STUDENTS 2021

Luis Alberto Sanchez Munoz

Luis is a civil engineer, local from Medellín, Colombia.He is focused on roadways, transit and transportation (public, active and cycling mobility), Luis is passionate about territories, planning and sustainability. He has leadership and experience in projects and challenges in his field. He loves urban cycling, is an empirical musician and an amateur swimmer. Also, Luis promotes a lifestyle based on the respect of the species around.
One phrase that could explain the vision of Luis is:

"The knowledge about nature is the most important tool to transform and adapt our civilization for the future. Planners are the dreamers that must drive this revolution.” 

Shalini Rao

Born in Chennai, Shalini lived across India before moving to Bahrain. She then completed her bachelor’s in Architecture from B. M. S College of Engineering in Bengaluru. Here, she gained a fundamental interest in research-based documentation and design. Her academic thesis on Ethnography revived the economic and socio-cultural needs of the Siddi community of North Karnataka. While documenting historic precincts with ABIDe Bengaluru, INTACH and the National Association of Students of Architecture, she developed an interest in Heritage, and believes it forms an integral part of a city’s urban language. India gave her an insight into designing for and within existing layers of density, its topography of diversity and convergence with progress.

For the last 7 years, she built an aptitude for the National and Local Planning Policy Framework in the U.K., and worked across the spectrum to deliver RIBA Plan of Work Stages (0-7). Her focus was on implementing and challenging planning policies for sustainable design solutions. She believes this discourse ensures credibility across platforms.

She now lives in Stuttgart, and hopes to bring her awareness of lands and languages in practice by moulding it for local response. Her interest in planning & policy making, research & conservation, publications & photography have found a home in IUSD. She is also engaged with South Asian Art through her practice of Kathak, editorials for voluntary organisations and human-centric experiences through UX Design.

Moving forward, she hopes to ask better questions and address the difficult ones – wherever that might be.

Anna-Kathrin Schneider

Anna-Kathrin (*1997, Berlin) graduated 2021, in cultural studies and geography from the University of Tübingen. She lived at different places in Germany and traveled trough Europe, but also visited Russia and the USA. As a learning-by-doing person, she was involved in several projects and organizations. During a civil service in Croatia, she organized various Erasmus youth exchanges, designed European-wide projects and applied for fundings. In work at the cultural department of Ulm she elaborated projects within the social and cultural structure. Additionally, she experienced another view in Ludwigsburg, focused on the sustainable aspect as well as on perspective of city planning. Through art festivals or other small projects, she was actively involved in the co-creation of urban life on different levels. Anna-Kathrin is interested in the reciprocal relationship between the physical environments and the social interaction, which happens in it. In her bachelor thesis she studied through field research the public space within cities and how people acquire a temporary modified space. Her focus of interest lies not only on the opportunities of cities to adapt to climate change, but also on temporary intervention in public space, fallow land or empty state as a research and participatory lab for future changes.

Samjhana Maharjan

Samjhana graduated with a Bachelor’s Degree in Architecture from the Institute of Engineering (IOE), Tribhuvan University in Kathmandu in 2017. As an architecture student, she became aware of the urban vulnerabilities when the massive earthquake hit Nepal in 2015 and exposed the risk of unplanned settlements and cities. However, it also provided her with an opportunity to reevaluate our urban infrastructures, open spaces, and development tendencies as a developing nation. Post the earthquake, Samjhana volunteered as a Technical Advisor in the construction of temporary shelters in the severely affected areas with the team of Aashraya Nepal. In the following years, she also volunteered in redevelopment of rural communities facilitated by the United Nations Development Program (UNDP).

Following my graduation, Samjhana worked for over 3 years at an Architectural and Planning Consultancy, Urban Park Pvt. Ltd. As an architect, she has worked on several projects in the field of Architecture, Interior Design, Urban Planning, and Landscape Design. The experiences have helped her comprehend the significant role that planning plays in shaping both the physical and social aspects of a sustainable community which led her to pursue my Masters with IUSD. Her career goal, post IUSD, is to work in the field of urban development and create design and planning solutions that can positively impact the urban communities by making them more livable, equitable, and resilient.

