Perfect Pitch

edited by Sheila Kim-Jamet -- Interior Design, 6/1/2005 12:00:00 AM

Swee Hong Ng has won Architecture for Humanity's international competition to design a girls' soccer field and HIV/AIDS-outreach center in Somkhele, South Africa. A jury, which included industrial designer Yves Béhar and the curator for the Museum of Modern Art, New York, Paola Antonelli, chose Ng's proposal as a finalist. It includes a pair of V-shape terrace bleachers made from adobe and hard earth under a tentlike canopy composed of fabric stretched across wood poles. Its profile will "emulate the local landscape," Ng explains. The finished project will be called Siyathemba, the Zulu word for "hope." And Ng, a designer at Edge Studio in Pittsburgh, will travel to South Africa this month to meet the newly formed Siyathemba soccer club. Construction begins later this year.