Iconoclasistas is a Buenos Aires-based design duo led by University of Buenos Aires professor Julia Risler and graphic designer and comic strip author Pablo Ares. The mission is to use cartography (maps) and other graphic art forms to create new visions of historic representation, societal growth, and participation.

Building on longstanding social justice work, Risler and Ares founded Iconoclasistas in 2006 out of a desire to create graphic resources that could be circulated among their network of activists. Maps were chosen as a medium because they are broadly understood and easily amended, using icons that transcend language and educational barriers. The resulting maps range from the local and literal (e.g., an overlay of a street grid peppered with icons designed to illustrate issues like safety, gentrification, etc.) to the political (a map of mining-related destruction in Argentina’s heartland).  

Iconoclasistas’ maps question dominant symbolism and ideologies to help community organizers build strategies of resistance. They are used as tools to lend legitimacy to complaints to local governments and industries. The work of Iconoclasistas falls into three different categories: artistic (production poetics and graphic devices), political (territorial activism and institutional drifts), and academic (critical pedagogies and participatory research). 

A major focus of Iconoclasistas is to inspire and enable others to use their strategies in their own communities. In 2013, the duo published the “Collective Mapping Manual. Critical cartographic resources for territorial processes of collaborative creation,” in which they systematize and share methodologies, resources, and dynamics for the self-organization of workshops, exercises, tables, and interventions of collective mapping and the development of collaborative research processes in the territories.

Iconoclasistas also holds collective mapping workshops and collaborative research in various countries and social, community, cultural and educational institutions. They organize training sessions with mapping tools focused on topics such as gender violence, the plundering of natural resources, urban gentrification, agroecological alternatives, fair trade, and environmental justice. These workshops are carried out with urban, peasant, and indigenous communities.

We had an opportunity to speak with Julia and Pablo about this process on our podcast, Social Design Insights. Listen to the episode below.

Hsieh Ying-Chun is a Taiwanese architect who works throughout Asia, training villagers to build locally appropriate dwellings in response to earthquake devastation.

In 1999, a 7.3-magnitude earthquake struck Nantou County in rural Taiwan, destroying more than 50,000 buildings, killing nearly 2,500 people, and threatening to dismantle the tribal home of Taiwan’s smallest aboriginal group, the Thao. In response, Taiwan native Hsieh moved his conventional architectural firm to the affected site in Sun Moon Lake. There, he took a leading role in redefining rural design construction with community engagement as a guiding principle. 

Through Hsieh’s hands-on education process, villagers reconstructed their community knowing they would live in buildings with greater safety, structural integrity, and sustainability. While in many disaster scenarios, the technical and financial burden of reconstruction renders the affected community powerless and dependent on NGOs to deploy basic aid, thanks to Hsieh Ying-Chun, the Thao’s story is a tale of self-reliance and community empowerment.

In his projects, Hsieh establishes a cooperative network of designers, local contractors, and residents that supports and sustains local needs. He develops simplified building techniques based on earthquake-safe steel-frame structures, which can be adapted to specific circumstances, traditions, skills, and availability of materials. Hsieh’s flexible designs prescribe only the fixed support features, leaving floor plans and aesthetic details to the residents’ discretion. Native materials such as straw, clay, and stone give a uniquely local identity to the buildings. Additionally, renewable materials and community labor keep Hsieh’s costs extremely low—up to 50 percent below the development standard—which is key to the success and sustainability of his model. Hsieh structures his projects to employ villagers during agriculturally idle periods, to avoid conflicting with farming cycles.

In the years since his first humanitarian efforts, Hsieh has demonstrated the scalability and adaptability of his designs in other parts of Asia. In 2008, he was called to central China where nearly 70,000 people had been killed by the Sichuan earthquake, and most buildings had been destroyed. He worked with villagers to construct 500 homes, as well as compost toilets. In 2010 his team completed the reconstruction project of 700 homes for 13 different tribal communities affected by the severe mudslides caused by Typhoon Morakot in Taiwan.

Hsieh continues to travel where rural communities need him most. In 2012 Hsieh received a National Award for the Arts, Taiwan’s highest honor for artists.

Listen to the episode below.

Founded in the wake of the 2001 earthquake in Gujarat, India, Hunnarshala engages in both community and artisan empowerment. It works with a network of artisans to combine traditional techniques with innovation resulting in buildings, including in post disaster situations, that are at once eco-friendly, resilient and in keeping with local vernacular. They also train and empower artisan entrepreneurs, bringing them into the mainstream of construction and participate in community-led reconstruction and planning.

