Michael Smith-Masis

"1:1"

Michael Smith-Masis, Co-Director of Entre Nos Atlier, presents "1 to 1," a lecture that seeks to underpin a humanistic social design agenda within community empowerment, environmental awareness, sustainability and hands-on experiences based on inclusive design processes mostly developed upon low income environments in Costa Rica.

1 to 1 represents a voice likewise many other small practices in Latin America, which is working on small scale projects with big impact for specific users and communities.  It is a human centered design process, which aims to present architectural practice and -issue oriented- (S.Mockbee) academic work that prefers to make rather than speaking, when theory becomes more than practice, it becomes  a collective life changing experience… Hence a selection of projects are presented involving  low-cost prefab systems, a Handbook for social and sustainable nursery design for Costa Rica, Day care Nursery’s (based on the handbook), Low income community centres,  among others.

"... We look within participation and cooperation, promoting a sense of ownership, where the designer disappears once the work is finished ... and the user-environment become the real protagonists ..."M.Smith 

"...By understanding and reinterpreting the participatory process and ownership systems, within the goal to improve life quality on behalf of the human habitat, in which we live as collective intelligences and strategies as design tools..."A.Vallejo 

Michael Smith-Masis, recently named the 2019 LOEB Fellow at Harvard GSD, graduated from Veritas School of Architecture (Hons) Costa Rica. Completed MSc in Sustainable Environmental Design at the Architectural Association School of Architecture in 2008 (Commendable), London U.K. Winner of several national and international awards such as CFIA Bienally, ALBAN scholarship for higher education (E.U.) and Archiprix international in 2007. He has worked with major architectural and urban design firms in Costa Rica. In 2009 co-founded SAAI an environmental consultancy firm with projects in Europe, Asia and America. In 2010 co-founded Entre Nos Atelier, a social collective design workshop. In the academy teaches and research in Universidad Veritas, Universidad de Costa Rica and Tecnológico de Monterrey. Since 2013 is Director of Collective Design Atelier at Universidad Veritas. Some relevant publications of his work are Social Housing in Costa Rica’s Warm Humid climate, Handbook for social and sustainable nursery design for Costa Rica and among several papers. His work has been presented worldwide in events and congress such as Venice biennale, Archiprix International, PLEA, Ecobuild, MOYA Annuale among others. His work seeks to underpin a humanistic social design agenda within community empowerment, environmental awareness, sustainability and hands-on experiences based on inclusive design processes mostly developed upon low-income environments.