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comment Competition Asks Architects to "Design Like You Give a Damn"
With the slogan “design like you give a damn,” Architecture for Humanity (AFH) has made a name for itself by bringing socially and environmentally responsible architectural solutions to communities in need. AFH provides educational forums and workshops for a range of audiences, and earlier this year it launched the Open Architecture Network, the first website dedicated to providing access to open-source architectural plans. The organization is perhaps best known, however, for hosting design competitions, including several in response to humanitarian crises such as the 2003 tsunami in south Asia and the 2005 hurricanes in the U.S. Gulf Coast.
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Now, following a three-year lull in competitions, AFH is hosting a three-part competition to design information centers that will connect three communities on three continents to the Internet and its educational, social, and economic opportunities. “We are calling upon the global design community to help improve living conditions around the world," says Cameron Sinclair, executive director of AFH.
The first challenge is to provide a cooperative of indigenous fair-trade artists and chocolate producers in the Ecuadorian Amazon with a chocolate-production factory, an online exchange and research center, a visitor center, and three rural technology hubs. The second challenge will bring a library, technology center, radio station, and recording studio to the youth of a slum in Nairobi, Kenya. The third challenge will provide a remote Nepali community of 250,000 people—but with only one doctor—with a telemedicine center that will give residents access to medical professionals around the world.
Dru McKeown, co-founder of TOIstudio and head of the fledgling Cleveland chapter of AFH, plans to enter all three challenges. Arguing that “information can lead to self-sustenance,” McKeown likens providing Internet access to teaching a person to fish. Explaining that he finds “no reason to introduce a structure that cannot be constructed or maintained by the communities that will be using it,” McKeown says he plans to incorporate vernacular building materials as well as solar orientation and passive thermal design into each of his proposals.
Administered by AFH, the competition is being cosponsored by Advanced Micro Devices through its 50x15 Initiative, an effort to provide affordable Internet access and computing capability for 50 percent of the world’s population by 2015. Each of the three challenges is being organized with the cooperation of a partner organization already established in the community.
Advanced Micro Devices will fund the construction of one winning design, while the other two will await other sources of funding. With enough funding, the designs will be replicated for additional community partners. AFH will share all entries on the Open Architecture Network under the terms of the Creative Commons Developing Nations License and will feature all finalist designs in publications and events.
The registration deadline is January 15, 2008. AFH will announce the finalists in March and the winners in April.
For more information:
www.architectureforhumanity.org
www.openarchitecturenetwork.org/challenge/
This article was produced by BuildingGreen, Inc.- www.buildinggreen.com
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