Community Design Agency

We are thrilled to present the 2024 OBEL AWARD Teaching Fellowship recipients. These new voices in academia will introduce innovative ideas and pedagogies to their universities: Dele Adeyemo – and The Department of Architecture & the Centre for Housing and Sustainable Development, University of Lagos Focus: Indigenous settlement practices shaping the contemporary Nigerian city. Councillor HY William Chan –  School of Architecture, University of Technology Sydney Focus: Balancing public needs with evidence-based design in civic projects. Sandhya Naidu Janardhan – School of Environment and Architecture, University of Mumbai Focus: Envisioning inclusive futures for climate-vulnerable communities. The purpose of the OBEL Award Teaching Fellowships is to support universities in introducing new ideas and pedagogies into their institutions while leveraging the knowledge and experience of professionals to contribute to academic teaching. Learn more: https://lnkd.in/dCQJadCT

🚀 New Series Alert! The Skoll Centre has published a new series of case studies featuring 14 social enterprises that are leveraging different forms of innovation to address pressing social and environmental challenges. 🌍💡    Social entrepreneurship has emerged as a powerful force, with an estimated 30 million social entrepreneurs worldwide contributing approximately $2 trillion to global GDP.     What unites these organisations is their innovative approach—driven not just by financial goals, but by the desire to create and scale social impact. 🌱    This new series offers deep insights into:  - Each organisation’s unique innovation activities,  - The challenges they’ve faced while pursuing these pathways,  - And the key lessons learned along the way.    Spanning diverse sectors, geographies, and social issues, they highlight the crucial role of innovation in building a better future.    Developed in conjunction with and supported by World Intellectual Property Organization – WIPO as part of their Global Innovation Index 2024.     🔗 Explore the full series and learn more about how social enterprises are transforming the world through innovation. Bandhu Urban Tech Community Design Agency Eco Femme Fairtrasa®Green Bio Energy Ltd Greenhope.co MAMUT PISOS INDUSTRIALES Y DEPORTIVOS, iKure Techsoft Pvt. Ltd. Peek Vision SmartStart South Africa Sustainable Organic Integrated Livelihoods (SOIL) Tebita Ambulance Thaki. Unlock their potential and WeRobotics   #SocialEntrepreneurship #Innovation #SocialImpact #Sustainability #SkollCentre #CaseStudies #SocialChange 

🌿 Exciting Research Publication! 🌿 Thrilled to share that our research study, co-authored with Ann Francis, Ph.D. and Albert Thomas, Ph.D., has been published! The study dives deep into sustainable building practices, comparing vernacular and contemporary construction techniques, especially in the context of affordable housing. Using Life Cycle Assessment (LCA), we examined the embodied carbon and embodied energy of these techniques. Key findings? Buildings constructed using vernacular methods have over 30% lower embodied carbon and energy than those built with confined masonry techniques. While vernacular methods are more sustainable, challenges such as limited material selection and a shortage of skilled labor persist. For large-scale affordable housing projects, sustainability isn’t always a priority. Our research underscores the importance of integrating sustainable design and construction practices, especially for low-income communities. By imparting skills and knowledge to these communities, we can ensure lower upfront, maintenance, and operational costs while promoting climate resilience. We hope this study sparks further exploration into sustainable construction techniques and helps make sustainability a key part of affordable housing projects! Albert, Ann and I (Vandana) are always excited to chat about all things housing, sustainability, climate change and resilience. Hit us up! Read more: https://lnkd.in/gftWZg4d #Sustainability #AffordableHousing #VernacularArchitecture #ClimateResilience #EmbodiedEnergy #EmbodiedCarbon #LifeCycleAssessment #Research #Construction Indian Institute of Technology, Delhi Community Design Agency Indian Institute of Technology, Bombay

