Archinect - News

South African CEO partners with NOMA and AIAS to offer architecture students a masterclass in community-led design

2020-09-24T11:50:00-04:00

You might remember Wandile Mthiyane from Archinect's recent profile on him, Undoing Apartheid Architecture. In that profile, Wandile talked about a pioneering new program his organization, Ubuntu Design Group, has developed. Called the Ubuntu Architecture Summer Abroad Program (UASA), the new initiative will teach college students a community-centered approach to architecture through a design-build studio course that will be led by Wandile.

Students will experience a unique educational experience to design & build dignified and culturally-influenced homes for resilient families in South Africa. “Students will be designing and building a home for a family that has been affected by apartheid architecture,” Wandile explained. “They will come to South Africa and learn first-hand the role of architecture in systemic racism, it’s history, and what its impacts are today. And they will get to be a part of the solution we are pursuing.”

According to Wandile, partnerships have already been se...

Hawaii's Thirty Meter Telescope could be moved to the Canary Islands

2016-12-01T12:40:00-05:00

The Thirty Meter Telescope’s International Observatory Board decided late last month that if they cannot move forward with building the telescope in Hawaii, they will instead choose La Palma, one of Spain’s Canary Islands...The nonprofit group that’s building the Thirty Meter Telescope began scoping out other sites for the $1.4 billion telescope this fall—including mountains in Chile, India, China, and Mexico...

Previous news about the TMT:

Hawaii protesters block construction of giant telescope on sacred mountain Mauna Kea

The $1.5B 30m telescope (TMT) will be the biggest ever

2016 Fuller Challenge finalists announced

2016-08-23T12:32:00-04:00

Multi-disciplinary teams from across the globe work hard for a chance to win the $100,000 Fuller Challenge grand prize that will help implement their initiative. Last month, the Buckminster Fuller Institute revealed 19 hopeful initiatives who were shortlisted for the 2016 cycle. Now, that competition pool has narrowed down to the final six.

CommuniTree by Taking Root

Cooperación Comunitaria

The Rainforest Solutions Project

Una Hakika by the Sentinel Project

The Urban Death Project

(cover image) Waterbank Schools by PITCHAfrica

Read more about the finalists on Bustler.

Previously:

Fuller Challenge winner says his GreenWave 3D ocean farm concept "could feed the world"

GreenWave's 3D ocean farm initiative wins the 2015 Buckminster Fuller Challenge

Living Breakwaters wins 2014 Buckminster Fuller Challenge

Seattle architect seeks to redesign America's burial landscape

LAPD directs officers to treat homeless people “with compassion” in new vague policy

2016-06-22T14:22:00-04:00

The Los Angeles Police Commission approved a new policy directing LAPD officers to treat homeless people with “compassion and empathy.” The policy was meant to be a broad statement – a “philosophy more than it is the nuts and bolts,” [Cmdr Todd] Chamberlain recently told police commissioners. More specifics will come in future directives, he added. But the new statement [unsurprisingly] was met with some skepticism from homeless advocates.

“Gary Blasi, a retired UCLA law professor who studies homelessness, said it would take more than a policy to improve interactions between officers and those living on the city’s streets. To do that, he said, the city should limit laws that unfairly criminalize situations involving homeless people — ‘so that the police are not involved in the first place.’”

More about homelessness in LA on Archinect:

LA's homeless population has increased by 11% in a single year

Homes of the homeless, seized: L.A. cracks down on free housing

To each their own home: A peek into the “HOME(less)” exhibition at USC

Los Angeles approves plans to tackle homelessness crisis, but funding is still unclear

“It's not the kids, it's their environment”: The tragic story of a young aspiring architect who died too soon

2016-06-16T15:51:00-04:00

Too often children from low-income neighborhoods are called broken...That needs to stop. “You keep telling kids that, and they actually begin to believe they are broken, that there is something wrong with them,” she said. “When in reality, it’s not the children that are broken, it’s the environment and area around them that is not working properly.”

