Architecture for Humanity + NextAid
NextAid Youth With A Vision
This project, sponsored by Architecture for Humanity for NextAid, a South African non-profit organization that runs several programs to engage community members of all ages in changing the problems that affect their community.
YWAV teenagers use creative-enterprise to teach AIDS awareness and life development. NextAid is working with ecological architect Joseph Kennedy of Village Renaissance and a team of international volunteer designers and natural builders to design and build an earth-friendly center for these teenagers and a home for an additional 50 children orphaned by AIDS. It will be a community resource center and a beacon of hope. The projects and programs in the Dennilton center will serve as models for sustainable centers and small scale projects NextAid plans to develop throughout the continent.
Architecture for Humanity is an incredible success story. Starting with a few hundred dollars and an idea, Cameron Sinclair decided to hold a design competition in response to the humanitarian crisis in Kosovo. Since then AFH has grown into a model nonprofit inspiring and helping in communities around the world.
Architecture for Humanity is a 501(c)(3) charitable organization that seeks architectural solutions to humanitarian crisis and brings design services to communities in need.
AFH:
We believe that where resources and expertise are scarce, innovative, sustainable and collaborative design can make a difference.
Through the power of professional design, we build safer, more sustainable and highly innovative structures–structures that become assets to their communities and ongoing symbols of the ability of people to come together to envision a better future.
Check Out: NextAid
April 18th, 2008 at 5:05 pm
anywhere can design emergency shelters for those who lost their homes in Sri Lanka. They may never meet in person or tour buildings they designed yet they can now see each other and their creations.
April 21st, 2008 at 6:44 pm
I participated in the Kosovo housing competition, sponsored by the group that later became Architecture for Humanity. Our entry was a containerized housing system that could ship thousands of houses to a location anywhere in the world to respond to humanitarian needs.
The concept was related to one of my patents, #5279436, which is a shipping container made from structural insulating panels. The panels that make the 6 sides of the container become part of the final structure so there is no charge for returning an empty container.
September 12th, 2009 at 10:12 pm
I won a competition in 1997- Architecture & the Eradication of Poverty that was organised by the UIA (International Architects Union). The design I submitted (with 2 colleagues) was for a ’service pod’ that could be dropped anywhere in the world quickly and easily. This pod contains compost toliet, cooking facilites, water collection and shower/washing. The idea then was that a shelter could be built around it using local materials.
April 13th, 2010 at 9:25 pm
In short, architects need to be a good deal a lot more than just plain architects.