We are architects, urban planners, designers, thinkers, biologists, sociologists, and educators projecting a different type of city. We envision a habitable model for the city, which places the human and the natural environment as the protagonist of urban development.
We promote a more egalitarian, connected, safe, and livable city.
Journal created by Habitable Studio
CURATOR
Marta Rodriguez
Marta, registered architect in Spain, is an Associate Professor at UH CoAD, Houston. She holds a PhD in Architecture from UPM ETSAM. Her work emerges from the confluence of a cross-disciplinary and intercultural experience with a humanistic and ecological sensitivity. She recently founded Habitable Studio, a think-tank that aims to create habitable environments spanning from the scale of the domestic to the scale of the city and the rural. She began her professional career at OMA (Office for Metropolitan Architecture) in Rotterdam, and subsequently opened her own atelier in Madrid, winning numerous awards in public architectural competitions in Spain. Marta was a Visiting Professor at the Institute of Architecture Technology of TU Graz, Austria; a Visiting Fellow at the Center for European Studies, Sciences Po, Paris; and a Visiting Scholar at the Center for Japanese Studies, UC Berkeley. In Japan, she conducted research funded by the Spanish Ministry of Science and Innovation.
CONTRIBUTORS
Cristina Cassandra Murphy
Cristina, registered architect in Netherlands, is an Assistant Professor at MSU, Baltimore, U.S. She started at OMA (Office for Metropolitan Architecture) and co-founded XCOOP, a think-tank that analyzes contemporary living. Cristina earned her Master in Architecture at Columbia University. Her tenure-track research examines how to prevent social and urban inequity. She develops an integrated method that provides a different perspective on how to design cities for people. This is delivered via design studios, study trips abroad, symposiums on inaccessible spaces and inquiries, and design-build activities. Cristina was thesis mentor at the Politecnico di Milano, adjunct at TU Delft, fellow at the Taliesin School of Architecture, Hyde Chair of Excellence at the UNL, and Lecturer at UofA.
Rebeca Hernandez Alonso
Rebeca is an Associate Professor of Portuguese Studies at the University of Salamanca, Spain, where she coordinates the Portuguese and Brazilian Studies degree. She teaches Portuguese literature, African Literature in Portuguese and Literary Translation. These are also her main areas of research and has published extensively in connection to these subjects. She is also a professional translator of literature and has translated into Spanish works by Eça de Queirós, João de Melo, Luís Bernardo Honwana, among others.
Paula Augusta Ismael da Costa
Paula, registered architect and urbanist in Brazil, is a co-founder of @_it.studio, specialized in urban, architectural and furniture Design. She is also part of the Urban Studies Group (GeUrb) from the UFPB, where she participates in researches about the built heritage and the urbanization of Brazilian cities. Paula holds a Master’s Degree in Architecture and Urbanism from the PPGAU/UFPB and a Postgraduate degree in Architectural and Urban Sustainable Environmental Rehabilitation from the Brasília’s University (UNB).
Elizabeth Cummins Muñoz
Elizabeth is a writer and lecturer at Rice University in Houston, Texas. Her work explores the moral borderlands of immigration, motherhood, and the cultures of Greater Mexico. Her forthcoming book, Mothercoin: The Story of Our Immigrant Nannies (Beacon Press) chronicles the experiences of immigrant nannies living and working in the US.
Cristina Palmese
Cristina is an PhD architect, audiovisual artist, director of PaisajeSensorial Office-Lab and researcher at Universidad Autónoma de Madrid Spain with a project “The soundscape as immaterial heritage.” Her most recent work is “Project Sound Stories of COVID-19,” and her last audiovisual piece is Rosita ante el Espejo. Variaciones sobre un texto de F. Garcia Lorca.
Livia Loureiro
Livia is a registered architect and urban planner in Brazil. She is a Lecturer at Texas A&M University, where she is a PhD Candidate in Architecture. Livia is co-founder of DLMA (2013), an architecture office specialized in housing, urban planning, and agency. Her research discusses the contemporary role of the architect on social housing through open building, self-help, and participatory design.
Sara Harpole
Sara received her Bachelors of Architecture in 2019 from The University of Texas at Austin. She is proud to practice in Houston and is influenced by previous experience in Dallas and Brooklyn on both urban and rural hospitality projects. Sara thrives by investigating spaces that focus on the user. Her interest in landscape, urbanism and interior design influence her work to create integrative, meaningful experiences.
Annette Alfaro
Annette has a Bachelor of Science in nursing and a Bachelor of Arts in psychology. She specialized in pediatric intensive care and transitioned into the public health domain. In the last few years, her primary focus is research of new and updated strategies for patients with Alzheimer’s to help delay cognitive decline. She investigates new therapies that complement existing medical approaches that optimize health, prevent chronic and age-related disease, and increase lifespan. Annette is most interested in addressing the needs of at-risk individuals and communities to empower them and to provide recommendations to improve their health.