Ananias Jolley was a high-school student in Baltimore who had a knack for building things with his hands, and he had dreams of becoming an architect. Living in a low-income neighborhood wrought with violence, his life was tragically cut short at age 17 when he was killed by a classmate. The story above is yet another grave reminder about the social and economic inequalities that persist in many U.S. cities (and in the world), as well as the dangers of stereotyping kids — who, more often than not, are POC — from low-income neighborhoods.

More on Archinect:

Unequal Scenes: drone images reveal Cape Town's "architecture of apartheid"

What are the world's most violent cities?

So Far to Go, So Much to Gain – discussing diversity with Elsie Owusu on Archinect Sessions One-to-One #9

2016 Wheelwright Prize awarded to MAIO's Anna Puigjaner for “Kitchenless City” proposal

2016-05-19T14:23:00-04:00

The coveted 2016 Wheelwright Prize went to Anna Puigjaner, cofounder of Barcelona-based MAIO Studios...[who] won for her proposal “Kitchenless City: Architectural Systems for Social Welfare”. Using shared domestic spaces as a starting point, Puigjaner will spend the next two years studying various collective housing models in China, Korea, India, Russia, Sweden, and Brazil aiming to find new design solutions that address persistent housing dilemmas worldwide.

Anna Puigjaner, MAIO Studios cofounder.

MAIO Studio, Barcelona, 2011-12. Photo credit: José Hevia.

Floating Columns, Chicago Architecture Biennial, 2015. Photo credit: David Schalliol.

The jury cited Puigjaner's proposal for its relevancy to the ongoing housing issues occurring throughout the world and the need for new housing models, as cities struggle to keep up with adequate housing due to rapid urbanization.

Find out more on Bustler.

Previously: Four 2016 Wheelwright finalists to compete for $100K travel grant

Why Zaha Hadid's gender and ethnicity mattered so much

2016-04-05T13:29:00-04:00

"It's a triple whammy," [Hadid] told the BBC Radio 4 in February. "I'm a woman, which is a problem to many people. I'm a foreigner — another problem. And I do work which is not normative, which is not what they expect. Together, it becomes difficult." Like any high-profile architect, Hadid was expected to produce strong, functional designs. But as a woman, she also faced the added pressure of having her work interpreted as some sort of gender statement.

More on Archinect:

Zaha on Zaha: "I always thought, you know, I should do well because the work is good."

“We just loved her”: Frank Gehry remembers Zaha Hadid

Fun game: spot the double-standards in this Zaha-bashing piece!

Zaha Hadid: 'Being an Arab and a woman is a double-edged sword'

How Chinese families are handling the country's ongoing mass evictions

2016-01-27T18:16:00-05:00

'My family has lived here for generations. We don’t want the money, we don’t want our house destroyed, we just want to live here,' Mrs. Zhang declared. The physical re-facing of China is cutting some very deep social scars. Abuse of power, corruption, developers in cahoots with government officials, and the misappropriation of funds are rife throughout the eviction and relocation process, littering the country with the seeds of discontent.

Wade Shepard digs into China's ongoing mass evictions and the country's laws that have long enabled such property seizures. While some families were lucky enough to receive compensation to give up their homes, the evictions have been the harshest for those who have lived in the same towns for centuries.

More on Archinect:

Another Olympics, another story of displacement

A closer look at the often complicated relationship between placemaking and gentrification

Zaha's Baku win ignites protests over forced eviction and suspicions over worker's rights and human trafficking

Activists “Evict” Businesses in Gentrifying L.A. Neighborhood

"It’s about recognizing someone as existing": Photo exhibit depicts L.A.'s homelessness crisis

2016-01-19T11:30:00-05:00

Los Angeles-based designers Sofia Borges and Susan Nwankpa recently collaborated in a photo exhibition titled "HOME(less)". Currently at the University of Southern California, the exhibition spotlights L.A.'s ongoing homelessness crisis in an interestingly positive manner. Borges and Nwankpa took a moment with Archinect to give more details into their project.

Read the full Archinect feature here.

