Isla Urbana is a project dedicated to contributing to water sustainability in Mexico through rainwater harvesting.

Isla Urbana is a water conservation non-profit based in Mexico City. The city’s water network cannot keep up with the expansion of the metropole, which leaves many families in peripheral neighborhoods without water for days or weeks on end. At the same time, the massive growth causes severe floods during the rainy season, as well as the rapid depletion of the aquifers that lie underneath the city. Isla Urbana has addressed the worsening water crisis by developing affordable, easy-to-install rainwater harvesting systems. 

The rainwater harvesting kits utilize the roof area of existing structures to catch the water and take advantage of the fact that many homes in Mexico City have storage cisterns, despite not being connected to formal water systems. The ecotechnology includes some innovative solutions, like Isla Urbana’s first-flush device, the Tlaloque, as well as other techniques to filter the water. 

When used and maintained correctly, the systems provide users with, on average, 5 to 8 months of water autonomy per year. To date, Isla Urbana has installed more than 21,000 systems that capture a rough total of 871 million liters of water per year, benefitting around 130,000 people throughout Mexico. The solution increases the beneficiaries’ health and sanitation and saves time, effort, and money that can instead be dedicated to productive, educational, and recreational activities. From an ecological point of view, each liter of rainwater harvested means relief for Mexico City’s dwindling water supply. 

The organization does not, however, merely install rainwater harvesting systems; in order to ensure full adoption of the systems, Isla Urbana teams carry out educational workshops and organize events that inspire consciousness around water conservation. In many communities, encouraging the conservation of water is a social change as much as a technological one. From interactive meetings and do-it-yourself pamphlets, to murals and instructional videos, Isla Urbana uses a variety of content to promote the importance of water consciousness, providing a model for how future cities will eventually deal with water crises.

Founded in Egypt in response to the Arab Spring, Cairo Lab for Urban Studies, Training and Environmental Research (CLUSTER) is an interdisciplinary platform for urban design and research working to establish a critical space for urban discourse by engaging questions of public space and specifically, urban informality.

CLUSTER was founded in 2011 by architect and urban planner Omar Nagati and artist and designer Beth Stryker in response to the dramatic changes that Cairo was undergoing. The activities of the platform are divided into four areas: design projects, research, programs and pedagogy. 

The platform has given rise to many forms, including The Cairo Urban Research Library (CURL), a free, open access research library with a focus on art, urban studies and architecture, available in English and Arabic. Another initiative, Cairo Downtown Passageways, is an urban design and art project that reimagines the city’s historic passageways and promotes more diverse, inclusive and accessible areas.

CLUSTER helped to organize the Street Vendors Initiative, in which the research team worked to help street vendors unionize and understand how public space is shared. The team brought together shop owners, residents, developers, drivers, women’s right groups, traffic and municipal authorities and created a common space for discussion. 

CLUSTER also created a mapping publication, Cairo Downtown Passageways: Walking Tour, that maps the city’s back alleys, side streets and in-between spaces, creating an alternative way to imagine the development and revitalization of the city. The platform has published over half a dozen books, one of which, Housing Cairo: The Informal Response, was awarded both the 2016 DAM Architectural Book Award and the 2017 National Urban Design Book Award. 

More recently, CLUSTER has focused on the project, “Informality as Creativity.” Over 70% of housing stock in Cairo is produced informally, posing questions about the role of architects and designers in shaping their city. In response, the project aims to bring together architects, designers and art students with local craftspeople and artisans, providing a direct exchange of formal training alongside practical and grounded knowledge. Further, the project aims to promote small businesses and enhance the visual and environmental qualities in informal areas through direct dialogues with local stakeholders.

We had a chance to speak with Beth and Omar about the role that design can play during a moment of instability on our podcast, Social Design Insights. Listen to the episode below.

Semi-arid regions of West Africa are facing unique challenges in sourcing materials to build sustainable, cost-efficient housing. For example, traditionally builders have been using bush timber for roofs, but due to climate change and deforestation, this is no longer feasible. Other modern options, such as sheet metal, are too expensive for many rural families. In response to this issue, Association la Voûte Nubienne (AVN) is bringing back an age-old technique, the mud brick.

Utilizing mud brick building empowers communities and encourages environmental stewardship through the revival of traditional masonry building techniques.

In addition to resurrecting the use of mud bricks, AVN also brought back a roofing technique from antiquity– the “Nubian Vault” technique, which can be traced to ancient Egypt. Sturdy homes are constructed from mud bricks made from earth and water, dried in the sun. The roofs are built with a curved, vaulted design. The resulting homes are inexpensive—around $1000 US (less if the homeowner creates his or her own bricks), and avoid further depletion of timber resources.  The roofs can last for up to fifty years if well maintained.

