Eleven more Curry Stone Social Design Circle members announced for June

The Curry Stone Design Prize just announced the latest group of designers to join the Social Design Circle. Instead of awarding the prestigious Curry Stone Design Prize to one recipient, a total of 100 individual designers and groups — whose work is dedicated to innovative approaches to public interest design — will be named as honorees in the Social Design Circle throughout 2017.

For June, the theme was “Can Design Reclaim Public Space?”. Eleven honorees from New York to Kenya to Romania were selected.

Have a look at this month's honorees below.

Asiye eTafuleni: “A South African NGO set up to support informal traders, market vendors, and others who use public space in their work.”

Basurama: “A Spanish collective of architects who create projects which provide cultural amenities while facilitating a wider conversation about waste as a resource. These projects take on many different forms, such as workshops, public art interventions, maps or data visualizations” — and most notably, colorful playgrounds made from common landfill waste.

Collectif Etc: “Begun in 2009, Collectif Etc is a French design collective which seeks to support urban experimentation and discovery. Like many of our honorees, Collectif Etc. began when its members were in their student days.”

Ecosistema Urbano: “A Madrid­-based architecture and design firm founded in 2005 by Belinda Tato and Jose Luis Vallejo. Ecosistema Urbano, which means “urban ecosystems,” works in mainly urban areas, revitalizing industrial areas and poorly developed inner­ring suburbs by creating new buildings and public spaces that focus on increasing both social activity and biodiversity.”

EXYZT: “EXYZT was a European multidisciplinary design collective that broke extraordinary ground in challenging traditional notions of how public space can be organized. Their work used simple low-­cost structures and mobile units as provocations. Seemingly temporary, their projects asked complex questions about how a particular space is used (or why its unused). Although the group disbanded in 2015, each member went on to do similar work in different countries throughout Europe.  EXYZT is honored for how they disrupted the entire landscape of how we think about public space.”

Interboro: “A New York City based architecture, urban design and planning firm whose work seeks to fully engage the economic, social and ecological dimensions of place. Their work crosses disciplinary boundaries to uncover underlying sociological and spatial dysfunctions and attempts to address them.”

Interbreeding Field: “A Taiwanese educational program that creates provocative installations in and about public space. Public space is contested in Taiwan, as it is in most places, and Interbreeding field uses its work to make commentary about how a space should or could be used.”

The Kounkuey Design Initiative (KDI): “A non­profit design and community development organization based in Los Angeles, CA and Nairobi, Kenya. Throughout Africa, Latin America and the U.S., their work emphasizes an extensive process of community engagement which reveals underlying systemic needs in a particular community and subsequently enlists the community in the design and construction of solutions. Contrary to typical NGO work, KDI never goes looking for a problem to fix. Any ‘problem’ which is eventually addressed by design is first uncovered through conversation.”

Raumlabor Berlin: “A German collective practicing new models of urban renewal and ‘instant urbanism.’ Their work is at the intersection of architecture, planning, art and ‘urban intervention.’ The group describes itself as being attracted to ‘difficult urban locations’: locations which are abandoned or left­over and have the potential for reinvigoration.”

Studio Basar: “Founded in 2006 by Alex Axinte and Cristi Borcan, Studio Basar is an architectural office, but is also a self­-described ‘Search-and­-Rescue’ team which works at both urban observation and intervention. The ‘search’ dimension works across Bucharest, looking for over­looked urban conditions that had somehow grown to be tolerated. Seeking moments of banality, improvisation or illegality, the group finds urban moments that don’t work. That leads to the ‘rescue’ part of their practice, which can encompass a variety of architectural interventions.”

Y A + K: “A French collective of artists and designers who seek new ways of understanding and defining public space. Their work encompasses exhibitions, gardens, interventions and workshops, all with the same mission: all public space can be organically and democratically created.”

Check out previous Social Design Circle honoree announcements in the links below.