Dr Paco Mejias Villatoro

Research Overview

Four branches summarize my current research interest and outputs, namely:

A.- POLITICS AND ARCHITECTURE
This research is the most theoretical. Within this area, I explore the politics of architecture – the connection between architecture, ideology and power. The papers “The socio-pol-ethical confluence of the architect: The idiot, the activist, and the dreamer”, and “The fiction of the equal: Boundaries disappearance and border neutralization in the American city”; respond to this research interest (both published in SITA, Studies in History and Theory of Architecture).

Also part of this research interest is the workshop Refugees and Cities, which took place in August 2022 at Liverpool University. This initiative was a reaction to the shameful proposal of the UK government to send Ukrainian refugees to Rwanda. In this workshop, we put together students and faculties from two British universities (University of Liverpool and University of Sheffield), the KTH University in Sweden and the Kharkiv School of Architecture in Ukraine. During one week, we brought a set of experts to discuss the topic, working cooperatively to develop proposals aiming to demonstrate that Ukrainian refugees are more than welcome in our cities.

B.- INFRASTRUCTURE DEVELOPMENT
This research interest is based on an urban and infrastructural perspective, coming from my background as an urban planner. Part of this research was my collaboration with China Railway Limited in China and the recent publication of the book China’s Railway Transformation: History, Culture Changes and Urban Development, coauthored with Dr Junjie Xi from the University of Liverpool (Routledge, 2022).

The interest in the urban impact of infrastructural development has been translated to Bangladesh in other research projects. As a design consultant for the Center for Inclusive Architecture and Urbanism from BRAC University, Bangladesh, I was part of the presentation of the project Multi-Purposing Flyovers at the United Nations Development Programme in Dhaka in the summer of 2022.

C.- URBAN AND SOCIAL ECOLOGIES
My expertise in urban and social ecologies was mainly developed during my experience at the University of Arkansas Community Design Center (UACDC), serving as project architect and Associate Professor of Architecture and Landscape. Most projects were at the request of specific communities to provide architectural responses to their concerns. The reconstruction of small towns destroyed by tornados (Tornado recovery plan of the cities of Mayflower and Vilonia), a food hub for helping small farmers in Hawai’i (Whitmore Community Food Hub complex), a project to restore the polluted waters of Conway Lake (Conway urban watershed framework plan) and a set of proposals to create a pocket neighbourhood for retired farmers to age in the community after a life of isolation (Houses for ageing socially) are examples of projects to which I contributed in UACDC.

This interest evolved through the co-direction of the think-and-do tank Estudio Abierto/Open Studio (www.thisstudioisopen.org), a collaborative platform operating at the intersection between architecture and urbanism. Through this platform, we promoted the first and second international congresses about ultra-dense urbanism: Unpacking Dhaka in 2017 and Unpaced Shanghai in 2019. As part of the first congress outputs, we published a chapter in the book Dhaka Totem (Altrim Publishers & AECID, 2019) titled “Karail: A social assemblage in Dhaka’s center”, where we explained the particular conditions of the most critical informal settlement in Dhaka, Karail, through theories of social assemblage.

As a consequence of the research “Improving sanitation safety through soft engineering design solutions in informal settlements: Karail (Dhaka) and the pollution at Banani Lake”, funded by the University of Liverpool, which explored unsafe sanitation practices in dense informal settlements, we proposed a book to collect, analyse and compare a selection of available off-grid sanitation systems. The proposal was accepted for funding by the Spanish Agency for International Development Cooperation (AECID), part of the Spanish Ministry of Foreign Affairs, European Union and Cooperation. The book Off-grid Toilets: Compilation, Analysis and Comparison (Altrim Publishers, 2022) has just been published as a result of this research. The publication compiles and comparatively assesses 16 available off-grid sanitation systems to help communities and NGOs to select and implement such systems in informal settlements worldwide.

As part of my collaboration with the Center for Inclusive Architecture and Urbanism of BRAC University, we produced the documentary film Population Density Could be Dhaka's Blessing (2023), exploring the particular conditions of urban density in the city of Dhaka. The film was presented in Dhaka on July 12 with the presence of the Minister of Planning of Bangladesh, Honourable Muhammad Abdul Mannan (film available at:https://youtu.be/S_owiT7zvAA). We are now working in liaison with Bangladeshi authorities and policymakers to produce guidance to manage better the urban density in what is one of the densest cities worldwide.

D.- RESEARCH BY DESIGN
As a project architect at the University of Arkansas Community Design Center (UACDC), I co-led a multidisciplinary team of professionals and students in delivering projects for communities across the USA. These involved other universities’ departments (such as the Department of Landscape Architecture, the Department of Biological and Agricultural Engineering, the Office for Sustainability and the University of Arkansas Resiliency Center) and several societal organizations and stakeholders nationwide. The projects in which I was involved received recognition through 25 national and international awards. Especially relevant for this application was the 2017 ACSA/AIA Housing Design Education Award for the teaching semester Third Place Ecologies: Pocket Housing Fabrics for Aging in Community, where students and staff explored housing fabrics for ageing socially; and the outcome was published in our book Houses for Aging Socially: Developing Third Place Ecologies (San Francisco: ORO Editions, 2017).

As a chartered architect in Spain and the UK, I have always looked for opportunities to develop my research through design. I have submitted proposals to 57 national and international blind-reviewed competitions since 1990, seven of which were granted first prizes, allowing me to build five projects for the community involving more than 40,000m2 of public construction and managing almost €25 million of public funds. All these commissions were a consequence of research-by-design projects, awarded by blind peer-reviewed selection processes.

Practice-based research is an active way to create a practical impact in our society by using our capacity as architects to transform our environment through design ideas. In cooperation with WaterAid Bangladesh, we received a Partnership and Innovation Fund from Research England for the proposal “In-situ prototyping of a solar septic tank as a community-led infrastructure for improving public health in Karail, Dhaka”. Different design proposals have been completed, and we are now working on the design refinements with WaterAid Bangladesh. The research aims to build a prototype of an elevated solar septic tank connected to a social infrastructure for improving sanitation and social conditions in informal settlements and public schools.