Entries for Safe Trestles are now under jury review leading to next week's exhibit of semifinalists at the Nike 6.0 Lowers Pro surf competition at Trestles May 04 - May 08.

The exhibit, designed by Gerard Minakawa of Bamboo DNA will explore the history and significance of Trestles and highlight the top 10 entries from Phase One of the competition.

Safe Trestles, a 2-phase design competition hosted by Architecture for Humanity and partners the San Onofre Foundation and Surfrider, explored ways to create a safe and low-impact access to Trestles, a surf and environmental world treasure in southern California.

The deadline for entries was April 17 and over 100 teams from 25 countries participated, with the largest block from the SoCal community.

Despite early rains, construction is moving along swiftly for the SIDAREC-Mukuru Kwa Njenga Center in Nairobi, Kenya.

The foundation walls are nearing completion - a major effort considering that the majority of the site will be raised nearly one meter to accommodate the new road elevation and drainage conditions. But before the walls could be situated, nearly one meter of black cotton soil had to be removed to achieve stable footings - resulting in the new geographical landmark in Mukuru - "Mt. SIDAREC."

Design Fellow Isaac Mugumbule captured this bird's eye view looking down towards the foundations of the SIDAREC Early Childhood Development center and Internet Cafe.

Read the latest from the SIDAREC and support Raise the Radio here.

It has been well over a year that Architecture for Humanity has been posting to twitter as @archforhumanity. Thanks to word of mouth, flattering RTing, generous #FFing, and some random celebrity attention, our follower list has grown to over 16,000 users. And we are fairly certain that at least half of them are not spambots.

It has been a wonderful experience forging personal relationships with many of our individual supporters. We've enjoyed not only telling you about the work of our many designers and partners, but also learning from our followers in turn. Twitter remains the best medium around for connecting smart people and spreading innovative new ideas.

Our Haiti team visited one of the interim camps being set up for displaced Haitians. Corail Cesselesse, opened two weeks ago, rests on a wide gravel flat 1.5 hours north of Port-au-Prince. Services are scarce and the cost of commuting to Port-au-Prince is sizable. At 30 Haitian dollars per round trip ticket, other options need to be found for setting up work, education and community activities closer to camp. Corail is currently home to 6000 Haitians and is growing by 500-1000 residents each day.

The standard unit of money in Haiti is the gourde (G). There are 5 gourdes to the Haitian dollar, and about 40 gourdes to the American dollar. So bus tickets cost around $3.75 US round trip–not a large sum unless you consider Haitian minimum wage is $40 Haitian (or $5 US) per day.

Original article on Students Rebuild

Mar 29, 2010 - Tomorrow is shaping up to be an historic day in Mahiga, Kenya.

The contractor will begin excavations for the 14-week Rainwater Court project which will provide a new community gathering space, sports facilities, and clean water collection and storage for the Primary and Secondary school students and greater community.

As per the government mandate, Haiti schools officially reopened April 6, but the capacity in which students are now attending class varies dramatically. In most cases the original school building has not yet been assessed by engineers or has already been deemed unfit for occupancy.

Temporary shelters can be found assembled on the old school grounds–wood frames nailed together and a tarpaulin thrown overtop. However similar school shelters prove stifling in the displacement camps. On one camp visit, our program manager couldn't help but notice how the children–while given a place to learn–were far from comfortable there: