Design School grad student wins Legacy contest

L. Michael Lu, a graduate student in architecture and urban design at The Design School in the ASU Herberger Institute for Design and the Arts, placed first in the Legacies are Built Kingspan Legacy Papercraft Competition.

Lu will receive a $5000 scholarship, a MacBook Pro and publication in the November issue of Architect magazine.
Over the summer, his design proposal for the Urban SOS Competition titled “Neblivelas” made the top 45. This fog harvesting device is meant to serve the urban poor along the coast of Lima, Peru.

Lu’s dual graduate theses will deal with an alternative to large government improvement projects. Open Source Infrastructures, in this case, are instead small federally funded projects bent on elevating the agency of the specific populations they serve. By providing easily replicable designs free from copyright, the urban poor are encouraged to duplicate, refine, and disseminate sustainable design solutions within their respective communities.