Rarely has a concrete lid for an outdoor latrine gotten such attention. Uncrated from an art-moving van, it was carefully placed on a well-manicured lawn across the street from Walker Art Center. Nearby sat battered cooking pots, benches made from hurricane debris, rusty bicycles stacked with grubby plastic crates, a pot of sugar cane charcoal, and an assortment of human-powered water pumps.

Tools and artifacts of the world's poor seem incongruous displayed, as a sample of them are, in a village of white plastic huts perched on a new deck in the Minneapolis Sculpture Garden. Surrounded by acres of lush, beautifully manicured grass and overlooked by multimillion-dollar condominiums and buzzing freeways, the huts and their contents appear to inject guilt-inducing poverty into a precinct of heedless affluence.

And yet, "Design for the Other 90%," as the show is called, is far from paternalistic. Rather than insidiously nagging visitors about the need to share their good fortune through charitable donations and top-down largess, "Design" demonstrates the ingenuity of indigenous people and the myriad ways their lives can be improved via inexpensive inventions.

"The whole field of international economic development has changed since the 1960s and '70s," said Andrew Blauvelt, the Walker's design curator. "The new idea is to lift people out of poverty by giving them tools to improve their incomes. Their lives are changed not by handout aid, but through design."

Take the latrine cover, for example. A slightly domed circle of concrete, 5 1/2 feet in diameter, it has a keyhole opening in the middle flanked by two footpads. Based on a design by Bjorn Brandberg at the National Institute of Physical Planning in Mozambique, it was manufactured by KickStart International in Kenya and can be mass-produced cheaply by unskilled workers equipped with little more than a bag of concrete and some wire. By sealing latrines, the lid reduces smell, flies and disease. More than 90,000 are now in use in East African refugee camps.

Unglamorous, yes. Lifesaving, you bet.

Cheap and functional

The show's point is to raise awareness of "a kind of design that is not particularly attractive, often limited in function, and extremely inexpensive," writes Barbara Bloemink in the introduction to the show's catalog (Cooper-Hewitt, National Design Museum, Smithsonian, $20). Printed on recycled paper, of course, the book is an amazing compendium of facts and practical information that could serve as a handbook for international development as well as an inspiration to design students and professionals.

The 70-some items range from exceedingly simple adaptations of indigenous materials, such as clay pots, to high-tech devices including inexpensive laptop computers. Each of the eight pavilions focuses on a key social issue: inexpensive transportation, food preparation, water purification, sanitation, education, disease prevention, shelter and so on.

Solutions range from "permanet," a polyester mosquito net treated with long-lasting insect repellent, to solar-powered lights, computers and hearing aids. More than 900,000 amputees use the Jaipur foot, a flexible, waterproof prosthesis that's especially popular in countries afflicted with landmines.

A doughnut-shaped plastic water container holds roughly 20 gallons and can be pulled easily by a child. Increasingly employed in rural Africa, the doughnut saves time and prevents back injuries among women who are usually responsible for procuring water.

Cheap, foot-powered water pumps likewise have enabled African farmers to irrigate their tiny 2-acre farms, increasing yields and raising net farm income from $110 to $1,100 annually -- small potatoes by American standards, but the difference between poverty and prosperity there.

Clay technology

Clay is a key material in many of the design innovations. The Kenya Ceramic Jiko is a portable charcoal stove that looks somewhat like a large wok. A thick ceramic liner insulates the metal exterior, reducing toxic emissions and increasing the efficiency of costly fuel. Fifty percent of urban Kenyans use the stoves, which are gaining popularity elsewhere in Africa.

A pot-in-pot storage system, developed by an enterprising Nigerian, extends the market life of fruits and vegetables by keeping them cool without electricity or ice. The produce is stored in a ceramic container whose double walls are lined with wet sand that cools the produce as the moisture evaporates.

Specially adapted pottery also is used to filter water in Nicaragua and Guatemala, and high-density bricks are made throughout Africa using a simple block press.

Bicycles and motorcycles are essential to solving transportation and other problems. Around the world, inexpensive frame extensions allow bicycles to be used as taxis and cargo carriers. In Cambodia and elsewhere, motorcycles equipped with electronic equipment gather health information from remote clinics and beam it via satellite to doctors in Boston who make diagnoses and recommend treatments.

A new generation of designers

Most of the products were developed in and for countries in Asia, Africa and South America, often employing European and American technologies and expertise. But examples from the United States are included, among them furniture made from wood and debris left by Hurricane Katrina.

It was a computer whiz at Massachusetts Institute of Technology who cooked up the idea of a $100 laptop computer that would make education available to every child everywhere. Costs are now nearing $100 and plans call for pilot distribution in six countries.

Besides improving the quality of lives worldwide, these designs also signal a transformation in a field long focused on high-end products for the affluent.

Blauvelt believes the change is generational and will eventually alter market goals, too. Young designers and architects, he says, are eager to apply their skills to solving social problems from housing the poor to providing access to education, clean water and health care. To be effective, those products must be cheap enough to be affordable, a concept Henry Ford would have appreciated.

"Most design is geared to the wealthiest 10 percent of the population, but the new idea is that the poor are the next billion customers," Blauvelt said.

Mary Abbe • 612-673-4431