The African Collaborative Institute of Design (ACID) has officially launched it’s fellowship program for which we are honored to be an official media partner. ACID is a new-age critically evaluating ‘place’ for thinking at various current levels that is mostly anchored in the African context.
As a research think tank, one of it’s primary tasks is to evolve Architecture, Planning, Economics and Design to meet up with the tempo and demands of the contemporary African context, drawing capacity from an interdisciplinary base. It is the need to accomplish these tasks, among many that has led to the Fellowship Program.
Studies have shown that the African continent can use a rise in scholarship and the built environment is not exempted. Most of the production of work in the African built environment are not backed up with formal research motives, procedures and decisions. The activities and processes of ‘looking’, ‘finding’ and ‘using’, are constantly being re-ordered very randomly with little consideration for scenario or context. This seems to be stifling innovation and significant incremental development that is sustainable, inclusive and humanly emphatic. Africa has a unique need to help engage and tackle the millennium development goals. This feat cannot be done alone.
It will take everyone. Research from ACID shows that the qualitative blurring of the boundaries of personnel in the practice and in academia/scholarship will noticeably improve the innovative tempo of the African built environment. The formal, cultural and social dichotomy existing between those who find knowledge and those who use knowledge is becoming untamed and therefore counter-productive. With the advent of the kontratiev-like wave of information technology, powered by the internet and more recently; social media (which is inherent in the internet but has strong manifestations and overlaps with the real world society), things are changing. Collaboration is emerging as the only key for development. Problems caused by everybody may need to be solved by everybody for lasting solutions.
ACID has speculated on this issue of enormous impact and scope over the past two years. In the built environment; an attempt to merge and consolidate the huge innovation capacity found in both the world of practice and academia is seen as a step towards maximizing human and intellectual capacity for sustainable development. If professionals learn how to search better and the academia has a firsthand experience of the application of knowledge in the real world, a positive change in development can be fostered.
As a research think tank, one of it’s primary tasks is to evolve Architecture, Planning, Economics and Design to meet up with the tempo and demands of the contemporary African context, drawing capacity from an interdisciplinary base. It is the need to accomplish these tasks, among many that has led to the Fellowship Program.
Studies have shown that the African continent can use a rise in scholarship and the built environment is not exempted. Most of the production of work in the African built environment are not backed up with formal research motives, procedures and decisions. The activities and processes of ‘looking’, ‘finding’ and ‘using’, are constantly being re-ordered very randomly with little consideration for scenario or context. This seems to be stifling innovation and significant incremental development that is sustainable, inclusive and humanly emphatic. Africa has a unique need to help engage and tackle the millennium development goals. This feat cannot be done alone.
It will take everyone. Research from ACID shows that the qualitative blurring of the boundaries of personnel in the practice and in academia/scholarship will noticeably improve the innovative tempo of the African built environment. The formal, cultural and social dichotomy existing between those who find knowledge and those who use knowledge is becoming untamed and therefore counter-productive. With the advent of the kontratiev-like wave of information technology, powered by the internet and more recently; social media (which is inherent in the internet but has strong manifestations and overlaps with the real world society), things are changing. Collaboration is emerging as the only key for development. Problems caused by everybody may need to be solved by everybody for lasting solutions.
ACID has speculated on this issue of enormous impact and scope over the past two years. In the built environment; an attempt to merge and consolidate the huge innovation capacity found in both the world of practice and academia is seen as a step towards maximizing human and intellectual capacity for sustainable development. If professionals learn how to search better and the academia has a firsthand experience of the application of knowledge in the real world, a positive change in development can be fostered.