More about homelessness in L.A.:

LA's freeway system is becoming an increasingly crowded 'neighborhood' for the city's homeless

Low-income housing in Los Angeles: A look at the past, present and future

Los Angeles to declare homelessness in the city an 'emergency' and pledge $100 million

In Los Angeles, homelessness is becoming more visible

Lessons learned: The complex realities when designing communal social housing

2016-01-05T15:18:00-05:00

What went wrong in Winnipeg was not just about architecture, and 5468796 were stuck trying to make the best of a bad situation. The pulling out of government support to make Centre Village an actual co-operative changed the [project's direction]...'It’s time to get the peanut butter off our fingers,' said Ross McGowan, former chief executive and president of CentreVenture...He admits that a failure to understand the needs of the community took a considerable toll on the project.

Despite good intentions to help families in need, perhaps the worst nightmare an architect can face when designing affordable housing is realizing that the project — which would of course already be fully built — doesn't meet the actual demands of the community, and then some. That's basically what happened to the 5468796 architecture-designed Centre Village project in Winnipeg.

More about affordable housing on Archinect:

California to decrease parking requirements for affordable housing

Cutting across the Chicago Architecture Biennial: Tatiana Bilbao's solution to Mexico's housing shortage

Up to 50% of all renting London households are living in poverty

The promising affordable housing of Hunters Point South

Poor Doors of Perception: discriminatory design, collapsing balconies, and virtual realities on Archinect Sessions #36

Examining the spatial crime of burglary

2015-08-12T19:50:00-04:00

Burglary is a spatial crime: its very definition requires architecture...Indeed, burglary's architectural interest comes not from its ubiquity, but from its unexpected, often surprisingly subtle misuse of the built environment. Burglars approach buildings differently, often seeking modes of entry other than doors and approaching buildings—whole cites—as if they're puzzles waiting to be solved or beaten.

More on Archinect:

The Secret Service wants to build a fake White House

Architecture of paranoia

Curbing violence through better architecture

Singapore's Sterile Authoritarianism

Pope Francis calls for "morally driven" city design in his climate-change encyclical

2015-06-19T15:07:00-04:00

Collectively, the encyclical affirms how important it is to make the moral case for city design. Too often, developers, urban planners and city leaders seem to think that it is obvious or implied why the decisions they make are in the best interest of the public. But there is no shortcut to articulating why our planning choices speak to the fundamental human dignity of the communities we’re working in.

"Given the interrelationship between living space and human behaviour, those who design buildings, neighbourhoods, public spaces and cities, ought to draw on the various disciplines which help us to understand people’s thought processes, symbolic language and ways of acting. It is not enough to seek the beauty of design. More precious still is the service we offer to another kind of beauty: people’s quality of life, their adaptation to the environment, encounter and mutual assistance. Here too, we see how important it is that urban planning always take into consideration the views of those who will live in these areas."

Pope Francis tells it like it is in his latest 184-page encyclical, in response to humanity's "principal challenge" of global climate change.

Vatican's Renovated Public Restrooms Provides Showers, Haircuts for the Homeless

Monterey Park City Council adopts tougher penalties for landlords of illegal boarding homes

2015-05-12T16:06:00-04:00

Landlords of illegal boarding homes could face $1,000 fines and six months in jail under tougher enforcement regulations adopted this week by the City Council...The city has staffed a volunteer in the code enforcement office and plans to add more of them. The council unanimously voted to update regulations to say it could prosecute landlords of illegal boarding homes with an infraction or misdemeanor charge and shut the 'public nuisance' down.

"These renters said in previous interviews that they try to stay out of the limelight and cannot afford other living arrangements as they work for below minimum wage and send a large chunk of their earnings back to family in China."

Will India's 'smart city' initiative exacerbate social stratification?

2015-05-12T14:29:00-04:00

Recently, the Indian cabinet green-lit a £10 billion scheme that will be divided equally between building 100 smart cities, and rejuvenating another 500 cities and towns over the next five years. Yet many experts and planners fear that such “insta-cities”, if they are made, will prove dystopic and inequitable. Some even hint that smart cities may turn into social apartheid cities, governed by powerful corporate entities that could override local laws and governments to “keep out” the poor.

