Retooling Metropolis: Working Landscapes, Emergent Urbanism
Studio Instructor Chris Reed
What is the status of the 20th-century metropolis? How do we rethink it (and retool it) in an era of significant climate change, considerable social and economic inequities, and cultural dissonance? And what of this in a disciplinary age when conversations on urbanism are likely to be better informed by ideas of indeterminacy, dynamism, operational ecologies and landscape, and emergence over time? These questions are at the center of this research and studio work, both of which examine possibilities for cultivating new landscape occupations and new forms of nascent urbanism in an area of Houston along the eastern stretch of the Buffalo Bayou. This is an area marked by large-scale abandonment, some active heavy industry, remnant poor neighborhoods, industrial ruins, denuded ecologies, contaminated lands, and a radically transformed hydrologic system. How does one act here, when contemporary environmental and social circumstances call for a shift in thinking and a need for change, yet where there is no obvious economic or political driver to initiate or sponsor transformation on the ground?
Teaching Assistant Sonny Xu Students Adam Himes, Juan Diego Izquierdo, Sophie Juneau, Rebecca Liggins, Xun Liu, Andrew Madl, Yuxi Qin, Chris Reznich, Louise Roland, Jonah Susskind, Andrew Taylor, Ziwei Zhang Mid-term Review Critics Francesca Benedetto, Silvia Benedito, Danielle Choi, Steven Handel, Andrea Hansen, Daniel Ibañez, Teresa Lynch, Kate Kennan, Nick Nelson Final Review Critics Baye Adofo-Wilson, Bradley Cantrell, Christopher Hight, Zaneta Hong, Daniel Ibañez, Mariana Ibañez, Nina-Marie Lister, Pratap Talwar, Sergio Lopez-Pineiro, Anne Olson, Lola Shepard, Mason White