She believes in utopias and managed to make them a reality. Her Utopian company is about to open the first floating school in Colombia in the village of Sempegua. For this ground-breaking project she was entirely supported by the ONU and the European Union. It takes time to design buildings capable of floating in case of flooding; nevertheless, her ideas are social innovation models in the world.
Lina has received T35 recognition by prestigious US Institute of Technology known as MIT, which named her the Solidarity Pioneer in 2012. She was born in Medellin (Colombia), she is 27 years old and states that everyone, from your daily life can change the reality without performing heroic acts.
According to the United Nations’ Environmental Program, the numbers related to natural disasters such as hurricanes, droughts and floods have increased more in the last twenty years . Although, the relative risk those disasters present to the population has not increased to the same extent thanks to the improvement in governance and planning of the territory; as the world population increases and shifts towards potential areas for such disasters, people’s exposure also grows.
To mitigate this problem, Lina, has developed a system that could reduce the vulnerability of thousands of families living in towns that are particularly affected by floods . Castaño has designed and tested (along with her colleagues Andrés Walker and Sergio Molina) a floating platforms prototype; prices will adjust to those established by the Government as social housing priority for about $19,000.
These platforms that have been provided to the people that are now living on them, is an affordable and practical way to deal with flood in a permanent way . Utopian team is formed by seven people (including process, administrative, mechanical and civil engineers) their current goal is to expand and bring these houseboats models to a larger scale.