PROJECTS
Tu Tambien Construyes Cuenca - TTCC
TTCC starts in the context of Cuenca, Ecuador, during Covid-19 pandemic. With the spread of the virus, the use of cars has been restricted, and alternative transportation became more popular. Although public spaces are still not adequately designed for the 'new normal'.
SIMERI LABORATORIO URBANO
Simeri Laboratorio Urbano is an experimental practice for the regeneration of rural landscapes and reactivation of public spaces and public life of Simeri, a small town in the South of Italy.
Huasipichanga is part of the working team within an international young collective. We act in a network of local and international actors and apply a co-creative approach based on a strong sense of community and local actions.
snake.city
A multiplayer game where you hold phones together to make a human snake.
Snake.City is a multiplayer experience inspired by the classic mobile Snake game. The game is played in a public space with friends where you connect together by holding one side of your mobile phone and one side of someone else’s phone. The game aims to move in the space together while holding on to your snake as long as possible.
FROM A MAZE TO A(MAZE)D
Huasipichanga participated from the Child-responsive urban planning workshop organized by ISOCARP, UNICEF and the China Urban Planning Society on August 2019. With a team of locals and internationals, a proposal was developed to transform the spaces in the Mingdong Community into child-responsive spaces re-imagined by children themselves.
Child-responsive urban planning represents a new approach to develop urbanism at a human scale. From August 26th to 30th August 2019 ISOCARP, UNICEF, the China Urban Planning Society (UPSC), Ningbo Bureau of Nature Resources and Planning (NBNRP), the Ningbo Urban Planning & Design Institute (NBPI) and the ISOCARP Institute, Centre for Urban Excellence organized a workshop on child-responsive urban planning to be held in Ningbo-China, awarded “China’s most Happy City” nine times.
Huasipichanga was selected as a participant to join one of the working groups that would develop a proposal to transform the case study area: the Mingdong community. With a team of four locals and two internationals, developed the proposal “From a maze to a(maze)d” that aims to transform Mindong from a space where children feel trapped and bored into a place where they find surprises everywhere, where they can move around freely while learning and having fun, a place to be a(maze)d.
EXPLORING AT HOME booklet
Due to the current uncertainty, the call of authorities for people to stay home #StayHome and the message that Francesco Tonucci sent to all children around the world the team “Exploradores de la Ciudad” from Mexico City got inspired and designed a didactic tool for children to express their emotions. The tool is an exploration diary called “Exploring at home”. Thanks to Huasipichanga we were able to translate this booklet into different languages including English, Dutch and Italian.
By using this booklet, children will be able to reflect on the current issues related to COVID-19 and discuss hygiene and healthy distance measures recommended by the authorities. Furthermore, this booklet includes activities to help children expressing their feelings and processing the experience that we all are going through as a measure of emotional support.
Co-creation of Tools for Inclusive Cities - Bari, Italy
Three exciting days of a fully immersive experience in understanding the city from an inclusivity perspective were held in Bari in November. Huasipichanga presented a theoretical and practical basis in order to assess a place and co-create solutions to generate inclusivity. After long brainstorming and discussions held following Huasipichanga’s methodology participants were able to select two main issues to work on: identity and mobility.
Through collaborative mapping and interviews on the street, the participants were able to collect data that would allow them to propose new alternatives for the city. Children and parents specially participated in the pop-up activities created by the team in the park and the city center. It was amazing to see how much energy and new ideas came up in so little time and we look forward to seeing how the participants will use the co-created knowledge and tools from the workshop in their future projects!
WORKSHOP RE-IMAGINE ECD DAKAR, SENEGAL
ImagiNation Afrika has focused on expanding paradigms around learning, play, and what African child-centered spaces look and feel like. They organised the event called “Re-Imagine ECD: A transformative learning journey for Pioneers and Societal Leaders”. The conference took place on February 24th and 25th, 2020 in Dakar, Senegal. It gathered 80 leaders and influencers from key private sectors like telecommunications, transportation, technology, and investment funds as well as UN representatives (UNICEF), local authorities, urban planners and housing representatives. All committed to engage and sustainably shift current models and understandings of early childhood development and its importance in the public space. As experts and facilitators, Huasipichanga’s team participated in the event developing an interactive presentation in the form of a workshop and an installation to showcase how participatory methodologies and placemaking interventions, that follow Child-Friendly approaches, can motivate new models for urban design in Senegal.
72hours urban action lobeda, germany
The 72 hour urban action festival is an international real-time architectural competition that has been going on around the world since 2010. In this event, participants coming from different countries are selected, merged into teams and given a mission to accomplish:
“Design and build a public installation in 72 hours”
Huasipichanga´s representatives collaborate with participants from Syria, Indonesia and Germany to form the team “HAPPY PLATTE FRIENDS” (in allusion to the history of the place and the construction technology used there).
The mission: “Behind the iron curtain. Create a landmark for Change”.
SHAGLLI PLAY&LEARN
Shaglli is a rural community in the South of Ecuador with high touristic potential. However, youth was not empowered of their spaces nor motivated to stay and foster development in their town. Therefore, this place also suffers from high migration to the city. Husipichanga, through placemaking and multi-actor inclusive practices managed to get youth involved in participatory sustainable processes that inspired citizens to recognize their strengths and capabilities as well as to make visible the cultural and historical potential of the place from which residents can benefit to improve their lives.
bolivia Panpa Tukuyninpa
The more locals can feel owners of their shared spaces, the more urban solutions can be achieved. As tutor in the Latin American Social Workshop (TSL) 2015, Huasipichanga contributed to the consolidation of sustainable and inclusive urban practices in Villa Abecia, Bolivia by supporting citizens on identifying their local identity strengths, landscapes and ways to improve them.
CANOA externalisation workshop
Effective participatory processes should empower both citizens and people that implement projects. It is about fostering a sense of ownership in the one hand and social responsibility on the other. The 2017 Latin American Social Workshop (TSL) was held in Ecuador with the purpose of contributing to the reconstruction process of communities hit by the earthquake that struck the coastal region of the country in April 2016. In this event, Huasipichanga participated as an agent of participatory practices in the PRE-TSL phase.
Pocket Park
The Pocket Park was an activity organized as part of the event LlactaCamp, hosted by the University of Cuenca. We were challenged to create recreation spaces in the city center for one morning collectively to show that some spaces can be thought, perceived and lived differently. For this project we worked collectively with other groups such as Creative Roots.
