How we power our lives dictates how we live together. Far from neutral webs of wires and meters, our energy networks are material architectures of political power, cultural desire, and social order–shaping everything from our definitions of personal freedom to the intimate choreographies of our daily routines. As we race to decouple from petromodernity, however, mainstream transition strategies risk enacting a punitive new era of green capitalism, where utility-scale solar and battery rollouts claim vast territorial frontiers while uncoordinated grid electrification triggers a financial “death spiral” for legacy gas networks.

This year’s studio focuses on an acute crisis within the US energy transition: the last user problem. This is a rapidly approaching future where, as wealthy households unbundle themselves from gas infrastructure, low-income and marginalized households will be left stranded, burdened with the skyrocketing costs of a decaying system.
Using Boston as our testing ground, we will reject hyper-individualistic, extraction-dependent transition planning in favor of alternative paradigms. Asking: How will we get off gas–together, and what will come next?

This is an intensely spatial question, involving new densities, use mixes, landscapes, and building typologies for sharing, repurposing, and balancing energy loads through the use of thermal energy networks, sewer-heat recovery, micro-grids, and more. It’s also a social and political question: How will this transition change our society and economy more broadly? Informed by cooperative ownership models and relational ethics of care, we will explore how the energy transition can be used to transform not only energy distribution, but democratic culture and just spatial practice more broadly.

The strongest proposals will exemplify grounded speculation: a clear-eyed understanding of the here and now; the confidence to propose radical breaks from it; and a clear theory of change for getting from here to there. Starting with critical readings in infrastructure studies and history of science, alongside a direct study of Boston’s energy grid and its governance, students will move on to proposing radical spatial and political solutions.

All projects will be expected to bridge three distinct scales:
– At the system scale, students can propose interventions on critical enabling legislation, zoning strategies, political coalitions, and movement building that can have systematic impact beyond a single site.
– At the spatial scale, students will propose what a world resulting from this system scale change will physically look like.
– Lastly, students will be asked to engage with the experiential scale, producing artifacts and ephemera that evoke the experience of inhabiting that life-world.

In keeping with the sense of radical imagination underpinning this studio, students are encouraged to generate a variety of deliverables to communicate their ideas, from more traditional forms of spatial representation to audio, video, and other forms of media.

Students will come out of the studio with a deep technical understanding of existing energy networks, emerging energy technologies, and their urban implications–alongside the ability to design radical socio-technical alternatives.

No prerequisites are required, all disciplines are welcome.