One billion people live in abject poverty. Four billion live in fragile but growing economies. One in seven people live in slum settlements. By 2020 it will be one in three. We don't need to choose between architecture or revolution. What we need is an architectural revolution.

The U.N. Millennium Development Goals aim to "achieve improvement in the lives of 100 million slum dwellers by the year 2015." Reaching this goal will require a profoundly new approach to improving the built environment.

This topic area will organize and showcase our Architects, and architecture we believe can meet the U.N. Goal.    We start with those we have personal experience with including Steven Travis, Nader Khalili, and Lloyd Turner.  Additional architects will also be added as appropriate, starting of course with Buckminister Fuller.

 An excellent source of information is the Open Architecture Network; an online, open source community dedicated to improving living conditions through innovative and sustainable design. Users can:

• Share their ideas, designs and plans
• View and review designs posted by others
• Collaborate with each other, people in other professions and community leaders to address specific design challenges
• Manage design projects from concept to implementation
• Communicate easily amongst team members
• Protect their intellectual property rights using the Creative Commons "some rights reserved" licensing system and be shielded from unwarranted liability
• Build a more sustainable future

The Open Architecture Network is the brainchild of Architecture for Humanity and the designers who volunteer through their local chapters. It grew out of the collective frustration in sharing ideas and trying to work together to address shelter needs after disaster.

Sun Microsystems, Hot Studio, Creative Commons, AMD and other partners joined Architecture for Humanity in realizing this ambitious undertaking, and at this year's TED conference, together they launched a beta version of the Open Architecture Network: the first site to offer open source architectural plans and blueprints on the web.