22-03-2017

Can Design Challenge Disequality? Al Borde responds.

Quito, Ecuador,

Bar,

Design,

Curry Stone Design Prize,

The organisers of this year's Curry Stone Design Prize - supported and funded by the Curry Stone Foundation - have assembled a group of 100 selected practices to join the Social Design Circle and some of them are also participating in its new platform: weekly podcasts called Social Design Insights that address a wide range of pressing issues.



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Can Design Challenge Disequality? Al Borde responds. The organisers of this year's Curry Stone Design Prize - supported and funded by the Curry Stone Foundation - have assembled a group of 100 selected practices to join the Social Design Circle and some of them are also participating in its new platform: weekly podcasts called Social Design Insights that address a wide range of pressing issues. This week's conversation involves the four architects from the Al Borde firm in Quito, Ecuador who will be discussing the insight “Can Design Challenge Disequality?”


One of the questions that so many designers ask themselves - particularly those who are socially engaged and work closely with the end users - is what is the real benefit of their work. To showcase the concept and ideas that drive architects and designers to make certain design choices, for the 10th anniversary of the prize, the Curry Stone Foundation has decided to acknowledge a large group of the most influential socially engaged practices as this year's winners. It has also introduced podcasts, that are becoming very popular in the world of architecture, to publicise the good practices of architecture and design of the 2017 winners of the Curry Stone Design Prize.
Twelve pressing issues will be addressed over twelve months in the “Social Design Insights” where the architects themselves will discuss their ideas and experiences. Last week, Colombian architect Giancarlo Mazzanti from El Equipe de Mazzanti responded to this month's theme “Can Design Challenge Disequality?” (link news), and the Ecuadorian architects from Al Borde will be participating on 23 March.
Al Borde was founded in Quito in 2007 by Pascual Gangotena and David Barragán; in 2010 they were joined by Maria Luisa Borja and Esteban Benavides. Their approach to architecture has always been human-based, turning limited resources into an aesthetic and political opportunity in a modus operandi that combines art and architecture. They do all of this in a process that begins with the location and with community engagement. 
The podcast will go to air on 23 March and will focus on the group's experience in their “hope projects” - three school projects (2009, 2011 e 2014) in Puerto Cabuyal in the Manabi province - that respond to the specific needs of the community with whom the architects built an ongoing relationship during development. As the Al Borde architects say, they see themselves as catalysts for change: “We want to transmit a rational thinking process so that the community can create new projects on their own and feel free to explore space in other ways.”  

Christiane Bürklein

Curry Stone Design Prize 2017
http://currystonedesignprize.com/honorees/al-borde/
Images: Courtesy of Al Borde
Related links: http://www.floornature.com/blog/espacios-de-paz-spaces-for-peace-in-venezuela-10080/http://www.floornature.com/blog/a-wagon-to-boost-culture-in-ecuador-9082/

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