Cohabitation Strategies (CohStra) is a non-profit cooperative for socio-spatial research, design, and development based in New York City, Rotterdam, and Ibiza. Founded in Rotterdam in 2008 by Lucia Babina, Emiliano Gandolfi, Gabriela Rendón, and Miguel Robles-Durán, CohStra has initiated community-engaged projects and operation centers in various cities across Europe, South and North America. Its action research endeavors to facilitate transformative and progressive urban intervention projects through active engagement with local governments, cultural institutions, artists, civic groups, researchers, designers, and activists that coalesce around the desire for social, spatial, and environmental justice. In 2015, CohStra collaborated with Philadelphia Mural Arts Program on the Center-funded project, Playgrounds for Useful Knowledge.
Lucia Babina is a cultural activist and founding member of CohStra. Babina's research focuses on reactivation of sustainable ways of cohabitation and coexistence. She is the co-founder of iStrike and iStrike.ultd in Rotterdam, an environmental organization aimed at creating multidisciplinary platforms of international exchange.
Miguel Robles-Durán is an urbanist and founding member of CohStra. He is a faculty member of the graduate program in design and urban ecologies at The New School/Parsons, and serves as a senior fellow at "Civic City," a post-graduate program based at the Haute École d'Art et de Design in Geneva, Switzerland.