Akriti Shrivastava

Akriti Shrivastava graduated from School of Planning and Architecture, Bhopal, India in 2018 with a Bachelor’s degree in Architecture. Her professional experience weaves through core architecture design, sustainability and vernacular, and a very interesting insight into behind the scenes of Theme Park design. Her passion for community upliftment and aiding the underserved instigated her to be an active member of a national NGO, working closely with the afflicted communities. Moving around the country, living in a different city every few years made her flexible in her ideas of what makes a city beyond the infrastructure venturing into research on built environment. Through IUSD program she hopes to aid in the growth and development taking into account every stakeholder of the society, which includes humans as well as our environment, rather than individual prosperity. 
Her strong belief is that inclusive development of society, looking past the social prejudices, stemming from deep-rooted sustainability is the only way towards a future. With every new building, with every development, our focus needs to be on our natural environment. Instead of taking from nature, finding ways of coexisting with our nurturer can help us grow without destroying.

Gabriel Machado

Gabriel Machado (1995) is an Architect and Urban Planner from Brazil who graduated in 2017. His academic background includes internships, teaching assistant positions and volunteering as a Portuguese teacher for immigrants and refugees from Haiti. Shortly after completing his bachelors, he started his own architectural practice designing several residential and commercial buildings, mostly built in Brazil. In 2018, he got his postgraduate certificate in “Urban Planning as a Healthy-City Promoter” at the State University of Campinas and published along with his colleagues and professors a booklet written to guide politicians with the city-planning processes. In 2019, he moved to Cairo, Egypt, where he worked as an Associate Landscape Architect and, in the following year, Gabriel took the position as a Visiting Lecturer at the Catholic University of Manizales, in Colombia. Currently, as a Master student at the University of Stuttgart, Germany, he conciliates his studies with projects being developed in Brazil and has as his personal and professional goal, to promote healthier, more equitable and resilient cities.

Maria Paula Mejia Vanegas

Maria Paula is an architect from Pontifical Xavierian University in Bogotá, Colombia, with experience in the development of social housing master and partial plans, and the construction of social housing buildings with detailed processes of pilotage, deep foundations, concrete and masonry structures control, steel quantities control, budgets and units, construction's preliminaries development, construction license procedure and urban license procedure.

Also, she was involved in technical advisory for current and new pocket construction projects in the metropolitan and expansion area for Bogotá. In Integrated Urbanism and Sustainable Design Master's program, her aim is getting skills in order to work with urban situations such as uncontrolled urban sprawl, informal settlements and the conservation of cities fringes. 

Aya Altom Babiker Mohammed

Aya is an Architect and Urban designer interested in Sustainable Urban Development. She holds a Bachelor’s Degree (BA) in Architecture from the University of Khartoum.

 Her Degree Project (DP) consisted of an Environment-Friendly Urban Design study focusing on Tuti Island, her thesis was noted by an international research team working on urban sustainable development (SDG11) in Sudan during a workshop in Khartoum in January 2020, where she presented a synopsis of her research. This has resulted in her current involvement as a research assistant in the project Resilience in Urban Sudan (RUS), hosted by Malmö University and carried out in collaboration with Lund University and Khartoum University.

Aya is a climate change activist that has participated in many events like Khartoum Climathon event -which was jointly organized by GCCA+ and Climate-KIC and funded by the European Union- aiming to solve Khartoum’s city local climate challenges and make it more resilient to climate change, she also participated as a consultant with COOPI - Cooperazione Internazionale organization in a Disaster Risk Reduction training program to Enhance climate change resilience of the most vulnerable residents of the Mayo Slums.

