Architecture for Humanity

Architecture for Humanity was a US-based charitable organization that sought architectural solutions to humanitarian crises and brought professional design services to clients (often communities in need). Founded in 1999, it laid off its staff and closed down at the beginning of January 2015.

Since then, the 59 US-based architecture for humanity chapters (which were already operating more or less in a self-sufficient manner even before Architecture for Humanity closed down) formed the Open Architecture Collaborative and vowed to continue. It could thus be argued that despite the closing of the main office, the movement that Architecture for Humanity represented has indeed been strengthened, and not weakened, as it has forced the chapters to operate truly self-sufficiently, and cooperate more directly with the other chapters.