Design competition for schools in developing countries

A dangerous disease is affecting the developing countries’ lifeline to a healthy development: unchecked and substandard schooling facilities creating an increasingly disparate future and unemployable youth. The erosion of this precious commodity has been detrimental to the many economies that continue to experience a decline in living standards.Millennium School is a design competition for school buildings in developing countries located in the tropics.  The Millennium School Design Competition is part of the Be Better Build Better Campaign and aims to solicit the best architecture-for-humanity designs from all over the world.  Architects shall be brought together in a collective effort to try to find solutions to the problems of school buildings in the developing world, and in particular those that are constantly faced by natural disasters like typhoons, flash floods and earthquakes.  The competition will facilitate the emergence of new sustainable design solutions and appropriate technologies that will improve the quality of school buildings in the developing world.  The competition will offer a venue for the practice of architecture for a client group that would otherwise have no access to design professionals that can solve their problems. The key is to stimulate innovation, serve as a means of exchange and ensure the widest dissemination of new technologies in the area of learning-conducive, sustainable, disaster resilient and cost-effective school building design.  By creating a forum where design, technology, education and disaster management converge, the quality of education can be improved through a best practices manual that could be used worldwide.  Through this convergence, the cycle of destruction-reconstruction can be broken and result in a more progressive ascent of destruction-reconstruction-resiliency and progress.  The competition will also yield the most appropriate green technologies with minimal negative effects on the environment. The project site will be in Sagnay, Camarines Sur, Philippines, which was recently devastated by the unrelenting Typhoon Milenyo.  The winning design and subsequent construction of the prototype will be a template specifically designed for the developing world. Deadline for registration: 29 February 2008          Deadline of receipt of entries: 3 April 2008
(foreign participants must take note of lead time for shipment) more about the competition