Proseminar in ECOLOGIES: Regenerative, Interrelated, Evolving

“Ecology is not simply a project of the natural sciences. Ecology is an overarching idea for a set of conditions or relationships with political, economic, and social implication.”
         – Chris Reed and Nina-Marie Lister, Projective Ecologies, 2013.

The Domain of ECOLOGIES engages the relationships between the living and mineral world, between science and technology, between infrastructural and ecological networks, and between human society and the non-human world that sustains us.

The role of the proseminar is to introduce students to the range of individual and group research presently being pursued by GSD faculty, across Harvard schools, the Loeb Fellows, and researchers and practitioners from many disciplines. Concurrent with the research presentations will be collaborative workshops on selected themes. Both will form the context for students to create an abstract for a design-research topic they may pursue in their subsequent work.

The workshops topics: Regenerative Development and Design, Research and Projections, Community, Society and Action, Resources and Metabolic Flows, Biosphere and Atmosphere, and Geographies and Settlement Form, will be undertaken by student teams and provide source material for the entire cohort. Regenerative development and Design proposes that increasing the capacity of all living and mineral systems is the most practicable way to engage changing climate. Research and Projection contrasts the skills and methods of research and art and craft of communication and dissemination. Community, Society and Action engages the theory and practice of collective society and seeks policy frameworks to build a just, resilient, and temperate future. Resources and Metabolic Flows is devoted to the transmission from a linear to a circular metabolism and the cycling of material and nutrients that support development. In Biosphere and Atmosphere, the planetary scale of the biosphere is the arena of transformation in which these changes can be engaged. Geographies and Settlement Form studies changing spatial structures and population dynamics as they are driven by climate change.

Readings will span from established texts, recent scientific research papers, and current critical journalism. 
The proseminar builds on the foundational work in the first iteration of ECOLOGIES. It is a venue for addressing questions of resource depletion, food and water insecurity, habitat and biodiversity loss, global policy and development disparities, regulatory misalignments, social and cultural upheaval, and inequities in wealth distribution and public health outcomes. The proseminar will focus attention to the interlocking challenges of climate change, and the potential to increase the capacities of living and mineral systems implied by regenerative design and development.

Note regarding the Fall 2025 GSD academic calendar: The first day of classes, Tuesday, September 2nd, is held as a MONDAY schedule at the GSD. Courses that meet only on Tuesdays will meet for the first time on September 9th. Courses meet regularly otherwise. Please refer to the GSD academic calendar for additional details.