QATAY arquitectura ecosocial

The cooperative QATAY ecosocial architecture is formed by a team of people determined to use our profession as a tool for a change towards a more fair, healthy and sustainable society. It consists of an international team of professionals specialised and dedicated to architecture and urbanism from a social and environmental perspective. Our main potential is the direct experience and knowledge acquired and accumulated in various contexts and realities (Europe, Caribbean, Central America, South America and Africa). We share the belief that making a living is not incompatible with maintaining ethical principles of action, so we decide to guide our approach to architecture, urban planning and construction to ways of acting that prioritize citizen empowerment and social interests, cooperative work and self-management, respect for the environment, cultural diversity and the commons. We also wanted this philosophy of action to guide our internal organization. Thus we formed a work cooperative. This organization prevents unequal relations between employer and employee and ensures democratic spaces for decision-making. At the beginning cooperatives were characterized by not having the ultimate goal of economic profit but providing a good or service to society. In QATAY we want to recover this sense of the cooperative movement. We participate in activities and projects leaving some social improvement, whether because they contribute to improving the living conditions of the people, promoting art and culture base, or caring for the environment. We believe it is a mistake of the professionals of architecture to evade the consequences of what they design or build and to only focus on responding to the assignment. If your idea is to build a weapon factory or a golf course in a natural park, do not call us. If your project is respectful in every way instead, we are at your complete disposal. Once the stages of understanding, analysis and internal debate about the purpose of the project are passed, we focus on how to act. In that sense we prioritize, healthy, organic and low-cost building systems and materials. On the other hand we work bioclimatic and respectful with the environment and the historical and cultural heritage designs. We do this by using participatory methodologies and processes that involve, empower and make citizenship take co-responsibility, contributing to allowing us to lead out of the excessive dependence on large companies and powerful interests that swarm the task of creating an habitat for all. All this, together with a clear commitment to teamwork and networking with other cooperatives and associations that may complement and enrich our action, is part of our essence.