Andrés Mauricio Estrada Bolívar

Mauricio (*1987) is from Medellín, Colombia. He studied architecture at Universidad Pontificia Bolivariana (UPB). His degree thesis “Sustainability Beyond Green Matters” approached the sustainable paradigm from a social and ecological perspective in terms of inhabitants’ adaptation to their daily places, both public and private. As he finished his career he presented the thesis in many research events in Colombia, then received invitations for showing it in Chile and Mexico. He worked with ephemeral architecture projects for his city and meanwhile attended national and international research events as an evaluating jury. He is passionate about understanding the world and the knowledge as a big network so that he tend to complement his career with topics such as gastronomy, biology and travels. After backpacking South America he is quite interested in learning and writing about history, identity and cultures.

Master Thesis: Temporal Changes in the Urban Metabolism of Alexandria, Egypt

Débora Picorelli Zukeran

Débora is an architect and urban planner graduated from the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro, Brazil in 2015. Throughout her academic life, she always had a strong interest in urban development, which led her to undertake internships and join university research groups in this field. Her passion for traveling and cities only grew stronger when attending the Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts in 2014. This passion for cities led her to design a social housing project for the IX International Architecture Biennial of São Paulo, receiving an honorable mention. Her experience with academic research includes congress presentations, scientific publications and academic competitions and awards.

Master Thesis:  Claiming Spaces: Applying The Right to the City in Appropriation Processes

Gabriella Micciché

Gabriella (*1991, Venezuela) is an architect, graduated from the Faculty of Architecture and Urbanism, in the Central University of Venezuela in 2014. During her studies, she worked in a private architecture office as collaborative architect in projects like "La Carlota, decision of all": Competition to transform La Carlota Air Base in a Green Metropolitan Park in Caracas. From 2014, she worked as architect in “Taller Integral del Paisaje” Office in landscaping projects such as the cable-car stations in Merida, Venezuela, and the Central Bank of Venezuela in Guayana, Venezuela. In 2016 Gabriella joined the MSc Integrated Urbanism & Sustainable Design at Stuttgart University.

Master Thesis: Child-friendly strategies in the public space towards social cohesion. Contextualization of a method through the analysis of the Breitscheidstraße and Schützenplatz case studies

Giancarlo Muñoz Ramírez

Giancarlo (*1985) holds a Licentiate degree in architecture at the University of Costa Rica. His licentiate thesis focused in Academic Interdisciplinary Spaces. He has five years of working experience as a freelance architect which involved design, management and construction supervision of housing and commercial projects at a variety of scales in Costa Rica. From 2014 to 2015 he worked three semesters as a professor of the third and fourth year Design Workshop Module in the University of Costa Rica. From the year 2015 he has been involved working with local governments in the development of public spaces and recreational areas for vulnerable communities in his hometown Alajuelita.

Master Thesis: Climate Change-Resilient Productive Landscapes. An Assessment of Climate Adaptation for the Community of Cerro Negro, Nicoya, Costa Rica

María José Martinez C.

Maria Jose Martinez C. (1989, Guatemala) got her B.A. in Architecture from Rafael Landivar University. She studied a semester in the Pontifical Xaverian University in Bogota, Colombia. From 2011 to 2016 she developed professionally in the fields of design for civil engineering, interior design and management of the construction of a residential building.He has worked doing research and participatory planning in settlements in Guatemala, Cairo and Cartagena. After joining IUSD in Cairo on 2016, she is now developing her master's thesis in Stuttgart University, focusing on the Social Aspects of Community Resilience, a field she would like to pursue along with Disaster Management.

Master Thesis: Social Capacities of Low Socioeconomic communities in risk areas. Case study of Doraldina 2, Mixco, Guatemala.

Juan Sebastián Benítez Bustamante

Juan Sebastián (*1991, Bogotá, Colombia) holds a Bachelor degree in Civil Engineering from Los Andes University. In the final years of his studies, he expanded his knowledge in the areas of urban planning, transport systems and ecology. On 2013, fascinated by the efficient use of natural resources and their subsequent recycling, as graduation project, he developed a diagnosis of the state of pavements-recycling in Colombia and raised recommendations for its effective implementation. The results showed deficiencies in the use of waste in pavements and it was one of the first researches to not only compile current numbers, but also to expose the country’s shortcomings that had hindered the development of this practice by that time. After graduation, he gained experience for three years in a consulting company specialized in structure design, technical supervision of infrastructure projects and testing of construction materials.

