Wes Janz is an architect and associate professor of architecture at
Ball State University whose practice and teachings focus on the transformative potential of “leftover spaces,” the slum dwellings, squatter towns and refugee settlements that house 1 billion of the world’s poor. For Janz, these impoverished sites are also living testaments to human resourcefulness and ingenuity: the shelters built from detritus and recycled materials possess a utilitarian beauty wrought of necessity. According to Janz, these “informal pioneers of global urbanism” have much to teach contemporary professional architects who have heeded “the same voices, the same pieces of architecture, and the same logic systems for too long.” As the demand for safe, low-cost shelter grows around the world, Janz argues, global citizen-architects have an important role to play.

Janz is currently working on a book, One Small Project, based on his travels and collaborations with his students and local people in the working class neighborhoods of Bangkok and Buenos Aires to Los Angeles and Istanbul. The book is inspired by the unauthorized dwellings people have constructed using scavenged materials, from packing crates to corrugated steel drums. As part of a project with his students in Sri Lanka in 2003, Janz led the building of pavilions constructed of found materials, including mud and rubble from demolished campus buildings. Janz responds directly to the needs of people he meets in the field, and trains the eyes of his students to adopt this singular forensic process, which he describes as, “One person. One architect. One small project. Repeat.”

Another example of Janz’s spartan approach to sustainability is his research project, “Deconstructing Flint,” a practical manifesto for tearing down thousands of abandoned houses in the declining Rust Belt city of Flint, Mich., in ways that reduce landfill waste and salvage as much building material as possible, from recycling electrical wiring to grinding down bricks and concrete steps for reuse.

This October, Janz will take a team of students through six post-industrial cities in transition along the Rust Belt including Braddock, Pa., Camden, N.J., and Youngstown, Ohio, to identify opportunities for architectural interventions that can potentially improve people’s quality of life.

Wes Janz

Architect and Associate Professor
Ball State University
Muncie, Indiana
Age: 55