The Future of Oil Boom Towns in Ecuadorian Amazonia

Geographers estimate that circa 80% of urbanization in Amazonia is peri-urban in nature. Since the urban frontier in the region is one of the fastest growing in the world, this condition calls for innovative approaches to address the future of Amazonian urbanization at multiple scales, from the regional to the architectural, paying particular attention to urban-rural linkages. At the regional scale, this studio proposes to recast Shushufindi, a highly contaminated and active oil boom town in Ecuadorian Amazonia, as a node for industrial, creative ecology where value can be added to renewable and community-managed, culturally significant, forest products harvested from agro and biodiverse polycultures. A new nodal economy of this sort could contribute to spearhead processes of productive forest resurgence in fallow areas along existing highway corridors. At the municipal scale, students will contribute to reactivate the voids of the intra-urban oil infrastructure network as a system of green public spaces (agroecological acupuncture) that may serve as support for new collective and mixed-use housing projects that incorporate the polycultural orchard system of Amazonians (chakra in Kichwa) into its scheme. This process will demand (bio)remediation of oil contaminated soil, water and air. The Municipality of Shushufindi and members of the First Nations of Ecuador will be active partners in this studio. We will also collaborate with students and faculty from FADA-PUCE. This studio is highly multidisciplinary and research based. It welcomes students from the fields of urban design, urban planning, landscape architecture, and architecture.

Designing the Conditions: Cooperative Housing in America

At the heart of how we conceive of housing in the United States lies a paradox: the goals of a house appreciating as an asset and that home remaining affordable for future generations cancel each other out. But there are existing and practicable alternatives both in the US and around the world that move beyond this dichotomy. These include limited-equity cooperatives and community land trusts. The studio will analyze the conditions that make these forms of decommodified housing possible within capitalist systems, at scale and across time. We will focus on Zurich, Switzerland, and selected municipalities in the US, including Burlington, Vermont, Minneapolis, Minnesota, and Washington, D.C. Students will then design the conditions for cooperative housing for a site in the US, testing their proposals at a scale of their choice (architectural, urban design, planning) through a specific project. In so doing, we will proceed from the assumption that architecture, finance, and regulation are always mutually constitutive.

Future Proof Neighborhoods: Old and New Housing Ideals

The search for new models for affordable housing in the world’s growing cities has never been more urgent. Good and affordable housing is needed to address the still accelerating growth of urban populations and the challenges of climate change, growing urban inequality and segregation. At the same time there is a similar urgency to intervene in existing housing neighborhoods where the same challenges ask for drastic interventions. 

To make sense of the challenges we are facing today, we need to develop critical accounts of experiences and developments from the past. In the last hundred years architects and urbanists have proposed many solutions to address the need for housing, based on high ideals and ambitions. However, often these projects, for many and complex reasons, had a short-lived future, failed, and are still failing.

The studio will investigate a selection of large-scale collective housing projects from the last hundred years, from the scale of the dwelling unit and the housing cluster to the scale of the neighborhood, the city and the territory. These different scales will be brought together in a (re-)design project for one of the investigated cases, exploring strategies for adaptation, differentiation, and densification of the housing, for rethinking and redesigning the open space and connections to the surrounding city and landscapes, leading to a model for a climate-responsive and future-proof neighborhood providing space for a diverse and inclusive community.

Agropolitan Mats, Rugs and Quilts

This studio will focus designing a suite of buildings, connective armatures and productive landscapes that can catalyse sustainable food regions in the fringes of one of Asia’s largest megacities, Jakarta. It will consider how such designs might contribute to a broader settlement typology capable of supporting relatively high population densities, mixed-use economies and agroecological principles in other parts of rapidly urbanising Asia.

Rapid urbanisation is increasingly threatening food security across Asia (FAO). Cities are sprawling at unprecedented rates, consuming fertile agricultural land and reducing the capacities of farmers to produce food in the process. Despite rising awareness of this issue, governments, developers and communities still lack the necessary designs, plans, prototypes and practical models that can meet this threat. This studio aims to contribute to this urgent need through design, research and recommendations for practical actions on the ground.

