Architecture in Development starts Crowdfunding Action via Onepercentclub
Last Friday I went to the House of Watt near Amstel Station in Amsterdam. Inside the cafe something special would happen, the start of Crowdfunding Action by Architecture in Development. I saw brown boxes piled up against the wall. Was it a kind of maquette? And/Or did it contain a surprise, and if so, what surprise?
Since 2011 Architecture in Development has been building a passionate community of architects. In 2016 the Buildify pilot established six collaborations and supported the realisation of a school in India. Now, by scaling up the platform, Architecture in Development wants to enable even more local-global collaborations. With your support, AID can help bring more community buildings to life!
Architects often dream of creating a better world, but their daily reality keeps them busy working in an exclusive domain for a lucky few. Since 2011, we’ve been encouraging architects to go out of the box and connect to people who need help to build schools, libraries, or meeting places for their communities.
We give the word to the crowdfunders:
With your support for the Unboxing Architecture campaign, we will help connect more people to more communities in need, together!
About us
We are Rob and Changfang, in 2011 we quit our jobs as architects and launched our online platform Architecture in Development (AiD). Our aim was to collect a world-wide database documenting examples of bottom-up architecture, where architects work hand-in-hand with under-resourced communities to solve their pressing needs in educational, health, economic and environmental development.
Our platform has, since then, grown to a community of more than 50,000 building professionals across all continents.
Buildify pilot
To tap into the potential of our community, in 2016 we started an experiment - the Buildify pilot. Our goal was to scout and select the best community projects in need of support to realise their dreams. This self-financed initiative has helped match 6 collaborations and improved the lives of 250 children in India. Through the Buildify pilot, a mobile school has been realised in a slum in India. And a community centre in a coastal village in Ecuador has engaged enthusiastic collaborators and partners to bring its development to the next level.
With the ’Unboxing Architecture’ campaign, we want to advance the success of Buildify and empower more people to build their dreams.
So, what is the funding for?
During the Buildify pilot, our platform was unable to facilitate the entire process: it lacks essential features to enable more communications, participation and collaborations. Although our platform has a fair amount of monthly visitors, it doesn’t provide easy access for them to directly connect to other like-minded people or projects.
In our next Buildify Challenge in 2020, we aim to facilitate more collaborations: increase it to at least 20 matches. We also aim to help ‘projects in need’ gain direct access to more supporters and partners, in order to triple our impact and improve the lives of more than 800 people.
With your support, our platform can connect more people to more community initiatives, making architecture accessible for the people who need it most!
And the brown boxes ....
By the way: the brown boxes was in way a maquette, but still more a way to hide Easter eggs. the children present quickly grasped them out of it. And the grown-ups? They got their own special small boxes.
https://onepercentclub.com/en/projects/unboxing-architecture