The technique is simple enough to be taught to laypeople. With proper training, one can move from novice to master ­builder in only a couple of months. This allows for the creation of livelihoods and reduces dependency on professionals who might not be available in remote communities. According to recent statistics, AVN has trained close to 400 masons with many more working as apprentices.

The work of AVN mines history to create a sustainable future. In areas of scarce resources, looking back to a time before industrialization and modernization can truly pay off.

Simultaneously a gallery, film project, home for two hundred displaced people (including fifty children) and a profound social and political commentary on an all­ too ­common problem: eviction, the Museo dell’Altro e dell’Altrove di Metropoliz (MAAM), “Museum of the Other and the Elsewhere” is a space unlike any other.

The seeds for MAAM were planted in 2009, when a group of two hundred immigrants, occasional workers, and homeless families found their way to an abandoned sausage factory outside of Rome. They cleaned the buildings and turned them into homes, naming their community “Metropoliz” in honor of the new city they were building. When anthropologist, filmmaker, and artist Giorgio de Finis discovered the site in 2011, the residents had just begun painting murals on the walls.

Previously, de Finis and collaborator Fabrizio Boni worked to document emergency housing in city slums. After joking that there was no space in Rome for the residents to live, they began work on a film with a sci-­fi premise: the residents of Metropoliz build themselves a rocket and take off for the moon.

The film “Space Metropoliz” enlisted the residents at all stages of development like building sets, acting as extras, etc. The completed film became a catalyst for ongoing work in Metropoliz, giving rise to the ‘museum.’ 

Today, MAAM has attracted installations from numerous notable artists and become a gathering point for scholars and activists interested in housing, eviction, and how to find peaceful coexistence in contemporary urbanism. An unused elevator is covered in gold by artist Michele Welke, commenting on both the Midas touch of art and the role of money in self-elevation. A room once used for stripping carcasses is now home to a giant mural featuring pigs strung up for slaughter, concluding with two happily scampering away. Other areas include a vegetable garden and a nursery where volunteer teachers provide tutoring for the residents’ children.

In the last decade, MAAM has become a cultural phenomenon in Rome, recognized and celebrated by the city administration in 2017 as a virtuous example of the social and cultural growth of the city. However, while the notoriety of the factory has afforded the residents at least some protection against the threat of eviction and the violence that often comes with being undocumented and untitled, unfortunately, the residents still live under the constant threat that officials will make them leave.

Assemble Studio is a multi-disciplinary collective bridging the gaps between architecture, design, and art, and employing a democratic and cooperative working method that enables built, social, and research-based work at a variety of scales.

Started by a group of Cambridge University students not yet qualified as architects, Assemble first garnered attention by turning wasted materials and places into temporary exhibitions. While some members of the collective are now qualified architects, some have no formal training at all, and instead draw on backgrounds in set design, anthropology, construction, and more. 

The first major project of Assemble Studio was the Cineroleum, an abandoned petrol station turned into a temporary cinema through the use of inexpensive, reclaimed, and donated materials. 

One of Assemble’s most notable works is Granby Four Streets, an ongoing community project in Liverpool. The collective worked with Granby Four Streets Community Land Trust and Steinbeck Studios to study a section of Toxteth, Liverpool, 80 to 90 percent of which was abandoned following riots in 1981. They came up with ideas to encourage renewed habitation for the derelict houses in the neighborhood, including gardens planted in the shells of ruined homes. To cut costs, its members implemented the “enrichment program,” in which they craft missing hardware such as doorknobs. They are also training neighbors in the skills necessary to continue refurbishing housing in the area, hoping to perpetuate a self-sustaining project of urban rehabilitation.

Recent projects make use of design and the built environment to bring communities together. In 2021, Assemble worked with the local skateboarding community in Folkestone, South England, to develop a skating spot that celebrates an informal, pre-existing one by transforming it into a permanent, dedicated space for skating. The resulting “skateable artwork” can be enjoyed by anyone. In the same year, Assemble worked with Hayatsu Architects and Stinsensqueeze on a series of interventions to revitalize the Blue, Bermondsey’s historic market and town center.

Currently, the studio is working with BC Architects and Materials to design a new workspace for the Luma Atelier in Arles.  Based in the south of France, the Luma Atelier is a think tank, production workshop, and learning network. The Atelier seeks to co-develop new ways of producing and caring for the city and landscape, using design as a tool for transition.

ELEMENTAL engages in projects ranging from housing to public space to objects to buildings, covering a wide spectrum of interests. One of the firm´s hallmarks is participatory design, in which the architects work closely with the client and users.