The studio will be guided by three general themes:

— Agropolitan territories: hybrid urban-rural regions developed around water-sensitive and agroecological development principles, socio-economic autonomy and decentralised technologies

— Mats, rugs and quilts: horizontal, thick 2D/shallow 3D settlement forms, typified by horizontal and dense sections, interlinking ramps, unifying roof structures, aerated open spaces integrating productive landscapes

— Seeding strategies: transformations catalysed in time (lifecycles, emergence, growth, entropy) and in thick environmental, material and institutional contexts.

We will work as a studio, in small groups and individually to develop complementary projects that combine a range of functions such as hydroponics, intensive rice farming, bamboo nurseries, mycelium production, maker workshops, electronics servicing, hawker centres, manufacturing, markets and cottage industries.

The studio will be focused on a series of 25-hectare sites located on the fringes of Jakarta, each selected for their proto-agropolitan characteristics, or their potential to develop as thriving agropolitan townships. An activity framework and associated resource-scape (living, dwelling, caring, making, growing, trading, deteriorating, repairing, reusing) will be used to develop complementary briefs for the projects.

The studio will not involve a physical fieldtrip (given the long distance to Jakarta) but will be supported in two specialist ways: a. field reporters to contribute specific site-based information to support the studio work as it develops — Jakarta-based urban design, landscape and planning students working with Future Cities Lab (FCL); b. geospatial data analytics from researchers at FCL in Singapore.

Airports and HST Stations as Nodes of Centrality for a New Age

Changes in territorial and urban mobilities play a vital role in addressing the challenges of environmental crisis. The studio will explore long-distance transportation modes as a new frontier for developing the urban future.

At the territorial scale, the high-speed train is more efficient and sustainable up to a range of 600-800 kms. Beyond this, the plane is the fastest system. The right choice of means of mobility may reduce the harmful greenhouse effect and global warming.

It is important to note that the right combination of long-distance transportation modes (HST and plane) can ensure the high-level accessibility required by an innovative economy and may reduce the negative impact of the wrong choice of modes of travel.

The studio will explore how this form of intermodality can be implemented, outlining different factors that determine the urban form of the airport and its districts in different cultures and its complementarity with other high-performance mobility systems, like the HST.

It is important to remember that this reflection is set in the context of the climate change being produced by the use of fossil rather than renewable fuels.

Added to this is a critical discussion of the circuit between industrialization and urban development that prevailed in the 20th century, which is now leading us to rethink the relationship between production and consumption in order to find more just, responsible guidelines. This emerging new age is the field outlined by the research to study new paradigms of integrated mobility and the relationship of urban territories with natural spaces that must be taken as the basis of work to be explored.

The research will select key paradigm examples of intermodality from different scopes (international, regional and local) to understand its urban influence. The Studio will test some urban design strategies to explore the construction of exciting urban districts for working, living, leisure and new forms of exchange.

Landscape Synergies of the new Energies

Faster than we would have ever thought we will and do already experience sustainable forms of energy production, storage, distribution and transport dominating and profoundly transforming all forms of our landscapes: urban, peri-urban, rural, productive, abandoned or not, and even natural, cultural and classified landmarks. The dream of a life without exploiting fossil sources and irreversibly exploiting our geological grounds seems to change from a vision to reality.

But in this rapid transformation conflicts are, of course, inevitable. Nature and monument protection rebel or are just happy to see the new power plants developed far away in the deserts of Arizona, Southern Spain, Morocco, or the Emirates.

The IEA (International Energy Agency) already in 2020 confirmed, that solar energy is now the “cheapest electricity in history”. Should these optimistic news only open future grounds for lucky shareholders and international investors and keep going on with models of profit maximization, or should the new infrastructures of energy production, transport and storage give back not only economic crumbs and some secure jobs to the local communities but help to substantially transform the territorial structures into something new and figure as catalyst for natural restoration, new rural and urban forms of food production and settlements?

With all respect to engineering requirements: why may panels, mirror and CSP elements who now get in a mono functional way implanted in power plans of several square miles size, not be arranged in alternative ways with more consideration of landscape structures (topography, hydrology, potential natural vegetation), maybe in mixed use of agriculture, settlements, services for communities, maybe even considering and getting inspiration from traditional patterns of local land use and local cultural background? What kind of “landscape synergies” can we imagine for the infrastructures of transport and storage? Who will design them? How will we design them?

