Nominees for the Curry Stone Design Prize are selected by an anonymous, rotating group of leaders representing broad fields of design and humanitarian advocates from other disciplines. A jury reviews the nominations to choose the Grand Prize Winner (awarded 79,000 euros) and two Winners (awarded 7,900 euros each). Emphasis is placed on emerging projects and ideas that may not have yet been taken to scale.
The 2011 Grand Prize winner was Taiwanese architect Hsieh Ying-Chun, 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.
The second 2011 winner was communication hub FrontlineSMS. Founded in 2005 by Ken Banks, the project seeks to enable effective communications channels for communities in the developing world, leveraging 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.
The 2012 edition of the prize features as jury members architect Teddy Cruz, Tate Modern's Curator of International Art Elvira Dyangani Ose, and Domus editor in chief Joseph Grima, in collaboration with Curry Stone Design Prize Executive Secretary Emiliano Gandolfi and Curry Stone Design Prize Curator Chee Pearlman.