Danielli Loli Teza

Danielli graduated from Santa Catarina State University in Architecture and Urban Planning (Brazil) in 2017. During her bachelors, as a volunteer, she worked assisting and developing projects in impoverished communities and did internships in the private sector as well as in public institution. Furthermore, after graduating, Danielli worked as an architect and urban planner at the Planning Department of her home town, where she had the opportunity to participate in urban problem solving. Danielli aims to create better cities for the residents – more inclusive, sustainable, healthier.

Gustavo Adolfo Rivera “Tavo”

Gustavo is a Civil engineer from Medellín, Colombia. He graduated from the University of Medellin in 2016 and in 2018 he becomes a specialist in Urban Management and Processes. With a love for public space, he dreams of generating city plans based on "the right to live the city" and people as the main designers of their habitat. Having previously worked in multidisciplinary teams for the Mayor's Office of Medellin, his work has focused especially on improving walkability conditions in the city, being the technical leader of this issue in the Management of Human Mobility, through projects such as the development of walking networks linked to the mass public transport system and the generation and recovery of safe spaces for pedestrians through the implementation of tactical urbanism strategies.

In his free time, he likes to practice his second profession, bartender and cocktail creation.

Maria Jose Palacio

Maria Jose Palacio is from Bogot , Colombia, graduated as Architect from the Pontificia Universidad Javeriana.
In 2014 she travelled to Germany to learn the language and after it, she did her internship at P+ Architekten, participating in the realization of residential projects. Her bachelor thesis was focused on creating an educational centre including permacultural design strategies, for people
displaced from the countryside to the capital due to the country's internal war. After graduating in 2016 she worked on residential design and urban plans. She was a part of the Habitarte strategy, a Master plan led by the Mayor’s Office of Bogotà, focused on the social and aesthetic intervention of houses in deprived areas of the capital.
As a volunteer and community coordinator, she is involved in projects that aim to spread awareness about human trafficking in Nepal, encourage single traveller women to fight against harassment while travelling, document the everyday experiences of racism, spread the Colombian culture and create a community of Colombian Life Defenders.
Today, the combination of these experiences with her interests in sustainability, well-being, nutrition and physical and mental health, have led her to be interested in creating spaces connected with nature that consciously generate a positive impact on the individuals who inhabit it.

Vishal Kumar

Vishal Kumar (1995, Meerut, India) graduated from School of Planning and Architecture, Bhopal with Bachelors in Architecture in 2018. During his bachelors, he developed interests in the role of built environment in disaster resilience, participatory design and social housing. It led him to his final thesis work on disaster resilient resettlement design for Rohingya refugees on a cyclone and flood prone- riverine island in Bangladesh. His thesis work was ranked among top 3 at the international built4Humanity competition (2018) in Lisbon, Portugal.

Later, he worked with multiple non-profits for 3 years on projects with focus on energy efficiency and disaster resilience in the built environment for the marginalized communities in rural and urban contexts. He was part of SEEDS Technical Services team for the development of Artificial intelligence model for disaster vulnerability assessment using satellite imagery to generate hyper-local advisories at household level, which was piloted at multiple live cyclone and heatwave events in 2020 and 2021 in Odisha, Maharashtra and New Delhi.

At IUSD, he is motivated to further develop his skills in research and understanding of complexities of inclusivity and resilience in varied urban contexts.

K M Hossain Oli

K M Hossain Oli (Barishal, Bangladesh) graduated from North South University in 2018 with a degree in Bachelors of Architecture. For his bachelor’s thesis he explored how to help the urban poor of the largest squatter settlement in Bangladesh to develop and self-reliant, resilient community-based organization through which they would be able to make their own decision on how to develop the settlement and its infrastructure with active participation of the government, NGOs, and private sectors. During his academic years he also participated in two, degree related workshop on constructing hygienic sanitation to the rural poor of Bangladesh (Rupganj and Dinajpur).

