MMA Architects wins Curry Stone award

[jamie]

7 October, 2008

By Anna Winston

South African practice MMA Architects is the first recipient of the annual $100,000 Curry Stone Design Prize, which awards breakthrough design solutions that respond to areas of need or environmental issues.

MMA was awarded the prize at the IdeaFestival in Louisville, Kentucky, USA, last week for a low-income housing design.

Originally commissioned by South African housing expo Design Indaba, the design uses a timber and sandbag structure which requires little skilled labour and can be built on a budget of 50,000 rand ($6,900).

Ten of the houses will now be built in Cape Town over the next year using volunteer help from the local community.

The judging panel, which included David Adjaye, commended the design as an easily scalable prototype that could help address Cape Town’s need for 350,000 new homes.

“MMA’s elegant solution for a low-cost single-family dwelling shows what can be done with simple materials and a sensitive eye to what local people need – as well as what they bring to the table,” said David Mohney, prize secretary and chair in design at the University of Kentucky.

“Their ideas are exactly the kind that the Curry Stone Design Prize hopes to promote and encourage in the broader field of design – because now, more than ever, the world needs them.”


Credit: Wieland Gleich, ARCHIGRAPHY.com, 2007
Design Indaba House: Jonker Family, MMA Architects

The prize is part of a $5.5 million gift to the University of Kentucky College of Design from architect Cliff Curry, an alumnus of the college, and his wife archaeologist Delight Stone.

Four runners up prizes of $10,000 were also awarded to Shawn Frayne, inventor of a non-turbine wind-powered generator, architect Wes Janz, artist and architect Marjetica Potrc and architect and multimedia artist Anotonio Scarponi.


Wes Janz 'One Small Project' (Sri Lanka Pavilions)

http://www.bdonline.co.uk/story.asp?...de=3124250&c=2

[jamie]

MMA will complete 10 of their homes by year's end with volunteer help from local women.

by Nicholas Tamarin -- Interior Design, 10/6/2008

Proving that high design isn’t just for the wealthy, South African firm MMA Architects has claimed the inaugural $100,000 Curry Stone Design prize for its design prototype for low-income housing in a Cape Town shantytown.



One of the few black-owned architecture firms in South Africa, MMA created the single-family home prototype by borrowing elements from indigenous mud-and-wattle building techniques that forgo traditional brick-and-mortar foundations.

MMA principals Luyanda Mpahlwa and Mphethi Morojele's design features a two-story frame of timber and sandbag infill construction, which is energy efficient and requires little or no electricity or skilled labor to construct. The firm will complete 10 of their homes by the year’s end with volunteer help from local women.

The jury for this year's prize, administered by the University of Kentucky College of Design, included architect David Adjaye and prize founder Clifford Curry, who is the principal architect for the Colson & Colson general contracting firm. Along with his wife H. Delight Stone, Curry donated $5.5 million to the college.

"MMA's elegant solution for a low-cost, single-family dwelling shows what can be done with simple materials and a sensitive eye to what local people need -- as well as what they bring to the table," says Dave Mohney, prize secretary and Curry Stone Chair in Design at the University of Kentucky. "Their ideas are exactly the kind that the Curry Stone Design Prize hopes to promote and encourage in the broader field of design. Because now, more than ever, the world needs them."



Four other finalists for the prize, including Shawn Frayne, inventor of the world's first non-turbine wind-powered generator, will each receive $10,000.

Photography courtesy of MMA Architects. All images copyright Wieland Gleich, ARCHIGRAPHY.com, 2007.

http://www.interiordesign.net/article/CA6601313.html