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. — bustler.net

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. — bustler.net

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. — bustler.net

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. — bustler.net

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. — bustler.net

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. — Al Jazeera

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.” — urbanland.uli.org

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. — citylab.com

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. — bustler.net

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. — bustler.net

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. — globalvoicesonline.org

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. — bustler.net

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. — bustler.net