Elisava Masters' Talks - Izaskun Chinchilla

Neighborhoods of Good Living: A Perspective from Tentative Design

What if designers made fewer mistakes if they stopped trying to get it right the first time? Neighborhoods of Good Living explore a city understood not as a finished object, but as a living laboratory: spaces that are tested, inhabited, evaluated, and transformed. The lecture will explore the work of Izaskun Chinchilla Architects and the book Neighborhoods of Good Living to ask what happens when design abandons certainty and embraces hypothesis, experimentation, and adaptation. A perspective from tentative design to conceive of well-being as something experienced collectively.

Izaskun Chinchilla, a professor at the Bartlett School of Architecture, University College London (UCL), and an honorary fellow of the Royal Institute of British Architects (RIBA), integrates ecology, care, and participation into her practice, research, and teaching. Her work promotes more equitable and sustainable cities. She combines design, critical thinking, and cultural knowledge to promote an architecture that is educational, cooperative, and oriented toward the common good. She is the author of La ciudad de los cuidados (Catarata, 2021) and Los barrios del buen vivir (Catarata, 2026).

Izaskun Chinchilla Architects is a group of architects led by Izaskun Chinchilla that brings together interdisciplinary teams for each project. Their work focuses on optimizing the environmental performance of architecture, public space, facilities, art, and cultural products through innovation. Public engagement and social participation are pillars of their practice, which promotes collaboration in the construction of shared spaces and community-based decision-making regarding the use, location, and characteristics of the facilities they design.