Clara Mar Hernández López approaches her work differently. The Spanish designer and architect – an alumnus of renowned institutes such as the University of Seville, Eindhoven University of Technology, and the Rhode Island School of Design – is a proponent of taking a more sustainable approach to architecture. Also a champion of adaptive reuse, she is adamant that designers must salvage what materials they can wherever they can.
In 2016, López took to the Design Indaba stage to share with the audience what she finds so inspiring about the possibilities afforded by architecture. Cognisant of the value of already existing structures in implementing truly sustainable forms of architecture, she talks about her unique process – one that involves sketching and rendering watercolours by hand – and how the practice of adaptive reuse can regenerate public spaces, giving them a new and more contemporary layer while maintaining their individual history.