Where Design Meets Belonging
A space to imagine new ways of shaping our cities, our communities, and ourselves
We’ve designed ourselves into disconnection. It’s time to design our way back towards places that hold community, care, and presence.
Our cities are not neutral. They reflect the values of the culture that shapes them. Too often, that culture has been disconnecting, extractive, and fragmenting. We’re here to imagine something different—together.
From Separation to Connection
At Design to Connect, we believe space carries more than function—it carries memory, meaning, and the possibility of healing. Through dialogue, reflection, and research, we explore how the places we create shape us—and how, in return, we might shape them with greater consciousness.
If design has contributed to separation, it can also become a path to repair. Together, we are cultivating a future rooted in care, belonging, and collective well-being.
Design to Connect began as a shared project between Arezoo and Hadil, who first met on LinkedIn while searching for answers to what felt missing in their studies and practice as architects.
The project has since evolved into a collaboration with Khadidja, and today it continues as a space co-created by two friends, designers, and storytellers who believe that our spaces shape our lives—and that we can shape them differently.
Arezoo Mohebpour
Architect & Urban Storyteller
Lecturer, Co-Founder of STIPO Italy
Author of Conscious Development (in progress)
Co-Founder and Co-Host of Design to Connect
Khadidja Konate
Architect & Landscape designer
Co-Founder of STIPO Italy
Co-Host of Design to Connect
Listen to our podcast!
Design to connect is where we can join together as a community to question, critique, and rethink our current ways of doing and imagining architecture. It is a place where we can use the power of conversation to tackle deep-rooted issues in the world of architecture and design and how it’s impacting in shaping our social norms. A place where we can reflect and come up with better solutions that are impactful and are kind to the environment and humanity.
So let’s dive in. Let’s start connecting and use it for creating something better!
We often speak of change as something we do. A movement. A decision. A strategy. But what if true transformation begins somewhere else?Over the past four episodes, we’ve explored healing in many forms through the lens of design, liberation, art, style, belonging, and identity.🎙️ In this conversation, we invite you to reflect with us on:🔹 How healing shapes the way we live and lead🔹 Identity as an unfolding, not a fixed idea🔹 Why slowing down and feeling deeply is a radical act🔹 How environments—colors, spaces, conversations—can become sites of healingWe created this series to explore what design and transformation might look like when they’re rooted in compassion, honesty, and imagination..This episode, like the series, was never about finding answers, but about opening a space, listening in, and remembering that inner change can ripple outward into the systems we dare to reimagine.💛 With deep gratitude to everyone who’s joined us on this journey.#radicaltransformation #design #systemschange .Music by SoulProdMusic from Pixabay.Music from #Uppbeathttps://uppbeat.io/t/pecan-pie/sweetness-of-the-momentLicense code: Y7M1OELFBATIWJSD