Architecture Option Studio 1314

The Urban Rift: Seeking Abundance in Kigali’s Urban Wetlands

Rwanda is one of the world’s fastest-growing economies and a global leader in climate-forward development. But with this rapid growth comes a tension that is playing out across the African continent: Can human development and ecological restoration be advanced together, or are they fundamentally in conflict? Nowhere is this question more urgent than in Kigali’s wetlands. 

These once-overlooked ecological zones are now at the center of a major urban transformation – transitioned from informal settlements and industrial uses, to restored landscapes serving as vital infrastructure for biodiversity, flood control, climate resilience, and public life. Yet the restoration of these ecosystems has also come at a social cost, displacing thousands of vulnerable residents. In parallel, new eco-planned neighborhoods like Green City Kigali target upper-middle income and international residents, prompting questions of equity, access, and ecological gentrification. 

This studio begins with a provocation: What would it mean to pursue abundance, for both people and planet, through the design of urban housing and ecological infrastructure in one of the world’s most biodiverse regions? What if housing development could become a tool for regenerative urbanism, reconciliation, and coexistence? Students will explore these questions through ecologically significant landscapes in the Albertine Rift region: Kigali’s Urban Wetlands. 

Throughout the semester, students will examine the unique conditions that have shaped the ongoing tension between human development and ecological conservation in Rwanda. They will study the country’s approaches to economic growth, food security, conservation, craft, and tourism, and develop research-based proposals that integrate design, policy, and ecological frameworks. Early coursework will include inspiration gathering, literature review, precedent and data analysis, leading to the creation of a stakeholder engagement plan to inform the site visit. In October, students will travel to Rwanda for a week-long immersive experience to visit key ecological areas, precedent projects and meet with select organizations and stakeholders. From the trip, students will then work in groups to generate a “design playbook” and identify a project site. Final deliverables will include a development framework and speculative design proposal that centers the wetland ecosystem and housing typology as the intersecting forces that could drive a new model of regenerative urban development. 

The studio will be supported with opportunities for virtual and in person community and resident engagement in collaboration with Rwandan University architecture and planning students as well as designers at the MASS (Model of Architecture Serving Society) Kigali Office. The studio will engage directly with key partners such as the Rwanda Environment Management Authority (REMA), the Rwanda Development Board (RDB), City of Kigali officials, as well as local organizations and experts. Instructors will hold weekly in-person desk crits, seminars, and mid-reviews; visiting critics and guest speakers will be incorporated throughout the term.

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 studio will meet for the first time on Thursday, September 4th.

Who Owns the Grid? Spatializing Our Collective Clean Energy Futures

In the face of the climate crisis, distributed clean energy technologies–such as solar, geothermal, waste-heat recovery, and battery storage–will play a critical role in powering our cities. Yet their integration raises urgent questions: Who will own them? Who will profit from them? Who will benefit?

Infrastructure is shaped by both its technical characteristics and the political economy that envelopes it. With that in mind, this studio invites students across planning, urban design, architecture, and landscape architecture to explore the physical, social, political, and institutional architectures of clean energy futures.

The future grid could be a public project, co-owned by the people it serves. But planning this distributed (and democratized) grid will require efforts from across the allied design disciplines. This is why we’ve opened the studio to a broad range of GSD programs. Together, we will ask questions like: Can a community land trust also be an energy supplier? What mix of uses support a circular energy economy in a new neighborhood? How should we design buildings and landscapes for co-use while managing safety?

This studio will focus on Newmarket Square–Boston’s industrial core–where freight meets food systems, high-tech manufacturing borders housing insecurity, and addiction intersects with homelessness. It’s a place where heat risk and flooding converge, and where an aging electric grid struggles to meet current and future demands–a challenge echoed citywide.

Boston’s grid is at a critical tipping point. The system, which currently peaks at 6.1 GW, is projected to reach 7.5 GW by the mid-2030s and double to 15 GW by 2050. Without urgent action, the already strained grid will soon exceed capacity in many neighborhoods, risking blackouts, rising costs, and stalling progress on decarbonization goals.

