Harvard University’s KDI was founded last year by the Graduate School of Design’s Center for Technology and Environment to enable landscape architecture students to get out into the field and apply ­participatory methods and environmentally sensitive techniques to urban revitalization projects. (The Thai word Kounkuey refers to the process of getting to know a place or thing.) This August KDI launched its kickoff project in Kibera, Nairobi, an urban slum that spans 600 acres and houses 800,000 people, with no potable water and an average of 175 people per toilet.

 

For KDI sustainability hinges around one essential resource: water. Many of the low-tech sanitation solutions the program envisions, such as plant-based wastewater facilities, clean-water wells, and wetlands—which pull pollutants out by moving water through plant roots—use locally available and self-sustaining resources to improve sanitation throughout the slum rather than implementing piecemeal solutions that don’t correspond to an area’s social patterns. “It’s about social and environmental sustainability,” cofounder Patrick Curran says. “We pay attention to cultural norms and tie that to the technical aspects of sustainability.” —Diane Mehta