The Winners for this year's coveted Curry Stone Design Prize, which awards talented designers who "harness their ingenuity and craft for social good," have just been announced!
A big congratulations go out to The Center for Urban Pedagogy, Jeanne van Heeswijk, Liter of Light, MASS Design, and the Riwaq Centre for Architectural Conservation! More info on these incredible organizations, after the break...
2012 Curry Stone Design Prize Winners
The Center for Urban Pedagogy (CUP) collaborates with teachers and students, policy experts and community advocates, and artists and designers to visually communicate complex urban-planning processes and policy-making decisions. In CUP’s hands a topic as dry and alienating as voter redistricting is distilled down into a colorful, accessible foldout brochure that becomes a source of empowerment.
Jeanne van Heeswijk is an artist who facilitates the creation of lively and diversified public spaces, typically from abandoned or derelict sites. Her socially engaged art practice generates new forms of encounter while challenging bureaucratic conventions and acquired rules.
Liter of Light, created by Illac Diaz, converts plastic soda bottles into a cheap daytime lighting source for those living in informal settlements in the Phillippines. Many of these chockablock dwellings lack electricity, windows or adequate daylighting, and are often made darker by extended roofing for protection from rain and hot sun.
Model of Architecture Serving Society —aka MASS Design—is a Boston-based architecture firm that has created a niche practice in designing healthcare facilities in resource-limited settings, primarily in countries emerging from crisis. MASS brings high-quality design and implementation to where it is most needed, and at the same time brings other disciplines into architectural work (its core team includes public health professionals with no background in design).
Riwaq Centre for Architectural Conservation has spent more than two decades documenting Palestinian heritage and culture through restoration of the built environment. RIWAQ sees architectural restoration as a social and economic incubator; the projects it facilitates serve the public, create jobs, and strengthen community identity. Riwaq has done pioneering work in a region greatly affected and fragmented by conflict, completing complicated, multi-stakeholder projects on a large scale in the face of many logistical and sociopolitical challenges.
Information from the Curry Stone Design Prize Web Site
