awards + accolades
Bronze Winner
Jan, 2024
Outstanding Young Planner Award of Merit: Naria Kiani
Jun, 2023
Honorary ASLA Member - Chelina Odbert
Jun, 2023
Excellence in Advancing Diversity and Social Change in Honor of Paul Davidoff
Oct, 2022
National Design Award for Landscape Architecture
Sep, 2022
General Design Award - ASLA Southern California
Sep, 2021
Equitable Communities Champion Award - ASLA Southern California
Sep, 2021
Low-Rise Design Challenge
May, 2021
SCAG Award for Efficient and Sustainable Land Use
Apr, 2021
Emerging Voices 2021
Mar, 2021
WRI Ross Center Prize for Cities
Dec, 2020
Emerging Planning and Design Firm
May, 2020
Excellence in Transportation Planning
Sep, 2019
Public Space Fellow: Chelina Odbert
Jun, 2019
Next City Vanguard: Naria Kiani
May, 2019
Kevin Lynch Award
Oct, 2018
Richard Trevithick Prize
Jun, 2018
Neighborhood Revitalization Award
Mar, 2017
Curry Stone Design Prize
Jan, 2017
Elijah Agevi Fellow: Jamilla Harper
Jan, 2017
Next City Vanguard: Chelina Odbert
May, 2016
Amplify: Urban Resilience Challenge
Jan, 2016
The Rockefeller Storytelling Award
Jul, 2015
National Creative Placemaking Fund
Jul, 2014
Ideas Scholar: Chelina Odbert
Jun, 2014
Dubai International Award for Best Practice
Feb, 2014
Architecture of Necessity Triennal
Jun, 2013
Designer and Advocate Shaping the World: Chelina Odbert
May, 2013
Disruption Index
Dec, 2012
2012 Innovation Challenge
Jun, 2012
Emerging Innovator: Chelina Odbert
May, 2012
ReSource Award for Sustainable Watershed Management
Apr, 2012
Sustainable Urban Housing: Collaborating for Livable and Inclusive Cities
Apr, 2011
New York Prize Fellowship
Apr, 2008
books + publications
Annual Report 2023
Apr, 2024
Annual Report 2022
Oct, 2023
From Kibera to Kalobeyei: Public Space as a Catalyst for Transformation and Integrated Planning
Dec, 2022
Technical Brief on Kibera Road Developments 2021
Apr, 2021
Hybrid Infrastructures, Hybrid Governance
Dec, 2019
Participatory Flood Modelling for Negotiation and Planning in Urban Informal Settlements
Apr, 2019
The Nairobi Dam: From Community Resource to Open Sewer – and Back Again
Nov, 2018
Using Future Scenario Planning as a Tool for Informed Decision Making on Infrastructure Interventions in Kibera, Nairobi in Kenya
Nov, 2018
Division or Development? Missing Link #12: A New Road Through Kibera
Jul, 2018
The Coachella Valley: Reimagining the Banks of the Salton Sea
May, 2018
Community Camera: Piga Picha
Dec, 2017
Green Infrastructure and Tin Roofs
Oct, 2017
Developing Risk or Resilience?
Mar, 2017
The Kibera Public Space Project
Jun, 2016
Community-responsive adaptation to flooding in Kibera, Kenya
Jun, 2016
The Kibera Public Space Project
Jan, 2015
Place-Based Creative Problem Solving in Action
Nov, 2013
Kibera Public Space Project 1 + 2
Mar, 2012
Megacities: Complexities at Urban Edges
Mar, 2011
An Expanded View of Agriculture in Ouled Ahmed
Mar, 2011
Kounkuey Design Initiative
Oct, 2010
exhibitions
The Future of Space
May, 2020
Conflicts of an Urban Age
Oct, 2018
Tujenge na Solar
Nov, 2016
Pop-Up Public Space
Oct, 2016
By the People: Designing a Better America
Sep, 2016
Africtecture: Building Social Change
Sep, 2013
Think Global, Build Social! Architectures For a Better World
Jun, 2013
Architecture of Necessity
May, 2013
Design with the Other 90%
Oct, 2011
Exhibition Vision Verte - ViVe Casa II
Mar, 2011
Dirty Work: Transforming Landscape in the Non-Formal City of the Americas
Jan, 2008
interviews
Designers Select: Landscape Products
Mar, 2023
Next Progressives
Apr, 2021
Policy Advice to Respond to Covid-19 in the informal settlements
Apr, 2020
A Space for Everybody
Apr, 2020
Forging a Common Understanding: Q+A with Vera Bukachi
Mar, 2019
Economic and Social Development by Design: Q+A
Apr, 2017
Using design to help solve a community’s greatest challenges
Mar, 2017
Making Public Space Productive
Feb, 2017
Building a Sustainable, Social Architectural Enterprise
May, 2011
newsletters
KDI at the World Urban Forum
Feb, 2020
Let's Get to Work!
Jan, 2020
Reflections
Dec, 2019
Giving Thanks
Dec, 2019
Stories of resilience
Oct, 2019
Get outside!