Challenging the space-age Manifest Destiny narrative, as Elon Musk vies to move humans to Mars

2015-05-08T12:26:00-04:00

It’s a myth almost universally believed, that sits at the core of liberal technocratic thought, and has been embedded in practically every other work of speculative fiction for the last half century. You can sum it up like this: 'When we go into space, we will all magically become nice.'...It’s early days, but if we really want to create a progressive new world then issues like these should be at the hearts of our efforts from the very start.

The longtime space-age Manifest Destiny of humans inhabiting Mars and the prominently white, European male perspective that narrative perpetually emphasizes has become a bubbling multi-faceted discussion among science bloggers as Elon Musk's staunch ambitions to ultimately turn humans into a "multiplanet species" continue to develop. Stemming from that discussion, writer Martin Robbins of The Guardian contemplates whether or not humanity's eventual future on Mars can exist without the earthly issues of sexism and racism.

Kate Orff to emphasize "climate dynamics" as new Director of Columbia GSAPP's Urban Design Program

2015-04-06T15:24:00-04:00

SCAPE founder and Columbia GSAPP Associate Professor Katherine Orff will succeed leading urban housing authority Professor Richard Plunz as the new GSAPP Director of the Urban Design Program starting this June. As a longtime GSAPP and Urban Design Program faculty member and landscape architect, Orff is best known for her eco-sensitive and resilient approach in her projects that integrate urban design, landscape design, and architecture.

Strongly reflecting SCAPE's design philosophy, Orff plans to expand the Program with an emphasis on interdisciplinary research and engagement in dealing with timely issues of climate change and social topics. "My goal is to magnify the social and humanitarian ethos that the Program is well known for, and bring it together with themes of infrastructure, urbanism and climate dynamics," Orff said in a statement.

Evidently, Orff's work throughout her time in Columbia is heavy in collaboration. In the past, she has led various multi-disciplinary collaborat...

Student-led Rural Studio continues to prove the value of socially engaged architecture

2014-12-12T19:29:00-05:00

Rural Studio, Auburn University's off-campus undergraduate program in Newbern, Alabama, continues to gain recognition for their student-led design/build projects that assist the communities in one of the South's most under-served regions. Rural Studio has won several awards from 1995 until most recently as the 2015 recipient of the AIA's Whitney M. Young Jr. Award. Named after the civil rights-era Urban League leader, the annual Whitney M. Young Jr. Award is given to an architect or architecturally related organization whose work greatly contributes toward progressive social advocacy and responsibility.

Established in 1993 by D.K. Ruth and Samuel Mockbee, the student-led Rural Studio has completed parks, museums, a fire station, Boys and Girls Clubs, parks, and homes throughout western Alabama -- a region where 40 percent of the population lives under the poverty line. One of Rural Studio's projects that has attracted attention in recent years is the 20K House Product Line, which is ...

Twelve winners for the regional Holcim Awards 2014, Africa + Middle East

2014-10-20T21:14:00-04:00

The winners of the Holcim Awards 2014 Africa Middle East regional competition were recognized in a recent awards ceremony in Beirut, making it the fourth installment of the 2014 global awards program. The Africa Middle East competition focused on multi-disciplinary design solutions for building social and environmenal resilience...The winning projects will be implemented in nine countries including Turkey, Lebanon, Ethiopia, Nigeria, Palestine, Rwanda, and Morocco.

