabul, Afghanistan. Yeah, it was truly incredible. Then I got a job as an intern and quickly like six months later, I was already like an international architect. I got upgraded. I started getting upgraded because nobody was able to do the job. And we made these incredible team with Mustafa Nuri, an American African architect running the show, and we made this incredible team and were able to do the impossible. And, and, and it was really fun.

Vaissnavi Shukl
Wait so so so when In a matter of a couple of months, you went from designing houses for rich people in Nicaragua, to designing in a, quote unquote, “post conflict zone”. So you were the project architect, and you were in charge of conceptualising. A lot of institutions that an architect would perhaps barely ever encounter in their professional practice, let alone in what you know, the IOM calls a ‘Post Conflict Zone’. And you ended up designing and building the National Police Academy in Kabul, Counter Narcotic headquarters in Kandahar, the Provincial Justice Centre in Bama and the Forensic Laboratory in Kabul and a bunch of other stuff. And when I was just like going through your stuff, and I don’t think we talked about it before, when, you know, we were at the GSD. But what strikes me about the programmes of these buildings is that they’re directly related to law enforcement in one way or another. And a lot of architects around the world, especially today, and especially in the US, are very, very off offering their services to governmental organisations that engage in enforcement operations, right? But in the place where you were practising, it was not only essential to have these operations, but almost urgent, right? Can you talk a little bit about what your process as a designer was to contextualise these buildings and spatially think through all the challenges the buildings and the users would face in a conflict zone?

Pancho Brown
Absolutely. Wow, that’s a great question. Vaissnavi, wow, smack in the face. Cool. I like it. What we need to understand is that these, I mean, the building here was, there were two important things, we were on an ongoing conflict zone to begin with, in the United Nations working and doing infrastructure projects. Working under a lot of pressures. It was… I’ll explain later about the process, but it was interesting that the building was shaped by so many geopolitical circumstances in context, that at the end of the day, the building was formed by so many power dynamics that are historical. And it varies project to project and donor to donor. So let me just very quickly about this. So we were, like a design office within the UN, right? Design-build, so we design and build the project.

Vaissnavi Shukl
So you were the contractors and the designers?

