I wish to create a community that actively embraces open-source design to generate innovative and sustainable living standards for all. The plan Create an online network dedicated to enhancing living conditions through sustainable design. The open-source platform will allow designers to share architectural plans and blueprints on the web, and al...

Accepting his 2006 TED Prize, Cameron Sinclair demonstrates how passionate designers and architects can respond to world housing crises. He unveils his TED Prize wish for a network to improve global living standards through collaborative design.

2006 TED Prize winner Cameron Sinclair is co-founder of Architecture for Humanity, a nonprofit that seeks architecture solutions to global crises -- and acts as a conduit between the design community and the world's humanitarian needs.

Alastair Parvin believes in making architecture accessible to 100 percent of the population.

DK Osseo-Asare creates architecture with and for the people that design overlooks.

Master architects share their vision for buildings that inflate, float, twist and glitter, while artfully addressing the challenges faced by their residents, their cities and the planet.

TED Fellow Rachel Armstrong is a sustainability innovator who creates new materials that possess some of the properties of living systems, and can be manipulated to "grow" architecture.

Designer Alastair Parvin presents a simple but provocative idea: what if, instead of architects creating buildings for those who can afford to commission them, regular citizens could design and build their own houses? The concept is at the heart of WikiHouse, an open source construction kit that means just about anyone can build a house, anywhere.

Ayah Bdeir is an engineer and artist, and is the founder of littleBits and karaj, an experimental art, architecture and technology lab in Beirut.

Where did all the lumps and bumps on buildings go? When did city architecture become so ... dull? Here to talk about why cities need inspiring architecture, designer Thomas Heatherwick offers a path out of the doldrums of urban monotony -- and a vision of cities filled with soulful buildings that people cherish for centuries.

Theaster Gates is a potter whose ambitions stretch far beyond the wheel and the kiln. In Chicago, his leadership of artist-led spaces has catalyzed interest and excitement in a formerly neglected neighborhood, as he uses culture as a transformational weapon.

Ani Liu explores the intersection between technology and sensory perception.

Tomás Saraceno invites us to consider the impossible, like spiders that play music or cities in the sky.

What caused the war in Syria? Oppression, drought and religious differences all played key roles, but Marwa Al-Sabouni suggests another reason: architecture. Speaking to us over the Internet from Homs, where for the last six years she has watched the war tear her city apart, Al-Sabouni suggests that Syria's architecture divided its once tolerant...

How can architects build a new world of sustainable beauty? By learning from nature. Michael Pawlyn describes three habits of nature that could transform architecture and society: radical resource efficiency, closed loops, and drawing energy from the sun.

Greg Lynn talks about the mathematical roots of architecture -- and how calculus and digital tools allow modern designers to move beyond the traditional building forms. A glorious church in Queens (and a titanium tea set) illustrate his theory.

With his team at SENSEable City Lab, MIT's Carlo Ratti makes cool things by sensing the data we create. He pulls from passive data sets -- like the calls we make, the garbage we throw away -- to create surprising visualizations of city life. And he and his team create dazzling interactive environments from moving water and flying light, powered ...

Cities are becoming increasingly privatized: commercial real estate dominates the streets, carving up open space that once belonged to the public and selling it as a commodity to the highest bidder. Architect Elizabeth Diller explores the causes and effects of this growing threat -- and takes us on tour of her groundbreaking projects aimed at cr...

Joshua Prince-Ramus is best known as architect of the Seattle Central Library, already being hailed as a masterpiece of contemporary culture. Prince-Ramus was the founding partner of OMA New York—the American affiliate of the Office for Metropolitan Architecture (OMA) in the Netherlands—and served as its Principal until he renamed the firm REX in 2006.

Because of poor acoustics, students in classrooms miss 50 percent of what their teachers say and patients in hospitals have trouble sleeping because they continually feel stressed. Julian Treasure sounds a call to action for designers to pay attention to the “invisible architecture” of sound.

An architect by training, John Cary has devoted his career to expanding the practice of design for the public good.

When TED Fellow Xavier Vilalta was commissioned to create a multistory shopping mall in Addis Ababa, he panicked. Other centers represented everything he hated about contemporary architecture: wasteful, glass towers requiring tons of energy whose design had absolutely nothing to do with Africa. In this charming talk, Vilalta shows how he champio...

For architect Ole Scheeren, the people who live and work inside a building are as much a part of that building as concrete, steel and glass. He asks: Can architecture be about collaboration and storytelling instead of the isolation and hierarchy of a typical skyscraper? Visit five of Scheeren's buildings -- from a twisted tower in China to a flo...

There's a creepy transformation taking over our cities, says architecture critic Justin Davidson. From Houston, Texas to Guangzhou, China, shiny towers of concrete and steel covered with glass are cropping up like an invasive species. Rethink your city's anatomy as Davidson explains how the exteriors of building shape the urban experience -- and...

Diébédo Francis Kéré knew exactly what he wanted to do when he got his degree in architecture... He wanted to go home to Gando in Burkina Faso, to help his neighbors reap the benefit of his education. In this charming talk, Kéré shows off some of the beautiful structures he's helped to build in his small village in the years since then, includin...

In this engrossing EG talk, architect Liz Diller shares her firm DS+R's more unusual work, including the Blur Building, whose walls are made of fog, and the revamped Alice Tully Hall, which is wrapped in glowing wooden skin.

Architecture can't ignore the realities of climate change. For time-tested solutions that perform under extreme conditions, designer Alyssa-Amor Gibbons says we should look to traditional buildings. Taking us to her home of Barbados, where the hurricane season is unforgiving and freak storms are becoming more frequent, Gibbons points to the bril...

In the vast sweep of history, even an empire can be forgotten. In this wide-ranging talk, Gus Casely-Hayford shares origin stories of Africa that are too often unwritten, lost, unshared. Travel to Great Zimbabwe, the ancient city whose mysterious origins and advanced architecture continue to confound archeologists. Or to the age of Mansa Musa, t...

In the Huffington Post, Cameron Sinclair reports: Today is a very big day for my 2006 TED Prize. Thanks to this. It's granted. Done. Finito. Complete. "This" is a brand-new iPad app called Open Architecture. It uses the power of Sinclair's Open Architecture Network to help users discover and explore innovative building projects. Thi...

The recent generations have been bathed in connecting technology from birth, says futurist Don Tapscott, and as a result the world is transforming into one that is far more open and transparent. In this inspiring talk, he lists the four core principles that show how this open world can be a far better place.