Structured in three phases, the course will equip you to engage with the technical, spatial, and political dimensions of energy infrastructure. In Phase 1, you will work in groups to explore clean energy technologies, the grid, and conduct site research in Newmarket. We will learn directly from technical experts, historians, and energy activists. In Phases 2 and 3, you will define your design scope, select a scale of intervention, and complete your final design project. For these final two stages, you may work individually or in groups. Every project must include systems for the production, storage, and distribution of energy, as well as a plan for co-use and co-ownership.

You will choose one of three scales of intervention. (1) Parcel Scale: this could be a building or landscape that integrates a utility-scale battery storage system, substation, or heat recovery center with community-serving uses. (2) Neighborhood Scale: here we ask you to imagine an urban neighborhood powered by a circular energy economy, strategically linking programs that produce and use energy. (3) System Scale: here you’ll work at the level of planning, regulation, and governance. Your product might look like a policy platform, an implementation toolkit, or a set of illustrated standards.

By the end of the course, you will be able to understand the foundations of clean energy planning and design; apply this knowledge within regulatory and economic systems; evaluate and interpret complex site conditions; and navigate the intersections of spatial, social, and policy-based decision-making to imagine a more just, resilient energy future.

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 studio will meet for the first time on Thursday, September 4th.

Canary in the Mine

The Canary in the Mine Option Studio lands this semester in California, based at the Jack and Laura Dangermond Preserve–an ecologically critical site managed by The Nature Conservancy (TNC), one of the world’s leading organizations dedicated to environmental protection. The studio follows in the wake of catastrophic wildfires that tore through parts of California this past January. In Altadena, Malibu and Pacific Palisades, fast-moving flames engulfed hillsides, destroyed homes, and forced thousands to evacuate. Entire neighborhoods were reduced to ash, air quality plummeted, and both human and non-human communities suffered profound losses. These fires were not isolated events, but part of a rapidly intensifying pattern–one that reflects the escalating impact of anthropogenic climates on flammable landscapes.

In response to this climate-driven volatility, the studio poses an urgent question: How can we design for resilience and adaptation in an era of human-induced extremes? From wildfires to floods, tornadoes to melting glaciers, these events call for a radical rethinking of how and where we build–and how we live with dynamic, at-risk ecologies.

Focused on wildfire-prone Mediterranean climates, the Canary in the Mine initiative at the Harvard Graduate School of Design prepares students to design in–and for–extreme conditions. It positions design as a critical force in advancing Restorative Adaptation: an approach that integrates ecological recovery with cultural restitution, community stewardship, and multi-species well-being. The studio explores, therefore emerging frameworks that align: (1) Ecological symbiosis with cultural practices; (2) Community stewardship with metabolic flows and nutrient cycles; (3) Productive disturbance engaging with “wild diplomacies,” traditional knowledge, and bioengineering.

Students will develop design scenarios in which the Dangermond Preserve becomes an Analog Landscape–a living model for fire-adapted design strategies that can be applied across similarly flammable regions in California and the broader Mediterranean type of landscapes. This studio includes a six-day immersive experience in early October, featuring a site visit to the Preserve and a stay at the Field Stations, which host researchers from around the world. Students will also explore areas affected by the Palisades wildfires as well as those spared–examining how and why to design in contexts marked by pyric vulnerability. As part of this reconnaissance, students will engage in reflection and dialogue with The Nature Conservancy (TNC) team, helping to reframe the discourse of conservation as a project of restitution. The studio will be supported by advanced geospatial resources developed for the technology program of the Preserve, and students will engage with the digital simulation of wildfire behavior in development of design interventions. Upon culmination of the studio, students’ spatial propositions will be shared with partners in the form of Esri StoryMaps, a dynamic platform for spatial storytelling and analysis. The Canary in the Mine continues its mission to address rural lands and vulnerable communities across Mediterranean bio-regions impacted by climate degradation. Originally launched in Southern Europe and later expanded to Africa, the initiative is now focused on California.

Home. House. Housing.

Housing in the United States is becoming unattainable for a growing number of households including those of middle income, low income, and the very poor, affecting the housing choices families, young adults, creatives, entrepreneurs and aging populations.  Production has been unable to provide the scale of housing supply to adequately meet this demand, despite the large amounts of devalued urban land located in many urban communities where diverse housing options are desperately needed.