Pancho Brown
Yes, but the construction was through construction contractor. So we were like more like the managers, we were like, if, like, if you will be doing all of the design build processes in America, you know, including construction administration, right? But you will not be profiting from the bricks and mortars and you know, that will be a company, you know, kind of x y z Construction Company, which was a whole deal, because they had to be Afghans and etc, etc. you know. So the design process, depending on the donor because the money was interesting, because the money came from an international donor. You have to deal with the with all the layers of government in Afghanistan, including the ministry, which were the executive power, but then the government, the governor, there was another type of power, and then the religious leader, and then the mayor, and then the community leaders, and then the donor partner, which is the money, where is the money coming from but then the UN and his own framework of legalities. So everything was really a balancing act of, of negotiations, and just to get things built up. So it was incredibly challenging that everything was the like design diplomacy. Because it was, I mean, and I have so many funny stories, because it was, I mean, and everything started with the American projects, but these weren’t hospitals in schools. So it was, we didn’t have to do much with the design were pretty much pretty much horrible. But they were so challenging, because it was there were supposed to be American compliant, very snobby. And Vaissnavi what we have learned, we, from the, from the, from the Global South, as the Global North have deemed us, is that when you try to impose these, these rules, nothing good comes from it. Because it’s just more expensive, which is more dramatic, you’re understanding what’s going on in terms of local construction material is not only a poetic thing, it’s just an economic thing, you know, and, and everything. Anyways, it was always a lot of negotiation to design and build these projects because they have to be code compliant with American projects. That means that they were very expensive, that budgets were tight. On top of that, you need to talk to local builders and the local, your local partners to match. I have so many funny stories, but one of the stories, for example, like doing a women’s hospital where you have to segregate the waiting rooms between men and women, became one of the most enriching and complicated conversations that I had. Because at some point, he was frustrated, because, you know, the governmental partner was that we need a segregated waiting room, and I’m like, okay, but what about if the woman is sick and the man needs to be next to her, because she’s, she needs to be next to somebody, you know, and, and who’s gonna be better than her partner, you know, like, we start having these conversations about the reality, not only political, but like, this is a hospital, you know, you’re gonna have all of these situations. And it was always very challenging to design and build. So everything just went through a lot of design processes and negotiations. And then the construction process was dealing with the horrendous corruption that a country like Afghanistan has. And then during the construction process, you have to deal with, with actual terrorist attacks, you know, when because at the end of the day, these new buildings for some people they represent and they were symbols of the imperial power of the military that was occupying their country was the Americans and NATO. The thing it was crazy, because the political situation is like, at some points that were like, like 40 country armies in Afghanistan with bases. I’m talking about, at some point, when I was there, they were like 11, or 12, active bases in each different city, from the Europeans from NATO, Spanish, Italians, Brits, Koreans. And you see this a context that is so militarised, and you’re trying to build something, you’re having your luck. By the way our team was just three or four foreigners with 50 national teams of engineers, and architects. So we were a national team, we were like, “We are not going to have Americans and Europeans architects”, I mean, this is because first of all, it’s too expensive. Second of all, what’s the point, right? Like, I want to know, that guy who knows where to get the cheaper bread, you know, what like, we, at the end of the day, are, what we were trying to do was to build a team, where we can just leave, as we did, I left and the team carry on. And it was like this incredible, incredibly organised team of architects and engineers that half of them sadly and good, they applied to American schools, and they got accepted. The other day, my electrical engineer, there was just like, super young, when we invited him to work with us. Like, he sent me a picture of his cheque for like three times what I ever did in my highest salary. And I am like, “You motherfucker, like bravo, you earn it you earned.” And that was the kind of people that you work in there, they’re like, they’re like, they really risk their life to be working with foreigners, and they really believe in the mission of construction, because that is the other side of the Vaissnavi. A bit of a, we were speaking off camera before about the power of architecture, you know, and, and, and there’s a lot of disenfranchisement with the humanitarian world and the UN because a lot of BS, a lot of bureaucracy and how much impact is actually happened on the ground. And I was as a beneficiary of humanitarian aid as a Nicaraguan I understand the good and the bad and the ugly from this world. And how to be an active actor of change from that perspective. And I think is just is just about who is there? I mean, is there a country man, and you’re likely to engage in the most respectful and in the most wide ear open approach. But the most beautiful thing was that what we were doing was the building, it was tangible. You can touch it, it wasn’t, it was a window, it was a ceiling. It was a shelter, it was a, it was a room that will have a Women’s Centre in my manner, it will be a police academy that will train all of these officers, civilian officers that we needed in a country that more than ever needed. Civil civilian stability. You know, you were talking about that we do a lot of projects on the law enforcement. It was actually bigger than that. That was mostly because we were working as well with the United Nation office for drugs and crime. Because this is very funny, it was wrong infrastructure promos run by this European architect that understood the power of architectural design. So he knew that he needed to put it up with a team of good architects to make good buildings, right. You know, it was like, at the end of the day a building costs money, a good building costs money, a bad building costs money, Vaissnavi. I mean, it’s like you, but it matters. I mean, you spent $1 trillion in the war of Afghanistan at the end of the day, I don’t know when that money went to, but I know that what I did went to a shelter, right, and it gives me a lot of a lot of peace without accepting enormous shortcomings of that war of the business behind it, of the, of all the mistakes, geopolitical mistakes that Americans and Europeans have made with Africans. And I’m from Nicaragua, living in Afghanistan. I mean, the whole experience was surreal, right? Because I was like, I understood what it was to, to, to be in a state of war, of active conflict of people dying all the time, all the time. It’s just terrible.

Vaissnavi Shukl
So knowingly or unknowingly, you coined a term that I have latched on to you, you call it design diplomacy. And I guess, when you’re talking about designing the Women’s Hospital, you’re also talking about, you know, negotiating your own values, while cultural values and your ethics as a designer with looking at a place or designing for a context that has a completely different set of values, and aspirations and ethics in that sense, like the way gender operates, and the way religion operates. And I’m sure it was also like a learning curve, too. Yeah, do not like to come with.I mean, bias is, again, I think, doesn’t do justice, but come from a foreign context and not have that Saviour complex, you know, when you’re designing in these places. It somehow requires you to humble down and perhaps know that there’s so much to absorb before you put pen to paper and design something which is actually going to be tangible. And, when you actually look at those buildings, you do see that while they are American code compliant, they would not be buildings built in America, I mean, maybe you can build would not one because the climate is so different. So you’re, you know, you’re seeing this, like stark, blank facades with minimum openings, you’re seeing these really high compound walls. Again, because you’re designing in a context where you can’t leave things open, right? You can’t expose yourself, you can’t expose the building to, you know, other external forces that might just come tomorrow and bomb the whole thing and, you know, turn it into rubble. But the other thing I mean, when you look at programmes, and you’re talking about schools, and these, these police training academies, one of your projects that really stood out to me was the display room for Counter Narcotics Academy. And it seemed to me in one way that it was following the topology of an exhibition space slash a museum of sorts, but it was this room, as you did say it was but I don’t know, just tell me about it. I mean, what went into it? And, again, this is a programme that you would perhaps never encounter, like ever, nobody’s gonna ask you to design a display room for narcotics like how do you identify drugs, and you know, whatever goes into it, but to me, that was unheard of. I never knew something like this would I mean, I haven’t even seen it in movies. So I have literally like, no reference point.

