An awards ceremony will take place next 15 November, 2012, at the Harvard Graduate School of Design, followed the next day by a forum of presentations by the 2012 winners and panel discussions with a curated group of respondents. The awards ceremony and daylong forum are free and open to the public.
The Winners of the 2012 Curry Stone Design Prize are the Center for Urban Pedagogy (CUP), Liter Of Light, MASS Design Group, Riwaq, and Jeanne van Heeswijk.
The CUP collaborates with students, policy experts and community advocates, and designers and artists to explain complex urban-planning processes and policy-making decisions through understandable visual communications and multimedia toolkits. Founded in 1997 by artist and designer Damon Rich and seven other co-founders and directed today by Christine Gaspar, CUP provides practical information to groups who need it most: immigrants, public-housing residents, and at-risk youth, to name a few.
Filipino entrepreneur and activist Illac Diaz created Liter of Light to provide residents of informal settlements in his country with a cheap daytime lighting source that can be produced and distributed locally. The solution is Diaz's figurative "liter of light," made simply from a clear plastic bottle that is filled with water and mounted in a metal tile. The tile is then easily installed in a typical metal roof. The inexpensive "bulb" disperses sunlight 360 degrees and lights up a room without need for kerosene or inventive wiring. Liter of Light is the first organization to widely distribute the solar bottle bulbs, and through a combination of social networking, open-source sharing, and hands-on building the organization has placed tens of thousands of these solar bottle bulbs in informal settlements worldwide.
The Riwaq Centre for Architectural Conservation has spent more than two decades documenting Palestinian heritage and culture through holistic 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. For Riwaq, conservation and historic restoration are not about creating a museum piece—they are tools for social and economic advancement.
The Curry Stone Design Prize celebrates social design pioneers and the power of design as a critical force for improving lives and strengthening communities. "The mission of the Curry Stone Design Prize is a wide mission of social transformation," said Emiliano Gandolfi, Secretary of the Prize. "It's not about style anymore, it's about an approach. The Curry Stone Design Prize is one of the institutions that is enabling this transformation."
The aim of the Prize is as much about sharing best practices of these emerging design disciplines as it is about the actual prize
"The aim of the Prize is as much about sharing best practices of these emerging design disciplines as it is about the actual prize," said Chee Pearlman, Curator of the award. "Each of these emerging practices is taking on critical challenges, and in the films we can share their stories."
15 November 2012
2012 Curry Stone Design Prize Forum Awards Ceremony
Harvard Graduate School of Design
18:30 — 20:30
Cambridge, MA
Free entrance — RSVP events@currystonedesignprize.com
16 November 2012
Curry Stone Design Prize Forum with 2012 Winners and Respondents
Harvard Graduate School of Design
10:00 — 16:00
Cambridge, MA
Free entrance — RSVP events@currystonedesignprize.com