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 readings, workshops, and presentations in four domain focus areas that will build capacity for individual students to create an abstract for their own design-research topic. This can be a topic which you have previously worked on, a project in progress, or a question you want to develop this semester.

In Part I, Introduction, Regenerative Development and Design proposes that increasing the capacity of all living and mineral systems is the most practicable way to engage the evolving threats of changing climate. This is followed by Research and Projections, which contrasts the skills and methods of research with the art and craft of communication and dissemination.  In Part II, the Domain Focus Areas: Communities, Biosphere, Resources and, and Settlement offer source material for the individual and collective research of the cohort. The domain focus area Communities, Society and Action engages the theory, practice and forms of collective society and seeks the corresponding regulatory and policy frameworks. The consequences of world-wide urbanization and land use change have altered land, water, and air. In Biosphere and Atmosphere, the planetary scale of the biosphere is the arena of transformation in which these changes can be studied and engaged. 
Resources and Metabolic flows is devoted to the transition from a linear to a circular metabolism and the cycling of the material and nutrients that support development. Geographies and Settlement Form studies evolving built and landscape structures, including population dynamics, as they are driven by climate change. Part III, Project Development, includes workshops and a mid-term review. Finally, Part IV, Presentation and Communication includes a pre-final presentation, individual appointments, and the final review.

Each student will develop their design-research topic through three Abstract stages, first, project definition, intention, and outcome; second, research strategy and process (mid-term review); and third, engaged fields, problems, and outlook (pre-final review). A project text will follow each oral presentation.

Readings will span from established texts, recent scientific research papers, and current critical journalism. As students build their research topic they will be expected to contribute bibliographic materials to the cohort’s specific interests.

The proseminar builds on the foundational work of 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 on the interlocking challenges of climate change, and the potential to increase the capacities of living and mineral systems implied by regenerative design and development.

Each student’s work and contribution will include engaged participation in weekly class discussion, research and presentation in one of the Domain Focus Area team groups, and completion of an individual project.