The studio will face these questions and propose landscape design strategies for a case studies sites: Noor (Ouarzazate, Morocco), the world largest solar power plant. It is in a desert context with specific natural conditions, where also historical cultural traces, different forms of agriculture and settlements can be found nearby.

In a first part, we will understand and record the “engineering requirements” of the sustainable energy production, transport, and storage, and also undergo design research about the historical forms of the relationship between landscape and energy in general and in the specific contexts.

Another task will be the mapping of the relevant landscape issues of the case study site. After this, site investigation will complement the analytical approach with the experience of the real context (natural/technical/cultural/social).

The main challenge of the studio will be to define landscape and/or architectonical projects for the future development of the sites transforming the mono functional technical power plants into lively structures, integrated in a regenerated or transformed landscape that deals with synergetic opportunities of economic, technical, and material resources for different forms of creatures. This can be a large territorial project around the power plants, a network of linear or punctual interventions in the larger area, as well as the gradual mutation of the power plants and the infrastructures themselves. In particular, synergetic opportunities for the nearby local community will be developed.

BANGKOK REMADE

BANGKOK REMADE will advance alternative futures for the capital city of Thailand. The studio subtitled ‘Design to Enhance Social Dignity, Climate Resilience and Inspire the Nation’s Imagination in the Contemporary Thai Landscape’ will engage with environmental engineering, flood control and land equity as a source of pragmatic landscape design ideas and tools to understand and reimagine this delta occupied by industry and dense settlements yet, in part, also derelict, polluted and in climate crisis. In addition, the ambition of the studio is to also inspire through design the Nation’s imagination about this contrary yet vibrant Thai landscape.

The study area is situated in the Chao Phraya River Delta, and is characterized as a flat low-lying plain and forms a vast water holding and dispersion area, which once served as a resource for defense and rice cultivation. A particular studio focus will be the former port facility of Khlong Toei and the broader districts along the main artery of the Chao Phraya.

Class members working individually or in teams will design innovative solutions for existing conditions in Bangkok’s overcrowded districts by the Chao Phraya River using small scale test proposals as ‘acupuncture’ replicable across the natural and built landscape. Students will shape a landscape design language from schematic concepts to specific site details- for water detention and control that will encompass flooding and drought mitigation, brownfield reclamation, the disposal or reuse of municipal waste and the reconstruction or reinvention of landscape infrastructure, informal settlements, land sharing and public space using the themes of ‘equity’ ‘permeability’ and ‘beauty’ within the context and traditions of Bangkok’s natural and built fabric.

A sponsored field trip to Thailand will take place in early February when students will engage with experts on the Chao Phraya and collaborate with local informal settlements and environmental organizations as well as representatives of city leadership. A further visit will take place to NYC in March to participate in the United Nations 2023 International Water Workshop. Final documentation of class projects will be assembled as a document and a traveling exhibition. The studio is open to students in landscape degree programs.

Below, Above, and Beyond: Future of Antwerp’s Mobility and Public Space

This studio aims to project the near-future scenario of Antwerp 's mobility and public space. We will challenge the conventional monofunctionality of urban infrastructure by proposing the interweaving of the under- and aboveground. Two major mobility enhancement projects are currently underway in the city: the ongoing construction of the Oosterweel Link, which will close the incomplete Antwerp ring road (R1), and the planning of A102, which will enhance the city’s overall mobility in a larger European Union (EU) context while diverting as much through-traffic as possible from the city. Although both routes have been planned to run mainly underground, the proportion of underground to aboveground for A102 remains undecided (in connection with the city’s reserved green space network), which provides the studio with a tremendous opportunity to reshape the city’s car-dependent mobility infrastructure toward decarbonization. The studio will examine the four nodes on the planned route of A102 where the underground highway will rise to meet the existing community and public spaces above and will consider how landscape can facilitate a framework for such infrastructural change.

The students will carry out the project in three phases. In the first four weeks of the semester, “Part 1: Context and Imagination,” pairs of students will investigate the site, mainly on and around but not limited to A102, and will examine Antwerp’s status in regard to mobility and public space. Students will be asked to explore the best media to be used throughout the semester to present the imaginative dimension of the topic and sites. When students use sectional thinking and representation as common design and commutative tools to deeply explore the site and problem, they will be asked to find an associated tool to expand their design and imaginatively represent the spatial experience.
 
