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.

Kraftwerk1 is a Zurich-based collective that pioneered affordable cooperative housing models. With its diverse and flexible housing types, participatory planning processes, and energy-efficient designs, Kraftwerk1 has proven that it’s possible to create high-quality affordable housing schemes in fringe areas of a city.

Kraftwerk1 was born out of multiple housing crises which hit Zurich in the 1980’s and 90’s, when a lack of housing pushed prices up, and pushed people out. The collective was formed in 1993 by the three authors of a manifesto of the same name. Architect Andreas Hofer, artist Martin Blum, and author P.M. based the Kraftwerk1 model on a more pragmatic vision of P.M.’s social utopian “bolo’bolo” (“tribe”) model.

Kraftwerk1’s primary innovation lies in project organization. They seek land in undesirable parts of a city and broker deals with owners desperate to offload their unused land. The communities finance the capital improvement by a graduated contribution scheme based on income. This allows the collective to admit those who financially might not otherwise be able to afford the rent. Even in so doing, Kraftwerk1 typically achieves rents at 20% below market.

Although Kraftwerk1 has chosen a different architect for each of its projects, a common theme in its design philosophy is an open and flexible architectural design strategy. Their buildings also provide a suite of communal amenities, often including a shop, a kindergarten, and a restaurant. Their latest project, Project Koch, involves building 325 affordable homes with commercial use on the ground floor, and is expected to be completed by 2026.

Kraftwerk1 is an illustration of how concept organization can make a project more than the sum of its parts. A building’s design must exist in partnership with the design of the community that lives there. Designers can do both when they recognize the interplay between building, occupant and community.

Kounkuey Design Initiative is a non-profit based in Kenya and California. Using extensive community engagement, KDI reveals systemic needs and enlists the community in constructing solutions.

The Kounkuey Design Initiative (KDI) began when six Harvard Design School students nearing graduation asked a question: Can we use our skills towards social justice rather than at the big design firms we are expected to join? One of the six, Arthur Adeya, was from Kenya, so they decided to investigate answers in Kibera, a large informal settlement in Nairobi which is home to over half a million residents.

When KDI began work in Kibera in 2006, they recognized this was not their community and they did not want to impose their assistance, nor create an innovative design to address a problem they identified in a vacuum. Instead, they sought guidance from experts: the residents of Kibera. They also came up with a name for their organization: Konkuey, a Thai word that means, “get to know intimately.”

In depth conversations and collaborations with residents led to The Kibera Public Space Project. This network of community hubs, created from waste spaces such as hazardous dumping sites in partnership with community groups, transformed these areas into welcoming public spaces with basic amenities like clean water, toilets, schools and playgrounds as well as income generating assets such as community gardens and small-business kiosks. There are also social development services provided such as technology training. The combination of small businesses and training mean that the transformed spaces were financially and operationally self-sufficient by year two.

KDI seeks to create what they now call ‘Productive Public Spaces’ wherever they work—and always through the same process of deep community engagement. In fact, their goal is to empower the community to the point that KDI is no longer necessary.

In 2011 the group began work with residents of the St. Anthony trailer park in the Coachella Valley of California. The valley is one of the most fertile agricultural regions of California, with a rich Native American history, yet it shares similarities with some of the poorest communities in the world. The 88,000 people who live in this unincorporated stretch of land lack access to basic services and often live in dilapidated trailer parks where water is contaminated with arsenic. Replicating the process used in Kenya, KDI worked with the residents to begin a network of Productive Public Spaces. The intent is to create spaces for meetings, education, small business development–and where new community interactions can flourish.

In 2020, KDI came out with The Handbook for Gender-Inclusive Urban Planning and Design, a groundbreaking document to help build more gender-inclusive cities. Drawing on their years of experience working with underrepresented communities, KDI shares guidelines on how to make projects more gender inclusive and recommends tools to involve all persons in design and planning.

KDI’s work and process illustrate how designers can catalyze new developments in public space often with minimal resources.

Jonathan Kirschenfeld is a New York architect recognized for design excellence over a wide range of environmentally and socially sustainable projects including supportive housing, childcare centers, recreation, and performance facilities.

Aside from his role as the principal of his architecture firm, named after himself, Mr. Kirschenfeld is an Adjunct Associate Professor at Columbia University’s School of Architecture Planning and Preservation and has taught at architectural programs at Pratt Institute and New Jersey Institute of Technology. He was a Visiting Professor at the University of Bologna: Facolta Di Architettura Aldo Rossi from 2013 to 2014, and has been twice selected as first alternate for the Rome Prize.

Kirschenfeld is also the founder of the Institute for Public Architecture, a non-profit which promotes socially responsible architects, provides a supportive community for its practitioners, and hosts an ongoing residency program for architects, urbanists, designers, and theorists at its new home at the Block House on Governors Island. 