Pancho Brown
Yeah. And, before I get into that particular project, which I think it’s, it’s great, it’s a great case study. It’s important also to acknowledge that I love living in Afghanistan. And I’ve learned so much from a culture that even though the terrorism in the end, this security was a problem. It was not even, it was not even the number one thing that we were dealing with. And I think that was what makes it rich that Afghans have so many other layers of problems, but also so many other layers of opportunities that has any country in conflict and in its own making has to get out of. It’s also a country full of richness that I found so exciting and so exhilarating and so rich. And bear in mind that when you make those distinctions about me arriving as a foreigner is like, there’s also a massive difference between you and me in that way. I mean, you come from a very diverse country, you know, like India has a lot of races, a lot of religions, a lot of ethnicities, you, you grow up understanding differences. They want I come from a very very monocultural country, like 98% of people are Catholic and Christian. racially, we have Afro descendants, which is a minority who are also kind of geographically segregated, you know. So I come from a country that is pretty monotonous in terms of diversity, religious, cultural language. And I come to this plays out, so that everybody have their own razor on it nice at their own tribe, their own language, woman and the man and the religious things, and then the war, and you have all these layers, that you need to be so careful to dribble, you also need to get the job done. Yeah. And designing is hard in New York, anywhere, in Tokyo. There’s not a single place in the world where a designer arrived, and is like, “Oh”. That is the beauty and the complexity of it. I mean, the thing is, like, the shit that I had to deal with in Afghanistan was very different, like you do not train for that, you know. So and a lot to do have to do with making relationships and talking to people. And and, and wiggling your way in understanding that your mission was the building. That at the end of the day, your politics or your own sense of values, might never meet the middle point. I sat down Vaissnavi to never shade the existence of our building, meaning they will blow the whole thing up. And with people that have nothing to do with me, nothing to do with my value, that pretty much represents, pretty much the opposite. And you understand like, you know, right now, I just need that building to stand up there. And I want you to understand why that is important. Forget about me, or my values, or the people who is buying your country. Right now. It’s about the building, I really need you to keep the building up for this, this, this and this reason, believe me. So just created that level of trust people, how can you ask for trust from Afghans to foreigners after everything that has happened to them? Africans have been invaded since the dawn of time, there has not been Listen to me. There has not been any Empire in the modern and old world that has not invaded that country is ridiculous, from Alexander the Great to Genghis Khan, to the Mughals, to the British, to the Russia, to the Soviets to the America, you know what I mean, like, everybody, but it’s it’s a country that has been that has been that has confronted foreigners through conflict, which is now about the project. Now, the project very quickly, the project is very interesting was a project that was kind of like our test ground. It was actually the first project that I designed.