The devastating 2001 earthquake brought together a group of architects, engineers, and environmental advocates who had been working in the region for years on the idea that people can be empowered by shaping their own habitats. The earthquake presented an opportunity for the cofounders to test this belief. In Kutch, Hunnarshala met with citizens, local builders, and artisans to devise reconstruction strategies that expanded upon local knowledge and the principle that homeowners were capable of replicating and updating structures for greater resilience. One conversation led to the revival of the bhunga, a traditional dwelling with a rounded shape that makes it naturally more quake-resistant than a boxy concrete buildings. Hunnarshala worked with artisans to further reinforce the bhunga’s rammed-earth construction by adding steel rings at various levels.

This community-driven process has become the cornerstone of Hunarashala’s approach. They constantly find new hybrid solutions to elevate vernacular architecture with innovation. For example, experiments have led to the use industrial waste, such as adding levigated clay (waste from porcelain factories that clog river systems) in rammed-earth construction and joining thin strips of waste wood from shipwrecks to make structural flooring, doors, and window frames.

All new materials and techniques are extensively tested in Hunnarshala’s lab in Bhuj, and the organization works with local governments to develop technical guidelines, which are added to regional manuals for new construction.

Hunnarshala has worked on disaster rehabilitation in India (Gujarat, Tamil Nadu, Kashmir, and Bihar), Iran, Indonesia, and Afghanistan. It has helped build more than 30,000 interim shelters and about 12,000 permanent reconstructions. The organization consulted on a program to design bamboo homes in the state of Bihar, in the foothills of the Himalayas, where 20,000 homes have been constructed using a traditional system that lashes bamboo poles together without hardware. Hunnarshala is working with the Uttaranchal government to design a social housing program in response to the floods of 2013, this time looking at ways to use local stone.

An example of Hunnarshala’s holistic approach to redevelopment work can be found in its home city of Bhuj. After the 2001 earthquake, Hunnarshala collaborated with the city government on several relocation and social housing projects, including a master plan for the sustainable, culturally sensitive relocation of 500 displaced families. On the outskirts of Bhuj, about 300 homes have been built reusing industrial waste materials; the homes can be expanded by their owners, not a typical perk of post-disaster housing. The residents are being relocated from a dense urban core, so creating public spaces throughout the town is a focus. To address water-shortage issues, partner organizations are creating an urban watershed with a decentralized wastewater treatment system. Helophyte plants filter water for use in irrigation, which stimulates agrarian activities as well as greater community self-sufficiency. The maintenance of these new elements has created jobs: Hunnarshala has trained residents to maintain the solar panels that power the water pumps in the biofilter plant.

Hunnarshala has built a network of artisans during its many reconstruction projects and this has been an ongoing source of expertise as the organization has continued work in Kutch and other disaster regions. It also contracts some of its artisans to work on international historical restoration projects. They also run a training program to help rural artisans understand urban business practices and how to apply their skills in an urban context. Participants get a two-year education in entrepreneurship during which Hunnarshala diverts business to them as they learn how to manage their own enterprises. Today, two hundred Hunnarshala-trained artisans are using their own knowledge systems to help build cities.

Hunnarshala demonstrates that communities given the power to make their own decisions create the best solutions. Hunnarshala understands how to revive local artisanal knowledge and skills to deliver high-quality housing that is sustainable and disaster-safe. It has started an ongoing conversation with artisans that continues to generate new knowledge.

 

Hester Street was a New York City-based nonprofit that devotes urban planning, design, and development expertise to support community-led change for socially, racially, and economically just cities, towns, and regions.

Hester Street provided technical assistance and capacity-building support to community-based organizations (CBOs) and government agencies to advance participatory planning, transformative policy, and equitable community development. They focussed on low-income communities and communities of color – people and places historically excluded from civic decision-making. Their team was made up of designers, architects, planners, community developers, and organizers who paired technical expertise with a deep understanding that the most successful projects and plans are grounded in local needs and informed by community priorities. 

Hester Street deployed four core strategies in its practice: 1.) Start with neighborhoods to build on existing social networks and local institutions; 2.) Change the narrative by centering communities of color; 3.) Re-imagine democracy and re-shape government to be more inclusive, equitable, and accountable; and 4.) Build power and deliver impact by equipping communities with tools to level the playing field. 

