Designing Otherwise: From Smart Solutions to Situated Practices

By Christina Priavolou, Marie Skłodowska-Curie Postdoctoral Fellow, University of Amsterdam in collaboration with Professor Maria Kaika.

Project: SMARTACULAR — Blending Smart Innovation with Locally Rooted Solutions for a Sustainable Future

Rethinking “Smartness” in Architecture

In a world shaped by ecological crises and globalized design templates, how can we build places that truly belong — to their people, their climates, their histories?

This is the question at the heart of SMARTACULAR, a Marie Skłodowska-Curie postdoctoral project hosted at the University of Amsterdam and supervised by Professor Maria Kaika. The project reimagines what it means to design “smart” — not as a matter of technological optimization alone, but as a process of contextual, community-led, and ecologically grounded creativity.

“Smartness should not mean uniformity. True innovation begins by listening — to places, to people, to the wisdom already rooted in everyday life.”

From Vernacular Wisdom to Global Sustainability

SMARTACULAR bridges local knowledge and global sustainability goals to reframe how the built environment can respond to climate change and social transformation. It explores how communities across the world are creating context-appropriate practices — design methods, construction techniques, and governance models that regenerate their surroundings instead of depleting them.

Through fieldwork, comparative analysis, and participatory mapping, the project identifies both successful examples and unsustainable practices shaping the future of housing, planning, and construction.

This process is about learning from place-based intelligence — whether found in a mud house in the Mediterranean, a cooperative housing initiative in Northern Europe, or a digital design collective experimenting with circular materials.

Co-Designing Tools for Situated Futures

A central outcome of the project is the SMARTACULAR Matrix Tool — a participatory platform co-developed with design studios, research labs such as LUDD, and local communities. The Matrix helps architects, planners, and citizens identify context-sensitive solutions for their specific environments, promoting responsive decision-making.

The tool will be piloted after its development phase and made freely available through the project website.

An Open Invitation to Collaborate

SMARTACULAR is more than a research project; it is a growing network of practice. It invites researchers, practitioners, activists, and communities to contribute stories, methods, and experiments that challenge conventional models of urban sustainability.

You can explore the project and its visual storytelling video at smartacular.eu, and join the conversation about building futures that are not only smart — but also deeply rooted.

Keywords

#Architecture #UrbanDesign #Sustainability #LocalKnowledge #CommunityLedDesign #VernacularArchitecture #PostGrowth #ClimateAdaptation #DesignJustice #MarieCurie