The Evolution of DisLocal: Integrated Frameworks & Global Governance (2020 – Present)

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DisLocal was born from a necessity to bridge the gap between architectural theory and the urgent socio-political realities of the global periphery. Under the leadership of Executive Director María Beatriz García Rincón (Mabe)—henceforth Mabe García— and Marcos Coronel in conjunction with 10 Venezuelan organizations, the platform has evolved into a cross-sectional discipline that integrates social sciences, strategic finance capacity building, and nature-based solutions into the built environment.

 

The Spark: Two Visions at Hansin Coffee Shop

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The foundation of DisLocal was laid during a defining afternoon at Hansin, a cultural heritage café in El Hatillo, Caracas. It was here that co-founders Mabe García and Marcos Coronel merged two distinct but complementary ambitions.

 

Marcos brought his "Thinking Outside the Box" series—a vision for a disruptive new school system designed to bypass traditional academic rigidity. Mabe García, drawing from seven years of urban analysis in the El Calvario informal settlement and her extensive background in international development, sought to fundamentally transform precarious urban fabric. Her goal was clear: upgrade informal settlements so that the creative arts, social sciences, and primarily women could achieve greater autonomy and a stronger political voice. This meeting sparked a manifesto to amplify female voices and established a "live" feedback loop between grassroots activism and architectural innovation.

 

Leadership and the Pedagogical Legacy

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The organization’s governance reflects this core partnership. Since 2024, Marcos Coronel has served as Co-Director alongside Mabe García. While Marcos leads the academic side and pedagogical expansion—ensuring the curriculum remains a live tool for real-world problem-solving—Mabe crafts the strategic frameworks aligning their architectural interventions with international development standards. Together, they articulate capacity-building models for government officials, university leaders, and students globally.

 

In its formative years, the team was anchored by operational and creative execution from Khristian Ceballos, alongside a strategic consortium of global innovators. This network includes architect Luciano Landaeta (Italy, Saudi Arabia, India), landscape architect Daniel Otero (Brussels), the award-winning team from Atelier Caracas led by Ricardo Armas, Urban-Think Tank's Rafael Machado (Mexico), spatial innovators Sara Valente and Marcelo Ertorteguy (Stereotank/FIU), Walter Leone, and Antonio Salas (Yuso Architects, Costa Rica).

 

Crucially, DisLocal honors the profound legacy of Dean Javier Caricatto (UCV), who joined in 2023. His leadership at the Universidad Central de Venezuela was instrumental in legitimizing DisLocal's experimental model within the academic sphere, and his wisdom remains a cornerstone of the institution's memory.

 

Global Alliances and Blended Finance: Foundations in Global Urbanism 

 

The structural framework of DisLocal is deeply informed by Mabe García’s background as a Chevening Scholar at the London School of Economics (LSE) and her foundational research at Harvard University’s Graduate School of Design (GSD), as well as Marcos' and Mabe's mentorship under Holberg Award winner, Bjorn Bertelsen (2020) at GRIP, University of Bergen.

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Between 2014 and 2016, Mabe completed an internship at Exuma Lab (Sustainability) followed by a Honors Research Fellowship at Zofnass Lab for Sustainable Infrastructure (GSD). This academic foundation directly catalyzed her subsequent tenure within the World Bank Group (WBG), including housing platform development for the International Finance Corporation (IFC) and strategic roles within the Energy and Environment departments. A key milestone of this period was her design of the upstream housing roundtable, Bottom-Up Meets Top-Down, which showcased high-impact Global South projects to international financiers. Today, she leverages this expertise to unlock blended finance investments for community real estate improvements, offering city officials equity-aligned designs under the Paris Accord and UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). 

 

Meanwhile, during those formative years, Marcos Coronel travelled across Latin America, crossing paths with formative key thought leaders like Alejandro Borrachia, going to Chile and then across South America, grasping the needs of populations across cities and comparing on-the-ground academic traditions and their impact on students' trajectories. 

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Euro-Latin American Partnerships

 

Norway & Argentina: DisLocal's international institutional presence is solidified through formal governance partnerships. This includes a formal Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) with Bjørn Bertelsen at the Global Research Programme on Inequality (GRIP) at the University of Bergen, Norway, as well as an academic alliance with the Universidad de Morón in Argentina, led by Dean Alejandro Borrachia.

