In Brazil, social housing movements led by the country’s precariat – the urban poor – are seizing vacant buildings and land to create their own access to decent housing in lieu of the government’s failure to do so. Based on an ethnographic study of several occupations in Rio de Janeiro and Sao Paulo this year, Clara Irazabal analyses how these collective movements propose a valid alternative planning model that can serve as a vehicle for restorative justice.

Clara Irazabal is director of the Latina/o Studies Programme and Professor of Planning in the Department of Architecture, Urban Planning + Design at the University of Missouri, Kansas City. She was previously associate professor of Urban Planning and director of the Latin Lab at the Graduate School of Architecture, Planning and Preservation at Columbia University, New York. In her research and teaching, she explores the interactions of culture, politics and placemaking, and their impact on community development and socio-spatial justice in Latin American cities and Latino and immigrant communities.

Organised by the Master’s Degree in International Cooperation: Sustainable Emergency Architecture at the UIC Barcelona School of Architecture and Roca, the second edition of Development by Design aims to highlight the role of architects and planners in the context of poverty, disaster, confl¬ict and rapid urbanisation.

If “starchitecture” isn’t dead, then it has surely been rendered irrelevant in a world struggling to provide decent living conditions to at least a quarter of its population. A growing network of architects and urban planners are busy tackling the challenges posed by realities such as unprecedented urban growth, climate change and conflict, grasping them as opportunities to build a more just and sustainable future. As such, resilience, sustainable urban development, the effects of mass migration on cities, community participation, post-disaster response and disaster risk reduction are key issues within our master’s programme that merit emphasis beyond the classroom and that today more than ever resonate with urban practitioners and the general public.

In a series of talks to be held between December and February, three guest speakers will talk about their work with affected communities across the world, highlighting new approaches to the provision of shelter, housing, spatial justice and resilience.

1 December 2016: Alejandro Haiek
16 January 2017: Clara Irazabal
2 February 2017: Eric Cesal

Roca Barcelona Gallery, Joan Güell 211-213, 08028 Barcelona
16 January 2017, at 7 p.m. 

Free admission, please register