As part of the Chicago Architecture Biennial’s kickoff last month, Rural Urban Framework (RUF), a Hong Kong–based nonprofit design lab run by architects Joshua Bolchover and John Lin, was awarded the 2015 Curry Stone Design Prize. The annual award, which honors socially engaged design, celebrates RUF’s commitment to reinvigorating Chinese villages that have been destabilized by unprecedented rural-to-urban migration; more than half of China’s population now lives in cities.

Servicing charities and NGOs, RUF works on projects that vary widely in scale: in some cases they design new housing,and in others they plan entire villages working collaboratively with local residents. Recent projects include Angdong Hospital in Hunan Province, which sought to develop a model structure for rural health care, and an expansion of the Mulan Primary School in Guangdong Province.