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Milestones:

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1. Radical Pedagogy & The Latin GSD Invitation (2022): In 2022, the Latin Graduate School of Design (Latin GSD) at Harvard University invited DisLocal to showcase its disruptive capacity-building models. Mabe García, alongside Luciano Landaeta, featured DisLocal’s radical pedagogical approach, demonstrating how institutional and municipal training can be deployed effectively across the globe.

2. Costa Rica Field Study: Curridabat Municipality: Building upon the momentum of the Harvard presentation, Marcos and Mabe developed a plug-in curriculum with Veritas University and Universidad Latina in Costa Rica. Partnering with Yuso Architects (led by Antonio Salas and Walter Leone) and a team of dedicated interns, DisLocal replicated its 2021 El Calvario methodology to conduct an intensive study of an informal settlement along a critical river corridor in the Curridabat Municipality of San José.

3. Washington University in St. Louis: Interdisciplinary Housing Credit: Expanding their North American academic footprint, DisLocal partnered with Washington University in St. Louis. Working alongside Matthew Bernstine, Mabe García presented a comprehensive case study merging the Costa Rican field findings with her two years of targeted IFC research on innovative credit solutions for individual housing upgrades. This framework outlines how incremental individual credit can evolve into a collective housing complex over a 15-year horizon, keeping gender analyses at the forefront. Supported by the international field team (Salas, Leone, and Cesar), this data was integrated into a cutting-edge, interdisciplinary engineering and sustainable architecture curriculum.

4. Venezuela & Spain: Award-Winning Infrastructure: Between 2023 and 2025, DisLocal institutionalized its local ties through a partnership with the Universidad Central de Venezuela (UCV). This collaboration yielded three landmark urban initiatives, notably winning a prestigious award at the XIII Ibero-American Biennial of Architecture and Urbanism (BIAU) in 2024 for their nature-based infrastructure models.

 

Future Horizons: The Creative & Network Economy

 

1- Decentralization: Today, DisLocal has blossomed into a decentralized learning community spanning Europe, Asia, Africa, and South America. The platform recently launched its landmark Diploma in Cultural Eco-Design in Caracas, established through a joint venture between the Fashion Academy and the Architecture School at the Universidad Católica Andrés Bello (UCAB). This initiative connects international colleagues through a highly active network economy, allowing the Venezuelan diaspora to directly engage with the local value chain and fuel a resilient creative economy.

 

2- Post Venezuelan Earthquake June 24, 2026: Simultaneously, DisLocal remains committed to crisis response; the platform is currently mobilizing alumni networks to co-create structural and urban solutions for communities still impacted by historic vulnerabilities in the wake of the Vargas state disasters. It is creating the "Ejidos al Aire/ Weaving in Air" project that offers temporary third spaces to those ostensibly vulnerable victims of the earthquake. 

 

3- The Extended Network: DisLocal’s ecosystem operates in dialogue with parallel urban interventions in Caracas, Paris, Barcelona, Buenos Aires, Bogota, San Jose, and cities across the UK and USA. Recent, notable initiatives sprung around La Palomera (Baruta Municipality), led by Cheo Carvajal and Elisa Silva (Enlace Arquitectura)—such as the "Cauce y Acrobatico" [the River and its Acrobatic Movements] taking place at Elisa Silva's "Casa de Todos" rehabilitation project launched in March 2025 with UCV and led by Marcos. It served as vital reference points. These projects reinforce DisLocal’s commitment to ethnographic city exploration, deep socio-political contextualization, and rigorous gender analysis in architectural innovation.

 

4- Erasing Design Boundaries: Today, Mabe is co-leading Diploma of Cultural Design with Josly Medina, Ana Lugo, and Vanessa Farina, and with the active participation in specific modules of DisLocal members: Ricardo Sanz and Marcos Coronel. The project is spreading a "Made in Venezuela" artistic movement to build social bridges between local artists across design disciplines and the Venezuelan diaspora in over 160 countries. The objective is strengthening the value chain from Venezuelan primary raw materials, local knowledge into the projects and implementation with our Venezuelan diaspora as the economic bridge that transfers knowledge and help placement and bvisbility of our precious primary resources (raw materials). 

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