An insight into the designing and building of the "Vertical University" project in Eastern Nepal
We've entered the Anthropocene, an era that is witnessing the greatest biodiversity loss since the Dinosaurs era some 65 million years ago. In this context, the way in which we design needs to incorporate not only the requirements of human species but also non-human species. The Vertical University project emerged in Nepal, in response to this biodiversity extinction threat to protect and safeguard biodiversity found across the vertical gradient of Nepal from the lowest elevation, Koshi Tappu to Mount Kanchenjunga, 8586 m.
Priyanka Bista and Rajeev Goyal are co-founders of the Vertical University project. In this podcast, they will elaborate on how the project was conceived and developed over the last five year period.
About Priyanka Bista
Priyanka Bista is a Nepali-Canadian architect, and designer working at the intersection of public interest design and biodiversity conservation. She's the Co-Founder and Design Director of KTK-BELT studio, a non-profit based in New York that works collaboratively with local communities to create the "Vertical University" project in Eastern Nepal spanning an 8,000-meter vertical gradient from Koshi-Tappu Wildlife Reserve (67 m.) to Mount Kanchenjunga (8,586 m.), the third tallest peak in the world.
She has previously held the position of Senior Architect and Planner at Collaborative Media Advocacy Platform (CMAP), Nigeria, where she worked on the "Human City Project" employing participatory mapping, planning and design techniques in informal settlements of Port Harcourt. Over the last six years, she has been working closely with marginalized youth from urban informal settlements to rural villages to build their technical and design capacity to contribute towards inclusive and sustainable development of their communities.
Her work has won numerous awards including the What Design Can Do Climate Action Challenge, the Energy Globe Award, the SEED Public Interest Design Award, UIAA Mountain Protection Award, and Holcim Award for Sustainable Construction. She has degrees in Architecture, International Architectural Development and Regeneration and Shelter after Disaster from Ryerson University, Toronto and Oxford Brookes University.
About Rajeev Kumar Goyal
Rajeev Goyal, a native of Long Island, NY is a lawyer, author, conservationist, and a development worker. A Peace Corps volunteer in Nepal from 2001 to 2003, Rajeev was the national director of PushforPeaceCorps.org, a grassroots advocacy campaign that increased the Peace Corps budget by $60 million in 2010, paving the way for more than 1,000 new volunteer positions globally.
He is a graduate of Brown University, the New York University School of Law and a Masters in Agriculture at Cornell University. He is the recipient of the Franklin H. Williams Prize, the America-Nepal Friendship Society Award, and the Eric Dean Bender Prize. Most recently he was named an "Asia 21 Leader" by the Asia Society. His first book, "The Springs of Namje" (Beacon Press, 2012) won the Paul Cowan Non-Fiction Award. Rajeev lives between Nepal and Singapore with his partner and writes about plants and people across Asia.
Contact:
Links:
