In my work with the communities, I have realised that the most important drawing is rarely the glossy render on printed paper. It’s a fingertip in the dust tracing the plan, a hand sketching where the wind turns, a neighbour pointing out a flood mark on a wall. That’s the language these five Architecture-in-Development (A––D) finalists speak in. When A––D invited me to write about them, I said yes because the frame is right. A––D frames this cohort as a “quiet shift” in which architecture is treated as a living process anchored in society and territory.
Read their jury statement, and you’ll see the priorities laid out plainly: collaboration over competition, process over product, and momentum sustained at a pace that communities can absorb. In short, this way of working is not the periphery; this is the frontline.
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In La Guasasa, a rural neighbourhood in the Palmarito Valley near Viñales, the problem is particularly acute: hurricanes repeatedly destroy homes that were never given a fair chance to be resilient in the first place, and the national economic crisis makes industrial materials scarce.
The team’s answer isn’t a single “model house.” It’s a school workshop and a rebuild-while-teaching approach that pairs climate-adapted earthen techniques with hands-on training. Their first phase targets a total of eight homes in complete collapse and ten in partial collapse. I find their logic simple and persuasive, with fewer debt-driven fixes, more know-how in local hands, and a pathway for residents to improve their own homes and those of their neighbours over time, while also gaining access to job opportunities during an economic crisis.
Uganda’s EcoPrefab is operating under a different kind of clock. When 14% of primary-age children still lack access to school and more than half the population is under fifteen, “we need classrooms fast” is the context of the region. EcoPrefab treats speed as a design constraint without outsourcing dignity.
All of us practising in developmental architecture understand the urgency of the issue and the slowness of bureaucracy. Their system is based on prefabricated timber using locally available eucalyptus and pine, folds sawdust by-products back into the process, and couples delivery with skills transfer through local fabricators and technical institutes. Their goal is to deliver climate-resilient classrooms and teacher housing quickly and affordably while keeping capacity and money circulating in the community. This isn’t a paper promise either: Localworks has already delivered the first EcoPrefab teacher villages at Busibo and Namabaale, a total of 52 units, demonstrating that repeatable systems don’t have to steamroll local knowledge.
What I like about EcoPrefab is how it reframes replicability. Instead of “one size fits everywhere,” it reads as a kit of parts tuned to Ugandan realities: light-frame components manufactured in Kampala, rapid on-site assembly, and building types that match actual needs in classrooms, administrative blocks, and teacher housing, among others. If you’re sceptical about prefab because it often alienates local labour (and there are numerous examples of this), consider this counterexample: a delivery method that trains the people who will maintain it.
In Espírito Santo, Brazil, the Mopy’atã Ra’yraé Cultural Centre is more like a political act. It’s a circular, youth-driven space in Aldeia Pau Brasil, designed in collaboration with Tupiniquim partners for performance, making, and everyday gatherings.
The design draws movement from the village square into a permeable central room, then tucks storage, audiovisual, and service spaces around the edge so the public life stays visible. More importantly, the authorship belongs to the young people who will use it; the building doubles as a rehearsal for cultural continuity. That’s continuity by design, more than just preservation.
Saving Portete in Ecuador takes the long road and makes it public. On a small island hard-hit by the 2016 earthquake, the team has spent years reviving bamboo and toquilla straw as a resilient, low-impact toolkit, and using it to build common ground: a dock, a children’s play village, a community area, and now an ambitious slate of public projects.
Often, these kinds of projects get into the frame of nostalgia, but this one is different. They put it bluntly: “public space educates.” You learn by walking on a deck, by sitting under a roof that cools without machines, by fixing a joint or a detail you watched your neighbour make last month.
The current plan includes a 300 m² community centre, a 1,000 m² sports and culture venue, and a school-museum to keep Afro-Ecuadorian heritage and local ecology in view. Along the way, the work has generated more than thirty construction jobs and steady tourism income for several residents in a community of roughly eighty families. It’s a civic curriculum in an island infrastructure.
Toda 2.0 in the Nilgiris, India, asks a delicate question: can a pastoralist’s ceremonial house become a contemporary home without losing its meaning? The Toda barrel-vaulted dwelling is a ritual technology tuned to wind, rain, and social life. The team’s prototype retains essential geometry and logic, then threads in modern necessities like electricity, sanitation, and a materials strategy that draws on renewable, locally sourced options rather than defaulting to concrete.
The project’s updates demonstrate real traction with local governance, with a site identified at Bekapathi Mund and an appointment letter for a community centre. While the broader intent is clear, the goal is to make it possible and desirable for Toda families to live in a way that honours both present needs and ancestral practices. That’s the only way tradition survives modernisation without becoming a stage set for tourism.
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When I read the five projects, a few things line up with something we can all take away in our practices and lives.
- Time is treated as a material, not a constraint. None of this is hurried; it’s paced, paired with training cycles, and sequenced through pilots so wins stick and failures teach.
- Labour is treated as knowledge, not a cost line to be shaved; when a school is also a workshop, your deliverable includes the next mason, carpenter, or youth filmmaker who knows how and why a joint works.
- Materials are arguments: earth, timber, bamboo, toquilla straw, each of them a climate tool and an economic multiplier when specified and taught with care.
- Governance is shared by design: international allies bring bandwidth and networks, but local leaders hold the compass.
If you go back to the A––D statement, you’ll see all of this telegraphed in their Do-it-Together ethos. It sounds humble. It’s also rigorous.
What this really means for practice is that we need to change the way we score our own work. If a project only “counts” when it photographs well, a lot of essential architecture disappears from our field of vision. If budgets are unlocked for objects but not processes, we’ll continue to pay too much for the wrong kind of permanence.
The stronger promise in this shortlist is that design can be measured by what it connects and sustains, not just by what it costs or how quickly it is implemented. That’s why La Guasasa’s student cohorts matter, why EcoPrefab publishes a parts-to-program logic for schools and housing (I also love their YouTube videos), why Portete’s public spaces double as classrooms, why a Tupiniquim youth centre prioritises authorship, and why a Toda prototype insists on form and meaning together.
If awards can help by offering cover for careful pacing, visibility for fundraising, and a shield against the demand to hurry, then they’re doing their job. The five projects here are already building a different centre of gravity for the field. Our task is to meet them there, with steady work and a willingness to learn from what’s already working.
Sources:
- A––D jury statement and finalists overview;
- La Guasasa project profile;
- EcoPrefab project profile and Localworks’ documentation on Busibo/Namabaale;
- Grupo Fresta communications on Mopy’atã Ra’yraé;
- Saving Portete project profile;
- Toda 2.0 project profile and updates.
