A glimpse into the research and design process of the Dreamer Institute, a new technology campus in Kabul, Afghanistan imagined collaboratively between Yale University, the government of Afghanistan, and The Digital Citizen Fund—a nonprofit that promotes tech education for females in the developing world. The project raises provocations on how architecture can be used to propel innovative thinking, cultural identity, and influence social behavior while remaining contextual.
Michelle Badr is a third-year Master of Architecture student at Yale. Prior to graduate school, she studied architecture with a focus on urbanism in developing countries at the University of California, Berkeley where she began advocating for socioeconomic and cultural inclusivity in the built environment. Her upbringing as an Afghan-American influenced her interest in the relationship between space, personal/collective identity, and social behavior. Her current projects include a new education center in Afghanistan and a gallery exhibition celebrating the subversive architectural acts that immigrant populations must conduct in order to sustain their daily lives.