In “Part 2: On Site,” the studio will visit the site to test the findings of Part 1 and conduct field research.

In the later part of the semester, “Part 3: Landscape as a Framework,” students will first establish the overall distribution of programs along and around the A102 route, with the community and public space as priorities. Next, they will proceed to the site-specific design of one of the four nodes, in which the mobility, subterranean, aboveground, and public space network will work together to enhance the life of the community, with the eventual goal of decarbonizing Antwerp.

This is a parallel studio with the Faculty of Design Sciences at the University of Antwerp (U of A), and the studio will benefit from the dynamic exchange between the two schools. The instructor will meet in person with the class during studio hours unless otherwise indicated. The course is open to all students who are eligible to take an optional studio in spring 2023, but applicants should bear in mind that this is a very design-oriented studio, and students will be expected to communicate through plans, sections, models, and other types of representational media.

CANARY IN THE MINE: De-carbonize, De-climatize, De-colonize rural communities

Canary in the mine is a sequence of Option Studios at the Harvard GSD focused on rural territories addressing communities and landscapes subject to ever-growing vulnerabilities in the context of anthropogenic driven impacts. The new sequence of Canary in Mine will examine designated rural villages in the center of Portugal under the continuous threats of wildfires, desertification, loss of biodiversity and cultural disintegration. Importantly, it will mobilize local latencies and local knowledge for increased resilience through the agency of design pertaining three topics: de-carbonization, de-climatization and de-colonization. In close collaboration with the New European Bauhaus, under the goals established in the European Green Deal, the Option Studio will explore design strategies toward new economic, social, and ecological paradigms. With approximately two-thirds of the country considered “rural,” the symptoms of current wildfires and expanding droughts are a warning and a prospect of what the future holds for Mediterranean landscapes; and, potentially, a springboard for new planning/design principles in today’s challenges.

The WHY questions are, for instance: Why is “rural” considered “rural”? Why are certain landscape features constructed in a particular manner and for which purposes? Why are climate driven crises so extreme in these territories? Why are rural communities disenfranchised? Why has the “rural” been marginalized? And why is important to revisit the “rural”? The HOW questions are: How will climate change impact these hinterlands? How can landscape (soft and hard) mitigate such thermal trends? How did the landscape (as a product of the deep symbiosis) reach the current state? How can the landscape be re-imagined as an infrastructure or medium for increased resiliency in the context of ever-growing wildfires? What new economic possibilities inform resilient forms of acting/forming the rural territory? And finally, how can the communities and their social/productive practices be re-integrated in the formation of the built environment?

Biospheric Urbanism – Changing Climates

Critical Moment
The climate crisis poses the urgent question of how to make our built environment more resilient to the challenging atmospheric changes such as heat islands, rising temperature, intensified rainfall, and longer droughts. Landscape architecture has a long history in using growth and transformation as its agents to better inhabit this planet. This unprecedented crisis represents an opportunity, and equal responsibility, for landscape architecture to radically rethink its field.

A City as a Myriad Microclimates
Cities account for over 70% of global carbon dioxide emissions worldwide, while only taking up around 3% of the land space. As such, cities present a crucial opportunity to combatting the causes of climate change, while needing an urgent mitigating of its effects. A city can be understood as an imbrication of a myriad of microclimates. Buildings change wind patterns and sunlight exposure, while the streetscapes changes soil permeability, runoff, and solar radiation.  

Urban Ecologies
For each man-made micro-climate, there exists a comparable natural condition. Using the logic of nature, our cities can be transformed into complex urban ecologies.

Biospheric Urbanism
Biospheric Urbanism is the study of the built environment as the interface between meteorology and geology. It aims at transforming the critical zone between above and below to better cope with uncertain changes in climate, while better using its underground resources.

Option Studio
The Option Studio will take New York City as its main subject of study in three acts.

The first act is to map the existing microclimates of the city, using all data available. This climatic cartography will help identify the most crucial area where each student decides to intervene.

The second act consists of conceiving a climatic project for the chosen area. A thorough analysis will be conducted of the existing physical conditions, with a special emphasis on the underground and its geology.

The third act is about the transformation of the chosen area into an urban ecology, effectively changing its microclimate. This will be achieved with the help of other fields like pedology, hydrology and ecology. The main ambition is to elaborate a pragmatic proposal that is based on a strong vision for the future.