Additionally, how we regulate, design, finance, and build housing in our cities has been slow to adapt, innovate, and change at scale. This also affects the adaptive reuse potential of the massive supply of single-family housing in American cities, as well as the production of multi-family housing where nearly 70% of developments accommodate households of two people or less.  

Finally, for many of us, home is no longer a place solely dedicated to where we reside, but it also the place where we work, learn, create, produce (food, products, services) and find social community (virtually). A such, the design and regulation of existing residential land parcels and structures is perhaps outdated and inflexible.

Home. House. Housing. is multi-disciplinary housing studio based in two neighborhoods on the southside of Chicago that will advance radical solutions for housing regulatory, design, and production reform. These neighborhoods hold both a history of extraordinary wealth and achievements by Black Chicagoans; anchor institutions like the University of Chicago and the Obama Presidential Center; as well as a legacy of urban renewal, displacement and disinvestment.  But in recent years, the middle class, new local noprofits and creatives including Amanda Williams and Theaster Gates have invested and made these neighborhoods their place of home and production.  The core intention of the studio will be to re-examine contemporary needs and cultural-based practices of what makes a “home”, how the “house” accommodates these needs, and how the provision of “housing” should be transformed through the lens of 8-12 resident types, and explore the ways designers, creatives and residents can co-create a more diverse climate-adaptive, culturally adaptive and economically sustainable housing supply and neighborhood urban form.

Values-based learning objectives connect the pedagogy of the studio and its outputs.

Rooted in Place
• Develop land narratives, including known and lost histories and current cultural and development conditions of each neighborhood

Rooted in Personhood
• Understand of housing needs and desires through the development of household profiles

Rooted in Adaptation
• Explore reforms for economic, cultural and climate reparative and adaptive land use, zoning and building codes; neighborhood identity, density and urban form; site plan and plan development; materiality and sustainability; fabrication and construction technologies

The studio will be open to architecture, urban planning, and urban design students with the goal of producing a comprehensive neighborhood plan, land use, zoning and building codes, and model home and housing designs.

The studio outputs will include:
• Architectural designs for different housing typologies
• Urban design plans neighborhood 
• Urban planning land use, zoning and development regulatory reforms
• Studio publication/catalogue of proposed design and regulatory housing and people and place narratives
 

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 studio will meet for the first time on Wednesday, September 3^rd.

Fireworks

Fire is a powerful and transformative process, a metaphor for energy, hope, renewal, destruction, and creativity in the collective psyche. Throughout history, humans have been grappling with fire’s duality as a force that both creates and destroys. Today, fire poses a mounting existential threat that demands attention and action. As designers, we must confront how landscape interventions can both harness and evade the transformative power of fire. How can these interventions apply, contain, and control fire in the landscape?

Led by James A. Lord and Roderick Wyllie of San Francisco-based international landscape architecture firm Surfacedesign, this studio will examine the theme of fire through a multi-disciplinary lens encompassing the practical, environmental, aesthetic, and symbolic.

This studio will focus its inquiry of fire on the Napa Valley region in California. The studio will explore the interplay of art, agriculture, architecture, ecology, landscape, restoration, and rewilding, while reinterpreting the relationship to fire at the di Rosa Center for Contemporary Art. The di Rosa Center for Contemporary Art is a cultural institution and arts incubator founded by Rene and Veronica di Rosa. A pioneering Figurative and Funk Art collector drawn to emerging artists whose work often had a humorous bent, Rene di Rosa was an early supporter of Northern California artists including Roy De Forest, William T. Wiley, Manuel Neri, Joan Brown, Nathan Oliveira, Viola Frey, and Ron Nagle.

Students will reimagine the future of this eccentric Northern California art and nature preserve through the lens of fire, examining the ecological, cultural, and aesthetic reflections thereof. Building off Rene di Rosa’s legacy as an outsider, students will look for alternatives through design. Using the site as a laboratory, students will seek different models for fire management and site design, deconstructing and challenging current thinking about how we incorporate art within the landscape. Can art and landscape provide an imaginative and speculative vision for the future hand in hand with design? This studio will ask students to suggest a speculative reworking of how fire, art, and landscape meet.