Founded in 2001, ELEMENTAL is based in Santiago, Chile, and led by five partners: Gonzalo Arteaga, Juan Cerda, Victor Oddó, Diego Torres, and 2016 Pritzker Prize winner, Alejandro Aravena. Just a couple of years after its establishment, ELEMENTAL received a tough commission from the Chilean government: transform Quinta Monroy, a shantytown in the desert city of Iquique, by resettling 100 families on the same 1.25-acre site they had illegally occupied for 30 years. Perhaps the biggest challenge of the project was the budget: about $7,500 per unit, including land, services, and construction.

In response, the self-described “Do Tank” (as opposed to a “think tank”) responded with what they called “half a good house.” Instead of building whole, cheaply made homes, the team created a model that would be 50-percent self-built by the resident. The purpose was to introduce two perks public housing rarely provides: privacy and the space to expand the homes as families grew. As the residents had been living illegally on the site for some years in informal dwellings, completing the buildings was something they felt comfortable doing. Additionally, at their baseline, the spaces provided a higher quality of living than they were used to, so residents could make improvements at their own pace. Elemental continues to refine this design and has built more than 3,000 units throughout Chile.

ELEMENTAL’s work comprises a wide range of projects. Other notable work by the firm includes educational and corporate buildings such as the St. Edwards University Dorms (USA), Anacleto Angelini UC Innovation Centre (Chile), the Office Building at the Novartis Shanghai Campus (China); and the design of public spaces as the Santiago Metropolitan Promenade and Bicentennial Children’s Park (Chile). Elemental has won an international competition to design ArtMill, a major cultural centre in Doha (Qatar).

In 2011, ELEMENTAL published the Incremental Housing and Participatory Design Manual by Hatje-Cantz, and in 2018, the monograph ELEMENTAL by Phaidon.

ELEMENTAL’s projects have been exhibited worldwide and have won many awards. A solo retrospective opened at the Louisiana Museum of Modern Art in Denmark in October 2018. 

Today, ELEMENTAL continues to develop projects that contribute to new fields of discourse.

Studios Kabako’s cultural programs and urban interventions create a network for artistic expression in a city isolated by war, political corruption, civil strife, and poverty. In addition, through international commissions and performances, the studio informs an international audience of the geopolitical consequences of postcolonial instability and the exploitation of the Central Africa region.

Founded in 2001 by Congolese dancer and choreographer Faustin Linyekula, Studios Kabako was created to address social memory, fear, and hope in the aftermath of the civil war. Linyekula discovered dance in Kenya when he ventured there after the Congolese regime closed the universities at home. He subsequently traveled and lived as a dancer/choreographer throughout Africa and Europe. When he returned to the Congo eight years later, decades of dictatorship and conflict had devastated the country and it was contending with refugees, government corruption, economic instability, and significant human rights abuses. 

Studios Kabako was founded in recognition that under these circumstances, the Congolese, especially young people, were living without hope, completely immersed in their daily survival and unable to imagine an alternative. Over time, members of the studio have realized that to rebuild war-torn regions, they must be able to envisage an alternative to the culture of destruction. Studios Kabako is a manifestation of designating art as the first design component in building a better society.

Along with performances, the organization also operates youth programs and provides facilities such as the country’s first professional recording studio and technical expertise to help residents produce art that exposes the city’s most critical issues and builds possibilities for alternative developments. The young people in the DRC are the direct beneficiaries of Studios Kabako’s work, gaining dance, music, and artistic skills as well as professional expertise in writing, development, video, and event production. Some students become part of the Linyekula’s touring group or create their own touring projects, produced by Studios Kabako.

Studios Kabako also practices urban acupuncture— small-scale interventions that transform the larger urban context. While the organization maintains offices, recording, and rehearsal studios in the city center, it also brings its work to the rural fringes and vacant areas of Kisangani via mobile performances.

Studios Kabako has been working with Viennese architect Bärbel Müller to build two more facilities within the city.  Through these projects, the studio is experimenting with environmentally friendly technologies, communal living systems, and educational models that are unprecedented in this region. 

Luyanda Mpahlwa is part of a vanguard of designers reshaping and re-envisioning South Africa’s post-apartheid architectural landscape.

Luyanda studied architecture at the University of Natal and Natal Technikon in the late 1970s before being incarcerated for anti-apartheid political activities when he refused to give up the name of one of his comrades to a judge in 1980. After five years in prison, his release to Germany was negotiated by Amnesty International, where he completed his MS in architecture at the Technical University of Berlin. After graduation, he was the project site architect for one of the Nordic Embassies projects in Berlin, the coordinating architect for the Berlin Embassy, and co-initiator of the South African Embassy project.

