History
The organization was founded on April 6, 1999 by Cameron Sinclair and Kate Stohr in response to the need for immediate long-term shelter for returning refugees in Kosovo after the region's bloody conflict. After hosting a series of open design competitions the organization then began taking on a number of built projects, pairing local communities with design professionals to develop a ground up alternative to development and reconstruction.
In 2005 they adopted an 'open source' model and were the first organization to utilize Creative Commons licensing system on a physical structure. To date it has worked in twenty eight countries around the world and has completed over 245 projects. Collectively more than 700,000 people are living, teaching and working in buildings designed by Architecture for Humanity design fellows, chapter members and volunteer design professional.
The early history of the organization is chronicled in the book Design Like You Give A Damn: Architectural Responses to Humanitarian Crises.
Read more about this topic: Architecture For Humanity
Famous quotes containing the word history:
“At present cats have more purchasing power and influence than the poor of this planet. Accidents of geography and colonial history should no longer determine who gets the fish.”
—Derek Wall (b. 1965)
“I am ashamed to see what a shallow village tale our so-called History is. How many times must we say Rome, and Paris, and Constantinople! What does Rome know of rat and lizard? What are Olympiads and Consulates to these neighboring systems of being? Nay, what food or experience or succor have they for the Esquimaux seal-hunter, or the Kanaka in his canoe, for the fisherman, the stevedore, the porter?”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“There is no history of how bad became better.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)