Double Happiness
Double Happiness is a collaboration between Nerea Feliz and Joyce Hwang. Their creative practice focuses on research and design at multiple scales, with interests in the intersections of interior design, architecture, urbanism, and ecology. Collectively, they are registered architects in Spain, the UK, and New York State. Feliz is an Assistant Professor at the School of Architecture at the University of Texas at Austin, and directs Nerea Feliz Studio. Hwang is an Associate Professor and Associate Chair at the University at Buffalo, School of Architecture and Planning, and directs Ants of the Prairie.
Andrea Batarse
Andrea is an architectural designer working in Dallas, Texas. She holds a master’s degree in Architecture with a concentration in Historic Preservation, as well as a bachelor’s degree in international politics and Diplomacy with a concentration in foreign languages from Texas A&M University. Her research interests include reconceptualizing migrant/refugee housing, post-war reconstruction and urban public space.
Laura Rojas
Laura (Mexico city, 1983) is a plant scientist and researcher in the agricultural industry. Life long learner, her interests focuses on plants, art, language and yoga. She is based in the Netherlands and lives with her husband and cat.
Dijana Handanovic
Dijana is an Assistant professor at the University of Houston, Gerald D. Hines College of Architecture and Design in Houston, Texas. Her work investigates architecture’s role in the creation and dissolution of Yugoslavia while exploring the convoluted relationship between monumentality and anti-monumentality.
Ana Vidu
Ana is a Marie S. Curie postdoc researcher in the Sociology department at UC Berkeley. Her work explores networks of solidarity and mechanisms to prevent and respond to sexual violence on campus. Her current project UniswithHeart examine successful actions crucial for survivors to become so, nurturing the “World MeToo Univerity Network”, other networks, universities, policies and specially women and girls.
Forgotten Joy
This project was the product of our second-year interior architecture spring 2023 studio at the University of Houston proposed by Professor Marta Rodriguez on the concept of Design for Dignity. Guided by Professors Katie LaRose and Marta Rodriguez, the studio engaged in a 16-week investigation of dignity and joy in relation to design, creating transformable furniture and spaces. We worked in groups of three from the brainstorming and research phase all the way to the final review. The members of our group “Forgotten Joy” are Aimée Karger, Nadine Khoury, and Nancy Tran.
Dignity Partnership
Dignity Partnership is a group of undergraduate students that focus on designing for dignity. Formed by Catalina Bardi, Lene Fourie, and Alexis Ramos at the University of Houston. Lemontwist was produced in INAR_2501 and developed with Professors Marta Rodriguez and Katie LaRose.
Lucía Martín López
Lucía is an architect and Professor at the Rey Juan Carlos University, Madrid. In the last 10 years she worked as Research professor in Mexico studying housing at a morpho typological level and from a gender perspective as a tool to generate more just and resilient cities. Some of her latest research papers are: Casa de la Asegurada: A Collective Housing Facility for Women Development in Mexico and Interior Environment Design Method for Positive Mental Health in Lockdown Times.
José de Villar Martínez
José is an architect, holding a master’s degree from ETSAM (UPM). He currently serves as an International Visiting Professor at TEC de Monterrey, Mexico. Since 2008, he has been a Co-Founder of DeVillarCHacon Architects (www.devillarchacon.com). Between 2014 and 2016, he played a pivotal role as an advisor and architectural coordinator of the Urban Development Area at Infonavit (Instituto del Fondo Nacional de la Vivienda para los Trabajadores, Mexico). During this period, he was responsible for overseeing 87 urban projects aimed at generating and implementing strategies to revitalize housing complexes across the country. Throughout his career, José’s architectural work has been greatly influenced by his passion for designing public spaces.
Enrique Lozano
Enrique is an architectural and urban designer in Austin, Texas. His work explores systems in urbanism, infrastructure and technology.
Ana Moyano
Ana is a PhD Architect with over two decades of experience specializing in systematic interventions for highly vulnerable structures in the Dominican Republic. Her focus is on executing development projects that drive adaptive innovation, transforming these structures into revitalized spaces showcasing negative entropy—an essence of highly syntrophic or negentropic systems. Ana’s approach emphasizes participatory action research, integrating theory and practice seamlessly. Through inclusive processes involving debate, reflection, and collective knowledge construction among various stakeholders, she aims to successfully transform urban landscapes, exemplifying her dedication to sustainable and resilient cities. www.arcoirisrd.org
Sheryl Tucker de Vazquez
Sheryl is the Director of the Interior Architecture Program, an Assistant Professor at the University of Houston College of Architecture and Design, and the founding principal of Tucker De Vazquez Architecture, an interdisciplinary practice and research firm. Tucker de Vazquez has published extensively on the influence of African American culture on the American built environment and her design work has been recognized with multiple design awards.