Contemporary Vernacular Design

5.2Lihir Island, Papua New Guinea

5.2.1 Lihir Island, Papua New Guinea

The Project

Assai is an organisation of community architects and project managers. They have 20-plus years’ experience working with indigenous and local communities in Southeast Asia and Australasia.¹ Their design methods draw on the idea of pattern languages developed by Christopher Alexander. Assai develops a different pattern language for every community in which it works.

Assai’s director, David Week, started working in Papua New Guinea in 1978 after studying at Berkeley, California, under Alexander. Week cofounded the Community Based Building Program Ltd (CBBP) ...