And it was kind of like a little branch and kind of an extension of these police academy, these counter narcotics police academy. The British and the Americans pour a lot of money to Afghanistan to fight the opioid, right to “fight the opioids”. You know what I mean? quoting here, because, on one hand, Americans were pouring billions to fight to actually fight the opposite. On the other hand, there were scandals, after scandals about bank accounts in the Virgin Islands, you know, triangulating money from opioid cells in Afghanistan. Don’t forget that by those years, 90 something percent of the abuse in the world was coming from Afghanistan. Yeah, it was a narco war at some point. So here I am, designing this little room that will teach cadets how to spot drugs modelling in objects. The museum of the objects how to smuggle stash. So there was a carpet, there was a booth, there was a piece of Afghan jewellery. So all of these objects that were in this, we were having these conversations about, and he was talking about the building itself, it was like, the allocated space was like, I don’t remember how many square foot was like, how many square metres were but 30 or 40 square that was like nothing, right? And so it was like these little pieces that had to have almost nothing. And just so students can look at these objects. And the conversations were very fascinating, because at the end of the day, I mean, I think it was more interesting about the project that we designed and the things we were learning about it. It was how can you build things in Afghanistan, with so little, with so little things and yet to inspire people to go to those places and into, into, into make them there’s, you know, make them they belong to that space that we because that was the biggest issue. We sometimes sometimes you can there were hospitals built in Afghanistan, they were empty, they were built by the Chinese in a very poor way, in the early 2000s. They were completely empty, not only because they were poorly built, but also because Afghans were never involved. At the end of the day, that is the only way you can do things anywhere. You know, talking to whoever is there, right there. It’s so basic, and so complicated, though.

Vaissnavi Shukl
So that’s, that’s, I think this is a perfect segue, because on the first episode, I was talking to John and Nadyeli from the GSD and they, you know, have been working in the Rohingya refugee camps. And so while after the studio ended with Anna Heringer, and I was talking to them about this, as well. And I imagine that a big challenge of working with international agencies has to do with red tape and navigating bureaucracy. And on top of that, as a foreigner working with locals, I’d be super curious to know how important it was for you to communicate and to build coalitions. Because I know and I will put this up on the website, you’ve created this very interesting graphic of all the stakeholders involved in a project,

Pancho Brown
Oh, that was a joke you know. That was a joke.

Vaissnavi Shukl
I know, but it’s so real, right? Because this is what is possible. This is how much money you have from your funding sources. This is what the project requires. This is what the local requires, this is a skill level. And basically, it’s like you, you’re trying to fit a square into a circle, you know, it’s, it’s just all these different things. And as you said, at the end of the day, you’re an architect, and you have to build something, and it has to be a functional building. And to make that happen, because it’s a job, it’s so important to have all these people involved, because if you don’t have that, I don’t want to call it embedded only labour in the building, but also that sense of belonging and ownership. If that’s kind of missing, then, you know, the building might just be like, one of those Chinese hospitals that you’re talking about. So what was your process of I mean, what is communication? Like? How important was it to build coalitions? What was the process like?

Pancho Brown
Well, it was, each project has its own process, obviously, sort of defined by money. Americans has its own process, there was a lot of checks and balances, of course, Americans and a lot, and let’s not forget that that red tape and that bureaucracy, both in multilateral organisations for donor partners exist, because we have to borrow forms of corruption, I mean, at the end of the day, we corruption has become an it is a serious illness in every form of of existence. And that red tape has come handy to battle the people without working ethics. So I hate to admit that he was the only way to deal but he was really daunting. And in terms of discussion, it was funny, I mean, everyone, everybody had their own way. But each project will have their own communication forums, I mean, you will have the having tea with the commanders in their house very top down. And you will have an incredible participatory method, like the one that we hold in the west for women, for the Norwegians. So we will have, like, all of these women from all ages and ethnicities, designing this building, and it was just like, you know, like a dream project, because at the end of the day, that project was as much as theirs as ours, and you realise, this is great, you know, you don’t have we know that that project will be there forever, you know, any, if anything is going to grow and is going to be this because and then you have other projects that we were not super successful. Because of corruption because of our own because of distrust from the donor partner because of our own lack of experience as well. And, I mean, there was we spent five years in a hospital that was supposed to be built in one year, you know, and because millions it was, it was ridiculous. I mean, one of the darqueze most funny conversations that I used to make fun of, but it was true, it was when we were designing that hospital, and it was a fight between the…because at the end of the day, Americans also gave the design to an American company. And it was like it was kind of an American corporate design company designing hospitals to be in Afghanistan. So of course, you know, you will have the Architects and yeah, but according to code C, five, five C, five C, D, you will have to have five psi or like, you know, and you’re like, yes, but you cannot have that a year because you know. So I remember having the big battle of the fire sprinklers. So Americans were like, “We will not build, we will not beat up buildings without fire sprinklers.” And we were like, “Listen, you cannot build a building with fire sprinklers. Because to get a building with fire sprinklers, you need all of this water that you don’t have. Because we don’t have running water you need to get well, which means that you will need to get this amount of space in this amount of money for this size of tanks. But on top of that, to get a fire sprinkler, you need to have to have this pressure to get that pressure you need to have, you need to have this amount of power, you don’t have the power, you need to have a generator, having a generator, you need to have a storage for fuel to have storage for fuel,” you need to indicate like that the conversation until I told him like where you’re trying to conveys, it is such an issue. It is such an issue that at the end of the day, you need to give up on that and bring a solution that will solve the problem with the building being on fire. But they will not meet code in America. And that is a carbonization that we have to have. It was ridiculous. And super funny. I mean, at some point, we have to change an entire design set ready to go for construction. You can imagine what that means, right?

