2009 Curry Stone Design Prize Winner Handmade Building: Anna Heringer

The "handmade" village schools and single-family homes designed by
Anna Heringer in rural Bangladesh are an elegant blend of old and new, bucking the growing trend toward cement and steel buildings in the region by offering a sustainable alternative. These buildings combine local materials such as bamboo and straw with modern building components, and are constructed entirely by hand by local people, without the need for machinery or dependence on outside markets. These beautiful, small-scale community-built structures reaffirm that "progress" can be both ecologically sensitive and support local craftsmanship.