Aaron Brakke’s Project Named Finalist in AZ Awards
Assistant professor and founder and director of WHITEKNEE, Brakke has been working with a community living in an informal settlement on the outskirts of Bogota for the past five years. Through a participatory design research process, he was able to help the community develop new collective imaginaries for their barrio, developed a design, and helped them build a park on what had been an empty lot full of trash and construction debris. This project of co-creation is now a vibrant place in the neighborhood and is serving as a space to gather for longtime residents, their children, those arriving as the result of internal displacement within Colombia, and also Venezuelan refugees who have fled the humanitarian crisis in their country of origin. The project was chosen as a finalist for the AZ Awards in the category of Social Good.
From the competition website: “An exceptional year, an incredible result: the internationally renowned jury of the 2020 AZ Awards has selected the very best from the 1,241 architecture and design entries we received—the highest number of submissions to date—from 47 countries around the world. The 68 finalists in 20 categories exemplify excellence in innovation, aesthetics, creativity and social and environmental responsibility. In 2020, the annual AZ Awards marks a major milestone—its 10th edition, coinciding with Azure magazine’s 35th anniversary—while entering the new normal. Our jury members Luca Nichetto, Stephanie Davidson, Omar Gandhi, Mia Lehrer and Marion Weiss were asked to weigh in from their homes in Stockholm, Toronto, Los Angeles and New York as we convened our first-ever remote deliberation process.”