Master Thesis: Informal Economy in the Public Space as a Driver of Social Resilience. Case Study on Informal Workers in the Public Space of Bogotá, Colombia

Kh M Abdullah Lizu

Kh M Abdullah completed his bachelor of architecture (2012) from Dhaka, Bangladesh. After working in an architectural consultancy firm for a year, he shifted his focus to participatory development projects and joined the London based studio ‘Paraa’. He was involved in a number of the research-based projects with ‘Paraa’. Research on the built environments in the refugee camps (Bihari Camps) in Dhaka, A shelter for street children, and a sustainable craft village were among the most successful ones. In 2014, Abdullah joined the ‘Urban Partnerships for Poverty Reduction’ (UPPR), a development project by United Nations in Bangladesh. With UPPR, he was conducting participatory workshops, mapping, analysis, design and supervising the construction of low-cost housings. Intended for people living in informal settlements of urban areas in different parts of Bangladesh. Later, he was awarded the ‘Perween Rahman fellowship’ to conduct an action-based research on community lead design by ‘Asian Coalition for Housing Rights’ (ACHR). At this point of his career, he felt the overarching need of methodical knowledge on sustainable design and participatory process. Eventually he joined the double degree masters program Integrated Urbanism and Sustainable Design (IUSD) in winter 2016.

Master Thesis:

Maria José Encalada

Maria Encalada (*1990) obtained her bachelors degree in architecture from Universidad San Francisco de Quito in 2014. In 2012, she participated in a workshop in Cartagena, Colombia where she learned about heritage intervention. In 2013, she started working part-time as assistant designer in a social housing project, which influenced her dissertation topic. On her proposal, she inserted new housing units in an under-used and neglected neighborhood in Quito. Her faculty awarded this project for showing the benefits of maintaining social housing within the urbanized areas of the city. After graduation, she worked as an intern in Lodz, Poland on projects that aim to re-use abandoned infrastructures. In 2015, she joined a housing development office in Ecuador and learned about the complex factors that influence decision-making processes.  At the moment, she is part of the IUSD VI intake in order to further develop her design skills and knowledge in the field of urbanism.

Master Thesis: From Shelter to Home: An assessment of livelihood opportunities in the post-disaster housing reconstruction of Pedernales, Ecuador

Mennat-Allah Fathy Aref

Mennat-Allah (*1990, Egypt) received her Bachelor degree from Faculty of Engineering Cairo University Architectural Department in 2012. Since 2012, she worked as an architect and urban researcher in the Urban Training and Studies Institute (UTI) which affiliated to the Housing and Building National Research Center (HBRC), Egypt. Through (UTI), she had participated in different research studies and in reporting numerous of national, international training courses and argumentative workshops cooperated with various international organizations such as UN-Habitat, GLTN and Ecoplois Europa (The Netherlands). Addition to her work in (UTI), she also worked as teaching assistant in different universities such as Arab Academy for Science, Technology & Maritime Transport. Besides, she had participated in international workshops with Brandenburg University of Technology (Germany) and University of Thessaly (Greece) that discussed different topics concerning sustainable design, informal areas, community development and public spaces. Working in varied environments and dealing with civil societies and young students, had enabled her to learn new perspectives of thinking and new approaches to deal with complexity of urban issues.

Master Thesis: Human Behaviour in Spaces around Metro Stations in Cairo: An approach towards improving the metro-catchment area to fulfil users’ needs

Nojoud Afif Ashour

Nojoud Ashour graduated from the University of Jordan in 2013 with a Bachelor degree in Architecture. During the last year of her studies, she participated in “Mappig Jabal Al Natheef “workshop. This was a turning point which shifted her interest in architecture and spatial planning to a new perspective, where humanitarian and architecture fields meet. That inspired her to work with Norwegian Refugee Council (NRC) in Irbid city, where she was involved in an Urban Shelter Project and in a School Construction Project, which allow her to understand the challenges Syrian refugees are facing in the urban context. Nojoud aims to further expand her knowledge through this master’s degree in “Integrated Urbanism and Sustainable Design”. She plans to carry on working in the humanitarian architectural field afterwards.

Master Thesis: Toward Eco-houses. The potential of applying eco-architectural principles between technical and behavioral dimensions: The case of El Gari village, Siwa