Students will examine the impact and potential of fire in Northern California through a series of four discrete and interconnected modules:

The first module is a personal design exercise: a shelter embracing fire.

The second module includes the studio trip to the Bay Area and the Napa Valley. The purpose of this trip is to gain full exposure to the character, climate, and culture of the Northern California landscape. Students will meet a diverse range of local experts on the topic of fire and how it has impacted their lives. Students will be expected to document their experiences.

The third module asks students to work in groups to create a stewardship plan of the site that considers fire as a point of inspiration for the design. Students are encouraged to find alternative methods to convey design ideas.

For the final project, students will work individually to create a site-specific intervention, inventing a new typology that combines fire research, contemporary art, and land.

This design-focused studio will be open to Landscape Architecture and Architecture students; however, there will be a strong emphasis on engagement with the landscape.

After Data: Future Forests for Geneva

This studio will explore the histories and future possibilities for the forests of Geneva, Switzerland. Building on the findings of last spring’s research seminar “Cultivating Shade: Policy, Planning, Design, and Activism for Geneva’s Urban Forest,” the studio will explore Geneva’s forests at the urban, cantonal, and regional scales. The studio seeks to assist Geneva in realizing their “Geneva Urban Area Arborization Strategy” (SAG), which specifies the city’s goals for expanding its tree canopy from the current average of 23% to 30%, with no areas below 10%. This translates to an estimated 150,000 trees planted over the next 15 years. As stated in the SAG report, “…we now know that the tree is one of the key levers of the transformation toward greater sustainability…a means of action to provide answers to crucial challenges expressed on the scale of the city: improvement of the climate, environmental quality, support for biodiversity and resilience in the face of the effects of global warming.”

Beyond the technical and performative aspects of trees (what they “do” for the environment), the studio will focus on the cultural dimension of forests in a city that has operated for millennia as a cultural and political crossroads. Geneva is strategically located at the southwestern end of Lake Geneva, the largest alpine lake in Europe, where the Rhone River emerges to continue its trajectory through France toward the Mediterranean Sea. The city and its regional unit, the canton, lie on the Couvette Genevois, a geographical basin bound by the Jura Mountains and Alps. These enclose the canton in a quasi-enclave of rural and agricultural landscapes that contrast with its urban core.

However, this strong territorial identity of Geneva is belied by its bi-national and global reach. Of its 104 kilometer-long border, only four kilometers are shared with the neighboring Swiss canton of Vaud, and the remaining 100 kilometers with France. The city has grown into a cross-border metropolis, Greater Geneva, with bedroom communities for the city’s laborers on the French side characterized by socio-economic and environmental disparities. What roles will forests play in the future of Greater Geneva?

Geneva’s global reach is also an essential part of its identity. It is the European home of the United Nations, with several of its entities, such as the World Health Organization, based there. It hosts more than 40 international organizations and hundreds of NGO’s, the world’s epicenter for diplomacy and international cooperation. “Tree Diplomacy,” the planting of trees from many different geographical regions with a presence in Geneva, has a role in developing its urban tree canopy. How should we define tree diplomacy in these perilous times?

Finally, Geneva offers a range of canonical design projects that reassert forested landscapes’ cultural and experiential dimensions. Of note is Georges Descombes’s Voie Suisse. L’itineraire genevoise. De Morschach a Brunnen (1998) and the Renaturation of the River Aire (c.2010-15). We will also examine planning proposals for Greater Geneva. Max Piana, Visiting Lecturer in Plant Science and Forest Ecology, Eric Kramer of Reed Hilderbrand, and Slide Kelly, Design Critic in Landscape Architecture, will support the studio. We will travel to Geneva where there will be an exchange with landscape architecture students at HEPIA.
 

