Design Like You Give a Damn: The Legacy of Architecture for Humanity

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In the introduction to Architecture for Humanity’s 2006 book Design Like You Give a Damn, founder Cameron Sinclair recounts a story from the early days of the organization. Half-joking yet deadly serious, he describes the day when, while still running Architecture for Humanity from a single cell phone around his day job at Gensler, he was contacted by the UN High Commissioner for Refugees who told him that Architecture for Humanity was on a list of organizations that might be able to help a potential refugee crisis in Afghanistan should the US retaliate in the wake of September 11.

“I hope it’s a long list,” says Sinclair. “No,” comes the answer.

“We’d like to think it was because we had already become a voice for humanitarian design - an unexpected touchstone in the movement for socially conscious architecture,” writes Sinclair of the incident. “The sad truth is that until 1999, when our fledgling organization got started along with a handful of others, there was no easily identifiable design resource for shelter after disaster.”

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Cite: Rory Stott. "Design Like You Give a Damn: The Legacy of Architecture for Humanity" 23 Jan 2015. ArchDaily. Accessed . <https://www.archdaily.com/591052/design-like-you-give-a-damn-the-legacy-of-architecture-for-humanity> ISSN 0719-8884

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