Kirschenfeld’s method focuses on identifying under-utilized portions of civic land that were passed over for private development and bringing world-class design to the city’s neediest residents.  The resulting projects combine housing with social services that help residents transcend chronic homelessness.  By pushing the expectations of what supportive housing can be, Kirschenfeld’s projects elevate the neighborhoods where they are situated.

Beyond housing, Kirschenfeld has drawn international distinction for the re-purposing of a cargo vessel into the Floating Pool—a temporary pool complex located in the East River in the Bronx, a neighborhood lacking in public pool facilities. Historically, temporary pools built on barges moored in the river were common in New York, but the practice died out in the 1930’s. The Floating Pool hosted over 50,000 visitors during its eight-week season and won the 2007 international Award of Excellence from the Waterfront Center. The Pool was also honored as the runner-up in the prestigious 2007 Cooper-Hewitt Museum People’s Choice Design Award, and has received a 2008 Masterwork Award, among other awards.

Jonathan joined us for a conversation with Brenda Rosen of Breaking Ground where we tackled the right to housing in the neoliberal era. Have a listen.

John Fetterman is an American politician who, as Mayor of Braddock, Pennsylvania, led the urban rejuvenation of a post-industrial city.

A Reading, PA native, he first arrived in Braddock in 2001 to work with AmeriCorps, an American volunteer organization. He ran for mayor in 2005, winning by a single vote. He had never held office before that.

Braddock, a former industrial town, known for being the site of Andrew Carnegie‘s first steel mill was a robust city that was once a center of commerce for Western Pennsylvania. However, it was hit hard by the decline of the U.S. steel industry. The town lost 90% of its population compared to its peak in the 1920s and by 1988, it had no supermarkets, gas stations or ATMs. With the loss of economic opportunity, Braddock, declared a financially distressed municipality, was beset by problems common in the post-industrial landscape: unemployment, drugs, disinvestment, and crime. 

Fetterman’s approach was aggressive but fundamentally simple: he looked for opportunities to bring back hope and pride, beginning with a small, do-it-yourself approach, such as planting fruit trees, or making an outdoor pizza oven out of reclaimed bricks from an abandoned factory. He also offered up free studio space to artists in order to welcome in the ‘creative’ class.

His work in Braddock is an ongoing experiment; people, especially homesteaders attracted by the availability of low cost housing ripe for renovation, are moving back to Braddock. Crime has decreased. While challenges remain, the arc of Braddock represents fundamental lessons about how to reinvent place, and meet the challenges brought on by globalization, even in the first world.

In 2021, Fetterman announced his candidacy in Pennsylvania’s 2022 Senate election. He won the Democratic nomination with 59% of the vote and will face Republican Mehmet Oz in the general election. Generally described as a progressive, Fetterman advocates for health care as a right, criminal justice reform, strengthening the U.S.–Israel relationship, raising the minimum wage to $15 an hour, and legalizing marijuana.

We had an opportunity to speak with John Fetterman about his thoughts on how to imagine a new future in a post-industrial landscape on our podcast, Social Design Insights. Listen to the episode below.

Jeanne van Heeswijk is an artist who facilitates the creation of dynamic and diversified public spaces. Her long-scale community projects question art’s autonomy by combining performative actions, discussions, and other forms of organizing and pedagogy to assist communities to take control of their futures.

Van Heeswijk’s projects distinguish themselves by their strong social involvement, often including hundreds of participants and over an extended period. She sees herself as a mediator who generates “interspaces,” contexts, and crossovers where new relationships are established between groups of people and institutions. These connections lead to public improvements, the self-organization of local groups, self-sustaining enterprises, and a stronger community identity.

Her work often attempts to unravel invisible legislation, governmental codes, and social institutions, gradually preparing areas for their futures.

A turning point in her career was the 2002 De Strip project in Vlaardingen, the Netherlands where she turned shops left vacant by unrealized development into galleries, artist’s studios, and workshop spaces for different community groups. 

In her 2008 project, Freehouse–Market of Tomorrow, van Heeswijk sought to revitalize Rotterdam’s Afrikaande Market. Working with vendors, artists, designers, and local shopkeepers, she developed a detailed sketch of the ideal market of the future, devoting more attention to diverse high-quality goods and services, and new skill-based collaborative projects. The master plan challenged government regulations that were preventing vendors and the community from establishing sustainable sources of income. The renewal of the market is ongoing, but it has already become the “beating heart” of the Afrikaner district.

In 2020, Heeswijk introduced Trainings for the Not-Yet, an exhibition that evolves through a series of training sessions organized in weekly chapters. The sessions range from “dreamscaping” to radical listening, from creating a sanctuary to enacting radical care, from fighting housing struggles to building solidarity economies, and from composing intersectional alliances to become collective. They take place amid and with artworks by van Heeswijk as well as an array of international artists engaged in social change and modeling collectivity. 

