What is Social Impact Design?
- Overview
- Most Urgent Questions
About the Foundation

What is Social Impact Design?
- Overview
- Most Urgent Questions
About the Foundation

Practices
Explore by Keyword
Advanced Search

Advocacy
Community Development
Conflict and Disaster
Environment
Healthcare
Housing
Resilience
Urban Strategies

Urban Planning

09 | Add, Transform, and Reuse!

Is the right to housing real? Lacaton & Vassal Deconstructs Their Widely Acclaimed methods for the Readaptation of Modernist housing blocks in France.

Housing

110 | Cities of the Future, Cities of the Past

Podcast

Engaging + Reframing the 'Refugee' Crisis Kilian Kleinschmidt is an international networker, development, and migration expert with 30 years of experience in a wide range of countries, emergencies, and refugee camps as a United Nations official, Aid worker, and diplomat.

Community Development

111 | Adapting our Global Institutions to Today’s Challenges

Podcast

Engaging + Reframing the 'Refugee' Crisis Dr. Nina Hall’s advocacy and research span varying fields. Her professional work looks specifically at how international agencies like UNHCR, IOM, UNDP, DFID, etc. are grappling with climate change, new threats in the age of global migration, urbanization, and climate change.

Community Development

112 | Giving Migrants a Voice

Podcast

Engaging + Reframing the 'Refugee' Crisis Mariam Traore Chazalnoel is a Senior Policy Officer at the Geneva Headquarters of the International Organization for Migration (IOM).

Community Development

113 | Opening the World to Refugees

Podcast

Engaging + Reframing the 'Refugee' Crisis The Refugee Academy is a Berlin-based non-profit that creates learning spaces for refugees seeking to assimilate.

Advocacy
Community Development
Conflict and Disaster

115 | Designing for Women & Girls

Podcast

Engaging + Reframing the 'Refugee' Crisis Anna Meddaugh is an American designer who developed a personal, reusable urinal designed for women and girls in refugee camps to use at night when it is too dangerous to go to the communal toilets. She named her design “The Night Loo.”

Conflict and Disaster

116 | This is Architecture as Well

Podcast

Engaging + Reframing the 'Refugee' Crisis Rania Qawasma of Architecture for Refugees joins us to discuss what designers can do to help welcome refugees.

Community Development

118 | Design Politics in the Climate Emergency

Podcast

Crisis in Climate, Crisis in Design Dr. Kian Goh, RA, Ph.D., is an Assistant Professor of Urban Planning at UCLA Luskin School of Public Affairs. She researches the relationships between urban ecological design, spatial politics, and social mobilization in the context of climate change and global urbanization.

Urban Strategies

122 | Imagining New Futures for the Planet

Podcast

Crisis in Climate, Crisis in Design Alex Steffen is an award-winning writer, speaker and foresight consultant, focused on climate change and planetary sustainability.

Environment

123 | Design’s Race & Rescue Mission

Podcast

Crisis in Climate, Crisis in Design Dr. Ken Yeang is a Malaysian architect, ecologist, planner and author celebrated for both his built & theoretical work in green urbanism.

Environment

124 | Five Things About Social Impact Design

Podcast

What Now for Social Impact Design? Our Special Projects Director Eric J. Cesal is a designer, writer, noted post-disaster expert, and podcast host.

Environment

26 | Making Public Space Productive

Podcast

Social Design Circle Honoree

Can design reclaim public space? Chelina Odbert and Jennifer Toy of the Kounkuey Design Initiative share their thoughts on how to engage community.

Community Development
Environment

40 | Activating Community Voices

Podcast

Social Design Circle Honoree

What can design do to promote peace? Isella Ramirez of Hester Street discusses their strategies for making communities be heard.

Advocacy
Community Development
Housing

46 | Gardening as Urban Action

Podcast

Social Design Circle Honoree

Can a city work as an ecosystem? Marco Clausen of Prinzessinnengärten discusses how they came to pioneer a form of mobile gardening, and the positive impacts it has had on their city.

