Community Design Agency

Founded by Sandhya Naidu in 2016, the design studio has worked with low-income neighborhoods and informal professional communities across India to address various issues socio-economic and health issues that either arise from poor design or which can be addressed through better design. They started out by building Niramay, a safe home for women engaged in sex work and their children in Shevgaon, a small town in Maharashtra. Designing Niramay with the women became a way to understand their needs for a safe and healthy workspace as well as their aspirations and dreams for themselves and their children. Working with a community of informal e-waste collectors in Delhi, who process almost 90% of India’s e-waste, CDA designed a prototype for a safe workspace to collect, segregate and dismantle materials.

In Ahmednagar, CDA collaborates with the local government and local organizations on an in-situ slum redevelopment project in the Sanjaynagar slum neighborhood. Adopting a unique participatory design and finance model, the project leverages the National Housing for All scheme to build thoughtfully designed homes for 298 families, empower local youth by engaging them as community liaisons, and imparting financial literacy to the community along the way.

To demonstrate the impact of art and design on communities living in poorly designed public housing neighborhoods, CDA works with the residents of Natwar Parekh Colony in Mumbai. Home to 30,000 people living on a mere 5 hectares of land, the colony is a site for major health and crime related issues. By working with the community on building community libraries, activating public spaces and taking ownership of their streets, the studio has successfully leveraged the city’s support in bringing greater improvements in the neighborhood. These efforts are further strengthened by their arts-based youth festival called Govandi Arts Festival, which brings much needed attention to a part of Mumbai that has been neglected and ignored.