Ecologies

The relationships among changing environments, varied forms and traditions of human settlement, and the material, infrastructural, and ecological networks required to sustain life raise some of the most challenging questions currently at the heart of public discourse and intellectual inquiry.

These topics, the problems they give rise to, and their increasing urgency require knowledge and engage insights from across a spectrum of previously distinct areas of study. At its most fundamental, ECOLOGIES is the cross-disciplinary study of the relationships between living and non-living entities on the one hand, and their social, cultural, and environmental contexts on the other. The interventions we seek, be they physical, philosophical, or political, look beyond current notions of sustainability and resilience to practices that increase the capacity of living and mineral systems.

Advanced study students in the ECOLOGIES domain learn to think about systems as interrelated, dynamic, and evolving. Organisms and material resources are always products of their interactions with various ecological processes, social/cultural histories, technologies, economic and political systems, and ethical frameworks. These lenses will open new ways of seeing and new forms of inquiry, design, and policy-making that embrace these interactions.  Candidates will work across scales and across disciplines, taking on urgent issues of climate change, 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, to name a few.

This area of study is particularly relevant for individuals who might pursue careers in the following areas:

1. critical, transdisciplinary design, planning, and management practices working in the public realm and relative to broader environmental issues;
2. advanced research and teaching in and adjacent to the design and planning disciplines, including the development of pedagogy around environment, infrastructure, and equity; and/or
3. leadership in political, governmental, NGO, and non-profit realms, especially around public and environmental policy.

The curriculum will be shaped and taught by internationally recognized scholars and practitioners across various design disciplines and complemented by access to leading experts and resources at affiliated research centers and graduate schools throughout Harvard University and beyond.

Proseminar in ECOLOGIES: Regenerative, Interrelated, Evolving

“Ecology is not simply a project of the natural sciences. Ecology is an overarching idea for a set of conditions or relationships with political, economic, and social implication.”
– Chris Reed and Nina-Marie Lister, Projective Ecologies, 2013.

The Domain of ECOLOGIES looks beyond limits of sustainability and resilience to practices that increase the capacity of living and mechanical systems. It engages the relationships 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 collaborative workshops on selected themes. Both will form the context for students to create an abstract for a design-research topic they may pursue in their subsequent work.

The domain focus areas: Culture and Society, Research and Projections, Biosphere and Atmosphere, Resources and Metabolic Flows, and Geographies and Settlement Form, will be undertaken by student teams to provide source material for the entire cohort. As an introduction, Regenerative Development and Design proposes that increasing the capacity of living and mineral systems is the most practicable way to engage the evolving threats of changing climate. The domain focus area Culture and Society investigates the relationships between traditional, modern, and future models of settlement, landscape, and economy including the theory and practices of collective society and their corresponding regulatory and policy frameworks. Research and Projection contrasts the skills and methods of research with the art and craft of communication and dissemination. The consequences of worldwide 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 material and nutrients that support development. Geographies and Settlement Form studies changing spatial structures and population dynamics as they are driven by climate change.

The work of the domain focus area group presentations, the readings, and guest presentations will support students in creating an individual research project developed through stages from abstract to final presentation. The 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 to bibliographic materials reflecting the cohort’s specific interests.

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

Domain Head

Alex Wall, Design Critic in Landscape Architecture

Research Affiliations

Harvard University Center for the Environment
Just City Lab @ Harvard Graduate School of Design
Harvard GSD Office for Urbanization
Harvard Center for Green Buildings and Cities