2011 Curry Stone Design Prize Winners Announced-Grand Prize Winner in Taiwan
About the Curry
Stone Design Prize
The Curry Stone Design Prize was created in the belief that designers can be an instrumental force for improving people’s lives and the state of the world. Our goal is to make the talents of leading designers available to broader segments of society and to inspire the next generation of designers to harness their ingenuity and craft for social good. More info
Hsieh Ying-Chun
2011 Curry Stone Design Grand Prize Winner
Hsieh Ying-Chun is a leading Taiwanese architect who for over a decade has deployed his talents in rural areas that have been decimated by natural disaster. Hsieh works throughout Asia, training villagers to build locally appropriate dwellings in response to the devastation of the 2008 Sichuan earthquake, the 1999 Nantou earthquake and the 2009 Typhoon Morakot in Taiwan. Through Hsieh's hands-on education process, villagers literally reconstruct their own community foundation, knowing they will live in buildings with greater safety, structural integrity, and sustainability.More info
Atelier d'Architecture Autogérée
2011 Curry Stone Design Prize Winner
Atelier d'Architecture Autogérée is a collective of architects, designers and social scientists who transform urban spaces through collaborative, localized endeavors. Founded by Franco-Romanian architects Constantin Petcou and Doina Petrescu in 2001, AAA has become an engine for engaging citizens in shaping their own cities through building, farming and artistic intervention. AAA acts as a creative instigator, empowering local communities to carry out and sustain their own ideas for urban regeneration.More info
FrontlineSMS
2011 Curry Stone Design Prize Winner
FrontlineSMS was founded by Ken Banks in 2005 to enable effective communications channels for communities in the developing world. FrontlineSMS leverages the ubiquity of mobile phones and familiarity of text messaging to turn an offline laptop into a communication hub. The simple innovation empowers villagers, aid agencies, and news services to exchange information among groups easily.
More info
Sustainable Health Enterprises
2010 Curry Stone Winner
Sustainable Health Enterprises (SHE) has been awarded the 2010 Curry Stone Design Prize for development of a locally produced product that enhances women's dignity. In numerous developing countries, the stigma of menstruation is exacerbated by the lack of adequate, affordable sanitary devices, often keeping girls and women away from school and work for many weeks a year. More info
"Designers is another word for problem solvers and that's exactly what we are at SHE." — Elizabeth Scharpf
"We’re not asked to just do a design; we’re asked to come up with the question that we need to solve." — Alejandro Aravena
"We aim to be a center of pedal power research promoting appropriate technology and small scale, sustainable agriculture." — Carlos Marroquin
“Our most beautiful buildings must be in our poorest areas.” — Sergio Fajardo
"For me, sustainability is a synonym for beauty." — Anna Heringer
“Our starting point is that we’re all in this situation together.” — Rob Hopkins
“I am hopeful that, because we have been able to build this project, other architects will take on the challenge.” — Luyanda Mpahlwa
“Design is a subversive practice, it has the power to imagine reality arranged in a different way and with a different order of values.” — Antonio Scarponi
“Citizens are the ones who make the city.” — Marjetica Potrč
“One person. One architect. One small project. Repeat.” — Wes Janz
“People facing the toughest challenges will respond with breakthrough innovations.” — Shawn Frayne
Elemental
2010 Curry Stone Design Prize Finalist
ELEMENTAL, a Chilean design firm and self described "Do Tank" has raised the bar for public housing in the developing world with its transformative design for Iquique's Quinta Monroy shantytown. More info
Maya Pedal
2010 Curry Stone Design Prize Finalist
Maya Pedal is a nonprofit organization that invents and builds "Bicimaquinas," – pedal-powered machines made from used bicycles that make agricultural and household tasks faster and easier for rural residents with limited access to gas and electricity. More info
Transformative
Public Works
2009 Curry Stone Winner
A bold and ambitious public works plan for the Colombian city of Medellín that helped revitalize its poorest neighborhoods and transform what was considered the deadliest city in the world into a vibrant, urban hub is the winner of the 2009 Curry Stone Design Prize. More info
Handmade Building
2009 Curry Stone Design Prize Finalist
The "handmade" village schools and single-family homes designed by
Anna Heringer in rural Bangladesh are an elegant blend of old and new, bucking the growing trend toward cement and steel buildings in the region by offering a sustainable alternative. More info
Transition Network
2009 Curry Stone Design Prize Finalist
The Transition Network is an international, community-led response to global warming and declining oil reserves. More info
Urban Indigenous Architecture
2008 Curry Stone Winner
Luyanda Mphahlwa is the creative force behind MMA Architects, a firm on the vanguard of a new wave of designers that is reshaping and reenvisioning South Africa's post-apartheid architectural landscape. More info
Windbelt Generator
2008 Curry Stone Design Prize Finalist
Shawn Frayne is an entrepreneur and the inventor of the world's first non-turbine wind-powered generator, a new technology that has enormous potential to help people in poor communities power lamps, keep small vaccine refrigerators cool, and charge cell phones for relatively little cost. More info
Leftover Spaces
2008 Curry Stone Design Prize Finalist
Wes Janz is an architect and associate professor of architecture at Ball State University whose practice and teachings focus on the transformative potential of "leftover spaces," the slum dwellings, squatter towns and refugee settlements that house 1 billion of the world's poor. More info
Participatory Design
and Storytelling
2008 Curry Stone Design Prize Finalist
Marjetica Potrč is an artist and architect who works with local communities to devise sustainable solutions for quality-of-life issues affecting people in informal cities. More info
Subversive Design
2008 Curry Stone Design Prize Finalist
Antonio Scarponi is an architect whose interdisciplinary projects use elements from architecture, multimedia arts and design to "jam" the conventional social order of contemporary society. More info