Check out a selection of the Africa - Middle East winners:

HOLCIM AWARDS GOLD 2014 - Eco-Techno Park: Green building showcase and enterprise hub, Ankara, Turkey
AUTHOR: Onat Öktem and Zeynep Öktem, ONZ Architects, Ankara, Turkey

HOLCIM AWARDS SILVER 2014 - Evergreen City: Urban pine forest rehabilitation, Beirut, Lebanon
MAIN AUTHOR: Raëd Abillama, Raëd Abillama Architects, Metn, Lebanon
FURTHER AUTHORS: Sawsan Bou Fakhreddine, Associaton for Forests Development & Conservation, Jdeideh, Lebanon; Youssef Abillama, Maintenance Management Group, Antelias, Lebanon

HOLCIM AWARDS BRONZE 2014 - Incremental Construction: Low-cost modular housing scheme, Addis Ababa, Ethiopia
MAIN AUTHORr: Dirk Donath, Bauhaus University, Weimar, Germany
FURTHER AUTHOR: Brook Haileselassie, Asgedom Berhe, Helawie Sewnet and Sarah Yusuf, Ethiopian Institute of Architecture, Building, Construction & City Development (EiABC), Addis Ababa University, Addis Ababa, Ethiopia; Peter Dissel, Afro-European Engineers, Addis Ab...

Studios Kabako from Congo wins 2014 Curry Stone Design Prize

2014-10-20T15:12:00-04:00

Congolese performance and theater group Studios Kabako from Kisangani was announced as the 2014 Curry Stone Design Prize winner this past weekend at an awards ceremony in Brussels...Studios Kabako was established in 2001 to address the various emotions linked to the aftermath of civil war. Located in a city that is isolated geographically and culturally, the studio has provided its community a safe creative haven of dance, theater, and music through its urban interventions and cultural programs.

Studios Kabako will start a U.S. tour including in New York from October 21 to November 1, 2014, with two performances at the BRIC theater in Brooklyn.

The studio will receive a $100,000 grant prize, and were also featured in a short documentary by the Curry Stone Foundation, which you can watch entirely below.

Arup Germany/SolarLeaf, Studio Tamassociati, and Elemental win in 2014 Zumtobel Group Award

2014-09-26T21:12:00-04:00

The winners for the 2014 Zumtobel Group Award were recently honored at an awards ceremony in London...According to jury chairman Winy Maas (MVRDV principal), although voting for the winners was very close in all three categories, the jury distinguished the winners based on the key factor of innovation — in regards to technicality, planning, and ecological and social challenges.

From 356 submissions to 15 nominated projects, three winners were selected in the categories: BUILDINGS; URBAN DEVELOPMENTS & INITIATIVES; and the newly added APPLIED INNOVATIONS.

BUILDINGS winner: Port Sudan Paediatric Centre by Studio Tamassociati, Italy

URBAN DEVELOPMENTS & INITIATIVES winner: PRES Constitución by Elemental, Chile

APPLIED INNOVATIONS winner: SolarLeaf with Arup Deutschland GmbH

More photos and other details of each project on Bustler.

You can also watch jury commentary videos on each winner right below.

Barcelona wins Grand Prize in Bloomberg Philanthropies’ Mayors Challenge for Europe

2014-09-23T21:32:00-04:00

Michael Bloomberg's Bloomberg Philanthropies revealed the winners of its first European edition of the Mayors Challenge. More than 150 top cities from 28 European nations entered the competition, which asked participants to send their most innovative ideas that address Europe's timely pressing issues like unemployment, energy efficiency, obesity, aging, and improving government efficiency.

Barcelona took the Grand Prize for Innovation and €5 million to help implement their proposal, Collaborative Care Networks for Better Aging, a digital and community "trust network" for each of its at-risk elderly residents.

Innovation prizes of €1 million were also given to the following cities:

Athens, Greece: Synathina, a Public Platform for Engaged Citizens
Kirklees, in Yorkshire, United Kingdom: Kirklees Shares
Stockholm, Sweden: Biochar - for a Better City Ecosystem
Warsaw, Poland: Virtual Warsaw - Urban Information System for the Visually Impaired

In addition to prize money, each winning city will receive technical assistance, expert coaching, and a trophy specially designed by renowned artist Olafur Eliasson.

Michael Bloomberg congratulated Barcelona via a surprise phone call from Paris in the video below.

Learn more about the winning ideas on Bustler.

