Community Design Agency is shifting the paradigm on building for the marginalised.

Working alongside residents and centering their dreams and needs, we regenerate slums into attractive, healthy and climate intelligent places where people can thrive.
We are an architecture and design agency
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SIGNATURE PROCESS, SUSTAINABLE IMPACT

Access to high quality spaces—especially housing, is foundational to achieving almost all the United Nation’s Sustainable Development Goals.

We integrate deep community engagement with democratized access to architecture, engineering, social support, home financing and more. As a result, those on the margins are afforded true agency over where and how they live. In attractive, safe, healthy spaces built to endure for generations. This measurably impacts gender equity, health and well-being, social inclusion, and climate resilience.

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FEATURED: TEDx BANGALORE - SAFE SPACES

Hear our Managing Director and Founder, Sandhya Naidu Janardhan, talk about her journey and how taking an empathetic approach to design to build better spaces for marginalised communities is the future.

Click below to read the executive summary of a report we participated in with global consulting firm Dalberg on innovative financing opportunities for slum redevelopment.

DALBERG STUDY ON BLENDED FINANCE

FEATURED PROJECT

Ground up Slum Regeneration

SANJAYNAGAR NEIGHBOURHOOD, AHMEDNAGAR, MAHARASHTRA

The Sanjaynagar slum neighborhood is home to 298 families on just two acres. Despite enduring challenges caused by poor physical infrastructure, the community enjoys rich social cohesion, forged over forty years of surviving alongside each other. When we began work in 2018 to redevelop the neighbourhood, we knew that protecting—and enhancing their existing bonds was vital.  And that like all humans everywhere, they had the right to dignified spaces to live, raise families, work and play.

CLICK HERE TO LEARN ABOUT THE PROJECT
KitaabMahal 13 ©Community Design Agency

FEATURED PROJECT

Uniting and empowering a diverse, fractured community through engagement, placemaking and art

NATWAR PAREKH COLONY, MUMBAI, INDIA

Natwar Parekh Colony, a vertical public housing complex, is home to more than 25,000 people from diverse castes, religions, and classes. who were relocated from throughout the city into tiny apartments, most without proper ventilation or natural light. This impacts health, personal safety, equity and inclusion– and results in a sense of disconnected isolation, especially for women and girls.

Six years ago, we started using space-based interventions to unite informal street vendors, build a popular children’s library, turn garbage-strewn alleys into inviting outdoor spaces and encourage youth-initiated placemaking projects—the first time many girls and boys interacted.

In 2022, realizing young people needed ways to express and process their experiences and identities, we launched a six-month long arts festival. Practicing Mumbai artists came to the neighbourhood as mentors. The youth enthusiastically created photography, theatrical performances, visual art, films and even a now-viral rap song. All culminating in a five-day event attended by more than 5,000 people from within and outside the neighbourhood. The positive momentum goes well beyond the festival, inspiring residents to be even more vocal self-advocates with city officials. Sparking ambitious—and achievable plans for even more community regeneration.

CLICK HERE FOR A FILM ON THE ARTS FESTIVAL
Residents participating in painting the mural

FIELD NOTES

More than a pretty picture

Click here for a first-person account of how a youth-led mural project transformed a derelict hangout for drug users into an enticing and inclusive gathering space for all.

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