Community Development
Environment

47 | Using Design to Bring Down Crime

Podcast

Social Design Circle Honoree

Does design create politics or vice versa? Kathryn Ewing and Don Shay of VPUU outline how community-based planning can make real results in crime prevention.

Community Development
Housing

75 | New Forms of Design Education for New Forms of Cities

Podcast

Can design education promote social justice? Christian Benimana is a senior principal and managing director at Mass Design. He also is the founder of the African Design Center.

Advocacy
Environment
Urban Strategies

Echeverri & Fajardo

2009 Prize Winner

Video

Can improving the built environment in impoverished neighborhoods transform a city? Fajardo and Echeverri implemented a bold program in Medellín. By training architects to build parks and public buildings in impoverished neighborhoods, Medellin was transformed from “world’s deadliest city” into a vibrant, livable place.

Advocacy
Community Development
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

Hester Street Collaborative

Social Design Circle Honoree

Podcast

How can neighborhoods be shaped by the people who live in them? Hester Street works to ensure neighborhoods are shaped by the people who live in them. They offer planning, design and community development assistance to community-based organizations, government and other agencies.

Advocacy
Community Development
Housing

Kounkuey Design Initiative

Social Design Circle Honoree

Podcast

How can conversation with residents and deep engagement lead to community empowerment? The non-profit Kounkuey Design Initiative is based in Los Angeles, CA and Nairobi, Kenya. Using extensive community engagement, it reveals systemic needs and enlists the community in constructing solutions.

Community Development
Environment

Lacaton & Vassal

Social Design Circle Honoree

Podcast

Is it better to refurbish and reuse than rebuild? Run by the duo it is named for, Lacaton & Vassal is an award-winning architecture firm using innovative design to promote social justice, sustainability, and the repurposing of materials.

Housing

Prinzessinnengärten

Social Design Circle Honoree

Podcast

Why should citizens and activists reclaim public space? Prinzessinnengärten is a bottom-up community garden in Berlin notable for both its scale and its ingenuity in starting a public conversation about the democratic use of public space.

Community Development
Environment

TAMassociati/Emergency

2013 Prize Winner

Video

How can architecture bring dignity in war-torn regions? Studio TAMassociati is a nonprofit architecture firm that specializes in designing healthcare facilities in war-torn areas, highlighting the connection between the built environment and the basic needs of life.

Community Development
Environment

Violence Prevention Through Urban Upgrading

Social Design Circle Honoree

Podcast

Can urban upgrading reduce crime? In Cape Town’s Khayelitsha township, Violence Prevention Through Urban Upgrading (VPUU) uses urban planning to fight crime, developing interventions in high-crime spots. They create decent, livable communities through local planning.

Community Development
Housing

Connect With Us currystonefdn

Get Our Newsletters

Occasional newsletter that keeps you up to date on our recent podcasts, social impact design news and more.

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.

What is Social Impact Design?
About the Foundation
Awards
Social Design Insights
Connect with Us
Explore by Keyword
Accessibility

Contact Us

1560 NW 25th Avenue, Portland, OR 97210-2426, USA

541.323.2299
info@currystone.org

REQUESTS FOR FUNDING

We are struggling to comprehend the magnitude and horror during this period of Covid-19.

The deaths, the illnesses, millions unemployed, millions in quarantine, borders closed and the disruption of normalcy.

Curry Stone Foundation is receiving numerous unsolicited requests for support in light of this crisis. Many of these have significant merit, and we understand the need is great.

Prior the Pandemic, our budget for 2020 and 2021 was committed to projects still in process, in India and elsewhere. Now, as a direct result of the crisis, we anticipate that these will need supplemental funds to reach completion. As these projects impact fragile, marginalized populations, we need to reserve emergency funds for that purpose.

For these reasons, we will not be able to assist financially with any immediate requests for funds.

Appreciatively,

Curry Stone Foundation