Project Location: Paseo de Castellana, Madrid, Spain
Project type: Academic Final Degree Project at IE University, Spain
Supervisors: Lina Toro, Fernando Rodriguez , Pablo Oriol,  and Manuel Perez Romero, Izaskun Chinchilla, Laura Martínez de Guereñu
Project Status: Submitted Spring 2015

The hybrid Museum/Education center addresses two of the main issues of this Spanish generation, namely ‘youth unemployment’ and the search for an ‘alternative sector of tourism’. The site location suggests a specialized approach towards its architecture, working towards a comprehensive solution that engages with the socio-economic conditions and challenges of its context within an ever changing European society.

The European Union and The European Council both maintain an agenda in the development of entrepreneurship and freelance-ship of European youth as an alternative and complementary solution for youth unemployment within the Euro-zone. The European Union’s Erasmus program includes ‘Erasmus for Young Entrepreneurs’ and the European Council maintains the ‘European Youth Foundation’ and The European Youth Centre’ both of which active citizenship via entrepreneurship is promoted.

The centre is designed for youth between the ages of 18-30. Typically youth that is still or recently graduated from university that are or were involved in educational travel organizations such AIESEC and Erasmus or Erasmus Mundus. The aim is inspire an alternative sector of tourism, educational tourism to develop  inter-European and international drive for youth entrepreneurship.

The project functions as a hybrid program of an idea incubator, i.e., a hub for business development, skill networking and investor haven for international entrepreneurial youth. This is complemented by a museum exhibiting the currently developing start-ups and the previously successful start-ups within the contextual views of the city, the business district to the north and the historical and cultural south of Madrid.

The Urban composition between phenomena, need and form defined at multiple scales provides the opportunity for innovative approach towards the architectural relationship between program, economy and the human experience. Through the architecture the opportunities are utilized and the challenges leveraged for the development of the buildings relevant character and identity.

‘The Upward Spiral: European Youth Entrepreneurship Centre’ responds to the socio-economic needs and activity of its context. Within its envelope it maintains a flexible nature, towards its context it becomes a positive icon, providing for its local community and attracting economic development and investment at a global scale for Spanish youth. Thus overcoming the challenges and leveraging benefits for the promotion of active citizenship through entrepreneurial youth initiatives.

Project location: Asunción, Paraguay
Project type: Professional Collaboration 2014
Office: Ecosistema Urbano
Project Link: http://ecosistemaurbano.com/portfolio/master-plan-for-the-revitalization-of-the-historic-downtown-of-asuncion/

The development of a suitable holistic approach requires strong research and understanding of the complexity of informal economies and their relationship with formal interventions of integration within the city at multiple scales. The winning proposal is based on an international scale research studying different methods of such integration. Through a combination of exemplary projects and a study of the local conditions and its opportunities, a wide scale collaboration system is designed synergizing both, local bottom up initiatives and top down policies.

At multiple scales proposals and interventions are defined. Firstly by the definition of multiple corridors (The Ecological, Dynamic and Civic). Secondly nodes of community gathering and city development labs. Thirdly global exemplary and local initiatives to inspire possibilities of economic and civic improvement through top down (institutional and governmental) and bottom up (communal and informal) initiatives.

Project Location: Segovia, Spain
Project type: Academic Alternative Design Practice at  IE University, Spain
Supervisor: David Diez
Project Status: Submitted Fall 2014
Team: Direct Collaborates: Lara Waked, Greta Magani, Yvo Corpataux  and Maud Collomb + Extended Collaborates: 15 x SDW Team Members
Project Website: http://www.daviddiez.com/SDW/?cat=21

The theme of linked design provides a wide window of interpretation of how design has been manufactured or developed and its impact on consequent design in an evolutionary manner. An exposition about these relationships in all their forms takes place in the Segovian context. The organization of the topics covered exhibit locations, marketing, guides and welcome packages are designed and developed.

Additionally each sub team organizes a topics for the exhibition; For our sub-team we suggested the theme of “Alternative Origins”
The theme discusses how now a days ‘We live in a globalized world where mass production has consumed the markets with manufacturing standardization. To evoke a memory of what was once was an alternative origin of common objects, we are creating spaces that simulate alternative pre-globalized contexts where these objects once would have been. This for the purpose of cultivating design links that were once well known but now forgotten.’

Our Sub team was also responsible for mapping out article archives and and compiling them into a book.

Project location: Cairo, Egypt / Caux, Switzerland
Project type: Freelance Project
Client: EMRA Initiatives of Change, Egypt
Project Status: Completed 2011

The job was to design a logo for the organization that reflects its initials, nationality and relationship to its mother network, the Initiatives of Change International based in Caux, Switzerland. Through the use of the organization’s initials as reference, a search for an iconic emblem from Egypt that would match it began. By expanding the the angles of the organization’s initials, it evokes the silhouette outline of the Giza Pyramids. To represent the organization’s relationship to it’s mother organization, an extraction part of the extended curve of the mother organization’s logo was placed to canopy the Egyptian organizations logo whilst extending to its foundation reflecting both organizations’ collaboration and shared vision.