Friendship has a firm foundation

PULLMAN — Washington State University Professor Rafi Samizay flips through a portfolio of his latest work with obvious pride.

On one page is a two-story building with the façade folded to allow the maximum amount of sunlight through windows placed at each corner. Another incorporates a 19th-century tower built on the end of a bluff overlooking a small town. A third is stuccoed a rusty red, the color imparted from sand taken out of the surrounding hillsides.

The last, in particular, delighted residents of Ghorband, the Afghanistan town where it was built, he says. Not only was the little courthouse the first government structure to be built there, it also stood on the site of a cluster of shops controlled by a local warlord. Tearing the shops down was itself a political breakthrough.

“People were afraid,” Samizay says. “But I wanted to make this statement.”

It is a statement he has made in one form or another 30 times the last two years in Afghanistan. From ancient, beloved Herat near Iran to Ghani-Khel in the hostile mountains shared with Pakistan, Samizay has designed and supervised construction of courthouses and other government offices that in many places, like the courthouse in Ghorband, represent the first governmental presence.

Together with newly trained judges and administrators, the buildings can begin to knit together a country with a history dating back to Alexander the Great, but one also sometimes at war with itself. Samizay, an expert on historic preservation in Afghanistan, understands the symbolism.

“It was not just building a new building, it was building a new system,” he says, referring specifically to the courthouses and the rule of law its functionaries will try to instill where there has been little law.

Take land, for example. Titles are all but non-existent, and in many cities the government owns none. Samizay found building sites, then cajoled local leaders into handing it over. That done, he had to design a compact structure that could accommodate competing demands for the limited space. And then there were the contractors, who drove him crazy with demands or promises that turned days into weeks.

“Everybody puts their fingers in it,” he says.

And when the building is finally handed over to authorities, another problem: “They don’t know how to maintain buildings.”

Still, he adds, working with local contractors ensured that money spent on materials and wages would stay in the village. And, aggravating as the process might be, at least he was getting something done.

Samizay lost respect for many international agencies that set up headquarters in Kabul, the capital, and wasted energy, time and money trying to work through the central government bureaucracy. Others told him his masonry and concrete buildings did not meet this code or that, or paid no heed to infrastructure requirements. And what about environmental impact statements?

“I’m trying to figure out what that would be,” muses Samizay, who understands better than most how limited are Afghanistan’s resources, even as a lavish flow of international aid creates a rush of “treasure hunters.”

Samizay, 59, was raised in Kabul, but was educated at the Illinois Institute of Technology and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He was a practicing architect, teacher, and historic preservation consultant in his homeland until he left in 1979 to escape Soviet invaders.

He did not return until the U.S. and its allies tossed out the Taliban in 2002. He stews over the destruction wrought by two decades of warfare, the Taliban’s xenophobia, and looters. But the pressure to somehow channel out-of-control development do not allow much time for preservation efforts.

Samizay pressed ahead and cut costs by making what use he could of an existing structure, often by adding a second story. He also incorporated features that would fortify the masonry as well as possible against earthquakes that frequently rattle the country.

Durable buildings will be a long-lasting message to Afghans about friendship with the United States, which funded most of his projects.

If each is not be a masterpiece — his words, and ones that give short shrift to their handsome simplicity — at least they were delivered for about $15 per square foot, about one-quarter the price of comparable projects done by others. Big windows and south-facing skylights maximize light where there may be no electricity, and localizing touches like the reddish stucco customize the various models he developed.

Although he’s now back in Pullman, Samizay says he left a team of Afghan architects and engineers behind who will carry on his work. “That’s almost like a little school of its own,” he says. And his fifth-year architecture students say they want to take on a problem based on the challenges of building in Afghanistan.

Samizay has set a high standard.

“I had one aim, to get these things built, and get them built right,” Samizay says.