Elisa Silva is director and founder of Enlace Arquitectura 2007 and Enlace Foundation 2017, established in Caracas, Venezuela. Projects focus on raising awareness of spatial inequality and the urban environment through public space, the integration of informal settlements and community engagement in rural landscapes. Public space interventions in informal settlements through didactic and participatory methodologies are central to the firm´s practice and were awarded in the XX Architecture and Urbanism Biennial in Valparaiso, Chile 2017. Other recognitions include winners of the VIII Ibero-American Biennale of Architecture and Urbanism for the Sabana Grande Pavement Project in Caracas, Venezuela 2012, the XI National Architecture Bienal Award for Ecoparque Maracay 2014, the Walk 21 Award for Puerto Encantado Higuerote Venezuela 2015, the X Salon Malausena Publication and Urban Design Awards 2016, and winners of several design competitions.
In 2017, Elisa received a Graham Foundation Grant for the publication Pure Space: Expanding the Public Sphere through Public Space Transformations in Latin American Informal Settlements (Actar, 2019). She has co-authored Pro-Inclusion: Practical tools for the integral development of Latin American cities (CAF Development Bank of Latin America, 2016) presented at Habitat III in Quito; and CABA Cartography of the Caracas Barrios 1966-2014 (Fundación Espacio 2015), widely recognized as a seminal contribution to the city´s urban history records. Elisa was awarded the Wheelwright Fellowship in 2011 and the Rome Prize from the American Academy in Rome in 2005. She was Design Critic in Landscape Architecture at the Harvard University Graduate School of Design in 2018 and has taught workshops at the Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya in Barcelona ,Spain and the Pontificia Universidad Católica de Perú in Lima, Peru. She has taught at the Simón Bolívar University in Caracas, Venezuela since 2011 and is a consultant to CAF and UN Habitat. Elisa grew up between St. Louis and Venezuela.
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The Landscape Lab, on the campus of the University of Utah in Salt Lake City, is a stormwater management landscape designed that serves as stormwater infrastructure but also as a research and demonstration facility. The steep slopes of the catchment basins represent standard institutional landscape practice: plants are planted into...
It can be easy to remain in the bubble of your own perspective, thinking that one’s relationship to place might be a universal phenomenon. When the phenomenon, in fact, is the uniqueness of each person’s relationship to place, community, home, and their perspectives, cultures, and lived experiences that shape the...
Climate action needs a new approach Ravaging fires and flooding, widespread ecological destruction, increasing dispossession and displacement: year after year, climate change action shows its tragic shortcomings because people and socio-territorial inequalities are not at the center of commitments, policies, and follow-up mechanisms. As long as global agreements and national...
It’s December 12, 2035. I woke up in my apartment, in the middle of the city and there was a mountain. Yes, a mountain with a forest, greenery everywhere. I opened the windows and I could listen to the birds singing. I could smell the moist ground, the same smell...
There is a close relationship between the three Es―economy, employment, and environment. Economic growth and jobs rely heavily on environmental resources, but a myopic focus on either of these aspects often results in environmental degradation. Green jobs have been seen as a way to buffer the adverse effects of economic...
In a world where every route is optimized, where algorithms predict our movements, and speed becomes an unassailable norm, the detour stands out as an act of resistance. It is the assertion of reclaimed freedom, a refusal of systematic efficiency that reduces our experience of the world to a digital...
Serina Fast Horse and Toby Query met as employees at the City of Portland in 2018 while working on an innovative project that centered Indigenous voices and perspectives. This project, Shwah kuk wetlands (which means frog in Chinuk Wawa, a local indigenous trade language) intertwines Indigenous (or relational) and Western...
What does the more-than-human city look like? Ferne Edwards, Barcelona Lucia Alexandra Popartan, Girona Ida Nilstad Pettersen, Trondheim Lily Fillwalk, New Brunswick Audax M. Gawler, Victoria İdil Gaziulusoy, Espoo Giulia Gualtieri, Almere Gloria Lauterbach, Espoo Saba Mirzahosseini, Turin Clare Qualmann, London Trophica Lab, Bogotá D.C. Aylin Yildirim Tschoepe, Basel
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Places, much like nature, are in a constant state of change. This is especially true for Rocinha, Brazil’s most populous favela, home to approximately 200,000 people. Perched on steep hillsides in Rio de Janeiro’s Southern Zone, Rocinha is a vibrant, multi-layered community where life unfolds within a dense network of...
Biodiversity has always been important to environmental scientists, conservationists, landscape architects, and others but only recently seems to have entered the public domain. It took a long time for Australia to accept the climate emergency. It is pleasing to see that the biodiversity crisis has been accepted more readily. There...
The United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) estimates that 19 to 23 million tonnes of plastic waste end up in lakes, rivers, and seas annually[1]. This staggering number highlights the urgent need to tackle plastic pollution. The growing production of waste, inadequate disposal methods, and the slow degradation of plastics significantly...
The EU Nature Restoration Law is here. Do we have what it takes to make it work? Bettina Wilk, Bilbao John Warren Tamor, Bonn Evelyn Underwood, Brussels Laure-Lou Tremblay, Brussels Ferenc Albert Szigeti, Budapest Adeline Rochet, Brussels Martin Grisel, The Hague Federica Risi, The Hague Silvia Quarta, Murcia Christos Papachristou, Dublin Anne-Sophie Mulier, Brussels Shane McGuinness, Dublin Goksen Sahin, Brussels Philipp LaHaela-Walter, Freiburg Gitty Korsuize, Utrecht Valerie Kapos, Cambridge Chris McOwen, Cambridge John Tayleur, Cambridge Opi Outhwaite, Cambridge Niki Frantzeskaki, Utrecht João Dinis, Cascais City Marta Delas, Madrid Jordi Cortina-Segarra, Alicante Humberto Delgado Rosa, Brussels Roby Biwer, Luxembourg Marta Mansanet Cánovas, Luxembourg Heather Brooks, Brussels Carlo Calfapietra, Porano Chiara Baldacchini, Viterbo Bogdan Micu, Bucharest Liviu Bailesteanu, Bucharest
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7 January 2025
The Power of Care for Climate Justice Praneeta Mudaliar, Mississauga Lilian Dart, Mississauga Dannia Eyelli Philipp Gutierrez, Toronto Celina Mankarios, Mississauga
Commoning and climate justice The Greater Toronto Area (GTA) in Canada is bustling with youth-based climate action and advocacy. From bringing lawsuits against governments to advocating for fossil fuel divestment and spreading awareness about intersecting crises such as housing insecurity and climate impacts, young people are emerging as powerful voices...
Cities are, at their best, collaborative masterpieces, aren’t they? They emerge from the interplay of diverse professions, ways of knowing, modes of action, governments, and, most importantly, the people who call them home. They are cultural, ecological, human, and non-human. Together (ideally), these forces shape cities based on shared—and sometimes...
Love, a complex and profoundly influential emotion, has been widely explored in a variety of academic fields including sociology, psychology, anthropology, as well as human and physical geography. In geography, love is explored in several ways, including love of place and of nature (tophilia and biophilia) (see Tuan, 1974 and...
The UK’s new Labour-led government has pledged to tackle the country’s long-standing housing crisis head-on, with a bold promise to deliver 1.5 million new homes in the next five years. This plan comes in response to the mounting pressures of soaring demand, limited housing supply, and ever-increasing prices that have...
Each time our editorial team gathers to publish an issue of SPROUT, we reflect on the role of poetry to comment on the current state of the eco-urban. When we read through the submissions, we feel that our original vision and mandate for the journal is confirmed by the special...