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Europe

88 | How to Make Useful Noise

Podcast
Is Resilience Still Relevant? By the middle of this century, up to 300 million people will be displaced by climate change and climate change disasters. What is the ethical role of designers in adapting the built environment to such changes?
  • Community Development
  • Conflict and Disaster
  • Housing
  • Resilience
  • Urban Strategies

Anna Heringer

2009 Prize Winner
Video
Is sustainability about working within scarcity or finding natural abundance? Studio Anna Heringer is a leader in architecture using low-tech, natural materials, often in collaboration with local community craftspeople. The resulting structures are beautiful, resilient and sustainable.
  • Advocacy
  • Community Development

Antonio Scarponi

2008 Prize Winner
Video
Are you ready to co-opt mass consumerism? Antonio Scarponi uses elements from architecture, multimedia arts, and design to “jam” the conventional social order.
  • Environment

Arquitecturas Colectivas

Social Design Circle Honoree
How can global practices and individuals share ways to effect change within the built environment? Arquitecturas Colectivas is a massive, open-source network interested in the participatory construction of the built environment. The common thread is a willingness to manipulate the fabric of the built environment.
  • Advocacy
  • Community Development

Assemble

Social Design Circle Honoree
What is the antidote to luxury apartments no one will live in? Assemble is a UK-based collective which critically examines the relationship between design, public space and public life.
  • Urban Strategies

Atelier d’Architecture Autogérée

2011 Prize Winner
Video
Can a new urban future grow out of a vacant lot? Atelier d’Architecture Autogérée is a collective of architects that transforms urban spaces. It is recognized as an engine for engaging citizens in shaping their own cities through experimentation and renewal.
  • Urban Strategies

Basurama

Social Design Circle Honoree
Podcast
Can waste be a resource for urban transformation? Best known for creating colorful playgrounds from common landfill waste, Basurama is a collective of Spanish artists whose projects provide cultural amenities while facilitating wider conversations about waste as a resource.
  • Urban Strategies

Civic City

Social Design Circle Honoree
Podcast
Can graphic arts be an agent of political change? The team of Vera & Ruedi Baur / Civic City are widely credited with launching a wave of political activism within the fields of graphic design and its allied professions.
  • Advocacy

Collectif Etc.

Social Design Circle Honoree
Is there an alternative to a top down, hierarchical civic design process? Collectif Etc is a French design collective that challenges top down, hierarchical civic design. All stakeholders, from experts to the citizens themselves have a role—and a voice.
  • Community Development

Coloco

Social Design Circle Honoree
Can a city work as an ecosystem? Coloco believes landscape is an opportunity for collective thought and action. Coloco seeks to create places that can bring communities together and create new ideas among diverse populations.
  • Community Development
  • Environment
  • Urban Strategies

Ctrl+Z

Social Design Circle Honoree
Is architecture more about community participation than materials? Ctrl+Z Architecture practices collaborative, participatory, self-construction initiatives throughout the world. It believes that at its heart, architecture is more about interaction with communities than specific materials or approaches.
  • Community Development
  • Environment
  • Urban Strategies

Ecosistema Urbano

Social Design Circle Honoree
Podcast
Can urban biodiversity be designed? Ecosistema Urbano is a Madrid-based architecture and design firm founded in 2005 by Belinda Tato and Jose Luis Vallejo.
  • Urban Strategies

EXYZT

Social Design Circle Honoree
Podcast
Can Design Reclaim Public Space? EXYZT was a European multidisciplinary design collective that broke extraordinary ground in challenging traditional notions of how public space can be organized.
  • Urban Strategies

Farm Cultural Park

Social Design Circle Honoree
Can rejuvenation through art transform a forgotten town? Farm Cultural Park is an organically conceived art-driven revitalization of the formerly abandoned center of Favara, Sicily. Visitors explore galleries, shops and cafes. Building exteriors are canvases for artists.
  • Advocacy
  • Community Development
  • Urban Strategies

