Citizen Architect Elisa Engel has worked with BASEHabitat at the University of Art and Design Linz, Austria since 2019. BASEHabitat focusses on designing and building socially responsible, sustainable projects in countries around the globe. For their 2022 Postgraduate Master of Advanced Studies: Architecture, Elisa facilitated a 2-week intensive course called ‘Social Entrepreneurship – Tools for Change Makers’.

12 young architects from 8 countries explored how individuals and groups can affect change in the world. They practiced a wide variety of techniques to generate ideas, categorise information, find consensus, trial solutions and communicate their proposals passionately yet clearly. We thought deeply about questions of ethics in practice and access to resources. We talked about how to map financial flows in projects (and what this tells us about who holds the power), and how to define and measure project impacts. The course was underpinned by a series of lectures to give a theoretical grounding to practical learning.

The group identified three varied themes they sought to address: they wanted to help individuals achieve self-awareness and personal growth, fight marine pollution and combat cultural erosion. They then divided into smaller groups to create project proposals to address these. Through a series of workshops, discussions, and trial pitches they honed their ideas. They practiced pitching their proposals to a variety of different stakeholders, culminating in a final presentation to outside visitors. The XChange team presented a cultural exchange program allowing participants to ‘discover’ their own true self. The Carbon Sink Collective proposed a global network of marine experts, designers and individuals to change behaviours that lead to marine pollution and over-fishing. Grow Local explained how a town in Peru, Cocachimba, could re-direct outside investments to benefit local crafts people and strengthen a community.

Following the workshop-based portion of the course, each group produced a written project plan, outlining their project vision as well as a detailed pathway to delivery.

After two weeks, the participants had at their disposal the tools needed to affect positive change as well as three worked examples of how this could be done.

For us this has been a unique opportunity to reflect on what we have learned in nearly two decades of seeking to use architecture for positive change. To test our thinking in conversation with the next generation of socially and environmentally engaged architects has been our privilege.

But above all, the 2022 BASEHabitat Master students have grown from being idealistic, joyous, smart and tenacious individuals to a cohort of skilled change makers. We cannot wait to see how they apply these tools in the real world!

 ‘Thank you once again for being a wonderful facilitator/guide/collaborator throughout this whole process. The time spent working on this and the learnings from this module will stay with us forever.’

Rikunj , Pooja and Samyuktha, Course Participants (Carbon Sink Collective)