Presence of Water: Garden Inherency and New Hydraulic Culture of Kyoto

This studio aims to reexamine and reevaluate the value of Kyoto’s environmental culture as shaped by its long history, seeking to update the city’s landscape culture for a sustainable and resilient future that moves beyond its tradition and style. Kyoto, renowned for the Kyoto Protocol and its legacy of environmental stewardship, serves as an ideal site for this inquiry. Its natural wealth derives from distinctive topography and abundant water resources, nurtured by a culture that has managed these resources responsibly and in such elaborate forms for centuries.

Kyoto’s exceptional water resources, known collectively as the “Kyoto Water Basin,” are unmatched elsewhere in Japan, if not in the world. This richness, both in quality and quantity, has enabled the creation of numerous historic gardens in varied styles, earning Kyoto the nickname “Sansui City”–the city of “Mountain and Water.” The city’s plentiful, pure water has not only supported scenic landscapes but also traditional crafts and industries, greatly enriching its cultural fabric. Today, these assets continue to attract millions of tourists and bolster the local economy.

However, the strong presence of historic gardens and landscapes can at times hinder the development of new spatial expressions that reflect contemporary urban life. Many current designs remain formal and isolated, rarely engaging with Kyoto’s evolving context or environmental challenges. As a result, opportunities for innovative, practical responses to global issues and local demands for public pleasure through landscape design are limited.

Furthermore, as in many cities worldwide, Kyoto’s sophisticated hydraulic infrastructures are mostly invisible and thus have not fully contributed to citizens’ experience of public spaces. The city is increasingly affected by the impacts of climate change–hotter summers, torrential rainfall, increased risks of flooding and landslides, and shifting mountain vegetation. Although local action alone cannot resolve these issues, new adaptive strategies rooted in local resources and knowledge are urgently needed.

This studio invites students to engage with Kyoto’s unique historical, cultural, and natural resources, seeking sustainable and resilient design scenarios that transcend traditional styles. By harnessing Kyoto’s water and landscape resources at multiple scales, participants will be challenged to reveal and enhance the presence of water–long invisible–to offer holistic approaches to sustainability and resilience. These strategies will reconsider water both as operational infrastructure and as a defining element of public space.

The studio will travel to Kyoto to perform field research and acquire local knowledge. Thoughts and ideas will be tested and developed through various lectures and workshops during the semester, including the topics of Japanese urban landscape, traditional and contemporary Japanese landscape language, environmental engineering, and model making. The students enrolled in this studio are strongly recommended to take the project-based seminar, “Designers of Mountain and Water: Alternative Landscapes for a Changing Climate (PRO-7453),” to gain a more fundamental understanding of the landscapes we are living in as a result of the reactions of landscape architects to their given environment.  

Biospheric Urbanism — Changing Climates — Los Angeles

In recent years, cities have suffered on an unprecedented scale from the unfolding climate crisis. Extreme heat, extended droughts, and flash floods have created crisis after crisis in the urban environment. This studio explores how to transform the built environment to better deal with these new challenges.

Biospheric Urbanism is the study of the built environment as the interface between an uncertain meteorology and an underestimated geology. It aims at transforming the critical zone of life to better cope with ongoing changes in climate, The studio’s ambition is to be pragmatic and visionary at the same time, proposing concrete solutions for different scenarios.

This studio is the fourth in the Biospheric Urbanism series. Each studio focuses on one city as its object of study and becomes part of a cumulative series of case studies, producing a growing set of solutions for different climatic conditions. Studio sites have included Athens, Paris, and New York City and the fall 2025 studio will center on Los Angeles. Students from the former studios will present their work to students from the new studio to create a laboratory where each new studio learns from the previous ones.

The studio is organized in three acts. Students first produce a new cartography of the chosen city, revealing its different microclimatic conditions. This map is used to identify the most problematic areas and to understand the underlying causes. Students then develop a pragmatic proposal for the site and theme they have identified. The students will work both in groups and individually. The primary learning goal is to use science-based research to generate solution-based design.

Case Study Los Angeles
The studio has a double starting point. The first is Reyner Banham’s 1971 publication ‘Los Angeles – The Architecture of Four Ecologies’. Banham’s proposal to read the city as a collection of ecologies drastically changed the way of looking at Los Angeles and introduced a new model to understand the contemporary city.