Vaissnavi Shukl
Like, oh, yes,I know that feeling way too well.

Pancho Brown
100 bed hospital design set 1.2 billion pages that are like ready to just leave the umbrella of the design studio. So somebody on the bottom of the food chain says, um, we need to change all of the toilets, because in Afghanistan, the tradition is that you cannot be facing Mecca. In the front, or in the back of the toilet stall? Right. So, in a hospital, as you can imagine, you can imagine how many toilet units are, like changing 90 degrees, toilets, I mean, means it’s important, you know, in terms of pipes, and it was it was one of those, it was one of those conversations that we did it by the way. So it was like that, like, those are two tokens of our daily design conversations. That expanded beyond what we are accustomed to our design practice. And I am so grateful for that. Because at the end of the day, as you mentioned at the beginning of the conversation, how do you communicate how you communicate design ideas, because it’s about communication, it’s when we learn to communicate our design ideas effectively and rigorously and with the right evidence is that we are going to live our profession to the right value and we will be able to stop bitching about where we are so undervalued in society. You want to be valued and let’s bring it up.

Vaissnavi Shukl
Well, said Pancho. I’m going to change gears and provoke you a little bit here and bring in a little bit of theory cause, you know, I, I have my own little, you know, obsessions. But there’s been an increasing interest among architects and planners to explore the Afghan of guns, geography and see how one can interact with, dare I say, the emerging urban fabric. I’m thinking specifically of Sasakis Kabul urban design framework and the GSD reasons to do imagining an urban future for discussion by Rahul Mehrotra that he also assisted in terms of documentation and research. So I’m going to look at this, you know, increasing interest through a different lens. I just finished reading Rem Koolhaas and AMO, ‘Countryside: A report’, which argues that rural areas around the world are witnessing tremendous change, and should become territories of investigation because that’s where, you know, all the innovations happening and different countries around the world are doing things with agriculture in terms of energy and solar farms and dairy industry, just literally, around the world. There’s now, you know, an increased interest in what the country sites are doing. But in the Afghan scenario with a sudden rise in the interest level of the urban areas. What do you think, does the future hold for the countryside in Afghanistan?