More recently, in the fall of 2021, Jeanne van Heeswijk and Bobby Sayers invited residents of Wester Hailes to Public Faculty No 14: “What are you invested in?” a four-day event in which the artists held informal conversations with both invited community members and passers-by about forms of investment—both financial and non-financial, personal, and city-wide.

Ishinomaki 2.0 was founded in the aftermath of the 2011 tsunami that devastated Ishinomaki and the surrounding region, with nearly 46% of the city destroyed. The founders came together with a profound yet simple goal: rebuild Ishinomaki into the ‘most interesting city in the world’ by bringing together a collective of local shop owners, non-profit workers, architects, city planning researchers, creative producers, web directors and university students.

Ishinomaki 2.0 has engaged in a wide variety of projects since its founding. These projects bring vibrancy and creativity to the city while also meeting the needs of existing and temporary residents. For example, Ishiomaki Chuo (the old central town area) was suffering from recession even before the earthquake–the street was nicknamed “Shutter Street” because so many shops were shuttered. After the tsunami debris and sludge was removed, what was left was vacant space with no buildings and empty shops. Ishinomaki 2.0 spearheaded a movement to reuse the vacant properties, converting garages into an open shared office, creating facilities for visitors to the town to stay economically and creating a small, DIY style bar.

Other projects include Irori Ishinomaki, a business café that provides a gathering space for micro-entrepreneurs and those involved in the reconstruction. It features free wi-fi and complimentary refills on coffee all day! Ishinomaki Voice is a free magazine written in the voice of local residents. It comments on both the history and culture of Ishinomaki, as well as the future Ishinomaki residents envision. In recent years, the group has facilitated several tours and visits for students and those potentially interested in moving to the rebuilt city.

These projects, along with many others, represent a forward-thinking approach to disaster – one that doesn’t limit its aspirations to rebuilding, but asks how disaster can be a catalyst for a completely new vision.

Interbreeding Field is a Taiwanese educational program that creates installations in and about public space. Public space is contested in Taiwan, and Interbreeding Field’s work makes provocative commentary on how a space should or could be used.

In biology, interbreeding creates future generations with qualities absent in the parent generation. That is what Interbreeding Field seeks to accomplish. The ‘fields’ it refers to in its name can be social, historical or physical. By grafting these fields together, new ideas of public space can be generated. For example, in one project, the studio built a park on a scaffold over a parking lot, drawing attention to how we have designed our cities for cars not people.

Interbreeding Field brings in students to help explore and design projects – starting with gaining an understanding of the social and philosophical grounding which makes that project necessary. The students then execute the projects, which can range from the practical (e.g., a bridge) to the fanciful (e.g, an installation).

Interbreeding Field’s work has encompassed public space in all forms, from benches to museum exhibitions, all of which look to explore how new spaces can be created by overlapping the ‘fields’ we already know.

Interboro is an architecture, urban design, and planning firm working across scales, from buildings to communities. They are known for a participatory, place-specific approach that helps build consensus around complex projects.

Based in Brooklyn, New York, the firm builds on the unique qualities of each space to program, design, and build open environments that are inviting to everyone. Their portfolio includes architecture, planning, and urban design, but has also crossed over into communication design, legislative reform, and branding.

Interboro first came to prominence with their project for the LA Forum for Architecture’s “Dead Malls” competition. Their project, “In The Meantime: Life with Landbanking,” envisioned a future for the closed Duchess County Mall in Fishkill, New York. Interboro identified the principal problem with the mall, “land banking”. In other words, a situation where a developer allows a property to sit unoccupied and closed in hopes that to sell the land at an increased value. Through research, Interboro discovered that while the mall was officially closed, it held an informal hub of organic activities and micro businesses. Truck drivers would pull over in the mall’s parking lot to rest, so a hot dog truck owner set up a business. A flea market entrepreneur used the space for a weekend market. Various clubs and organizations used the parking lot as a meeting point. To protect the impromptu community, Interboro proposed cheap, flexible moves that promoted the activities which were already ongoing.

Recently, Interboro developed the Anne O’C. Albrecht Nature Playscape. The firm led a team of landscape architects, builders, artists, educators, growers, and civic activists in the design of a new natural playscape in St. Louis’ Forest Park. This project transformed what had been 17 acres of turf into a restored natural environment with nine unique activity areas connected by a network of trails and paths. 

Another recent project involved a comprehensive analysis and assessment of 63 vacant school properties located across Detroit. The objective of this ambitious project was to complete a holistic, comparative study of 63 vacant school properties (VSPs) in Detroit—including 39 owned by the City of Detroit (City) and 24 owned by the Detroit Public Schools Community District (DPSCD)—and to make recommendations regarding their redevelopment potential. 

We had an opportunity to have an extended conversation with Daniel D’Oca of Interboro on our podcast, Social Design Insights. Listen to the episodes below.