Design with the Other 90% Exhibit Focuses on Cities, Social Impact and Sustainability

<a href="http://designother90.org/cities/home">Design with the Other 90%: Cities</a>, now on view at the United Nations Headquarters in New York City, presents sixty projects, proposals, and solutions that address the challenges that arise from the increasing number of informal settlements appearing in emerging and developing economies. The exhibit is an updated version of the "Design for the Other 90%" exhibition that took place at the <a href="http://cooperhewitt.org/">Cooper-Hewitt, National Design Museum</a> in 2007 that shifts the focus to the urban environment. Currently, more than half of the world's population lives in cities and a projected one billion people live in informal settlements; the exhibition shines light on the importance of design in managing this rapid transition that impacts a growing number of people.

Located in the informal settlement of Freedom Park in Cape Town, architect Luyanda Mpahlwa designed the two-story 10x10 Sandbag Houses that draw on indigenous mud-and-wattle building methods.

MAS Urban Design ETH Zurich has created concrete mixed with recycled urban bi-products such as polystyrene that make it more flexible and durable allowing for an affordable, modular building system.

EkoFaeBricks are made from cow dung with soil extracts. They are cured using biogas which reduces the amount of CO2 emitted during the production of traditional clay bricks.

Elsa Maria Zaldivar Rolon's loofah panels provide thermal and sound insulation at a low cost- 50 cents to $1 per square meter. They are made from crushed loofah, cassava starch waste, sand, water and castor oil which are applied to a bamboo panel. A tuna based solution offers a waterproof bond on the outside of the house.

Numerous typhoons have devastating effects on the Philippines every year. Eleena Jamil of Malaysia won the Millennium School Design Competition with her bamboo structure meant to withstand the up to 93-mph winds that result from typhoons.

The bamboo design was inspired by vernacular houses of Southeast Asia and is the first school to be built of bamboo in the Philippines. Its inexpensive, flexible, strong and abundant qualities make it a highly replicable design throughout Asia and beyond.

Architect Mohammed Rezwan first designed his Floating Community Lifeboats to address educational interruptions that result from natural disasters.

Maria Teresa Tete Leal founded the COOPA-ROCA to help women artisans make a living. With more than 100 members, women in the favelas use traditional crafts skills to produce products such as the Cristal de Luz light coverings seen in the photo above.

A gravity-fed water system called Gota a Gota was developed to relieve dwellers in Chile's informal communities from expending effort in transporting water. An easy-to-operate foot petal moves water up from a ground-level tank.

Bernard Kiwia, a trained electrician and vocational-school instructor, collaborated with the for-profit social enterprise Global Cycle Solutions (GCS) to design a phone charger from scrap bike and radio parts.

Abul Hussam, a chemistry professor from George Mason University, designed SONO water filter to help reduce the high level of arsenic that poisons an estimated seventy-five to ninety-five million people in Bangladesh. Each unit costs about $35.

Solidarites International, a French NGO, designed Garden-in-a-Sack in response to Kenya's post-election violence in 2008.

In collaboration with Design for Africa, XYZ's Bicycle Modules are based on an incremental design model whereby consumers buy difficult to manufacture parts and assemble the bike according to their needs.