Afghan charity challenges students to build dog shelter

A charity in war-torn Afghanistan has challenged architectural technology students from Nottingham Trent University to design a collection box to re-house abandoned and mistreated street dogs.

The Nowzad Dogs charity is the brainchild of former Royal Marine Paul Farthing, who set up the organisation after witnessing the dogs’ plight.

The aim was to create a charity collection box with reference to the architecture of Afghanistan.

The students worked in groups creating card boxes made with a laser cutter designed so that they can be posted flat in an envelope and assembled by supporters of the charity.

Peter Barker, a student from the winning team, said: “Our design was based on two themes; the architectural question and the need to tie in with the material on the Nowzad Dogs’ website.

“We felt that most of the architecture of Afghanistan was comprised of quite plain box structures.

“To make our design stand out, we decided to subtly associate the box shape with the war-torn reality of Aghanistan today, in a damaged house shape. In terms of the images used, we chose photographs of the dogs in ’Pen’ Farthing’s Afghan dog rescue story, and the Nowzad Dogs’ logo, to ensure we tied in our material with the charity website.”

His team’s design will be put into production to become the charity’s official collection box.

Charity founder Farthing said: “I cannot thank Nottingham Trent University enough for their support in assisting the Nowzad Dogs charity with our aims of promoting animal welfare and training in Afghanistan.

“Plus, if as a charity we can assist the students by providing a viable and real time project during their course, then it is a win-win situation all round.”

Vince Conway, an architectural technology lecturer in Nottingham Trent University’s School of Architecture, Design and the Built Environment, said: “We are constantly looking for exciting and innovative projects for our architectural technology students, so that they gain a better ’sense of reality’.

“The use of projects like this challenges the students to view things from a different perspective.”