MSDUE Class of 2018–
Program Associate at NACTO (National Association of City Transportation Officials).

Eduarda Aun is an urban designer and DUE ’18 alumna. She has a background in architecture and urban planning from Universidade de Brasilia in Brazil and is the co-founder and former co-director of an organization called Coletivo MOB, based in Brasilia.

Eduarda is a designer exploring creative and critical actions for meaningful social change. Her work ranges from urban design and community engagement to research, visual storytelling and strategic design, aimed to transform the way people understand and experience cities. To that end, one of the main focuses of her work has been producing tools that assist citizens to navigate, contest and/or transform their urban environments. In NYC, Eduarda has worked at the NYC Department of Transportation (DOT) and collaborated with Street Labs and Beautiful Trouble. She is currently working at NACTO GDCI (Global Designing Cities Initiative), an organization which supports city governments around the world to implement projects that foster sustainable mobility, public space and road safety. Through policy and design guidance, capacity building and community engagement, interventions and street transformations, and metric collection and evaluations, they add to the cities’ local knowledge and provide tools to help change the roles of streets and public space. The guides developed by NACTO and GDCI build on the knowledge of experts from cities around the United States and the world, sharing and amplifying experiences so that different cities can learn from each other, towards safer, more sustainable and equitable urban mobility.

Eduarda writes:

“The MSDUE program definitely helped me better define and support my beliefs and values and incorporate them into my urban and professional practice. It not only gave me the theoretical framework in which to base it off of, but it also exposed me to some of the methodologies, design processes and the different paths I could take as a designer, other than a traditional architect/planner. It also demonstrated the need to work in interdisciplinary groups and how the different perspectives and skills are complementary and can yield unexpected and more creative work. Working in Sunset Park during the first studio was a great experience, which I think quite summarizes the program: the combination of research (using different methodologies and going deep into understanding not only the neighborhood but the systems in place that possibly affected overcrowding in public schools), participation (working alongside existing community groups) and strategic design. Proposing design scenarios which not necessarily solved the problem we were given at first (overcrowding in schools), but touching on the different aspects we learned throughout the research, thinking across scales (short-term vs long-term; temporary vs permanent) and type (program, policy, architecture design, curriculum development). And then, all of this was documented and shared in a medium that was accessible to the community, which forced the cohort to think of those design constraints, producing content that was engaging and legible to the diverse community that lived there and translating it into three languages. This process gave me a glimpse of the type of work I wanted to do, how to go about it and how to communicate it.”

Personal Links:

www.eduardaaun.com
https://www.linkedin.com/in/eduarda-aun-b4823937/