CHAPA is an architecture and urban design practice based in Austin, Texas, and São Paulo, Brazil. Its name, CHAPA, means “urban guide” in Portuguese—reflecting the studio’s mission to navigate complex urban challenges through community-driven design, research, and planning. This approach is shaped by founder and studio lead Kristine Stiphany, a Fulbright Fellow and co-author of the forthcoming book Insurgent Urbanisms in the Americas, who brings over a decade of experience in slum upgrading and immersive participatory work in São Paulo.

From 2015 to 2017, Stiphany was a National Science Foundation Social, Behavioral, and Economics Fellow at the University of Texas at Austin, where she conducted a major study on urban informality in São Paulo in collaboration with the University of São Paulo’s Polytechnic School (NSF#1513395). She has also been a visiting professor at São Paulo’s Escola da Cidade and was a finalist for the 2024 Princeton Mellon Fellowship.

CHAPA’s recent work includes two community-led preliminary designs for the revitalization of under-resourced neighborhoods: the Brownie Park Revitalization in Austin (2017) and the Sparks Oasis Community Center in El Paso (2024), both recognized with a Texas Society of Architects Studio Prize. CHAPA also contributed to Sobradinho, an honorable mention-winning design for a 2016 social housing competition in Brasília, in collaboration with Shundi Iwamizu Arquitetos Associados in São Paulo.

In 2018, CHAPA was awarded a Smart Cities Award by the American Planning Association for developing ComuniDADOS, a data visualization tool that empowers informal communities to map and utilize their own data.

CHAPA’s work has been widely presented, including at the 2016 United Nations Habitat III Conference in Quito, Ecuador, the Cities and Economy Symposium at the University of São Paulo’s Faculty of Architecture and Urbanism (2016), and the Salk Institute in the fall of 2024.