The organization worked with partners serving all over New York City,  New York State, and throughout the country. They worked closely with CBOs led by and serving communities of color to provide technical capacity to advance their goals and project work. They also worked with government executives, staff, legislators, and agencies to develop and deploy the skills and tools necessary to ensure transparency, accessibility, equity, and accountability to communities of color. 

Hester Street developed neighborhood plans that prioritize affordable housing, economic opportunity, and public health; supported efforts to strengthen economic self-sufficiency and self-determination in the Navajo Nation; stemmed the tide of CBO displacement by acquiring and developing new community centers in NYC; advanced people-powered, culturally-driven, post-disaster climate justice in San Juan, Puerto Rico; re-imagined beloved and democratic public institutions – libraries and parks – as true Palaces for the People, and; engaged hundreds of thousands of New Yorkers in policy conversations for cultural equity, mental health for all, gender equity, and the future of fair housing. 

In August 2024, Hester Street closed its operations.

We had a chance to talk with Isella Ramirez of Hester Street about their projects, and how their particular form of activism helps facilitate thoughtful development on behalf of historically voiceless communities in East Harlem and beyond. Listen to the episode below.

The Heritage Foundation of Pakistan is a non-profit working at the intersection of architecture and social justice. Since the 2005 Swat Valley earthquake, they have become one of the world’s most successful providers of sustainable, resilient disaster relief structures, and are also very involved in historic conservation projects in villages all around Pakistan.

The Foundation was established in 1980 by husband and wife team Suhail Zaheer and Yasmeen Lari. Yasmeen Lari has the distinction of being Pakistan’s first female architect.  Prior to her work with the Foundation, she built giant concrete and steel buildings for clients such as the Pakistani State Oil company. As President of the Institute of Architects Pakistan (IAP) and first chair of the Pakistan Council of Architects and Town Planners, this winner of the Jane Drew Prize 2020 was instrumental in bringing about recognition for the professions of architecture and town planning.

The Foundation’s post-disaster reconstruction work began in the aftermath of the 2005 earthquake in Swat province. It developed an emergency shelter called “Karavan Ghar” made from debris of collapsed houses and local materials, and were built by community members, university volunteers and local artisans under the direction of the Foundation.

Beyond their relief work, the Foundation has worked widely in all forms of sustainable development, including developing a remarkable smokeless “chulha”, an earthen stove, which can be built by unskilled labor for only $7. With her dictum of ‘Low Cost/Zero Carbon/Zero Waste’ and using locally sourced sustainable materials such as earth, lime and bamboo, Yasmeen Lari devised Barefoot Social Architecture (BASA). BASA incorporates tenets of social and cultural justice, helping communities achieve self-reliance through participatory processes – co-building and co-creation of households by themselves. Through BASA, Heritage Foundation has provided humanitarian assistance to 840,000 persons in over 8 years.

The Foundation has also worked towards the conservation of much of Karachi’s cultural heritage, as well as the historical district of Khairpur and the ancient site of Kot Diji, by advocating for safeguarding several hundred structures in poor conditions.

Yasmeen has gone on to win several accolades, including the 2023 RIBA Royal Gold Medal, the 2020 Jane Drew Prize and Pakistan’s third-highest Civilian Honor, the Sitara-e-Imitiaz

For more on Yasmeen’s extensive and ground-breaking career, please join us on Social Design Insights. We had a chance to talk with Yasmeen in Episode 16, where she detailed her journey and her strategies for building a more resilient Pakistan. Listen to the episode below.

Gyaw Gyaw is a community development non-profit that works with the Karen people at the border between Myanmar and Thailand. The organization combines low-cost, sustainable building techniques with community input to ensure designs are appropriate to the customs and culture of each village.

Gyaw Gyaw, which means “slowly, step-by-step” in the Karen language, was co-­founded in 2008 by Norwegian landscape architect Line Ramstad and members of the Karen community. Besides Ramstad and South Korean/German architect Jae-Young Lee, the rest of the team consists of Karen people, and the core of the group has remained the same since 2008.

The Karen are the second largest ethnic group in Myanmar. After World War II, Myanmar (then Burma) was granted independence from Britain and the Karen were promised their own independent state. Neither the Karen nor other minorities received this sovereignty. Surviving more than 60 years of war, oppression, and violence from the Myanmar government, many Karen fled to the Thai border. Though they can claim refugee status in Thailand, they often have no rights and face the constant threat of arrest and deportation.

Gyaw Gyaw’s development has been organic, governed by a few general principles: source locally, involve everyone, and take it step-by-step. Though they receive program-based support from a small number of Norwegian companies which allows for flexibility in projects and the ability to navigate complex political upheaval, civil strife, and military conflict, their work is deliberately small scale. Their budget is a mere $60,000 annually by choice. 

