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Hosting city Porto: Call for Ideas

UN Millenium Development Goals

At PORTO in Portugal
In 2007
By Arquitectos Sem Fronteiras - Portugal
Local partners: M.I.R.A.
Donors: Self funding

Migration: Our ideology stands for a new mentality, presented in our Manifesto.

Interface: A platform that supports and connects different individuals, projects, organizations, ideas… building bridges between them.

Reflection: The process of individual awareness starts by creating individual consciousness.

Activism: Being active with effective answers to different problems and situations, denouncing, reclaming and redefining.

Our objective with this initiative was to promote a reflection on the city, its physical and social territory concerning the problems of social exclusion, specially associated with migration issues. Therefore, this competition of ideas has as object of study/intervention our own city, Oporto, represented by four places:

1- Rotunda da Areosa

2- Urban void near Casa da Música

3- Blocks behind S. Bento Train Station

4- Viela do Anjo

By choosing these places we searched for identification in our urban territory of different case studies associating public space reflection, citizenship, social exclusion and migrants’ settlements. Our aim was to encourage participants to propose ideas and concepts for an intervention on the suggested places bearing in mind a critical reflection on the issues mentioned above. The proposal must have also seek raising awareness and reclaiming social integration, in order to develop a more democratic territory and a more active role of each individual in the community.

oporto street
oporto street

Design primer competition for an aids orphanage

UN Millenium Development Goals

At OLIFANTSFONTEIN in South Africa
In 2006
By Architecture Sans Frontières - UK
Local partners: Archaos and Hearts of Hope
Donors: Squire and Partners

The AIDS crisis in South Africa has left 12 million orphans aged 0 to 17 (2005). The purpose of the Design Primer Competition for an AIDS orphanage was threefold; to generate ideas or a design primer, to raise awareness of the scale of the AIDS crisis in South Africa and further afield, and to raise money.

It was a theoretical exercise to challenge students to consider how to improve the provision of facilities for AIDS orphans with an emphasis on innovative design ideas in terms of materiality and spatial and formal relationships. It offered an opportunity to enrich a simple building through consideration of shelter, privacy and small scale detailing.

From a notional brief of accommodation, locally sourced materials, budget requirements and environmental considerations a diversity of design ideas emerged. These ranged from pragmatic to playful solutions, at different stages of refinement. Themes of ownership, thresholds and identity were explored through formal and organic solutions in the landscape at different scales.

Category: Competition Medium / Technology / Material: local resources Typology: Orphanage
proposal
proposal
proposal
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