The second starting point is the devastating fires of January 2025. The Palisades Fire devastated many neighborhoods along the coast, while the Eaton Fire swept through communities north of downtown Los Angeles, burning 40,000 acres and destroying more than 18,000 homes.

The studio will examine how Banham’s four ecologies – Surfurbia, Foothills, Plains and Autopia – have evolved in the last half century and if this approach can be updated to meet today’s climate challenges.

Site Visit & Partnerships
In the first week of October, the studio will move to Los Angeles. During the field trip, the students will explore the sites they identified during the first act of microclimatic mapping. They will also meet different actors in the city to better understand their challenges and ambitions. At the end of the studio, the students will present their proposals to the city so both can benefit from this partnership.

The studio will collaborate intensively with Transsolar, a firm specialized in climate engineering. Pamela Cabrera, Senior Associate of the NYC office will come to the GSD studio multiple times. She will introduce the concept of Outdoor Comfort and explain the parameters of the Universal Thermal Climate Index. During individual desk crits, these concepts will be further integrated and developed in the students’ designs.

Aqua Incognita V: Resilience Under New Climate Regimes in Valencia, Spain

Aqua Incognita aims to decipher an array of design-visions capable of advancing extreme climate resilience in the water-stressed region of Valencia, SP. Spain’s original breadbasket, but growing unsustainably, this metropolis of 1.57 million is threatened by critically unbalanced water regimes. While facing its driest year on record in summer 2024, that Fall the city withstood the deadliest DANA floods in Europe since 1967. Some areas received a year’s worth of rain in only 8 hours. The devastation took a heavy toll on human life, the environment, and infrastructure. According to experts, political-economic deficiencies facilitating the encroachment of riverbeds, non-water-wise urbanization, and climate unpreparedness amplified the extreme rains. How to break free from this Sisyphean drought to flood destructive cycle?

To answer this question, the studio will focus on one of Valencia’s most strategic Critical Zones: the Horta Sud–severely impacted along its Poyo Ravine. Segregated from Valencia by the 1969 flood-control channel of the Turia River, the Horta Sud has evolved as a patchwork of urban areas that lack symbiotic relationships within their water-wise coastal lagoon and biocultural landscape, the Albufera and the Horta. The Horta de Valencia, recognized by FAO as a Globally Important Agricultural Heritage System (GIAHS), is a millennium-old agroecological system centered on a still-functioning irrigation network of gravity-fed acequias–developed by Islamic communities in the 8thC. Characterized by high agrobiodiversity, its smallholdings produce a wide array of vegetables, citrus fruits, and centuries-old rice varieties, while also supporting artisanal fishing to the south in the Albufera lagoon. The Albufera–Spain’s largest freshwater lagoon with RAMSAR protection–sits within the Parc Natural de l’Albufera. This cultural landscape features traditional barracas, alquerías, molinos and is collectively managed through irrigator communities and the Tribunal de las Aguas, Spain’s oldest water court–also with UNESCO recognition.

Our thesis is that this millennial territory holds clues towards a resilient water future in Valencia and that after unearthing it, we’ll be able to design a better relationship between its towns, the Horta, and the Albufera by changing the present water narrative. From one of invisibility, extraction, and drainage to that of mutualism, care, capillarity, circularity, connectivity, and even immersion. From a design culture that erases water to that accepting floods as part of the necessary flowing cycle. In short, creating synergies between water and life.

Building on previous work in Aqua Incognita I-IV, we’ll continue to collaborate with experts, academia, GSD and MIT alumni from Valencia, and work directly with impacted communities. With their shared knowledge we’ll use critical cartographies to decipher and reveal vulnerabilities and potentials within the urban/agricultural duality of the Horta Sud. Individually, students will project design-visions that could increase resilience for the human/non-human communities and their environment. We will receive technical support from the World Monuments Fund and the Santa Fe Institute. The latter will host us during our studio trip to Santa Fe, New Mexico, a territory with a similar DNA to Valencia with acequias and floods. Two selected students will travel to Valencia in January’26 in representation of the class. 

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 studio will meet for the first time on Thursday, September 4th.