A design by C-re-a.i.d. for a Maasai village in northern Tanzania, is a morphological response to the imposed need to settle, using sustainable, local and accessible materials to redefine its construction culture.
The project is built by a series of earthbags and glass bottles that in addition to generating private and comfortable spaces, allow a quick and easy construction.
Imagine that London becomes the world’s first National Park City. This large-scale and long-term vision has the potential to transform how Londoners live and how the city works. But what would London look like?
With Melbourne’s contentious elevated rail project starting construction, an independent group has taken the opportunity to critique the way that this key piece of infrastructure is engaging with the public. The project, leftunder, is a platform for alternate, community driven proposals for the public space being made available adjacent to this new infrastructure, that which might normally be overlooked and undermaintained. Run by not-for-profit OFFICE, the project has recently culminated in an exhibition at The National Gallery of Victoria's Design Week.
In 2015, after the catastrophic earthquake in Nepal, Maria da Paz invited Joao Boto Caeiro from RootStudio to design and build a model house in Nepal. Using local and accessible materials, they built two prototype houses out of bamboo and partitions, via a collaboration between locals and volunteers that came to the region.
The prototypes respond to the need for housing that is able to be built quickly with the goal of providing independence and immediate shelter, while at the same time introducing basic building techniques using bamboo and bricks. In doing so, they're able to create a set of tools that allow for future construction that the community can make themselves.
For several decades, a set of oriental practices and techniques have strongly infiltrated the western world. A new program that, as architects, we must start solving more often, and that poses interesting challenges from the point of functional, environmental, and aesthetic.
These disciplines are completely focused on the human being, as they seek to work and satisfy their physical, psychological and spiritual needs, and that's why it seems important to analyze how these needs are being met spatially by architects. Many of the operations taken in these spaces create enabling environments for reflection, introspection, healing, and therefore could also be applied in other relevant programs, such as housing, educational, hospital, and even office spaces.
This article seeks to draw lessons from some projects already published on our site, in order to perform a kind of guide for designs that helps our community of readers to find inspiration more effectively.
In the past eight years the world has seen important changes – stemming from natural catastrophes, global warming, war, diseases, political and economic crisis among other things – all of which have a direct impact on the way we inhabit our planet and therefore how architects and planners are managing context-related designs for community living.
The importance of socially engaged architecture was highlighted by this year's Pritzker Prize winner Alejandro Aravena, whose work appeals to the idea of an active, committed architect who seeks for a democratic urban environment. This development also resonates strongly with ArchDaily's mission statement "to improve the quality of life of the next 3 billion people that will move into cities in the next 40 years, by providing inspiration, knowledge and tools to the architects who will have the challenge to design for them."
Therefore, in celebration of ArchDaily's 8th birthday, our Projects Team curated a selection of 24 exemplary projects divided into 3 categories. Each of these projects published over the past 8 years dedicate their design to find greater social, community, civil and humanitarian needs.
.jpg?1476369871 "Ritual House of Yoga / goCstudio. Seattle, United States. Image © Kevin Scott")
