Isadora Hastings and Elis Martinez on Participatory design in the social production and management of habitat process­es to increase the resilience of rural communities

On 8-February, Isadora Hastings and Elis Martinez shared their work with Cooperacion Comunitaria in the first installment of the 2022 Spring Urbanism Lecture Series, co-hosted by the City Design & Development Program (CDD), SMArchS Urbanism Program, and Norman B. Leventhal Center for Advanced Urbanism at MIT.

Isadora Hastings is a professor in Architecture from UNAM and the Polytechnic University of Madrid, 2007. She is a founding member of the non-profit organiza­tion Cooperación Comunitaria. Elis Martínez is currently responsible for Institutional Development at Cooperación Comunitaria. Her re­search focuses on development models, especially in rural settings.

Isadora Hastings and Elis Martinez carefully navigate the complicated intersection of a modernizing world and timeless cultural heritage and practice. During their lecture, Isadora and Elis shared a body of architectural work from Cooperación Comunitaria, demonstrating how participatory social production and design for resilience in rural communities can fully embrace cultural heritage and traditional craft approaches. Their projects focus on the power of social production and habitat management, and highlight a unique process of community engagement, learning, documentation and collective decision making.

By Joris Komen, Norman B. (1938) and Muriel Leventhal Fellow, Norman B. Leventhal Center for Advanced Urbanism.

The social production and management of habitat process with Cooperacion Comunitaria [Courtesy Isadora Hastings and Elis Martinez]