The 2014 Buckminster Fuller Challenge semi-finalists

2014-08-27T21:14:00-04:00

The next edition of the prestigious Buckminster Fuller Challenge has already begun! Every year, the highly competitive international challenge searches for the most inventive -- and effective -- holistic solution strategies to the world's most pressing problems. The Challenge Review Committee selected 20 semi-finalist initiatives out of 450 proposals worldwide. Each project went through three rounds of rigorous evaluations.

See the rest of the projects and other details on Bustler.

The uphill climb to gender equity continues...

2014-08-26T17:39:00-04:00

Women are architecture's original rebels. Over 120 years ago, they insisted that architecture schools and professional organisations open their doors to women, arguing that the field would thrive (or wither) according to the diversity of its students and practitioners...And yet despite this long history of challenging architecture to be inclusive, women have been given little credit for their contributions.

Despina Stratigakos, historian and University at Buffalo architecture professor highlights in her Opinion article how women in architecture have challenged and continue to challenge the deep-rooted patriarchy in the field of architecture throughout the past century. Although there is a growing number of women who are studying architecture, holding leadership roles in schools and firms, and forming organizations, the same problems of gender inequality still exist to this day. From that, another question remains: Is anyone even paying attention?

In Architecture, a Glass Ceiling

Phyllis Lambert named as 2014 Golden Lion for Lifetime Achievement recipient

Mecanoo’s Francine Houben named AJ Woman Architect of the Year 2014

Arab Women in Architecture Film

Behind the Scenes at Bloomberg’s Ideas Camp for Cities

2014-07-21T13:29:00-04:00

Serious money is in play in the Bloomberg Philanthropies’ “Mayors’ Challenge” for cities competing to show they have come up with promising innovations to cope with 21st-century challenges. “It was a big surprise to hear we’d share our ideas with competitors,” says Gomes. “But it works brilliantly. It’s exactly what you need—everyone sharing and trying to help each other. It’s crazy, but it works.”

Previously:

How the Bloomberg Mayors Challenge Is Being Received in Europe

2014-06-27T13:09:00-04:00

Can a U.S. organization really tell Europe how to run its cities better? [...] Following a successful inaugural challenge last year, the city innovation contest crossed the Atlantic in 2014, winnowing down European applicant cities to a shortlist of 21*, all of whom attended a two-day Ideas Camp staged in Berlin earlier this month. [...] A European organization could not realistically offer anything as substantial as €9 million in prize money.

Previously: Twenty-one finalists for the Bloomberg Philanthropies’ Mayors Challenge Competition in Europe

“Arctic Adaptations: Nunavut at 15” to represent Canadian Pavilion at 2014 Venice Biennale

2014-05-22T19:01:00-04:00

After being selected in a juried national competition back in March, the Arctic Adaptations: Nunavut at 15 exhibition will represent the Canadian Pavilion in the upcoming 2014 Venice Biennale. The timely exhibition will also mark the 15th anniversary of Nunavut, Canada's youngest territory.

Curated by Lateral Office of Toronto, "Arctic Adaptations" will examine the complex relationship that modernism has had with Nunavut's indigenous communities throughout the last century, and the innovative ways they have responded to those changes.

The exhibition will also showcase five themed proposals that explore the various aspects of Nunavut's evolving architectural, social, and cultural landscape. Each design team consists of a Canadian architecture school, a Canadian architecture office with extensive northern experience, and a Nunavut-based organization.

More details on Bustler.

Twenty-one finalists for the Bloomberg Philanthropies’ Mayors Challenge Competition in Europe

2014-05-08T14:58:00-04:00

Twenty-one of what was deemed as the most bold and creative ideas were listed as finalists in the first European edition of the Bloomberg Philanthropies’ Mayors Challenge Competition. European cities with populations of at least 100,000 residents were invited to submit ideas that address a variety of some of the most common and complex urban issues throughout the continent.

In the fall, one winner will get the grand prize of €5 million (approx. US$6.9 million) for the most original and transferable idea, and four more cities will receive €1 million (approx. US$1.4 million).

