As cities confront rapid demographic, environmental, and sociocultural shifts, impermanent infrastructures have emerged as critical tools for addressing transient needs and fostering dynamic public engagement. Ephemeral Infrastructures: Designing for Impermanence interrogates the design, materiality, and societal impacts of temporary structures, proposing a systematic classification to analyze their diverse applications across global urban contexts. Students will explore infrastructures designed for transient use, including event-based pavilions, emergency shelters, mobile workspaces, and participatory art installations. In terms of use, these interventions could span categories such as speculation, mobility, community, entertainment, health, water, and sanitation, reflecting their multifunctional roles in contemporary cities. 

Key questions guiding the course include: How do we define the boundaries between ephemeral and permanent infrastructure for human settlements? What are the key factors that determine the lifespan of ephemeral structures? How can we measure the social impact of temporary urban interventions? What role does technology play in enabling more adaptive and responsive ephemeral infrastructures? How do different cultural contexts influence the design and reception of ephemeral structures? What design strategies balance spectacle with utilitarian function? Can temporary interventions democratize urban space, or do they risk perpetuating exclusion under the guise of flexibility? How do we define the line between what can be considered infrastructure and otherwise a folly? This seminar interrogates the notion of deployment and how that might influence the design of a system and conversely how redeployment or reuse could influence the imagination of infrastructure. 

Through interdisciplinary analysis, students will produce case studies and speculative proposals. These outputs aim to redefine infrastructure not as static edifice but as adaptive (building) systems that could potentially embrace uncertainty, resource constraints, and collaborative authorship.

The format of this course is that of a research seminar and will pick up from the exhibition that will be in the Druker Gallery all term. The exhibition is titled: I Infrastructure in a Time of Flux and foregrounds a body of architectural, engineering and urban innovations whose potential remains largely unrealized. Bringing together historical precedents and contemporary investigations, the exhibition examines methods of building that are lightweight, adaptable, deployable, and materially efficient, while asking why their broader social and design application has remained elusive. The exhibition poses a critical question: if architecture has produced such sophisticated methods for building with fewer resources, greater adaptability, and increased efficiency, why have these innovations rarely been directed toward the conditions that constitute the lived reality of a large portion of humanity? In reconsidering this question, the exhibition invites a broader reflection on the relationship between invention and implementation, and on the capacity of design disciplines to engage in a world defined not by permanence, but by flux. Students will study the situations that are identified in the exhibition (but expand the cases within the taxonomy) and will pick systems to explore their applicability at scale. Individual research proposal will be developed in discussion and consultation with the instructor.