‘Waffle’ emergency shelter design wins prize for Delft students

DutchNews, June 20, 2020 - By Senay Boztas 

Image: Delft University of Technology

Students at Delft University of Technology have won first prize in an architecture competition for an emergency shelter that can be folded away and transported on just one truck. 

Aleksandra Wróbel, Agnieszka Witaszek and Kamil Owczarek designed the foldable emergency shelter to be made from prefabricated cut plywood, with an adaptable structure that can easily be put up and pulled down again, according to a university press release. The wall construction – which also acts as shelving – is described as ‘waffle-like’. 

Their design has won the Kaira Looro Architecture Competition. It also includes a storage room, tank for collecting and filtering rainwater and composting toilet that uses wood shavings. 

The three students received a prize of €5,000 and internship at Kengo Kuma & Associates in Japan. ‘Winning this competition might even become a base for us to start our own practice,’ said Wróbel. ‘This competition has focused our minds to a human-centred approach.’

Arata Isozaki of Japan wins Pritzker architecture prize

Yahoo – AFP, March 5, 2019

Japanese architect Arata Isozaki has been named the 2019 Pritzker Architecture
Prize winner (AFP Photo/Giuseppe CACACE)

Japanese architect Arata Isozaki has been awarded the Pritzker Prize, considered architecture's highest honor, for a lifetime of work that found global resonance while mining local traditions.

The 87-year-old's over 100 built works range from the Palau Saint Jordi, built in Barcelona for the 1992 Summer Olympics, to the Museum of Contemporary Art in Los Angeles, his first international commission.

His hometown of Otai, Japan is a showcase of his early work, including a medical hall and annex, and a prefectural library.

"Isozaki is a pioneer in understanding that the need for architecture is both global and local -- that those two forces are part of a single challenge," the chair of the jury, US Justice Stephen Breyer, said as the prize was announced Tuesday.

The Allianz tower (R) designed by Japanese Arata Isozaki and Andrea Maffei in 

western Milan stands next to the city's Generali tower (AFP Photo/MIGUEL MEDINA)

"For many years, he has been trying to make certain that areas of the world that have long traditions in architecture are not limited to that tradition, but help spread those traditions while simultaneously learning from the rest of the world," he said.

Isozaki is the 46th Pritzker laureate and the eighth Japanese architect to receive the honor. Winners receive a bronze medallion and $100,000.

Indonesian Woman Wins ‘Asia’s Nobel Prize’ for Helping Poor

Jakarta Globe, July 28, 2011

Indonesian social worker Tri Mumpuni, left, pictured at the White House
 Summit on Entrepreneurship in Washington in 2010. Tri is among the
 winners of Asia’s prestigious Magsaysay award this year for giving green
technologies to the poor, organizers said on Wednesday. (EPA Photo)

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Manila. Indonesian social worker Tri Mumpuni is among the winners of Asia’s prestigious Magsaysay award this year for giving green technologies to the poor, organizers said on Wednesday.

Award foundation president Carmencita Abella said Tri, along with an Indian engineer and a Philippine charity group, had helped harness the technologies to empower their countrymen and worked to create waves of progressive change across Asia.

Each year six people or organizations are named joint winners of the Magsaysay award.

This year the other winners were a man who set up an Islamic school for girls in Indonesia, a lender to India’s poorest, and a man working to restore democracy in Cambodia after the Khmer Rouge murdered his father.

“Working on critical issues ... they are showing how commitment, competence, and collaborative leadership can truly transform individual lives and galvanize community action,” Abella said.

The award, often described as Asia’s Nobel Prize, is named after a famous Philippine president who died in a 1957 plane crash.

It aims to honor people who address issues of human development in Asia with courage and creativity.

Tri Mumpuni, 46, was recognized after her IBEKA foundation built 60 small power plants harnessing the energy of water stored in dams to bring electricity to half a million people, the awards foundation said.

She was once kidnapped with her husband by former separatist rebels in Aceh province while pursuing her nongovernmental group’s project to bring electricity to rural Indonesia.

Another winner was US-trained Indian engineer Harish Hande, 44, for bringing solar lights to a country where half of all households have no electricity, the awards foundation said.

His Solar Electric Light Co.-India has tapped the sun’s energy to light up 120,000 households and is now one of the country’s largest solar technology providers.

In the Philippines, Dutch marine engineer Auke Idzenga’s Alternative Indigenous Development Foundation won for using an ancient, near-forgotten technology, the ram pump, to help impoverished communities on Negros island.

Re-engineered for upland farms, the pump gave the communities clean, cheap water for household use and for raising livestock, fish, and small farms, it said.

A ram pump, which does not need an external power source, harnesses the force of a large body of moving water to pump a small amount of water uphill.

The winners are to receive their awards in Manila on August 31.

Agence France-Presse

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(Photo Auke Idzenga)

512 companies awarded for ‘zero accidents’

The Jakarta Post, Jakarta | Sat, 06/04/2011

The Manpower and Transmigration Ministry has awarded 512 companies in the country for recording “zero accidents” in their operations this year.

That figure is an increase from the 287 companies that received similar awards last year.

“This indicates improved awareness among employers and workers on applying K3 [safety precautions] in their work environments,” Manpower and Transmigration Minister Muhaimin Iskandar said in a press statement released on Saturday.

Applying K3, he said, helped minimize possible accidents at the workplace, most of which occurred in construction, transportation and mining sectors.

Muhaimin said K3 needed to be continually campaigned on to further reduce work accidents.

“It is part of efforts to draw investment and support national economic development,” he added.

Award-Winning Indonesian Conservationist Says Children Victims of Pollution

Jakarta Globe, April 13, 2011

Prigi Arisandi, 35, examining polluted water from the Brantas river in Surabaya,
East Java. The biologist who enlisted schoolchildren in his fight to clean up
an Indonesian river and received an international prize for his efforts says he hopes
young people will do more for the environment. (Reuters Phoito/Sigit Pamungkas)

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Surabaya. A biologist who enlisted schoolchildren in his fight to clean up an Indonesian river that led to an international prize said he hoped young people will do more for the environment.

Student research into a 41 kilometer stretch of the Surabaya river that flows through Surabaya, Indonesia’s second-largest city, prompted 35-year-old Prigi Arisandi into discoveries that helped him become one of six winners of this year’s Goldman Environmental Prize, the world’s largest award for grassroots environmentalists.

Arisandi found that the river, which provides water for 3 million and is also used for bathing by people living along its banks, was contaminated with high levels of toxic effluent.

Recently, mercury levels were found to be 100 times the limit set by the World Health Organization.

He and other activists created the first environmental education programme in the region in 2000 to educate local communities about biodiversity and water pollution, teaching students about the dangers and using them to spread the word.

“These students are the victims of pollution,” Arisandi told Reuters at his Surabaya office last week, in an embargoed interview.

“We place these children as agents of change ... We bring them to the river and there are already thousands of children that we have trained.” Arisandi and other activists have also taken legal action to stop companies from polluting the river and won a case against East Java’s governor, who was ordered to reduce pollution.

The $150,000 prize, named after husband and wife philanthropists from San Francisco, honours individuals for sustained efforts to protect the natural environment, “often at great personal risk,” according to the prize’s Web site.

The other 2011 winners are from the United States, Zimbabwe, Germany, Russia and El Salvador.

Reuters