Gyaw Gyaw’s work promotes a combination of both traditional and contemporary building methods. This design choice is intended to show viable alternatives to the common foreign aid model of primarily concrete buildings. By building upon existing local knowledge, materials, and methods, Gyaw Gyaw empowers communities to value and utilize their existing expertise skills.

Previous and current projects include primary, high, and teaching schools, libraries, dormitories, gardens, and a widow house. Additionally, the organization is involved with many community projects, like providing roofing, installing toilets and water systems, fencing, and more. 

Having completed over 65 projects and, despite the COVID-19 pandemic and a military coup that has devolved into a civil war, the team is steadily working forward, building sustainable structures for and with local existing schools.

We had an opportunity to have an extended conversation with Line Ramstad on our podcast, Social Design Insights. Listen to the episodes below.

Goonj is a non-­governmental organization based in Delhi since 1998 which undertakes poverty alleviation work, using the city's discard as material to fuel widespread development work across village India.

Founded by social entrepreneur Anshu Gupta, Goonj uses urban surplus as a tool to alleviate poverty and enhance the dignity of the underprivileged. The scarcity of clothing—and cloth, is an overlooked contributor to poverty across the world. Without proper uniforms, children cannot attend school. Without decent clothing, people are prohibited from a variety of employment opportunities. Without sanitary napkins, women might be confined to the home throughout menses. Through barter between material and community efforts, Goonj stimulates an inclusive alternative economy where everyone is an equal stakeholder in the process, creating a model for development that maintains dignity and does not compromise quality. 

Communities are no longer ‘beneficiaries’ of charity in the paradigm created by Goonj, but rather workers who are paid in a non-­monetary form of currency. Goonj’s work has also led to systematic changes in disaster relief and rehabilitation work across India, addressing taboo issues such as menstrual hygiene to reduce stigma and increase access.  

Goonj has established a culture and mechanism of sustained mindful giving, grounded in dignity and empathy, for vast stocks of everyday necessities. It collects underutilized urban materials (like clothes, books, kitchen items, etc.) and processes them, sorting, repairing, repurposing, cleaning, and carefully curating them into need-based socio-geographically appropriate family kits comprising items such as clothing, toys, utensils, footwear and more.

Goonj’s innovative approach has spread throughout 31 states/UTs in India and has handled over 13,000 tons of material in 21-22 FY. Responding to the COVID-19 pandemic, Goonj escalated its urban and rural network to rapidly deliver more than 1 million family/relief kits between April 2020 and March 2022 to severely affected families in the most neglected communities, working with a strong on-ground partner network.

Anshu Gupta was awarded the Magsaysay Award for his work on transforming the culture of giving in India and for highlighting material as a sustainable development resource for the socioeconomically disadvantaged. He was listed in Forbes Magazine as one of India’s most powerful rural entrepreneurs. We had a chance to speak with Anshu about Goonj’s remarkable program on our podcast, Social Design Insights. Listen to the episode below.

GeoHazards International is a California based non-profit that works with under-resourced communities to stay ahead of disasters from earthquakes, natural hazards and extreme weather. It was founded in 1991 by geologist Brian Tucker, who was acutely aware of successes in California and wealthy nations – legally, socially and culturally – to address known risks from local hazards. This proactive approach has protected lives and enabled communities to thrive.

In contrast, people in poor and emerging economies are far more vulnerable to natural disasters. Over 90% of disaster fatalities occur in these countries. Urban populations are rapidly growing and communities lack safety expertise to assess risks and to reduce vulnerabilities. Further, basic needs often take priority over planning.

During his PhD research, Tucker traveled extensively in Tajikistan and Central Asia and was surprised and concerned by the seismic vulnerability of the buildings he found there. After his return to California, he began to consider how advanced mitigation strategies could be thoughtfully translated and put to use in the most vulnerable parts of the world.

GeoHazards International now champions a safer future for all, in which people are better protected and prepared. It equips people across the spectrum to sustain and scale safer practices. Its expert team advises decision makers so they can anticipate and tackle disaster threats. Its programs share information that is clear, relevant to daily life, and actionable. Local team members invest in community relationships, which enable steady progress.

Engagement happens at all angles. One focus is resilience of schools and hospitals, ensuring that key facilities will withstand disaster events. Some programs have trained engineers, masons and other professionals to create a safer built environment. Village-level interventions have included retrofitting vulnerable schools and conducting community outreach programs. Top-down solutions have included creating risk-informed action plans, creating structural engineering programs with universities, and helping to draft national policy and regulations that consider natural hazards risk.

