We're excited to introduce you to our six, shortlisted architecture practices for our pilot Prototype City - an architecture exchange programme launched in Coventry and delivered in partnership with Coventry UK City of Culture.

Prototype City Coventry brings together international architects from Aarhus (Denmark), Cairo (Egypt), Dakar (Senegal) and São Paulo (Brazil) to collaborate with emerging Midlands-based practices in the UK. The participating architects are working together to address unique urban  challenges by responding to the site in Coventry, UK. Using co-design and community-led processes, the teams will design prototypes for more inclusive and welcoming public space that will be launched in October 2021.

The selected architects are:

Amin El-Didi (Cairo, Egypt)

Amin El-Didi is an architect and urbanist who graduated in 2017 with a Bachelor's degree in Architectural Engineering from the German University in Cairo. Since then, he has been working in the field at the Cairo Lab for Urban Research, Training and Environmental Research (CLUSTER) with founders Omar Nagati and Beth Stryker, invested in the context of Downtown Cairo.

Amin’s projects revolve around mediating between multiple stakeholders and having a grounded approach towards physical interventions as well as citizen science-focused research. Alongside his architectural work, Amin has a deep interest in media in all its forms and often experiments with video animations and graphic design, seeking to utilise a multi-disciplinary approach with all of his projects.

Anna Parker, Intervention Architecture x Alessandro Columbano Co\LAB (Birmingham, UK)

Intervention Architecture (IA) is a young interdisciplinary RIBA design studio based in Birmingham, working across the UK, led by Anna Parker.

One of its specialisms as an emerging boutique practice, is creating built interventions with community-led design. It leads and facilitates collective collaborations to enable community input to be integral to the design process, also within existing buildings or site reuse, leading to a greater public involvement and acceptance of large scale projects.

As local entrepreneurs, the practice works in an open, collaborative way, inclusive of the wider team and stakeholders. Its interest is in site-responsive works, engaging with users throughout each stage, with each unique site context.

Established in 2011, the Co\\aborative Lab.oratory is a multifaceted initiative embedded within the Birmingham School of Architecture & Design at Birmingham City University. It focuses on design-research, entrepreneurial community engagement, design innovation, collective urbanism, installations and structures, and trans-disciplinary exploration with collaborative practice as a key working methodology. It also acts as a vehicle to directly engage the school, its staff and students to collaborate (Co.) with ‘partners’ across a varied field of artistic disciplines and scales. 

Projects intervene across the city – acting as a laboratory (LAB) to test ideas against. Co\LAB explores issues of liveness: the relevance of the creative arts, and all its disciplines to challenge the limits and crossovers between them, developing new creative practices in order to explore contemporary issues that affect our urban contexts.  

CoCriança (São Paulo, Brazil)

CoCriança is a collective from São Paulo, Brazil, composed of eight women. They work with architecture in a transversal and integrated way with other disciplines, developing participatory processes of urban intervention with vulnerable communities with a special emphasis on children. 

Since 2017, the collective has been working to raise children's involvement in urban planning by including them in the process of re-signification of parks and other urban open spaces. By working towards a more child-friendly city, CoCriança is taking children’s right to the city into account and making the urban environment healthier for adults. The collective has developed its own research-intervention method of co-designing in which children are considered a fundamental protagonist and active part of the transformation of free and leisure spaces.

Sam Little, Channel Projects (Hereford & London, UK)

Channel is an architecture practice founded by Sam Little and Ryan Cook. The practice is interested in the design and construction process, working with industry, institutions and individuals on projects that explore innovative responses to constraint and planetary resources.

Prior to establishing the practice in 2020, Ryan and Samuel worked with a number of internationally acclaimed design practices including Caruso St John Architects (UK), David Chipperfield Architects (UK) and Rotor (BE) among others. The studio works between London and Herefordshire on projects that seek to expand the traditional boundaries of architectural practice in relation to material supply, consumption and extraction.

Sawdatou Kane (Dakar, Senegal)

Sawdatou is a young architect who is passionate about ecology, vernacular building technique and design. She combines all these skills to offer a refined architecture that combines the traditional and the modern, ecology and aesthetics. She currently has several active projects focused on environmental protection that she proudly values.

Stephan Gustin (Aarhus, Denmark)

Stephan Gustin founder of Gustin Landscape has been working with urban planning, landscaping, and urban social environments for the last 15 years. With more than 100 projects and several nominations and awards, Gustin Landscape strive hard to create a better city, with more poetry, more smiles, more creative spaces, and more social responsibility. The practice now has 10 employees, ranging from PhDs, architects and landscape designers – all with the passion of creating better cities for all.

To find out more about Coventry UK City of Culture programme, click here.