Pancho Brown
Well, to what this is like a two part question first. Yes, it seems that there is an interest. Well, there’s been an interest in actually, if anything, I will push back. I think the interest in Afghanistan has decreased because of the geopolitical and cultural condition because of the one in the end of the war. And architects in American academia seems to be paying a bit more attention, which is the case of, of Rahul’s which I think was, was a very interesting exploration and, and Sasaki is a different story. I mean, that’s what they were invited by the Government of Afghanistan or whatever. And it was an incredible and incredible project that is going on, by that team. And I’m, again, not an urban designer. So I don’t have a lot to mention about that. And about what your comment on what the latest exhibition of a AMO and I mean, yeah, I don’t, I kind of distanced myself about what what Rem seems to be implying, because I don’t agree with it, I think it’s kind of a navel gazing approach to, to, to a topic that, uh, that is bigger than than that exhibition, I actually went and see it twice, made a little article about it, that it’s that I was just kind of like, thought that it was such a wasted opportunity to put attention to the, to the real conversation. So what I believe, is interesting for designers, in what he called the Countryside, which is the most exchange name to be to name. But I am actually very interested in about your question about the interest to the new urban, urban areas in Afghanistan, because Afghanistan is I mean, calling urban is to which, to which standards, I mean, exactly, Afghanistan, state of conflict and poverty, sadly, has, has keep most of their urban areas with the without the more modern infrastructure all the way all the way down from like running water, in some places. And until very recently, electricity, actually funny enough, the day that I moved into Afghanistan, or like the week that I moved into Afghanistan, is when the electricity became stable, 24 hours, literally. So as I was leaving, and I remember, like, it was, “Oh, my God, you gave it to the best week, and now we have power all day long.” And I was like, yeah, who? And so so the idea of urbanisation in Afghanistan is it’s, it’s really, it’s really an incredible of a set of curiosities that academics and, and design offices and multilateral institutions, because they are understanding there’s a lot of interesting potential in small cities and big cities, because double when I was living in Kabul, Kabul became the second or the first city of highest growth between 2010 and 2012. Like, getting like adding like a million people a year something ridiculous, like, like India levels, you know, because Kabul became the source of money coming from other governments. So, I think after that, that money start to drying up, and all of these development projects from Afghans start to, you know, simmering down, I think there’s another another new way of understanding what’s happening in cities, but it’s challenging, it’s challenging, but there’s a lot of very serious people looking into Afghan cities, and their development, and these government has been very, very forward about it, the Afghan government. And but it’s, it’s, it’s huge, it’s the Titanic. It’s that they are behind. It’s amazing, though, and, and, and I’m very excited to see. I mean, I saw the project that they did the studio that Rahul did and some of the projects. It was very interesting, sort of, of curiosities. And, and, and I think what was very interesting about what Rahul did was that he kind of flipped the coin and used the paradigm of COVID-19 lockdown from school. And he knew that he would never be able to send a team of students to Eshkashim. Sadly, because of security restrictions, so it has been a while now that nobody’s been travelling, let’s do this now. And I think that that attitude of understanding these moments to look into into places that we should be looking at is it’s the right attitude, you know, like I think that’s what I’m it excites me when I see that that kind of approach to to other other schools of thoughts of getting super rich to understand. And architects, as you mentioned, is like, we still haven’t figured it out. I think it’s just because it’s difficult to go there. I mean, I think it’s just as simple as that at some point.

Vaissnavi Shukl
Yeah. Because, because I saw the first two enemies Rahul you know opened up the, the introduction lectures the input lectures to everyone and I could I was a part of the first two so I saw the introductory lecture, the one where Sasaki was presenting and I had, I had the time to go through their proposal it just seemed like, and just looking at these geographies that you normally would not I mean as you said you wouldn’t have been able to travel that but you still have the resources and the opportunity to kind of critically, look at it and you know propose different ideas you would just like brainstorm and think through an area that what you might not be able to visit but still are able to study. Now, I think, just as we’re, as we’re going towards the, the end of our, our conversations, and this is a public proclamation that I’m obsessed with the New York Times and the Daily Podcast, I mean it’s it’s a weak spot. I’m cranky if I don’t listen to it and back in November, that the Daily which is the New York Times podcast did an episode with Mooji Mahshahr, who is their senior correspondent in Afghanistan, on what it was like to grow up in Kabul and the changes has witnessed and the Taliban took over the city and while I was listening to her I think it was the Diwali vacation in India, so I was listening to it and I don’t even know what I was doing I was probably doing the rangoli on the floor but I’m just like, Pancho. I have to speak to Pancho about it. But he gives a very detailed and vivid account of life and Afghanistan, but I’m curious to know if you have any stories that you’d like to share, or any out of the ordinary encounters that you had during your five years. I know there’s plenty, but if you were to pick one.

Pancho Brown
You know, it’s very interesting and when I say one that is very cheesy but that it actually changed a lot of things for me. It was the day that we hired our first female staff, or our first female engineer, and what was striking me about her. It was that she really knocked on the door. And she was like, “Hi, I’ve heard that you have the best design or architectural office in town, and I travel. And I want to work for you. And this is my CV, and I’m here to get hired.” And this is, and I’m going to give you some context, this was a super very young experience very young, very petite Hazara, woman are engineer, mechanical engineer, and also was like, wow, this is the minority of minorities and I remember like she sat down, and we’re like, “Okay let’s interview you I mean yeah come in”. And we start talking to her and that’s so important. Someone was like, “How did you travel here?” somebody asked my boss and she was like, “Oh I drove. I have a car I drive.” And I was like, because I didn’t know that in Afghanistan until very recently, you couldn’t move and women couldn’t have driving permits. And this woman that is also Hazara but they suffered their own set of discriminatory attitudes against you know they’re, you know they are like that kind of like minority in especially in Kabul, there was this young woman asking for a job and for me that relentless, like in when I was out, get your hire the same day, we gave her a desk and I remember the, the two Afghan male engineers were formally complaining. And I was like, I just, I was for one and I was heartbroken. To see that this is what she has to deal with like two guys that don’t know her, we’re actively saying that they will leave the office if required. And I was just like, it’s so real. Of course we get her and she became the best thing we have and then she became the best engineer and then she’s a superstar right now and I thought that the reason why she went and knocked on the door was because what we did in our buildings inspire her, and she honoured that we that we were a real architecture office, and she, she role as an engineer her opinions were taken into account. And I saw that was also the kind of design diplomacy that we could do. It is easy to just receive people, invite people. I really understood that power, and it really changed, and it really changed the whole office for the better, because we keep getting more and more female staff and then more minorities and then it became a think about how can we improve the quality of design, it was because these are countries where there is run on the old school thinking the elder is the one who rules and the one who from the, from the, from the leading, you know, cast to race. These guys were like the pashtun guy you know male. He’s the one who runs the show you know and you have to convince him so you know. And then when we did I mean we convinced him. It was like, we can have a better working family. But I mean it was there for almost five years.

