Rider on a brown horse in a grassy plain with distant hills; wearing beige jacket, knit cap, and colorful saddle blankets.

Civil Challenges - A Book on Urban Thinking

Red hardcover book with bold black lettering on the cover, lying on a dark surface.

Every week for the foreseeable future until 2050, our cities will grow by more than one million people. Contempt for human rights and freedoms, coupled with striking inequalities in living conditions reveal one of the greatest architectural challenges of our time.

The blatant inequality of living conditions in metropolises and megacities is one of the major humanitarian challenges of our time. Architecture can never be neutral. It is called upon to recognize and fulfill its social responsibility—not only—in urban planning.

This book elucidates the connections between architecture and human rights through a vibrant collage of narratives, photos, designs, and critical dialogues.

Edited by Tiziana Panizza Kassahun, published by niggli Verlag. See also: architectureandhumanrights.org.

Red poster promoting a book on human-centered urban thinking; bold black text lists adjectives like sustainable, inclusive, democratic.
Person in traditional attire rides a brown horse with a colorful saddle blanket across an open grassy plain.
Two-page magazine spread with bold pink title about who owns cities and urban takeover on the left, with dense black column text on the right.
Open book spread; left page features bold WE ARE ALL FROM ADDIS with Introduction, right page dense column text.
Open book two-page spread; left red page with UN proclamation header; right page with dense human-rights text.
Open magazine spread: two pages with bold red titles RAHEL and EYABEZ; dense text about displacement and eviction.
Dog stands in a driveway behind a tall iron gate topped with barbed wire at a brick house.
Deep muddy construction trench along a city street with workers and excavating machinery; high-rise buildings under construction in the background.
Two-column black page listing Articles 1-16 rights titles in white serif text.
Red typographic poster with white uppercase text reading ARCHITECTURE AS EARLY WARNING SYSTEM.
Two-page architectural spread showing left page The truth in architecture and right page Adaptive is the word, with a large black rectangle.
Colorful laundry hangs on clotheslines across a grassy field, with beige apartment buildings in the distance.
Two-page red magazine spread with white placeholder panels and text blocks, including an Eleanor Roosevelt quote on universal rights.

Written by Tiziana Panizza Kassahun

Foreword by Saskia Sassen

Visual essay by Stefano De Luigi

Published by niggli

Rosebud delivers Editorial Concept, Editorial Design, Book Design, Webdesign and Social Media.

Stack of red books with white "Architecture & Human Rights" text on the spines, arranged as a cube on a gray surface.
Damaged billboard depicting a 3D apartment complex at an urban construction site; a person sits on rubble by green-yellow fencing.
Dilapidated mud-walled shack with wooden beams; blue tarps cover it and a white door is propped against the wall.
Rubble-strewn street with bent corrugated metal sheets and debris; yellow jerrycan in foreground, people nearby, church tower in background.
Static red webpage poster displaying a book cover with a bold uppercase title listing adjectives; white caption strip at bottom.
Two-panel poster: left black panel with 'ARCHITECTURE AS EARLY WARNING SYSTEM'; right red panel with 'CRITICAL CONVERSATIONS'; bottom white quote band.
Adult in pink headscarf and gray protective gown stands in a grassy field with wildflowers; power infrastructure in background; A Visual Essay.
Person in plaid shirt and jeans stands with hands behind back, looking through a window in a teal-and-orange striped, abandoned wall; black pillar.
Person lying down on a wooden pallet behind a corrugated metal fence at a construction site with piled logs.
Young person standing with hands on hips in a cluttered blue-walled kitchen, surrounded by pots, drawers, and containers.

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