David Gunn
Twenty years after the end of the Khmer Rouge, Cambodia still bears the scars of this time. Some of its effects are obvious – related to the decimated infrastructure, the depopulation of cities and displacement of peoples. But some of its effects are more complex.

Raymond Prucher

When I initiated this piece, I had expectations of culling out what was at the core of my own altruistic mission, to help put a face on the people who are today’s enemies of choice, namely Arabs and Persians. So, I turned to the culture-makers—artists, designers, writers and dancers, both native and ex-patriot—to ask [...]

Joyce Epolito
For us, it’s been all about relationship and listening. This year, a group of friends and I had the opportunity to inject design into the context in which we lived. It all started when we met several Burmese (Karen) refugee families in our neighborhood in Chicago (Rogers Park), one of the most diverse neighborhoods [...]

Editor’s Note: With this article we celebrate the third anniversary of the Design-Altruism-Project. Always intended as an outlet for the unheralded young who are doing good work for the unknown and forgotten, it is appropriate that we enter our fourth year with the following account by a Ugandan-born designer, now working in America, who is [...]

Raymond Prucher
“In the land of the blind, the one-eyed man is king.” – Desiderius Erasmus

Images taken at the Qalandia checkpoint inside the West Bank, well beyond the ‘Green Line’ that was set up by the 1949 Armistice.
I became a designer in Palestine. In 2003, three years after we’d [...]

Jonathan Russell
My experience in the United Arab Emirates started with a trip to visit my in-laws in Dubai for spring break in 2003. It was a fun trip with my wife and our 7-month old daughter Emma and included visits to 3 of the 7 emirates, Dubai, Abu Dhabi and Sharja. One trip consisted mainly [...]

Jesse Miller

Outside “Casa Rosenda” Monterrey, Mexico
The Architectural Masters Thesis. High expectations and the culmination of one’s educational career are commonly used to describe this thing that looms as the end of graduate school approaches. It is a thing that has much implied importance and historical baggage. Though all these factors that [...]

Arden Stern’s research in Zambia

Fred Quillin
It’s impossible for me to tell students to “stop playing around on the computer with Photoshop” and get back to their note taking. As I walked into the classroom recently, my class was busy quietly taking notes for the other professor and one student stood up to ask me a question about Photoshop. [...]