Vaissnavi Shukl
What, what happens when, when you leave, and your boss leaves, and all the foreigners either have already left or in the future. When the aid runs out and when the umbilical cords cut and everybody goes and what happens do this setup this office where you’ve hired a lot of local people. What happens to their practice when, you know, you guys leave?

Pancho Brown
Well the practice is them, that is, I mean, for me the practices, people right? And, and the practice for them and most of them of course lead the organisation. It was an organisation or a unit within an organisation that is donor funded so there’s no money there’s no organisation, right? It’s not like it’s not like a private company you know your physical, you know you’re like, there’s no donors, want to make a building, we just go shop and I think that’s what happened. And most of those engineers are now running the show. You know, we have incredible jobs and put them in firms and so we were very proud that we stay very much in touch with some of them, especially women that have worked with women. And what happened is like, that’s a sad thing they have they have to stay and I, and I have and I had the privilege to leave. And, and that is very. That is what we do when you, when you go and move into countries and and you make your own life there is just, you have to be very frontal and critical about these questions about. It’s a good question but what happened with them I don’t know about. But I’ve heard things in Afghanistan have gotten worse and better and worse, worse and it’s such a blunt blue balloon push and sorry and and but in some place I will never forget I mean, some placeI want to go back to as well. Like actively want to, but I mean, with the right opportunity and the right framework but yeah it’s amazing.

Vaissnavi Shukl
So it’s been some time since you lived and work in Afghanistan have, you know, since then you, you came back to the US and you we not you, we all graduated together, and you’ve recently gotten back into research and reconnecting with your former colleagues still working there do you plan on going back next,what are you what are you up to now?

Pancho Brown
Well, right now I’m doing a lot of small consulting jobs on different relationships that I have built. I’m collaborating with partenaire the magazine that I write for in Mexico. I am looking into putting a startup here in New York. And also a small studio with a couple of our friends from the GSD. So, and that is coming as well of very soon like this, this month. So it’s a lot of things happening. Stay in New York and also like looking at my next steps in New York itself. So it’s. There’s a lot of change and a lot of hope you know me like at the end of the day that just kind of like closing the loop from our previous conversation about like what is incredible opportunity of education that we have meant. And I think it’s just reinforces who, who, what you bring in wisdom. To begin with, you know, and. And I think that some of that resilience is embedded in our own way of living. Early in our lives, it’s good enough, as well, to keep going and then the whole diploma, the whole experience, the whole connection. This is also going to be just going to operate through some. I am super excited to see what 2021 has because I’m actively looking to, as you mentioned, how to have fun doing something that we care about.

Vaissnavi Shukl
Amen, amen Poncho. Well, thank you so much for taking the time. I hope that the next time we do this, you know, we get to have another conversation about your startup and what you’re doing and all the new projects, and also hopefully soon I don’t know when does just meet for drinks in New York whenever that is but I’d love to see you, and thank you for being here.

Pancho Brown
Absolutely, thank you so much for inviting me and I hope you like it. Thank you. Thank you so much.

Vaissnavi Shukl
Special thanks to Kahaan Shah for the background score. For guests and topic suggestions, you can get in touch with us through instagram or our website through our website archoffcentre.com, both of which are ‘archoffcentre’. And thank you for listening.