Foundation for Achieving Seamless Territory

Social Design Circle Honoree
Podcast
Is there a relationship between architecture, planning, politics and human rights? The Foundation for Achieving Seamless Territory (FAST) is a think tank founded from a desire to spark a discussion about how political powers use architecture and architects to implement ideological agendas.
  • Community Development
  • Conflict and Disaster

Francis Kéré

Social Design Circle Honoree
Podcast
Can an architect truly straddle both first world success and community development in the developing world? Diébédo Francis Kéré is a Burkinabe architect based in Berlin, Germany, whose work straddles community development in the developing world and award-winning architecture in the first world.
  • Community Development
  • Environment

FrontlineSMS

2011 Prize Winner
Video
Can SMS technology be harnessed as a powerful information dissemination tool? Frontline SMS is software that acts as an information dissemination service for text messages. It uses cell service not internet access to create communication networks and exchange information.
  • Advocacy
  • Community Development

Himanshu Parikh

Social Design Circle Honoree
Podcast
What happens when gravity replaces modern technology as a tool to design urban infrastructure? Himanshu Parikh is an Indian engineer who developed of the concept of ‘slum networking,’ which stems from how the traditional organization of cities was based on natural features such as topography and gravity.
  • Environment
  • Healthcare
  • Housing

Inteligencias Colectivas

Social Design Circle Honoree
What happens when traditional and modern design techniques are blended? Inteligencias Colectivas focuses on the ‘fringe’ of construction practice. Between highly mechanized construction and ancient methods are blended practices with their own wisdom. Inteligencias Colectivas¬ collects, collates and shares these.
  • Advocacy
  • Community Development
  • Urban Strategies

Kraftwerk1

Social Design Circle Honoree
Can high quality, affordable housing be created in fringe areas of a city? With diverse and flexible housing types, participatory planning processes, and energy-efficient designs, Kraftwerk1 has proven that it’s possible to create high-quality affordable housing schemes in fringe areas of a city.
  • Community Development
  • Housing

Lacaton & Vassal

Social Design Circle Honoree
Podcast
Is it better to refurbish and reuse than rebuild? Paris-based Lacaton & Vassal is known for restoring and rehabilitating post-war affordable housing blocks that were threatened with demolition in Paris, Saint-Nazarre and Bordeaux.
  • Housing

Marjetica Potrc

2008 Prize Winner
Video
Can participatory design inspire sustainable prosperity? Marjetica Potrč is an artist and architect who works on community-based projects characterized by participatory design and a concern for sustainability.
  • Community Development
  • Environment

Museo dell’Altro e dell’Altrove di Metropoliz

Social Design Circle Honoree
Can a former salami factory be a home, gallery, film set and a commentary on eviction? Museo dell’Altro e dell’Altrove di Metropoliz is simultaneously a gallery, film project, home for 200 displaced people and a profound social and political commentary on a common problem: eviction.
  • Advocacy
  • Community Development

MVD

Social Design Circle Honoree
How do we democratize design? MVD is an Austrian collective that works to bring a political view to how public space is utilized.
  • Housing
  • Urban Strategies

Raumlabor Berlin

Social Design Circle Honoree
If utopia eluded us, what’s next? Raumlabor Berlin practices “research-based design.” Their practice intersects city planning, architecture, art and urban intervention. Central to their work are projects that disrupt a community’s notions about space.
  • Community Development
  • Urban Strategies

Recetas Urbanas

Social Design Circle Honoree
Podcast
How can citizens take planning into their own hands? Santiago Cirugeda is the founder and principal of Recetas Urbanas (Urban Recipes), a design & advocacy collective of architects, lawyers and social workers based in Seville, Spain.
  • Advocacy
  • Community Development

