Abstract
Methodology
Our contemporary cities exist in perpetual urgency: metropolitan territories demonstrate tremendous diversity and complexity in
This first semester introduces students to an urban design process. In urban design, site is not a given; students must identify and
growth and decline. By 2050, 70 percent or so of the world will live in cities. What does it mean for us to live together? And what will
investigate the complex, layered contexts, operating at multiple scales, within which urban places are embedded. Similarly, the
it mean for us to live together, several generations from now in the future? To elaborate this paradox is to understand the uestion
construction of program is within the urban designer’s purview; opportunities exist to extend and expand the field for human action
of organization, or how we live together and mix. It is through this lens and the interdisciplinary filter of urban design that we must
and interaction. Working in multiple scales as well as multiple time frames will be an integral part of this investigation to design an
today more than ever question/probe/critique/rebuild/re-invent our built and natural systems.
intervention that follows a speculative hypothesis for the future of the City The techniques of investigating a site; its physical and
Introduction
non-physical context; its geographic, historical, or socioeconoic apects; its boundaries and networks; and its areas of influence and
impact create knowledge about the site. In this studio, we treat drawings, diagrams and models not as final representations of a
This studio engages New York City as a laboratory and introduces the ideas, representations, and techniques of contemporary
proposal, but as material evidence for a process of “thinking through making”. Students will be introduced to a variety of different
urban design and discourse through the lens of a resilient built environment. By analyzing and questioning the morphology/or-
techniques throughout the semester and we encourage students to test, refine, and sharpen skills of representation as a means
ganizations/processes inherited from the past, we will propose a new vision for the city. We will innovate new patterns of human
of thinking and communicating complex ideas. In developing an urban design project, the process by which we imagine a project
concentration as opposed to perpetuating the last 80 years of relentless expansion. Working in a post-industrial city requires the
being implemented is an essential part of design itself. Who are the stakeholders that would advocate for or pay for the project?
critical investigation and re-definition of the many layers of existing and past urban fabric and urban infrastructure to shape the city
Who are the users that would benefit? What is the timeframe in which it is envisioned? Speculative answers to these questions
to the needs of its future inhabitants. Our focus will be on a new resilient vision for New York City in the form of re-thinking how we
inform the decision-making process for the physical manifestation of the urban design project. Students will be asked to translate
live (and work) together at the scale of an EcoDistrict, driven by new strategies that weave transit, housing, natural systems and the
investigation of site and program, and the making of knowledge about an urban site into a series of conceptual hypotheses for
public realm. New York City, the most populous and the most urban of America’s cities will serve as a laboratory for these investiga-
the site that operate on several scales and in several temporal dimensions. In the context of this studio, students will be asked to
tions. A resilient New York City will develop the capacity to adapt and thrive in constant change. Success as urban designers will be
speculate with innovative models for how New Yorkers in the 21st century will live and work, and mechanisms to develop such
measured from a civic building perspective, when innovative program and physical form provide the integrated resilience necessary
models. Students will then be asked to apply a hypotheses to their specific site and develop design proposals that confront how we
for positive economic, social and ecological elements to flourish over time. Energy, Transportation, Waste, Water, Green Infrastruc-
live together into physical space.
ture / Natural Systems and other urban infrastructure systems carry profound technical, social and cological consequences.