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The Curry Stone Foundation (CSF), founded in 2007, is the inspiration of Cliff Curry FAIA, architect, urban planner and developer, and historical archaeologist Dr. Delight Stone, RPA.

CSF’s mission is to empower the practice of community-driven social impact design. The Foundation supports groups and individuals using design to build healthier, more vital communities. CSF actively advocates for the use of design as a tool for social change, especially in marginalized communities. In all cases, the Foundation encourages designers and communities to work in close collaboration.

The Foundation’s primary areas of interest are: shelter, community building, health care, environmental issues, education, and peace. Inherent to all CSF does is the belief that the benefits of social impact design should be accessible to those in greatest need.


Initiatives

The Curry Stone Foundation’s programmatic work extends from a desire to empower and inspire design as a tool to create social change. Programs fall under the following three areas:

Collaborative Practice

Collaborative Practice

Community Design Agency (CDA) is a design studio and collective of architects, planners and activists working alongside poor communities towards a shared goal: address inequalities in the built environment. Launched in India in 2017, we have projects underway in diverse areas throughout the country, collaborating closely with communities on dignified places to live, learn, play and work.

Learn more about Community Design Agency

Education

The Curry Stone Foundation supports a wide variety of initiatives related to the teaching of public interest design. Our popular flagship podcast Social Design Insights shares best practices from leading practitioners around the globe. At a deeper level, the Foundation works with academic partners to expand and develop public interest design curricula.

Listen to Social Design Insights

Design Practice Network

Design Practice Network

From 2007-2017, we awarded the Curry Stone Design Prize, an annual juried prize for social design. As a result, the foundation built a significant, diverse network of social design practices from all regions of the world. We continue to support these practices and to promote their work in order to inspire others. This includes facilitating collaborations, sharing innovative projects, organizing formal and informal gatherings and staying in regular dialog with all of our winners, honorees and funding recipients.

Meet our Design Prize Winners
Meet our Social Design Circle Honorees

Curry Stone Foundation Founders Cliff Curry And Delight Stone

Listen to Episode 57 of Social Design Insights to get to know our founders Cliff Curry and Delight Stone and learn how their careers in archeology, city planning, and architecture inspired a foundation dedicated to community driven social impact design.

People

Co-Founders

Clifford Curry

Clifford Curry, FAIA

Co-Founder and Co-Director

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Delight Stone

Dr. Delight Stone

Co-Founder and Co-Director

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Board

Gary Feuerstein

Terrie Kolodziej

Terrie L. Kolodziej

RN, BSN, MS

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Team

Eric J. Cesal - Photo credit: Shayan Asgharnia

Eric Cesal

Director of Educational Initiatives
Host, Social Design Insights

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Baruch Zeichner

Baruch Zeichner

Sound Engineer
Producer, Social Design Insights

Donna Cooper Read

Filmmaker and Advisor

Katie Sheldon

Accounting

Advisors

Diana Bianchini

Di Moda Public Relations

Emiliano Gandolfi

Emeritus Prize Secretary

Community Networks Advisor

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Phoebe Curry Campbell

Writer and Advisor

Kim Saunders

Strategic Advisor

Leah Freidenrich

Advisor

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Rahul Mehrotra

Advisor

Sandhya Naidu Janardhan

Emeritus

Andre Gustavo Guarienti de Almeida Ferreira

Emeritus

Cindy Luzier

Emeritus

Dr. Louisa Silva

In Memoriam

The Team

Clifford Curry, FAIA

Co-Founder

Architect Clifford Curry’s fifty-plus year career has been dedicated to strengthening underserved communities using architecture, design-and collaboration.

In 1968, while still in architecture school, he created the first-ever master plan for his hometown of Bloomington, Indiana. Next, he relocated to Oregon (where he remains) and led an urban renewal project for the city of Salem. In both cases he forged consensus between civic leaders and residents from all walks of life, resulting in a collective vision for a more vibrant and livable city. These early commissions influenced his belief that all types of problems can be approached from a design standpoint.

For over thirty-five years, Cliff focused his practice on senior living. He designed 320 affordable, service-rich facilities that have been home to 2.4 million seniors in the US, China, Canada and the UK. Worlds away from the usual, dreary “old people’s homes,” Cliff innovated buildings that mitigate loneliness, elevate quality of life and promote wellbeing-years before this thinking was fashionable. Drawing on his city planning experience, Cliff also ensured the facilities were perceived as an asset to surrounding neighborhoods. Arguably his work changed the paradigm for senior housing.

In 2007, out of a desire to further the use of design as a tool to improve the lives of people who don’t usually have access to design services, he co-founded the Curry Stone Foundation with his partner, historical archeologist and community activist Delight Stone. Together with their team, they promote, empower and inspire a global generation of social design pioneers working in-and with, diverse communities.

