About Resilience by Design

Resilience by Design is a programme that unites a series of live-projects and international workshops exploring socio-ecological issues in the context of rapid urban change, climate hazards, environmental and man-made disasters, resource scarcities and depleted ecosystems.

It focuses on bridging local with scientific knowledge through spatial design by utilising an innovative participatory, action-learning and interdisciplinary methodology. With this approach we facilitate the formulation of integrated scenarios and concrete solutions that can facilitate long-term resilience in urban contexts, while retaining a strong pedagogical focus that allows communities and different stakeholders to understand and reflect on the complex interaction between humans and the ecosystems and territories they inhabit and transform.

The Resilience by Design workshops are based on an integral action-research and interdisciplinary methodology that assesses the multiple dimensions of vulnerability in order to promote solutions that situate resilience in the context of the wider ecological, physical, social, economic and political dynamics shaping both rural and urban areas. We use participatory tools such as harvest mapping and 3D modelling to identify the existing resources and potentials to address such vulnerabilities.

This process critically examines the capacity of communities to respond to risks such as climate hazards, resource scarcities and depleted ecosystems, in order to envision future scenarios and concrete solutions that can facilitate long-term resilience.

In this context, resilience is understood as the capacity of a community to actively respond to change, rather than simply returning to a pre-existing state.

This methodology has developed from ASF-UK’s experience with several international partners in India, Ghana, Cameroon and Colombia.