Design Like You Give a Damn: Architectural Responses to Humanitarian Crises

If you care about the future we're building, you ought to own a copy of Design Like You Give a Damn

Design Like You Give A Damn screams its message in its title. Good design is not a luxury, but a necessity.

A book that is lovely in every sense of the word.. ...makes clear just how much talent is currently going to waste designing McMansions.

This book brings forth the values of sustainability and diversity in a beautiful way-values which are as essential to our housing as they are to food we eat.

...a 336-page love letter to architects worldwide who provide pro-bono design services to communities that have survived war, government oppression and natural disasters. It's also an antidote to apathy.

Design like you give a Damn is truly an important work-its lesson is that architecture and design are not about being on the cover of last week's New York Times Magazine but about making a difference in people's lives.

Heavy on context and images, light on celebrity names, Design Like You Give a Damn is a bracing reminder that there's more to architecture than museums and posh private homes. Instead, the founders of the group Architecture for Humanity round up 77 nimble solutions to real-life problems: There are fiberglass domes for the homeless of Los Angeles, a schoolhouse in Burkina Faso with an arced steel roof that insulates the clay brick classrooms below -- even a water pump in South Africa that is powered by children playing on a merry-go-round. Truly inspirational.