Below are the finalist cities and a glimpse into the type of issues their ideas address:

AMSTERDAM, Netherlands – Youth Unemployment
ATHENS, Greece – Civic Engagement
BARCELONA, Spain – Aging
BOLOGNA, Italy – Youth Unemployment
BRISTOL, United Kingdom – Health/Anti-obesity
BRNO, Czech Republic – Public Safety/Civic Engagement
CARDIFF, United Kingdom – Economic Development
FLORENCE, Italy – Economic Development
GDANSK, Poland – Civic Engagement
KIRKLEES, United Kingdom - Social Capital
RAKOW, Poland – Transportation
LISBON, Portugal – Energy
LONDON, United Kingdom – Public Health
MADRID, Spain – Energy
SCHAERBEEK, Belgium – Energy
SOFIA, Bulgaria – Civic Engagement
STARA ZAGORA, Bulgaria – Economic Development
STOCKHOLM, Sweden – Environment
THE HAGUE, Netherlands – Civic Engagement
WARSAW, Poland – Tran...

China censors sci-fi film about Hong Kong's political and social anxieties

2014-04-14T16:56:00-04:00

The video reveals Hong Kongers’ anxieties over political and social issues, such as their increasingly crowded and materialist city and the growing numbers of mainlanders since the city's transfer from the United Kingdom to China in 1997. It sends the opposite message of a very common view among mainlanders, that without China's economic support, Hong Kong would have been dead long ago.

"Hong Kong Will Be Destroyed After 33 Years" is a nearly seven-and-a-half minute video by local film studio G.V.A Creative. Set in present-day Hong Kong, the city has become the target of an approaching meteor expected to hit in 2047 -- the year when the Special Administrative Region of China ceases to have separate laws from mainland China. As nearly two-thirds of the population abandons the city, the city is reborn despite its doom.

You can watch the entire film below.

SEED Award winners for Excellence in Public Interest Design

2014-01-31T18:58:00-05:00

The winners were recently announced in the fourth annual SEED Awards for Excellence in Public Interest Design. The SEED Awards acknowledges design projects that highlight pressing social, environmental, and economic issues in the world. Winning projects received a US$1,000 honorarium and an all-expenses-paid trip for one team representative to present at the Structures for Inclusion conference in New York City on March 22-23, 2014.

The jury selected six winning projects:

Pictured above: Towns Association for Environmental Quality Green Building Headquarters, Sakhnin, Israel

Comunidad Ecologica Saludable, Puenta Piedra, Lima, Peru

Can City, Sao Paulo, Brazil

Manica Football for Hope Centre, Bairro Vumba (Vumba neighborhood), Manica, Mozambique

Community How-To-Guides, Detroit, MI, USA

The Potty Project, New Delhi, India

Three honorable mentions were also awarded to: Dimen Kam Minority Cultural Heritage in China, Dimen, China; Walk [Your City], Raleigh, NC; and People Organizing Place, Dallas, Texas.

Find out more on Bustler.

Project winners announced for Public Interest Design Global

2013-12-12T13:35:00-05:00

After tight competition and vigorous deliberation from the jury, six Project winners were selected for the Public Interest Design Global. The winners will present their projects and discuss social impact design at a public global convening at the Ecole Spéciale d’Architecture in Paris on April 18-19, 2014.

The six winners, announced by the Ecole Spécial d’Architecture, Design Corps, and the Social Economic Environmental Design (SEED) Network are:

Umusozi Ukiza "Healing Hill" - Butaro Doctor Housing - Burera District, Rwanda (see cover image)

Can City - Sao Paulo, Brazil

TAEQ Green Building Headquarters - Sakhnin, Israel

Walk [Your City] - Raleigh, North Carolina

Comunidad Ecologica Saludable [Healthy Ecological Community] - Lima, Peru

Joler Jonno Utshob - A Dug Well Pavilion - Dhaka, Bangladesh

For more, head over to Bustler.