The Richest Foundation In The World

[DonRocks]

It's the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, right?

No, it's the Dutch Stichking Ingka Foundation, founded by Ingvar Kamprad, he of the IKEA fortune.

Does anyone know what this foundation does for architecture?

With this kind of money, an enormous amount of good can be done, but there can also be petty power struggles (which really aren't so petty), and evil people that can get involved. One can only hope that it's been set up to run correctly, and that the board of directors puts the concept of charity before self.

[johnb]

It's the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, right?

No, it's the Dutch Stichking Ingka Foundation, founded by Ingvar Kamprad, he of the IKEA fortune.

Does anyone know what this foundation does for architecture?

With this kind of money, an enormous amount of good can be done, but there can also be petty power struggles (which really aren't so petty), and evil people that can get involved. One can only hope that it's been set up to run correctly, and that the board of directors puts the concept of charity before self.

More information here.  Seems avoiding civic duty by paying a fair share of taxes, right wing extremism, and preservation of the established order have been high on the priority list.  Revelations of all this (see the article) seem to have pried some of the money loose more recently; funny how impending eternity moderates people's view of things. Those who shop at IKEA thinking what a wonderful place it is may want to know where their money has gone though.

There are interesting parallels here between this foundation and the Howard Hughes Medical Institute, which is currently fourth on the list of foundations by assets.  Hughes set it up purely as a way to keep his money out of the hands of the gummint, and did essentially nothing charitable with it during his life.  But it got really big (it essentially owned the satellite TV business at one time).  Finally, decent people got their hands on it, and now it is a major funder of cutting edge medical research.  Many Nobel Prizes in medicine and allied areas have gone to scientists who are, for practical purposes, on HHMI's payroll.  As an aside, among the HHMI Nobel winners/collaborators was one of the guys who proved that the human tongue has receptors for umami, thus proving that umami (the 5th taste) exists and is important in human evolution.