Using evidence-based scenarios, GHI has mapped potential earthquake disasters to stimulate action to prepare. They calculate the percentage of damage in regions of a city based on likely shaking and local building types. They describe what life would be like in the city immediately after a disaster as well as one week, one month, and one year later. The hope is that by galvanizing public attention, leaders and individuals will be incentivized to act in advance of a disaster.

GHI has been an innovator in the field of disaster resilience for decades, chiefly because they approach it holistically: past, present and future.

We were fortunate enough to speak with Brian Tucker and Kenneth Kornberg of GHI on Social Design Insights. Listen to the episode below.

Diébédo Francis Kéré is a Pritzker Architecture Prize winning Burkinabé architect recognized for creating innovative works that are often sustainable and collaborative in nature.

Diébédo Francis Kéré began working while still a student at the Technical University of Berlin. His first project and the first primary school in Kéré’s home village of Gando, was opened in 2001. While schools in Burkina Faso are normally built out of concrete, it is an expensive and energy consuming material to produce and the material is ill suited to the hot climate. Kéré used locally available resources and built with mud bricks. His design consisted of a wide, raised tin roof to protect the walls from rain and allow air to circulate under the building for cooling. The finished building was cooler and more pleasant than the conventional concrete ones. 

Kéré’s process included the entire community, gathering together different participants in both the design and construction phases and subsequently allowing a synthesis between traditional building techniques and modern construction. The techniques that the community learned in erecting the building have allowed them to practice elsewhere, stimulating the proliferation of better building. Construction of a secondary school designed by Kéré began in May 2011. The new building complex was designed to accommodate approximately 1000 students. 

Another of Kéré’s projects, “Opera House for Africa” was initiated by German film and theatre director Christoph Schlingensief. Kéré designed a festival theatre, workshops, a medical center, guest houses, solar panels, a well, and a school for 500 children and teenagers offering music and film classes. The village comprised of simple basic modules, which vary in quality and function depending on the equipment they house. Members of the local community were employed to build the modules. Local materials such as clay, laterite, cement bricks, gum wood and loam rendering were used for construction. Due to the massive walls and large overhang of the roofs, air conditioning could be discounted in most buildings. The theatre hall was conceived as a place of encounter and exchange for people of different cultural and family backgrounds.

In 2022, Kéré became the first African to receive the Pritzker Architecture Prize.

We had a chance to speak with Mr. Kéré on our podcast, Social Design Insights, about his philosophy of inclusion, and his advice for young designers in a two-part interview. Listen to the episodes below.

Foldit is an online game that uses crowdsourcing to enable players to contribute to scientific research about protein folding, a vital biochemical process at the basis of most cellular functions.

Foldit began as an experimental research project developed by the University of Washington’s Center for Game Science in collaboration with UW’s Baker Biochemistry Laboratory. The idea has turned a complex process into a simple, addictive game—often compared to solving a 3D jigsaw puzzle — that gives players both the thrill of competition and the satisfaction of contributing to a project that has a critical social impact. 

In the game, players are presented with a 3D model of a protein that they can manipulate by clicking and dragging its sections. The amino acid chains that make up proteins naturally want to fold into the lowest-energy shape, so the goal of a Foldit puzzle is to make the protein’s structure as compact as possible, while still keeping the chains intact and respecting the basic properties of proteins. The winning designs help researchers learn more about the shapes of proteins. The more we understand about these structures, the easier it is to design new proteins with desired functions, leading to the development of vaccines and disease-curing drugs. 

Crowdsourcing is the basis of Foldit’s success: it uses the creative problem-solving of thousands of people to refine computation. By taking complex biomedical problems and crowd-sourcing their possible solutions, FoldIt has democratized a design process typically isolated in a lab and innovated a way for amateur players and designers to help solve the world’s toughest medical questions. 

Foldit players are already solving biochemical problems that were stumbling blocks to scientific research. For example, in 2010, players determined the structure of a key protease, or protein-cutting enzyme, of the Mason-Pfizer Monkey Virus (M-PMV), a retrovirus that leads to AIDS in rhesus monkeys. It took Foldit three weeks to complete a task that biochemists had struggled with for over a decade.

In 2024, David Baker, the protein research scientist at the UW who founded Foldit, won the Nobel Prize in Chemistry for his work on computational protein design.