After his study he worked as a volunteer architect with SHWO Architects to design and construct an elementary school for the underprivileged children of the tea garden worker in Tetulia, Bangladesh. From July 2018 he went on to work as a junior architect at Vitti Sthapati Brindo Ltd. Where he worked on project of different scales, from multi-family residence, urban water way restorations, to a family-owned organic farm.

Through IUSD he is interested to further develop his understandings of the diverse dimensions and issues of urban planning and design he encountered while doing his bachelors thesis. Additionally, he is also interested in water sensitive urbanism to develop better way for cities to develop in a country with more then 700 rivers and streams.

Angie Carolina Camacho Gutierrez

Angie Carolina (1995, Bogotá, Colombia) obtained her bachelor’s in Architecture and urbanism with an emphasis in urban projects and research at the National University of Colombia in 2019. She completed an exchange semester at the Toulouse National School of Architecture in 2016-2017.
During her studies, she took part and coordinated the research group of territorial architecture at the National University of Colombia, an academic group that sought to explore different forms of inhabitation around the riparian areas. Her graduation thesis investigated and proposed the reinterpretation of the ‘la Conejera’ wetland in Bogota as structuring elements of planning and as potential providers of ecosystem services and not only as protected areas.
She has worked in the urban realm in sustainable mobility and urban design projects, and she has been involved in public projects within the Secretary of the Habitat of the mayor's office of Bogota. In addition, she has experience as a research assistant in urban phenomena such as the proliferation of gated communities and their spatial distribution in the city of Bogota.
Her interests and motivation lie in the implementation of sustainable practices in the so-called global south countries to reach environmentally sustainable, and social justice cities.

Saksham Rai

He was born in a small town called Palwal, Haryana state in India in 1996. He holds a Bachelor Degree in Architecture from Chitkara University, India.
It was the year 2016 in which he got the motivation towards Urban and Rural Development and documented an ancient step-well in a small village called Mukandpura. During the rural context analysis and working on its documentation, he familiarized himself with the silent impact of Climate Change on habitation. He has precisely worked at an International office in Rotterdam, The Netherlands where the focus involved the Sustainability and Cradle to Cradle approach. His Bachelor Thesis project tackled the issue of Climate Change and showcased how Architecture and Urbanism can slow down the impact of it with the help of a Circular approach. He actively took part in various Volunteer works including ArchiKidz in the Netherlands and WorkOUT Initiative at TU Delft and Chandigarh, India. After graduation, he worked at various Architecture and Real Estate offices. He always has moral drive and interest to learn and have in-depth knowledge of the Sustainable development of Cities through smart Architecture and Urbanism.

Yassin Al-Tubor

Yassin is an Architect based in Amman, Jordan. His passion is socially responsible design. He holds a joint degree in architecture and design from the German Jordanian University and Hochschule für Technik Stuttgart. He also has a professional training in social work and migration studies from the German Jordanian University. He worked as an architect and also as a designer in socially responsible projects. Yassin has done consultations and trainings with various NGO's such as Turquoise mountain, GIZ, DRC , Blumont, Embassy of the Kingdom of the Netherlands and others. He is
also an educator in the field of design.

 

 

 

 

Dina ElGharib

Dina ElGharib (1998) started her architectural journey by obtaining a Bachelor of Science in Engineering with a major in Architectural Engineering from Future University in Egypt in 2020. This marked the beginning of her academic and professional exploration within the field. Dina assumed roles as a teaching assistant while also working as a practicing architect with esteemed architecture firms in Cairo, Egypt. As a graduate in Architectural Engineering with extensive coursework in "Building Construction and Materials" and "Urban Design and Housing" over five academic years, coupled with her exposure to various German cities besides attending an autumn school at TU Delft, Dina possesses a keen awareness of the challenges posed by prolonged periods of heatwaves and hot weather on households. This profound interest motivated her to join the International Urbanism and Sustainable Design (IUSD) program, where she aims to develop innovative solutions for urban challenges.

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