In 2015 The American Institute of Architects recognized Cliff with a Fellowship designation in recognition of his work in the senior living community and promoting humanitarian design. In 2015 the SF AIA honored the Curry Stone Foundation with one of their annual awards.

Dr. Delight Stone

Co-Founder

For over forty years Dr. Delight Stone has worked across platforms and geographies promoting, defending and creating community vitality.

Delight is a philanthropist, historical archeologist and community activist. This activism has been local, national, and international and includes work in archaeology, cultural resource management, architectural preservation, design, public health, and environmental and social justice. This includes participation with the Reclaiming group Living River, North Santiam Watershed Council in opposition to the Kinross Copper Mine, and the creation of the Guadalupe Medical Clinic in Salem, Oregon.

Born and raised in the rural west, especially the Pacific Northwest and Alaska, Delight grew up working in the fields, picking crops, and on farms. She then worked her way through undergraduate school and after graduation worked in as an engineering technician. Subsequently she earned an international MBA, a masters in applied anthropology and a PhD in historical archaeology.

In 2007, she and Cliff Curry co-founded the Curry Stone Foundation and the Curry Stone Design Prize to promote and honor designers who address the critical social needs of people who are not typically served by the design community. The prize championed the belief that design can be a powerful force for improving lives and strengthening communities. Among other facets of the prize, Delight oversaw production of short documentary videos about the winners.

When not travelling to India to visit project sites for the Curry Stone Design Collaborative or working on behalf of practices in the Curry Stone design network, Delight enjoys reading mystery books, cooking, and Bikram Hot Yoga.

Emiliano Gandolfi

Director of Community Networks

Emiliano Gandolfi is an urbanist and independent curator. After a long-term engagement directing the Curry Stone Design Prize, he is currently developing programs to support the Curry Stone design network. Gandolfi is also co-founder of Cohabitation Strategies, a non-profit cooperative for socio-spatial research, design and development.

Eric Cesal

Director of Educational initiatives
Host, Social Design Insights

Eric J. Cesal is a designer, writer, and noted post-disaster expert, having led on-the-ground reconstruction programs after the Haiti earthquake, the Great East Japan Tsunami, and Superstorm Sandy. Formally trained as an architect, Cesal counts international development, economics and foreign policy among his areas of expertise. He is currently visiting faculty at the University of California, Berkeley.

Cesal has been called “Architecture’s First Responder” by The Daily Beast for his work leading Architecture for Humanity’s post-disaster programs from 2010 to 2014. Cesal has been interviewed widely on the subjects of disaster and resilience by publications such as The New Yorker, Architectural Record, Architect Magazine, and Foreign Policy Magazine.

Cesal hosts the weekly podcast Social Design Insights, in conversation with the world’s leading public interest design practitioners.

Sandhya Naidu Janardhan

Sandhya Naidu Janardhan | Managing Director | Curry Stone Design Collaborative | Mumbai

Sandhya Naidu Janardhan is the Managing Director of Curry Stone Design Collaborative, a Mumbai-based design studio established in 2017. The Collaborative works to bring together disadvantaged communities, civic agencies and designers, to a common cause – work together to use design and technical tools to address inequalities in the built environment.

Sandhya is a graduate of Columbia University’s GSAPP in New York City and a TED Fellow. Her prior experiences include working as a Design Associate at Tierra Design an interdisciplinary design firm based in Singapore, and as Design Fellow and Project Manager at the San Francisco based non-profit, Architecture for Humanity. These experiences helped Sandhya form a balanced view of mainstream architecture and social architecture, and eventually led her back to work in service to communities that are most in need.

At the Collaborative, Sandhya is currently working with a diverse group of communities across India through design interventions helping create dignified places to live, learn, play and work.

Leah Freidenrich

Research

Leah has a background in education, library and information studies and psychology.

She has spent a lifetime cultivating curiosity and assisting people with their informational, philosophical and psychological questions. Leah holds graduate degrees from the University of Southern California and Pacifica Graduate Institute. When she is not traveling, she enjoys literary fiction, photography and gardening with her cat Newman.

Terrie L. Kolodziej

RN, BSN, MS

Terrie draws from her Pittsburgh steel roots of hard work and common sense to follow her aim, make a difference, contribute and be kind.

From patient care to policy development, Terrie’s career in international research led her to Beijing, China for two years working on TB vaccine development for Asia. Prior to China she provided program support for USAID in Iraq. While in the U.S.A. she worked in clinical research at the National Institutes of Health and as the Regional Program Officer for the Americas/Caribbean at the Office of Global Research. She held the position of interdisciplinary scientist, at the Department of Health and Human Services, Biomedical Advanced Research Authority, receiving H1N1 vaccines and ancillary equipment into the U.S. Strategic National Stockpiles.

Through these experiences Terrie has made helping those who are the most vulnerable a priority.

Terrie is a registered nurse in Oregon. She received a Bachelor of Science from Johns Hopkins School of Nursing and a Master of Science in Correctional Administration from Western Oregon College.