Just when you thought the world might be suffering from disaster fatigue after a number of successive catastrophes, along comes a disaster of such immense proportions that we are compelled to dig even deeper into our pockets. The earthquake, tsunami and nuclear crisis that hit Japan has been [...]

When New York architect Joel Sanders was first approached about being part of a design team for BOOM, a gay-friendly planned senior community outside of Palm Springs, California, he signed on at once. The concept, he says, dovetailed with his long-term interest in the intersection of architecture and gender. What’s more, he wanted to design a [...]

Architects want to give back to society by designing for the public good. But how? Pro bono projects are the most common route, promoted by organizations like Public Architecture , which launched an initiative in 2005 to encourage firms to donate a minimum of 1 percent of their working time to volunteer service. More than 750 firms have [...]

The first collaboration between Designmatters at Art Center College of Design and Chile’s Un Techo para mi País creates fresh ideas for water usage in a Santiago slum. For the teachers and students in the Environmental and Product Design departments at Art Center College of Design who signed up for the Safe Agua project in Chile, the first [...]

Case studies form an integral part of management school curriculum. But few have considered the role of design in social innovation or social enterprise management. Case studies form an integral part of management school curriculum. Pioneered in the 1920s by Harvard Business School, case studies encourage students to focus on the problems facing an organization at [...]

The goal of the Ripple Effect project — a collaborative effort between IDEO, the Gates Foundation and the Acumen Fund — was to help social enterprises increase their ability to distribute water. Nine projects in India and Kenya were funded with $15,000 each to develop pilot projects. Today, four of the projects are still in pilot phase and five are [...]

Worldstudio has been dedicated to socially responsible design since 1993. The website for  Worldstudio, a New York-based design and marketing firm, proudly proclaims its dedication to promoting “lasting social and environmental changes” through design. Worldstudio, the site says, can help corporations “connect their marketing goals with strategies for corporate social responsibility.” Those core values are certainly part of [...]

Catapult Design offers one model, but is it workable over the long run?

Though Catapult Design , a small, nonprofit studio in San Francisco, was founded in January 2009, it’s already helped to electrify seven rural health clinics in Rwanda [...]

More than 2 billion people lack access to basic sanitation. A solution’s in the bag. The promotional blurb for Peepoobag, a new self-sanitizing, single-use, biodegradable container for human waste, is as dramatic as it is straightforward: “2.6 billion people just got their own toilet,” declares the website of Peepoople, a private Swedish company that developed the toilet-in-a-bag [...]