Free Studio for Social Design
EDUCATIONAL EXPERIENCES IN TERRITORY: THE TALLER LIBRE DE PROYECTO SOCIAL
Teaching Team: Beatriz H. Pedro, Lucas Giono, Mauricio Contreras, Luis Wexler, Gabriela Bandieri, Amelia Ojeda, Alina Romero Orué, Nicolas Spagenberg, Noelia Bronstein, Yésica Lamanna, Rodolfo Laufer, Fabian Leguizamón, Natalia Salmoiraghi, Andrea Sucari, Camila Álvarez, Augusto Daniele, Mariana Guido, Irene Arecha, Magdalena Castría, Andrea Cabrera, Maria Luisa Valdez Frutos, Gabriela Cuesta, Laura Alderete, Soledad Silva, Pablo Bruno, Sergio Gagliano, Lorena Fernandez, Fuad Barrionuevo, Marta Morató, Qori Ontiveros, Victoria Larosa, Monserrat Lanza Castelli, Carola Gonzalez Casartelli, Claudia Timoner.
Emeritus Professors: Maria Ledesma, Ana Novik, Fermín Estrella (†), Pedro Perles (†).
Disciplines: Architects, Graphic Designers, Audiovisual and Industrial Designers, Fashion Designers, Social Workers, Historians.
Established: 2002 – Present
Location: Buenos Aires Metropolitan Area (AMBA)
Contact: [email protected]
Website: https://tlps.ar
Instagram: @tlpsfadu
Facebook: tlpsfadu
YouTube: tlpsfadu
Description, concept, objectives
The Taller Libre de Proyecto Social (Free Studio for Social Design) is an open academic program at the Faculty of Architecture, Design and Urbanism of the University of Buenos Aires. For over 23 years, it has been developing educational processes and teaching practices aimed at fostering a professional approach that, grounded in disciplinary knowledge, supports participatory, interdisciplinary, progressive, and intersectoral projects within the social production of habitat, with a gender perspective and environmental awareness.
The studio offers a formative seminar and carries out in-situ experiences in collaboration with communities and social, productive, and neighborhood organizations at different scales within the Buenos Aires Metropolitan Area, as well as with rural and popular communities in other provinces of Argentina. It contributes to participatory processes and co-authored projects in architecture, urbanism, industrial, graphic, audiovisual, and fashion design.
Critical of gentrification and urban-environmental extractivism, the studio engages in action-research around popular habitat and the right to the city, advocating for the right to design and transform the spaces we inhabit. Its work places urban transformation processes at the service of popular needs.
This space is recognized as a key reference among academic programs focused on housing, habitat, popular and self-managed habitat, community practices, and participatory design. It is a member of the Latin American Network of Housing and Habitat Studios, which in 2023 was awarded the UN-Habitat Bronze Prize for exemplary university training initiatives. It is also part of HIC-AL, the Habitat International Coalition for Latin America.
Through these networks, the TLPS has developed international educational exchanges with FAU-UNAM and FAU-UAM in Mexico, FAU Pernambuco in Brazil, as well as national collaborations with FAU Resistencia, FAU Córdoba, and FAU La Plata.
The TLPS also leads the Center for Research on Housing and Habitat at the Higher Institute of Urbanism (FADU).
What is the project about?
The TLPS is a learning space for undergraduate and postgraduate students that combines teaching, research, and community engagement. It addresses real-world social issues by supporting popular social processes and constructing a participatory, comprehensive, and situated approach to design.
The studio trains students in participatory design processes with an integral, multidimensional, and multi-perspective approach to planning, management, and community-based production of habitat. It works in collaboration with numerous social collectives from a rights-based, popular, and ecofeminist perspective, engaging in self-managed projects that contribute to the fight for popular habitat. These include slum upgrading, family relocations, neighborhood and housing improvements, environmental care and preservation, and the recovery of public land for recreational and community use—working alongside worker-owned cooperatives, Indigenous communities, and grassroots organizations advocating for social rights.
Activities
-Popular Habitat Consultations: held in health centers, mutual aid associations, and neighborhood councils.
-Technical support for participatory proposals addressing urgent demands: Relocation with rootedness of Barrio 14 de Noviembre (Almirante Brown), Barrio Papa Francisco in Villa 20 (Buenos Aires), Land recovery in Guernica, Community neighborhoods Norita Cortiñas and Crisol Popular, Recreational and community spaces: Barrio 14 de Febrero and Proyecto Hábitat, environmental project in Claypole (Almirante Brown), Slum upgrading: Villa 31, Villa 20, La Loma (Olivos).
-Recording and preserving the memory of popular struggles for housing, neighborhoods, and self-managed production with worker-recovered factories.
-Practicing methodologies, tools, and techniques for participatory and integral professional practices, revisiting and developing approaches inspired by architects such as Rodolfo Livingston (community architecture), Fermín Estrella (urban and social housing systems), Victor Pelli (modular housing), Mariana Enet (collective creativity), and Gustavo Romero (design and complexity).
Challenges
This self-managed initiative has been evolving within Argentina’s public university system for 23 years as a Cátedra Libre (Free Academic Chair), offering project-based learning experiences that run counter to the dominant educational paradigm. It collaborates with other teaching teams, researchers, and extension programs within FADU and across other faculties at the University of Buenos Aires, as well as with the Latin American University Network of Housing and Habitat Studios and professional networks from national and Latin American gatherings on community architecture. Expanding these spaces and enabling thousands of students to experience this approach remains an ongoing challenge.
Future Directions
In the current context of harassment and defunding of public education, scientific and health institutions, and grassroots spaces, the TLPS is committed to their defense and continuity, working in solidarity with students, teachers, researchers, and professionals.
