Imagining a world without the Internet is nearly impossible. Despite the Internet’s global significance, less than 20 percent of the world’s 6 billion people currently have access to the educational, social and economic opportunities it can create.

The 2007 AMD Open Architecture Challenge invited the global community to help address this digital divide. It challenged design professionals and others to develop not one but many solutions for building sustainable, multi-purpose, low-cost technology facilities for those who need them most. As the winner of the 2007 AMD Open Architecture Challenge, The Global Studio will see their ideas come to life for SIDAREC in the heart of the Mukuru Kwa Njenga settlement in Nairobi, Kenya.

Overall Competition Winner and Africa Winner: The Global Studio (Stephanie Ingram, Geoff Piper, Matthew Sullivan, Ashley Waldron), Seattle, WA, USA

Asia Challenge Winner: Max Fordham, LLP (Gwilym Still, David Hawkins, Bertie Dixon and Thomas Bailess) + Nick Lawrence Location: London, UK

South America Challenge Winner: Igor Taskov, Fernando Pagan, ChunSheh Teo, Heather Worrell Locations: Nis, Serbia, San Juan, Puerto Rico and Indianapolis, IN, USA

Other Placed Finalists
Africa - Second Place: Duvivier Architects, Venice, CA, USA
Africa - Third Place: KBAS Philadelphia, PA, USA
Asia - Second Place: Emre Can Yilmaz Istanbul, Turkey
Asia - Third Place/ Founders Award: Studio Wikitecture, Second Life
South America - Second Place: zerOgroup [Laurent Troost] Manaos, Brazil
South America - Third Place: HdlT Collaborative Seattle, WA, USA

About the 2007 AMD Open Architecture Challenge

The 2007 AMD Open Architecture Challenge focused on the issue of digital inclusion and tasked design teams to address the issues of facility design that prevent technology labs from succeeding. Three community partners were selected, one in each of three regions. Each site posed a unique set of design constraints and opportunities. While the needs of each client were unique, the hurdles they face in embracing technology to offer access to education, health care and the global marketplace are shared by millions of people in communities all over the world.

One overall winner of the competition has the opportunity to realize their design in partnership with the community partner. Additionally, each of the three winning teams receives a US$5,000 travel stipend to travel on site and work with the respective community organizations to further develop and refine the design. Architecture for Humanity is currently seeking additional funds to construct the solutions for the sites in Ecuador and Nepal.

The three site challenges for the 2007 AMD Open Architecture Challenge were:

South America
Community Partner: Kallari Association, Napo Province, Ecuador
Challenge: Connect a cooperative of indigenous chocolate producers and artisans in the Ecuadorian Amazon with the global marketplace by building a fair trade exchange, chocolate production center and satellite rural technology points.

Africa
Community Partner: SIDAREC, Nairobi, Kenya
Challenge: Empower the youth of Mukuru Kwa Njenga, an informal slum settlement of 250,000, to connect with other youth and create positive change in their community by building a technology media center and recording studio.

Asia
Community Partner: Nyaya Health, Sanfe Bagar, Nepal
Challenge: Enable families in a remote rural area of Nepal where there is only one doctor for a population of 250,000 to access to health care from top physicians and medical professionals all over the world by building a tele-medicine center.

About the Open Architecture Challenge:
Each year the Open Architecture Challenge harnesses the creativity and energy of the design community to address a different systemic issue facing those living in under served communities. The Open Architecture Challenge is an open, international design competition that reaches beyond the traditional bounds of architecture by challenging architects, designers and others to solve inequities in the built environment affecting the health, prosperity and well-being of under-served communities.