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“Ninety-five percent of the world’s designers focus all of their efforts on developing products and services for the richest 10% of the world’s customers.”  - Paul Polak, Design for the 90% [1]         

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The vast majority of contemporary architectural practice today is service industry based, where a fee-paying client commissions a firm for a defined scope of services. Master of self-effacing cynicism Philip Johnson wryly accepted this structure, calling architects “high-class whores.” The recent surge of interest in designing for traditionally underserved communities, from groups such as Architecture for Humanity, MASS Design, Project H and Public Architecture challenges the traditional firm model. The Prizker Prize jury’s recognition of Shigeru Ban’s humanitarian designs highlights that high design and a socially conscious practice are not mutually exclusive.

Believing that architecture can alleviate societal ills and improve the quality of life for all people is not a new concept. Two eras, the 1920s and 1960s-70s, brought a social agenda to the forefront of the discourse. Hindsight reveals flaws of each. Modernism’s utopian visions for public housing and urban renewal are blamed for the detrimental impact of Post-WWII urban housing projects; participatory design in the 1960s and 70s is criticized for ceding expertise in the name of consensus, ending with projects that were no better than the status quo. Despite this, there are lessons to be learned from those who emphasized the social and humanitarian role of architecture.

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In the immediate aftermath of an earthquake, the need to provide shelter and privacy for those affected is outranked only by the need for food and water. As such, a lot of effort is now put into planning for disaster: how will shelters be distributed? How can they be built cheaply, in large numbers? The answers to these questions have usually led to a standardized design, distributed to any part of the world in the days after an earthquake strikes.

But is this the best way to deal with these natural disasters? Architecture Global Aid, a group based in Spain and Japan, thinks not. They're developing a series of lightweight, fold-able shelters which are actually distributed to earthquake-prone areas in preparation for future earthquakes, rather than in response to one. And unusually, these "Origami Houses" have different designs to suit conditions in different countries.

Read on to find out more about these Origami Houses

The fertile Anqiu region of China’s Shangdong Province is known locally as the land of “cultivation, stone hills, and creeks.” Thus, Little Diversified Architectural Consulting’s (LITTLE) design for Anqiu’s new cultural campus and fitness center is based upon these very elements.