CHAWANAD LUANSANG

OPENSPACE THAILAND & COMMUNITY ARCHITECTS NETWORK

Chawanad (Nad) Luansang was the founder and director of the Bangkok-based Openspace Community Architects, an organization which revolutionized the approach to rural and urban community revitalization by empowering villagers and slum-dwellers to lead, facilitate and expand their community activism beyond the revitalization process. Through successful roll-outs rural communities across Thailand, and meticulous documentation through film, web and print-based media, Nad and Openspace worked to fine-tune a scalable model that centered on a participatory, collaborative community design process. An Ahsoka Fellow in 2008 in the field of civic engagement he works for the Asian Coalition for Housing Rights (ACHR) and has been active in establishing ACCA (Asian Coalition for Community Action). ACCA is engaged in slum upgrading in 107 Asian cities in and has developed the Young Professionals Program, created to give opportunities to young professionals to work with urban poor communities.