Deb­bie Ja­cob

Ste­fan Pin­heiro nev­er for­got the sight of the Beetham on his boy­hood trips from his home in Barataria to Port-of-Spain.

"Grow­ing up in Barataria and trav­el­ling from Barataria to Port-of-Spain, I al­ways looked at the Beetham as a shan­ty town. I wished some­one would do some­thing about this and try to im­prove the scenery as one trav­els to Port-of-Spain, not to men­tion the qual­i­ty of life of the peo­ple in the Beetham," says Pin­heiro.

It was that in­deli­ble im­age of pover­ty that led Pin­heiro to choose the Beetham for his the­sis project when he en­tered the mas­ter's pro­gramme in ar­chi­tec­ture at the Uni­ver­si­ty of North Car­oli­na at Char­lotte in 2010. The road to Char­lotte and his cur­rent project on the Beetham has tak­en an in­ter­est­ing path.

In 1996, Pin­heiro, who had been liv­ing with his grand­moth­er in Barataria, moved to New York to be with his moth­er. In 2000, he grad­u­at­ed from the New York City Col­lege of Tech­nol­o­gy, where he ma­jored in ar­chi­tec­tur­al tech­nol­o­gy, and land­ed an in­tern­ship with the fa­mous Amer­i­can ar­chi­tect Daniel Libe­skind.

It was a good move.

On Feb­ru­ary 27, 2003, Libe­skind won the com­pe­ti­tion to be the mas­ter plan ar­chi­tect for the re­con­struc­tion of the World Trade Cen­ter site on Ground Ze­ro in Low­er Man­hat­tan, New York, af­ter the 9/11 ter­ror­ist at­tack.

Pin­heiro had am­ple op­por­tu­ni­ties to learn from that project.

While he in­terned with Libe­skind, Pin­heiro soaked in in­valu­able in­for­ma­tion from Libe­skind's many projects, in­clud­ing con­struct­ing low-cost hous­es for tsuna­mi vic­tims in Una Wana Tu­na, a Sri Lankan com­mu­ni­ty dev­as­tat­ed by the tsuna­mi in 2004.

The one- and two-bed­room hous­es Libe­skind de­signed cost US$3,000 each.

Libe­skind de­vel­oped com­mu­ni­ties for a fish­ing vil­lage and de­signed a com­mu­ni­ty cen­tre and craft cen­tre, as well as a div­ing cen­tre to teach peo­ple how to swim and dive.

Libe­skind's firm hired Pin­heiro af­ter his in­tern­ship and he worked there for two more years, be­com­ing in­volved with ar­chi­tec­tur­al de­signs, in­clud­ing the Jew­el on the Las Ve­gas Strip, a tow­er in War­saw, Poland, and the Hum­ming­bird Tow­er in Toron­to.

His job was to work on com­put­er mod­els and three-di­men­sion­al mod­els of many of Libe­skind's projects.

In 2010, Pin­heiro de­cid­ed to do his mas­ter's de­gree and be­gan his re­search on the Beetham, which in­clud­ed a Guardian ar­ti­cle: The Beetham: The Good, the Bad and the Ug­ly.

In De­cem­ber 2013, he came home to vis­it the Beetham.

"The biggest sur­prise was the ab­ject pover­ty. As you go down to Phase Five of the Beetham, the in­sta­bil­i­ty of the en­vi­ron­ment, the shacks and the lack of op­por­tu­ni­ty is what struck me, along with the stig­ma at­tached to the Beetham," says Pin­heiro.

"Us­ing the is­sues on site: the La Basse garbage dump across the road and poor hous­ing, while recog­nis­ing these is­sues as op­por­tu­ni­ties for de­vel­op­ment, I asked my­self, 'What can we do to bet­ter?'"

Pin­heiro plans to de­sign a re­cy­cling busi­ness in the La Basse that could ac­tu­al­ly re­sult in a thriv­ing con­struc­tion busi­ness.

"Of course this is all a uni­ver­si­ty project on pa­per, but it is a project that gov­ern­ment could turn in­to a fea­si­ble plan."

Pin­heiro tar­get­ed one is­sue with­in the Beetham it­self: to im­prove the qual­i­ty of life and elim­i­nate dan­ger from the jum­ble of elec­tri­cal wires among hous­es that are so close to­geth­er. Pin­heiro says he would en­cour­age so­lar pan­els for elec­tric­i­ty in Beetham homes.

Next, he would cre­ate bridges from the Beetham to the La Basse, and de­vel­op a re­cy­cling cen­tre in the La Basse so that re­cy­cled ma­te­r­i­al could make its way back in­to the Beetham in prod­ucts that could be used to build bet­ter hous­es.

Again, he re­minds: "This is a syn­thet­ic project, but it could have re­al-life po­ten­tial.

"The re­cy­cling project would in­clude an area to sort ma­te­r­i­al and could even in­clude re­cy­cling class­es so that scav­engers now op­er­at­ing in the Beetham could learn about haz­ardous ma­te­r­i­al: what ma­te­r­i­al they shouldn't come in con­tact with and what clothes they should wear while re­cy­cling. They would learn how to max­imise re­cy­cling ef­forts.

"With gov­ern­ment's in­vest­ment in­to the project, the Beetham could even de­vel­op an in­dus­try in mak­ing prod­ucts from re­cy­cled items, cre­at­ing new prod­ucts by us­ing plas­tic moulds.

"They can cre­ate ca­bles or alu­mini­um pan­els from re­cy­cled alu­mini­um. Many prod­ucts can be re­cy­cled to make cheap, ef­fi­cient hous­ing ma­te­r­i­al that can go right back in­to the Beetham or be sold for oth­er ar­eas in T&T. Every­one would ben­e­fit from a so­phis­ti­cat­ed re­cy­cling ef­fort with­in the Beetham."

Pin­heiro's the­sis is still a work in progress, but he be­lieves it can cre­ate eco­nom­ic op­por­tu­ni­ties be­yond scav­eng­ing in the Beetham.

Stay tuned. By March, Pin­heiro will have ren­der­ings or com­put­er draw­ings that ac­tu­al­ly look like pho­tos of a whole new in­dus­try for the Beetham.