Despite working within seemingly separate sectors, we share a mission of using architecture and engineering to empower communities and with them co-design a fairer world. For Oecumene that has primarily been in the physical space, working on the ground on urban planning and design projects. For Yalla it has been in the digital space, creating technical tools to tackle societal challenges. 

However, in a context where one billion people are living in poor and insecure conditions in the world today while day-to-day existence becomes increasingly dependent on digital access, an integrated, interdisciplinary approach is called for to tackle its entangled existence.

Technology is not the solution. However it is an integral part of how we work together to build collective intelligence and create spaces for coexistence. 

Digital prototypes can provide quick, cost-efficient ways of implementing change on the ground, starting to solve problems while creating a tight cycle of learning to iterate and inform the wider infrastructure work. Technology can be a way to support research initiatives to collect and disseminate meaningful impact information. Design thinking tools and principles used to build digital solutions, can help shape how we collectively approach problems in the physical world too.

However, technology is only as good as the knowledge and design behind it. For technology to play a positive role, it must be designed with the local communities it looks to support, working with specialists in sustainable integrated planning and research. And true inclusive problem solving will always require physical activation and real world human-to-human interaction.

If we are to be successful in creating ‘smart’, sustainable places to live, we need a collective approach, always centered on the humans with whom we are building.