Co-Creating Design Solutions for the Built and Natural Environments

Build World provides innovative and impactful solutions to companies, cities, governments and NGOs to solve some of the biggest problems they are working on and create positive impact.

We create visionary strategies, crowdsolving challenges and design competitions that leverage our diverse community from around the world. We bring together professionals and companies with different skills and expertise to collaborate on creating innovative solutions for projects relating to the built and natural environments.

Our Mission

Our goal is to co-create solutions to some of our clients and partners’ most pressing problems by harnessing the power of collective wisdom.

We bring together the skills and knowledge of experts and visionaries from around the globe to work together and build on their collective expertise in order to collectively build holistic and impactful solutions.

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Key Benefits

Crowdsolving harnesses collective wisdom and provides a holistic, multidimensional outcome by bringing different perspectives together in creating solutions. This way, we minimize risk by building on different expertise and fusing them together!

Our unique crowdsolving method combines research, education, design, and implementation to solve real-world problems that are becoming increasingly important to tackle right now and for years to come. We do this with our own custom process that combines design thinking, tailored courses and workshops, and  provides them with a platform to participate in impactful projects. 

Our approach creates solutions all the way from vision to implementation, so that the participants and clients are all able to make a global impact and be recognized and rewarded for their work.

Define requirements

Clients can specify project requirements, parameters, resource limitations and desired outcomes in great detail before we launch the project as a crowdsourcing challenge or competition.

Flexible involvement

Clients can be as involved or removed as they want throughout the entire process.

Innovative solutions

Clients will receive a selection of the most creative and innovative solutions due to our unique crowdsolving process that brings together a global mix of experience and skill sets.

Timely results

Clients can set time constraints on how complex they want the challenge to be and how long they want it to run for.

High quality

The design solutions delivered are of the highest quality because of the strong professionalism of the participants, experts and advisors involved in the process.

Global exposure

The results of the challenge can be shared with the public through articles, videos, books and exhibitions, promoting the solutions worldwide.

Clients & Partners

Past Challenges

Resilient Homes

In 2018, Build World together with the World Bank, Airbnb, and GFDRR organized the Resilient Homes Challenge. It inspired and mobilized more than 3000 architects and engineers from around the world to develop designs for resilient, modular and affordable homes that cost under $10,000. Some of the pаst projects have already been implemente in the Caribbean and South East Asia, creating positive impact for thousands of people.

Image: The winning designs of the 9 finalists.

Learn more

Emergency Shelters

The goal of this global challenge was to generate designs for emergency shelters for the victims of wars and natural disasters. The participants in this course will design affordable and easy to build shelters, which could be implemented by OCHA, UNHCR, WBG, and other international organizations.

Image: Team Cross Hands.

Resilient Schools

When typhoon Haiyan hit the Philippines in 2013, causing more than 5,000 deaths and destroying the homes and cities for millions, Build World latched the Resilient Schools Challenge. It resulted in more than 80 proposals for new types of school buildings that can also be used as community shelters. We can’t do much to stop natural disasters, but as architects we can help with the recovery and to build shelters that would withstand them.

Image: Team MAT-TER.

Solar Lights

Liter of Light and Build World crowdsourced designs and taught people how to make cost-effective sustainable solar lights. The participants in this challenge designed affordable and easy-to-build lights, which will be implemented by Liter of Light and partnering organizations moving forward. These Solar Lights are for people living in underdeveloped areas where there is no affordable solution to get energy and lights.

Image: Liter of Light.

Our Process

1. Design Challenge

Professionals and companies participate in the challenge and produce initial design ideas.

2. Feedback and Iteration

Designs are reviewed and edited based on client input and feedback sessions.

3. Winners Selection

Final design proposals are submitted in front of a jury and the client, and winning designs are chosen.

4. Public Engagement

The best solutions are shared with the world through exhibits, articles, books, conferences and websites.

5. Implementation

We help the designers and our partners to implement the solutions and create positive impact.

Community

63000

Professionals

175

Countries

15

Experts

12

Partners

Testimonials

“We are very pleased to have a collaboration with Build World and look forward to working with them in the future”

Chris Williams PhD, Director New York

UN-Habitat


“We hope that this competition with Build World has jump started a movement and a community of practice that can exchange and grow.”

Sameh Wahba PhD, Regional Director, Sustainable Development, Europe and Central Asia Region

The World Bank

Our last articles

Crowdsourcing Design Solutions at Build World

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Urban consciousness as a path to evolution

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Community and Participatory Governance

Decisions in cities are normally made in a top-down approach without the involvement of the broader community. Because of that, a lot of people feel disconnected from what happens in their cities and do not approve of urban projects and developments and how money is being spent. With all the guidelines mentioned in this article, the…

Abundance and Circular Economy

Globalization has created a hyper-connected world with many benefits, yet it has also created an overdependence on the outside and a reliance on global supply chains, usually controlled by a few companies, to supply most basic goods and services. Given the state of the world with all the problems related to climate and increased conflicts,…

Energy, Sustainability and Resilience

Climate change and its effects are some if the biggest challenges of our time. The COP21 target for 2050 is to reduce today’s CO2 emissions by 80-90%. Currently, buildings account for about 40% of total emissions in cities. Many of them are due to the building’s energy inefficiency. In the EU roughly 75% or buildings…

Shared and Integrated Mobility

Wherever needed, physical connectedness in cities can be guaranteed with an excellent infrastructure for walking, biking, private and public transportation networks. With the new advancements and evolution of mobility technologies will come new ways of commuting, such as electric and self-driving cars, aerial rideshare, etc. A lot of resources are going into developing electrical and…

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