A Downtown Eastside church expresses support for the local supervised injection site, whose operation was challenged by the federal government.
For over two decades, architect Sean McEwen and medical anthropologist Dan Small have been involved in designing and advocating for vulnerable populations in Vancouver?s Downtown Eastside?including North America?s first supervised injection site. Here?s the story of their endeavours, in their own words.
The architect and the anthropologist
Sean McEwen: I first met the principals of the Portland Hotel Society about 25 years ago, when I was working as an affordable housing activist in Vancouver. I was really struck by the social-serving activists who worked with the Portland, and began to collaborate with them on a number of projects. Over the years, they asked me to be the architect on such wonderful projects as the supervised injection site, the Interurban arts centre on the Downtown Eastside, a bank for low-income folks, social enterprises like East Van Roasters, and an urban farm. Dan Small: Medical anthropologists, like other anthropologists, study culture, but they focus on culture in healthcare. My particular interest is the lived experience of healthcare and illness. To borrow a phrase from another medical anthropologist, Byron Good, while a physician might look at a patient as a site for disease, an anthropologist sees them as a site for story.
An anthro-architectural approach
DS: Stories give us a sense of profound experien...