Now more than ever, we need the skills of architects and designers to build sustainable and affordable housing. This is evident in cities around the world, where lower-income residents often have no choice but overcome hardships overlooked by developers looking to target more affluent inhabitants.
Enter the Community Design Agency (CDA), an architecture and design agency with a vision to create “an inclusive world where every human enjoys access to vibrant, safe, and healthy spaces to live, work, and play.”

An initiative of the Curry Stone Design Collective, the sustainably-minded CDA recently worked with both the Ahmednagar Municipal Corporation and non-profit group Snhalaya on a project meant to revitalize the housing blocks in the city of Ahmednagar, India. The city’s Sanjaynagar neighborhood in particular is plagued by subpar living conditions, including homes built from unsuitable reclaimed materials like scrap metal and a lack of adequate sanitation facilities.
The community’s residents directly contributed to the design of the buildings’ interiors. As CDA Managing Director Sandhya Naidu Janardhan explains, the overall process “evolved at different scales of the neighborhood [from] the masterplan…[to] each family designing their apartment interiors.” The result is an “apartment typology [that] allows for multiple combinations and iterations based on the preference of families.”

Over 30 families have al...