Refugee Academy

Social Design Circle Honoree
Can refugees be a national asset? Berlin’s The Refugee Academy responds to the influx of refugees into Germany. Their work is about designing new ways to think about migration.
  • Advocacy
  • Conflict and Disaster

Repair Café

Social Design Circle Honoree
Can anyone repair everyday objects? The Repair Café is both an organization and a global network of cafés that emphasize the repair of everyday objects in order to promote a culture of sustainability and reuse.
  • Community Development

Slow/d

Social Design Circle Honoree
Can the product-to-consumer supply chain be made more equitable? Slow/d is an Italian organization seeking to disrupt traditional supply chains in design by connecting designers, consumers & artisans directly.
  • Advocacy
  • Community Development

Stalker

Social Design Circle Honoree
Podcast
Does design create politics or vice versa? Stalker is a collective of artists, architects, activists and others whose work focuses on the margins of the city.
  • Advocacy
  • Community Development
  • Environment
  • Urban Strategies

STEALTH.unlimited

Social Design Circle Honoree
What are the limits of architectural practice? STEALTH.unlimited challenges notions about architectural practice by connecting arts, urban research, cultural activism and interventions. They have a particular focus on ‘common’ spaces shared by both the private and the public.
  • Advocacy
  • Community Development
  • Urban Strategies

studioBASAR

Social Design Circle Honoree
Can design reconcile the legacy of brutal authoritarianism and the new forces of the market? studioBASAR is an architectural office and a “Search and Rescue” team conducting urban observation and intervention. It searches for overlooked urban conditions. Then the ‘rescue’ encompasses architectural interventions.
  • Community Development
  • Urban Strategies

Superuse Studios

Social Design Circle Honoree
Podcast
Can a “blue” economy be created where one business' waste is raw materials for another? Rotterdam based Superuse Studios is at the leading edge of ecological thought. Their work pioneers ideas around an economy where the waste of one business becomes raw materials for another.
  • Environment

The Association La Voûte Nubienne

Social Design Circle Honoree
Can resurrecting building techniques from antiquity solve a West African housing crisis? West Africans face unique challenges in sourcing materials for sustainable, cost-efficient housing. In response, The Association la Voûte Nubienne (“AVN”) is bringing back an ages old technique: mud brick.
  • Housing

thinkpublic

Social Design Circle Honoree
Can better human services be co-designed? London-based Thinkpublic is a social design agency helping improve services of public sector and nonprofit organizations. Thinkpublic’s collborative “co-design” approach identifies and addresses problems which may not have been apparent.
  • Advocacy
  • Community Development

Transition Network

2009 Prize Winner
Video
Can your neighborhood become a self-sufficient community? The Transition Network is a global network of communities responding to global warming and declining oil with local self-sufficiency in food, energy and more.
  • Community Development
  • Environment

Urban-Think Tank

Social Design Circle Honoree
Podcast
How can urban dwellers participate in the construction of their own built environment? Urban-Think Tank (UTT) is an interdisciplinary design studio dedicated to high ­level research and design at a variety of scales, principally concerned with contemporary architecture and urbanism.
  • Community Development
  • Urban Strategies

YA + K

Social Design Circle Honoree
Can design free the public from hierarchical constraints in society? YA + K is a French collective that seeks new ways of understanding and defining public space. Their projects focus on low-tech innovation and the creation of new economies.
  • Community Development
  • Environment

Connect With Us currystonefdn

  • 2010 Curry Stone designprize winner Maya Pedal repurposes donated bicycles
  • Social Design Circle Honoree Nance Klehm runs thegroundrules a composting
  • In Myanmar 70 of the population depends on agriculture designprize
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The Curry Stone Foundation (CSF) is the brainchild of architect, urban planner and developer Clifford Curry, FAIA, and the historical archeologist Dr. Delight Stone, RPA. It was inspired by a shared conviction that design thinking and design actions can—and should, serve those wishing to contribute to community vitality and human dignity. Most of all, we believe that design should be available to those most in need.

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