Jul, 2019
June newsblast
Jun, 2019
Climate Warriors
May, 2019
Celebrating women
Mar, 2019
press
Making Shade Where There Isn't Any
Oct, 2023
Women’s Movement: Removing Gender-based Transportation Barriers
Apr, 2023
The Road to Equity
Jul, 2021
How Weather Forecasts Are Changing Lives in Kenya and Tanzania
Apr, 2021
Fines and Confiscation: Explaining L.A.’s Arbitrary Street Food Cart Law the County Uses to Criminalize Street Vendors
Mar, 2021
KDI is a global firm that respects local context
Feb, 2021
Gardens of Kibera: The Kibera Public Space Project
Feb, 2021
After COVID-19, What’s Next for Landscape Architecture
Jun, 2020
Philly is making it easier to turn your block into a place for play this summer
May, 2020
Studying Public Space, No Strings Attached
Aug, 2019
9 Women Using Architecture to Change the World
Aug, 2019
Chelina Odbert selected as 2019 Knight Foundation Public Space Fellow
Jun, 2019
Great Public Spaces: Five Street Transformations
Mar, 2019
How to Design Playgrounds for the World’s Most Vulnerable Kids
Mar, 2019
New program helps residents turn empty lots into community gathering spaces
Dec, 2018
Chelina Odbert and Jennifer Toy, Kounkuey Design Initiative
May, 2018
Los Angeles Tests the Power of "Play Streets"
Apr, 2018
In Unused Space, Endless Potential
Jan, 2018
To Build a Great Public Space, You Need More Than Good Design
Mar, 2017
The Kind of Thinking Cities Need
Oct, 2016
KDI Kenya Country Director, Tatu Gatere, Invited to Speak at Habitat III on the World Stage
Oct, 2016
Next City Selects World Stage Speaker From Hundreds of Applicants
Sep, 2016
A Story to Encourage Storytelling: “We have a life in Kibera”
Feb, 2016
Thinking Big by Designing Small
Jan, 2016
What Kenya's Biggest Slum Can Teach Us About Saving Cities From Floods
Jan, 2016
North Shore: Projecting the Future
Nov, 2015
The Spirit of North Shore
Jun, 2015
Out of Desert Dust, a Miracle on a Shoestring
Jun, 2014
KDI Launches WATSAN Portal: Kibera
Feb, 2014
KDI Awarded Grant from The Rockefeller Foundation
Feb, 2013
Can Designers Improve Life in Non-Formal Cities?
Apr, 2008
selected talks
Equity in Climate Change Adaptation
Aug, 2019
Fit to Scale: Community Engagement for Site, City, and Region
Jun, 2019
Creating Agency: The Power of Community Organizing
May, 2019
Design for Health
Apr, 2019
Women in Kibera: Climate Warriors
Mar, 2019
Ask, Listen, Collaborate, Repeat
Oct, 2018
Crime and Fear in Public Spaces
Oct, 2018
Acknowledgement to Action: From Identifying Systems of Oppression to Designing Community-led Interventions and Systems Change
May, 2018
A Tale of Two Ponds
Apr, 2018
Afrika Design
Mar, 2018
Urban Risk or Resilience? Opportunities for Improving Informal Settlements in Urban Africa
Mar, 2018
One 'Slum', Three Upgrades
Mar, 2018
City-Citizen Collaboration in Contested Spaces
Mar, 2018
The Salton Sea and the Nairobi Dam: A Parable of Two Ponds
Nov, 2017
Dangerous Landscapes? Re-Thinking Environmental Risk in Low-Income Communities
Nov, 2017
Advocacy Through Design; Ecology, Design and Community at California's Salton Sea
Oct, 2017
A Tale of Two Cities: Creating Productive Public Spaces in Nairobi and Coachella
Oct, 2017
The Role of Informal Actors as Service Providers in Urban Africa
Sep, 2017
Urban Tinkering: Innovation in Nature-Based Solutions to Simultaneously Address Climate Change and Uncertainty, Improve Urban Health and Generate Multiple Other Benefits
Aug, 2017
Heterogeneity in flood and linked risks across neighbourhoods in Kibera, Nairobi
Aug, 2017
Community-Responsive Adaptaton: A Transformative Process for Environmental Remediation along the Informal Settlements of the Ngong River, Nairobi
Aug, 2017
Community-Responsive Adaptation to Flooding
May, 2017
Community-Responsive Adaptation to Flooding in Kibera, Nairobi
Mar, 2017
Implementing the New Urban Agenda: From Local to Global Sustainable Urban Development
Dec, 2016
By the People: Designing a Better America
Oct, 2016
Community Engagement and Tactical Urbanism
Oct, 2016
Nuestro Lugar & Productive Public Spaces
Oct, 2016
Regional Planning Through Local Community Outreach
Oct, 2016
Be Heard
Oct, 2016
Providing Safe, Inclusive and Accessible Public Spaces
Oct, 2016
Focus Africa: Informality and Urban Pattern
Jul, 2016
Kibera Public Space Project: A Participatory Approach to Upgrading in Nairobi's Largest Slum
Jul, 2015
Placemaking at the Edge of the Salton Sea
Jun, 2015
Powerful: Women Leading Design Symposium
Feb, 2015
WATSAN Portal: Kibera – Improving Access to Water and Sanitation in Nairobi’s Largest Slum
Jun, 2014
Kibera Public Space Project: a Participatory Approach to Upgrading in Nairobi’s Largest Slum
Jan, 2014
Sustainable Urban Alternatives through Productive Public Space
Apr, 2012
Global Innovations in Development and Housing
Apr, 2012
Sustainable and Inclusive Cities: the Right to the City
Nov, 2011
Landscape, Infrastructure and Urbanism in the Global South
Oct, 2011
Emergent Cities: Navigating the MIDDLE
Apr, 2011
The Right to the City - Bridging the Urban Divide
Mar, 2010
Work Sessions in Kibera, Kenya
Nov, 2006
videos
Women in Kibera: Climate Warriors
Feb, 2019
Ask, Listen, Collaborate, Repeat
Oct, 2018
#CityShapers: Ibrahim Maina
Sep, 2018
Resilience Building: Interview with Vera Bukachi
Apr, 2018
Tatu at the UN: The Future of Nairobi
Sep, 2016
The Spirit of North Shore
Jun, 2015
We Have a Life in Kibera
May, 2015
Meet KDI
Dec, 2013