In the last week of June, I had the privilege of attending the extraordinary Glastonbury Festival (https://lnkd.in/dWAzzqmN) as part of Greenfield's Diversity Artist programme!! Since the beginning of my practice, I have worked with teams organising art festivals of various scales in public spaces, from six editions of Art in Transit's Festival of Stories in Bangalore's metro stations and city parks to co-curating the inaugural Govandi Arts Festival with Community Design Agency. Through these experiences, I have come to view festivals as a powerful cultural tool for discourse and inquiry in urban contexts. As artistic-civic interventions, art and cultural festivals possess immense potential to bring together diverse practitioners, citizens, and decision-makers, to creatively generate a collective purpose and collaborative action that is often absent in urban development practices. Through this exposure visit to Glastonbury festival, I witnessed this on a much larger, global scale. Spanning the vast fields of Somerset, the festival transforms the area into a temporary city for five days, where people camp together and make the festival their home. With workshops, theatre performances, food, and music, the festival offers an alternate life of joy while also grounding you in the realities of the world. Above all, it was the people I serendipitously met there who made the greatest difference to me, both personally and professionally. A special mention goes to Dee Moxon, lead artist from Lamplighters Bristol CIC, for bringing all of this together. Our collaboration, which began with the Govandi Arts Festival under the British Council 's India/UK Together Season of Culture, has blossomed into a wonderful friendship. Together, we are either writing artist grants, cooking meals, or exploring new ways to continue our collaboration. A huge thanks to Etty Elliot and Toby Elliot, artistic directors of Greenfields, for being amazing hosts and making sure that my first visit to Glastonbury is a tad bit less overwhelming This also became an opportunity to take a part of Govandi to Glastonbury. With the youth of Govandi we co-created an 15ft x 6ft artwork, reading Haq se, Govandi (Govandi, my pride), that travelled to Glastonbury. (Read more about that in the Midday article below.) As part of the team at Community Design Agency, I hope to translate my learnings from Glastonbury into our initiatives at Govandi, and bring more creative resources to further our program. I have heard that stepping out of your usual context can bring a fresh perspective to your own practice! :) (sharing very few images here for context. I have shared a lot more on my gram where things are a bit more casual :P)

My film Gutter Ki Machhli (Fish from the Sewer) will be part of the 16th International Short Documentary Film Festival of Kerala (IDSFFK), amongst some amazing films and artists. Read more about the selections in this article in The Hindu today: https://lnkd.in/dF55QJTZ Gutter Ki Machhli weaves together the voices of the children, youth and women of a rehabilitation and resettlement colony in Govandi, Mumbai through their drawings and poetry to vocalise, localise and visualise their experiences of climate change in their poorly built homes and neighbourhood. I workshopped and directed this film as part of the Arts4Resilience Knowledge Into Use awards 2023 I received from Global Resilience Partnership, with a super supportive team at Community Design Agency and our project partners ElemenTree Education Foundation Through the award, we facilitated a series of arts based research workshops using multiple mediums including drawings, photography, theatre and poetry to discuss the environmental changes and impacts the residents of Govandi are experiencing in their everyday lives. This film weaves together these experiences to create a local vocabulary for a more inclusive discourse around environmental and climate crises. Special thanks to Triparna Maiti & Kalesh Lakshmanan for being a dream team on this film. You can learn more about the process here: https://lnkd.in/dhFVt2Sf If you're attenting the festival in Trivandrum this July , catch the film at SREE theatre on 27th July 11.15am. Registeration link: https://idsffk.in/

We're excited to announce that Sandhya Naidu Janardhan, founder and managing director of Community Design Agency has been awarded the Berkeley Rupp Prize. We look forward to welcoming her to campus in the fall.

Dear friends :) We are so glad to invite you for the book launch of one of our dearest projects: AWAAZ - Voices of Govandi ❤ Published by Yoda Press.  We are grateful to @govandiartsfestival for this opportunity to collaborate, especially the curators Bhawna Jaimini and Natasha Sharma for giving us the creative space to find meaning and express ourselves. Awaaz is set in Natwar Parekh Compound , a resettlement colony at Govandi, in the M East ward of Mumbai. This edited volume, co-written by seven residents (who do not wish to reveal their names on a public forum yet) and edited by Nisha Nair-Gupta, is the culmination of a five-month-long co-writing work in the community. M-East ward in the Eastern suburbs is considered to have ‘the lowest human development indices in Mumbai’ and appalling socioeconomic conditions. With its hazardous industries (petroleum refineries, fertilizer factories), undesirable land uses (solid waste landfills, India's largest abattoir), and correctional facilities, it symbolizes the underbelly of the megacity. It also houses the largest number of resettlement and rehabilitation projects, with poor infrastructure, extremely high density, and neglected living conditions. However, beyond this history of structural violence, the story of this place is also about the people here — who have mobilised, organised and made ‘place’!! This book Awaaz — is made of stories and reflections of the community — tracing their lives in this neighbourhood, their aspirations and their hopes. This Sunday, on 21st April join us for the book launch at @kitaab_mahal the community library, in Natwar Parekh Compound, Govandi at 5 PM. ❤