Incremental importance.

The Aga Khan, speaking at the ceremony at which his architectural awards were presented in Solo, Indonesia at the end of November, welcomed the jury's choices (AR November pp62-86), in which, he said, 'we see buildings and places that are humane, resourceful and eloquent. [Jury members have] eschewed monumentalism. The projects they have selected address central concerns in Muslim societies, indeed problems that also face other societies throughout the world ... Everywhere we seem to find rising inequalities in societies, an emerging urban underclass, homelessness and strife between neighbours, as well as growing environmental degradation, the sense of alienation in mega-cities that are no longer humane and the avalanche of images that destroy identity.' Yet, 'It is important to understand that we should not take the message to be that architecture can, of itself, be a remedy or solution to these issues.'

It is curiously moving to find a religious leader restating the essential humanitarian role of architecture in society at a time when many architectural thinkers are abandoning human responsibility in pursuit of personal vanity, ersatz substitutes for religion and sheer greed. It is even more curious that the jury that chose such an inspiring range of buildings included both Peter Eisenman (who has done more than any other architect to try to dislodge humanity from the centre of the cultural stage) and his new disciple Charles Jencks (AR September pp84-85).

Ismall Serageldin, a member of the Aga Khan Award's steering committee, outlined the scale of the problem at a seminar held in Yogyakarta - and the ease with which, without any help from trahison des clercs, human issues in architecture are only too easily pushed aside. 'In the next generation, the cities of the developing world are going to treble in size. The increase in the population of India alone will be larger than the populations of Germany, France and the UK combined. A new and positive dynamic is needed.'

Serageldin, an architect who works for the World Bank, emphasised that 'we need a minimum level of human decency that can't be hijacked by the middle class. Most subsidised housing ends up like that'.

'How do we incorporate the homeless. It's a relevant question for the First World as well as the Third,' said Serageldin, conjuring up the image of the huddled figures in the shop doorways of Oxford Street, Fifth Avenue and the Champs Elysees. One of his answers is self-help: 'Governments can't cope with the size of the influx to the cities'. If the poorest are to be the targets, international and national money is often unhelpful. Schemes (such as the premiated one in Hyderabad, AR November p71) seem to work; they allow people to start making their own houses, in almost any way, and then to add to them as funds and energy permit. The help comes in staggering repayments for the loans for purchasing the site and services - and keeping rates of interest to a minimum. If this can be done in the Third World, why can't it work in industrialised countries?

The incremental approach must be applied to regional and national planning as well as housing, according to Abdoulaye Elimane Kane, the Senegal Minister of Culture. 'We must decentralise,' he said, 'otherwise by the year 2010, Dakar will have 90 per cent of the nation's population. It is vital to reinforce provincial centres and make intermediary cities. This is a problem for all developing countries.'

Some of the problems of developing countries could be seen immediately outside the hotel in which the seminar was held. Most of Yogyakarta is relatively flat, and the centre is built to an agreeable scale, with three- and four-storey buildings that have arcaded shops at ground level. Winding through the plain is the river, which has carved a deep valley, along the sides of which live some of the poorest people of the town. There are no roads there, just very steep steps from the streets down to alleys and courts that lace together the one- and two-storey houses that have grown haphazardly from the path by the water's edge to the rim of the valley. Construction has plainly been incremental (and indeed still continues as houses are extended, and temporary materials such as woven reeds are replaced by bricks and tiles).

The whole area seems remarkably cheerful there is none of the utter, grinding poverty seen in India and Bangladesh. The alleys and courts are scrupulously clean because they are swept by the householders many times a day to keep the dust and rubbish down. Water comes from wells and standpipes (though people seem to use the river as a lavatory and sewer, as well as for various other things). Bushes and flowers flourish in pots everywhere. Huge and gorgeously coloured game cocks stare disdainfully out of great wicker cages, and the whole area is full of birdsong from small cages that are lifted on poles and hung under eaves.

Up near one of the bridges that span the valley is the Kampong Kali Cho-de which received an Aga Khan award three years ago. It was built by the very poorest people: down-and-outs, and ex-peasants just off the land. The site was a rubbish tip and the town council wanted to turn it into a landscape (it succeeded a little further downstream but the result is ludicrously suburban, and cannot be entered). Yousef B. Mangunwijaya, an architect and Christian priest joined the illegal squatters, and inspired them with a sense of community. He suggested ways of building that the people could master which would cope with the steepness of the slope. The story was as moving as any discovered by the Aga's scheme and as dramatic in form, with its A-framed structures on stilts.

Now, Mangunwijaya has left, but the council has accepted that the community should be given tenure. The place is as clean as its rather more prosperous downstream neighbours. There is a well and a certain amount of electricity. Little children sing in the nursery, boys kick balls around on the playground made at the edge of the river, and men throw their fishing nets into the water as they used to in the countryside. The colours have faded a bit, but the buildings seem to work well, and there is evidence of incremental growth.

Clearly the community is working, though but for the recognition given it by the Aga's scheme, it would probably have been swept away by the authorities. It worked because Mangunwijaya understood the organic natural process of the squatter settlement and was able to direct it to creating a community in the most difficult of circumstances. Kali Cho-de has lessons for rich countries as well as poor ones.