Forget about showy "starchitecture" from the likes of Frank Gehry.
Architect Cameron Sinclair sees the future of his field in the slums,
where the United Nations projects that one-third of the world's
population will dwell by 2030.

Sinclair insists that nothing short of a design revolution is needed to
construct innovative housing solutions from the ground up. The Open
Architecture Network, a Web site he co-founded that applies the
principles behind open-source software to the construction of the
material world, is working toward that sweeping global goal.

The project is an offshoot of Architecture for Humanity, founded in 1999
by Sinclair and his wife, Kate Stohr. The nonprofit has worked to
provide affordable housing in the tsunami-trampled Indian Ocean region
and post-Hurricane Katrina U.S. Gulf Coast, as well as HIV clinics and
soccer fields in sub-Saharan Africa. Its call to arms serves as the
title of Architecture for Humanity's 2006 book Design Like You Give a Damn.

That cry reached influential ears in the tech world when, in 2006,
Sinclair won the coveted TED Prize, from whose spoils Sinclair and
others at Architecture for Humanity launched the Open Architecture
Network last March. It enables designers anywhere to share blueprints
under Creative Commons licenses.