After nearly two years, all seven biloxi model homes are complete or nearly constructed. It's been quite a journey. Last weekend we took some time out to celebrate this amazing accomplishment. It was great to see all the families and architects in one room. We haven't done that since the program began. Naturally, this being Biloxi, there was plenty of food and good humor on hand. Huge thanks to everyone for making this program possible and showing us all how to help families come home.

Sportables challenged participants to design a highly demountable, portable sports product library, product development studio, and futsal (soccer) play area for the community of Capao Redondo, a dense, colorful, and energetic settlement near Sao Paolo, Brazil. The “pop-up” facility deploys to provide jerseys, shoes, and balls, using sports inspire change for youth of both genders, and provide income generation opportunities for others. All designs had to grapple with issues of space, accessibility, security, resource scarcity and community.

The winning design by Toby R. Keeton is a brilliant and carefully thought-out compact module that is easy to transport and deploy, but also provides incentives for the participants to take ownership in the community resource.

Frontline/World, the award winning documentary series, featured the work of Architecture for Humanity in their June 2008 episode. For more information or air times, check your local listings. or watch it online now.

This story focuses on some of our post-tsunami reconstruction in Tamil Nadu, India by design fellow Purnima Mc Cutcheon. Reporter Singeli Agnew travels to the Bay of Bengal in southeast India, where communities are still struggling to rebuild after a tsunami devastated the coast four years ago.

Around the world nothing connects kids like the power of play. In areas of great need there is an opportunity to use sports as a catalyst for social change.

The challenge: design a solution to create a highly demountable, portable sports product library, product development studio, and futsal (soccer) play area. This “pop-up” facility will be deployed to provide much needed (and desired) jerseys, shoes, and balls to communities that would welcome and use them to inspire change for youth of both genders.

For this Open Architecture Network design challenge, Architecture for Humanity is teaming up with Google SketchUp to bring the power of play to Capao Redondo, a densely packed, but colorful, friendly and energetic settlement on the outskirts of Sao Paolo, Brazil.

Each year Architecture for Humanity’s Open Architecture Challenge design competition brings public attention to inequities in the built environment affecting the health, prosperity and well being of under-served communities. In 2009 the Open Architecture Challenge will focus on the issue of portable classrooms.

In 2003, the Modular Building Institute estimated that more than 220,000 K-12 portable classrooms were in use by public school systems. Because school systems cannot readily access capital funding, these temporary and makeshift classrooms have become an unintended fixture of many educational campuses. In the United States alone more than 6 million students spend much of their day in “portable” classrooms. Anyone who has spent time in one of these classrooms knows that we can do better.