Urban Design
Studio III: Water Urbanism Resilient Caribbean
Urban Design Studio II: Atlanta After Property Vol. 3
Immeasurable Sites
Site ms arch and urban design
Introduction
Urban Design
The Urban Design program engages the complex processes of global urbanization amid the emerging stress of the climate crisis. Ways of living in cities and landscapes around the world are increasingly untenable, and now require new forms of research and attention. What is the agency of design in these rapidly shifting conditions? The program frames the city not as a fixed, delineated territory but instead as a gradient of landscapes supported by networks of energy, resources, culture, mobility, and capital. It addresses near and long term threats to local, regional, and global ecosystems, positioning design as both an inclusive, activist, tools-based project for specific sites and communities, and as a critical project examining urban form, process, and knowledge.
Studios
Spring 2024
Studio III: Water Urbanism Resilient Caribbean

Teaching Associates:
Di Le, Maria “Gaby” Flores
In alignment with Johanna Lovecchio & MA Climate & Society students

Site Partners:
Dominican Republic: Punta Cana Ministerio de Turismo, Universidad Nacional Pedro Henríquez Ureña
Colombia: Fundación Social Cartagena, Universidad Tecnológica de Bolívar
Jamaica: Alligator Head Foundation, University of West Indies
The Caribbean Sea at Night, NASA Satellite Image
This studio explored future regenerative urban design scenarios for Caribbean coastal communities that weaves together social, ecological and policy/government imperatives. What does urban design mean on a hotter earth, in a globalized context where those most vulnerable to earth systems collapse are the least to blame? How can we approach the concept of resilience critically and in light of centuries of extraction, but also offer bold ideas for the future? How does the right to housing and the prerogative to invest in next century urban infrastructure intersect with the need to rebuild ecosystems, fisheries, forests ? How has a legacy of colonization and extraction led to climate risk? What is the role of urban design to catalyze resilient pathways forward in short term and long-term scenarios 2100 ?
Punta Cana: Veron Verde

The proposal seeks to generate a socio-ecological capital for Verón-Punta Cana based on the pr...

Punta Cana: Water As Catalyst

Blurring the Money’s edge.

By building Social and Economic Equity

Blurri...

Punta Cana: Resilient Collective Corridor
Through a reestablished focus on creating stronger lines of transportation and mobility as a cata...
Punta Cana: Mending Landscapes From Mine to Coast
Our project tries to engage people with the ecological value of the place. Our project advances t...
Cartagena:SEAmless Archipelago
SEAmless Archipelago embraces La Boquilla’s land fragmentation caused by sea level rise, working ...
Cartagena: Weaving Waterways

Canal Juan Angola in Cartagena is a vital link in the chain of water bodies on Colombia’s coas...

Cartagena: Semilla de Cambio (Seeds of Change)
Our Community vision for Ciénega de la Virgen mirrors its ecosystem, integrating high-ground and ...
Cartagena: From Cloud to Sea
Our strategy for Tierra Bomba Island addresses erosion, habitat loss, and water scarcity through ...
Cartagena: Cienaga del Dique
Constructed by Spanish colonizers in the 18th century, Canal Del Dique connects Cartagena Bay and...
Punta Cana: Bridging the Blues

Our project balances the complexities of Punta Cana’s profound environmental treasure with res...

EAST PORTLAND: Roots of Renewal: Centering Maroon Practices in Regenerative Design
Roots of Renewal: Recentering Maroon Practices in Regenerative Design As local maroon communities...
EAST PORTLAND: Agroforestry Field Hub: Rural Resilient Practices
The “Agroforestry Field Hub” manifested a replicable vision that embraces small scale farming’s p...
East Portland: Regenerative Rio Grande
Our initiative aims to transform the Rio Grande’s environmental challenges into sustainable...
EAST PORTLAND: Caribbean Co-op: Transforming Fisheries into sustainable livelihood
“Caribbean Co-op” aims to revitalize Jamaican fisheries by establishing a cooperative...
EAST PORTLAND: Water for All: Unlocking coastal access through springs
Jamaica’s coastline enclosure by private ownership, enabled by colonial policies, has turned wate...
Fall 2023
Urban Design Studio II: Atlanta After Property Vol. 3
How can we disentangle urban design and architecture from property? How can we use this moment of environmental and institutional reckoning to disassemble the exploitative regimes of speculation and displacement that anchor the built environment? In other words, where do we go from here? This studio aims to identify temporal slippages and spatial practices that carve out moments of liberation from the limits of property. Studio participants will develop a collective intelligence, by gathering samples from various cultural and political geographies, to experiment with ways of seeing beyond the privatized enclosure in the metropolitan Atlanta region— the city and its sprawling suburbs. The aim is to design a region (with hopes of building a world) that is not tethered to individual land ownership, but instead, predicated on collective stewardship and care. This work will be done by recognizing, drawing, and modeling ordinary spatial practices that operate against the hegemony of real estate—systems that value people over property— in order to develop a dynamic catalog of spatio-temporal constructs. Through radical reinterpretations of historical and contemporary interventions where the everyday struggle begins to approach the surreal—or even, the sublime—we aim to liberate urban design from its historical commitment to borderization. We will celebrate undervalued spatial practices that actively dismantle the cartesian frame of racial capitalism, as a gathering of performances committed to imaging a different world, because the status-quo is untenable. Atlanta After Property reframes the discipline of urban design by reimagining the city of Atlanta in solidarity with contemporary movements of Black liberation, anti-coloniality, and mutuality; working against the ruthless policing, dispossession, and displacement of marginalized communities.
Seminars
Spring 2024
Immeasurable Sites
Terra-Lapse

In the heart of a place void of time and territorial space,
Lies a practice,
Geographi...

Hadass and Vaishnavi’s Accountability Index
Stemming from readings and discussions in class, this project is born from a need for self reflec...