What is the future of urbanization?
What role can design play in shaping that future?
What will happen to the conflicting tensions between urban and rural?
How might technology transform our experience of the physical and social worlds?

This course will use the concept of the project, as both idea and implementation, to examine contemporary architecture and urbanization both reflectively and prospectively. Through a critical analysis of the historical evolution and contemporary conditions of Japanese cities and regions, and their encounters with disruption and continuity — such as World War II, the 1964 and 2020 Olympics, the bubble economy, and the 1995 Kobe earthquake — we aim to question and reimagine the future relationships between the physical and social worlds.

Drawing from architecture, urban design, technology, theory and practice, infrastructure and nature, institutions and memory, as well as literary and visual culture, the presentations consider how the physical and social worlds interact. We will examine speculative and built work from both the metropolitan centers and the regional cities, focusing on alternative models of practice, especially those emerging from younger generations responding to a post-growth condition.

The course integrates representations of Japanese life through literature, film, photography, and theory to explore the evolving tensions between center and periphery, tradition and modernity, spectacle and the everyday. While the focus will be on Japan, we will consider these ideas in light of parallel developments elsewhere in the world facing similar demographic and economic shifts.

The course will feature lectures, guest speakers from near and far, and class discussions based on a wide array of visual and textual materials provided for asynchronous review. Over the course of the semester, students undertake independent investigations into an issue of their choice, culminating in a speculative project.
 

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. This course will meet for the first time on Tuesday, September 2nd.