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Architect's Design Aims to Lift Lives in South African CommunityA Pittsburgh architect has won an international competition to design a girls' soccer field and health-care facility for a South African community with one of the highest HIV/AIDS rates in the world.
Swee Hong Ng, a 29-year-old Singapore native who works with EDGE studio in Friendship, took first place with a design that uses local, low-cost materials for the V-shaped soccer stands and celebrates African textiles in their colorful canopies.
The competition was sponsored by the Montana-based nonprofit Architecture for Humanity, founded in 1999, which brings design solutions and services to communities in crisis or in need.
The youth of rural Somkhele are three times more likely to become HIV-positive than youth in other parts of the world. The Siyathemba competition, named for the Zulu word for hope, last year invited architects to create the "perfect pitch" for what will be Somkhele's first girls' soccer league. It also will serve as a gathering place for youth between the ages of 9 and 14.
Ng said he was drawn to the competition because "the project is a meaningful intervention in the rural area of South Africa." He will travel there next month to collaborate on the design's evolution with community members, health-care providers, teachers and the girls from the newly formed Siyathemba football (soccer) club.
more: www.post-gazette.com/pg/05143/508... (74)
June 6, 2005 | Viewed 25,354 time(s)
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