Santiago Cirugeda is the personification of ‘guerrilla architecture’ and set up the collective Recetas Urbanas which translates as Recipes for the City – to empower other citizens to find loopholes in planning laws to adapt and create their environments.

He has developed a series of subversive projects that explore the complexities of urban life, including the occupation of public spaces and containers; building prostheses into façades, patios and empty lots; and negotiating a way between legal and illegal zones.
Cirugeda has built housing units on rooftops, classrooms on top of a variety of institutions, and civic centres constructed from materials collected from about-to-be demolished buildings. His website details how ‘habitable scaffoldings’ can be attached to the facades of existing buildings, and other dwellings built entirely from waste materials.