After his return to South Africa in 2000, Mpahlwa’s innovations included designs for low-cost homes. The 10×10 Housing Project in the township of Freedom Park, a shanty town on the outskirts of Cape Town, was commissioned in 2007 by Design Indaba, South Africa’s premier design expo. Ten local and international architects were paired with ten Freedom Park families to build experimental homes on the government subsidy budget of 50,000 South African rands, or about $6,900 US. 

To reduce costs, Mpahlwa replaced traditional brick-and-mortar foundations with less expensive two-story structural frames made from timber and filled with sand. The design borrows from indigenous, mud-and-wattle building techniques that keep homes cool in summer and warm in winter. In addition to its thermal and sound-absorbing properties, sandbag construction also requires little to no electricity or skilled labor to erect. Several Freedom Park families now live in new two-story homes with built-in terraces and private gardens—a step up from their previous one-room tin shacks. 

Since the successful completion of the 10×10 Design Indaba Housing project, Luyanda has continued to pursue socially impactful design. One current project seeks to upgrade an informal settlement in the township of Philippi, Cape Town. Currently, the team has completed 400 government-subsidized units of a total of 5,000. The design philosophy borrows from the lessons learned in the 10×10 Housing Project of 2008, but on a larger scale and with different typologies in order to create better urban quality. 

Recently, Luyanda was appointed Adjunct Professor at the University of Cape Town, African Centre for Cities (ACC), an honorary position which he hopes to use to promote socially impactful design in the teaching of Architecture and Urban Design. 

L’Oeuf (l’Office de l’Éclectisme Urbain et Fonctionnel) is a Montreal-based design practice with an international reputation for sustainable architecture, urban housing, residential and commercial renovation. L’Oeuf’s work is characterized by its broad interpretation of ‘sustainability,’ striking a balance between affordability, ecological efficiency and architectural detail.

Founded by Daniel Pearl and Mark Poddubiuk in 1992, L’Oeuf emphasizes building community over building buildings. Or, more precisely it examines the relationship between the two and the interplay between building, occupant and environment creates the potential for design innovation at multiple levels.

One of their influential projects was the world’s first government-subsidized, large-scale, community-driven neighborhood renewal project, a site called Benny Farm. Originally conceived in 1947 as housing for families of returning World War II veterans, Benny Farm was a flourishing community until the late 1970’s when it faced the challenges of aging residents and an increasingly decrepit infrastructure. In 1989, plans were made to demolish the old structures and sell some of the land to finance new buildings. L’Oeuf’s success was in navigating the competing concerns of ecological sustainability, affordability, working with government agencies and stimulating the necessary changes to legislation in order to avoid private development of the site.

Run by the duo it is named for, Lacaton & Vassal is an award-winning architecture firm using innovative design to promote social justice, sustainability, and the repurposing of materials.

Anne Lacaton and Jean-Philippe Vassal met in the 1970s during their formal architecture training in France. In 1987, they established Lacaton & Vassal in Paris. The duo’s architecture reflects their advocacy of social justice and sustainability by prioritizing a generosity of space and freedom of use through economical and ecological materials. They vowed to never demolish what could be redeemed but instead make sustainable what already exists, thereby extending through addition, respecting the luxury of simplicity, and proposing new possibilities. For over three decades, they have designed private and social housing, cultural and academic institutions, public spaces, and urban strategies. 

While most designers focus either on perfecting elements of a design (i.e., choosing sustainable materials) or the impact that the final product has on the user’s experience (i.e., designing a building that is aesthetically pleasing) Lacaton and Vassal focus on both aspects. For example, a skillful selection of materials enables the architects to build larger living spaces affordably. Not only do they think deeply about the best way to construct the built environment, but they ensure that their designs exceed basic function, inspiring joy and quality of life. 

In 2004, together with Frédéric Druot, Lacaton and Vassal made headlines with their manifesto PLUS, which pushed back against the French government’s proposal to demolish urban, post-war social housing and replace it with smaller, more expensive new units. Over the ensuing years, the three architects and Christophe Hutin reconfigured modernist housing blocks in Paris, Saint Nazaire, and Bordeaux. This result was less expensive than rebuilding. Additionally, low-income residents were not forced to move outside the city. To minimize inconvenience to the residents, much of the retrofitting was prefabricated so the construction could be implemented with inhabitants on site. The replacement of the facade lasted about 2 days and after a few weeks, a resident could have an improved, larger home.

Current works in progress include the transformation of a former hospital into a 138-unit, a mid-rise apartment building in Paris, and an 80-unit, mid-rise building in Anderlecht; the transformation of an office building in Paris; and the renovation of the Kampnagel theater in Hamburg.

They were awarded the Pritzker Architecture Prize in 2021

We had an opportunity to speak with Anne and Jean Phillipe. Listen here.