What is urban design?
Well, I mean, I think there’s an official answer to that, that’s probably part of like my training in urban design, which would refer to the formation of the space between built form that constitutes that kind of experience of the urban. So, unbuilt figures that result from the deployment or arrangement of the built. That’s probably a traditional way to think about it. But I think from my perspective, urban design now extends to the entire constructed landscape of the world, which in my understanding of the nature of contemporary terrain of the earth, probably extends to every surface of the Earth. Where no place in the world remains untouched by the chemicals or systems that have been produced by man. And the kind of idea of thinking through the organization and spatial distribution of things, we can apply urban design thinking to questions that are external to the city. So whether we’re talking about rural territories, or whether we’re talking about landscapes, or whether we’re talking about globalized infrastructure systems, or whether we’re just talking about territory in general, I think the kind of what’s included in the domain of urban design has evolved fairly substantially in the last 30 years, I would say.
What makes your work urban?
I think for me, it’s about the thinking about the coming to how about how design informs the coming together of a multiplicity of people. So the kind of designing for a public. A sense of a broad constituency that’s variable that has multiple interests in time and space. And whether for me whether that’s situated in a landscape field or whether that’s situated in an urban area is independent. I’m interested in working on projects that are meant to assemble a multiplicity of people. And for me, that’s what constitutes an urban that, that kind of assembly of the collective around conditions of the public.
Who is doing compelling work in urban design right now?
I think probably because of my set of interests, I tend to look at people who share a similarly broad sense of the way in which urban design works and the kind of media through which they work on it ranging from you know, built form to landscape to media to thinking about the city as media. But probably there’s a few groups that I come back to regularly. I’m always interested in the work of Lateral Office. Lola Shepard and Mason White. Luis Callejas in Central America does really super interesting work. Alexander D’Hooghe, Neeraj Bhatia in the Open Workshop, they’re kind of a cluster of offices and designers with whom we share some affinities and I think I kind of tend to look at their work. Also. Ersula Kripe and Stephen Mueller of Agency Architecture right now are doing some super interesting urban design work that bridges the kind of space of the US Mexico border, and we’re collaborating with them on a couple of projects. And so I tend to be interested in these people that are kind of taking the traditional skills and techniques of urban design and applying them to larger fields. I mean in terms of authors, I’m reading Shannon Mattern right now, who I think is doing some really interesting work and thinking about ways in which we reimagine the city through the lens of technology. I’ve always been interested in what Keller Easterling is writing about is I think she’s a mind that thinks through the lens of urbanism on a range of different topics, whether their organizational framework subsystems or whether they’re understanding the role of new types of space. She’s a strong voice that I’m always referring to. And then, you know, I think there’s, there’s mechanisms like publication mechanisms, New Geographies, from Harvard is a really interesting publication that DDes students produce there every year. And I think that’s for me been a kind of seminal publication that’s consistently introduced new and kind of, to me intriguing topics that vacillate around and have kind of been redefining interests of urban design, relatively frequently. And then I recently came across a publication in China in Beijing called UED which is another design publication, often with built work, but that’s trying to reframe narratives around emerging approaches to Chinese urbanism and urban design that I think is a pretty fascinating thing I’ve only recently come across.
What do you try to teach urban design students?
In terms of the things that I aspire to convey? You know, it’s interesting, for me, it’s a lot less about a set of facts or canons or principles. I try to work really hard with people especially in design studios, to expand design literacy. And by that I mean a kind of familiarity with a broad oeuvre of work that relates to the projects that they’re working on. So one thing I’m constantly myself trying to work on is just an awareness and familiarity of a really broad range of precedent projects that you’re able to draw upon and kind of introduce people to as part of studying, as opposed to particular techniques or methods. And I probably eschew, really explicit methodologies to try to be more lateral in terms of figuring out what approaches and methods might make more sense to a particular project or to a particular set of fascinations that a student has in their work and, and realign what I’m talking about relative to that. But you know, then you have your own set of experiences to draw upon. And it’s kind of interesting as someone who studied sociology and environmental science and architecture, and urban design and ethics, those are topics that I’ve studied, and I try to impart as much of whatever it is that I’ve learned in those from those moments of academic study, as well as just, you know, life lessons and narratives and things that you found or things that you’ve just found out about and, kind of introduced those things. And then, you know, there’s the teaching that I do in the at the university. But then there’s also kind of another form of teaching that happens in our research group RVTR, which is a different kind of different kind of activity. But I think there’s a whole kind of range of learning that happens in that context, too. And we’re working full time around the project and dialogue about what it what it is and what it’s trying to become and how we’re trying to format or how we’re trying to represent. And I think that’s another whole kind of engagement that leads to new forms of learning, like around a project, which is different than in the context of a course within a curricula in an institution.
What is a common misconception about urban design?
I think at the moment, something that a broad public may have a hard time understanding soon is that urban design necessarily will exist beyond the constructs of big data and surveillance economies. At the same time, I think a kind of significant feature in terms of how urban design is being delivered in the world is precisely being delivered by vertically integrated venture capital backed companies that are investing in the urban as an extension of technological enterprise. So I’m thinking about sidewalk labs and Katerra, WeWork any one of these kinds of emerging forms of business that are aiming to work on the city as a media through emerging technology. And in many ways, within the structures of their own enterprises are replacing design expertise, whether that’s in the form of a profession, such as mechanical engineering, or electrical engineering, or architecture, or a discipline, like urban design, integrating design thinking into the kind of corporate structure that’s delivering new formats of built form outside of traditional consultancies. So I think the kind of preconception, is that the future of big data will overwrite and rewrite the city. And I think that imagining that that will replace the role of spatially knowledgeable, dexterous urban design is a misconception.
Where do you think urban design is heading?
I think there’s a tremendous potential myself in the kinds of capacities that urban designers have to work on some of the most pressing questions whether it’s in a research domain or whether it’s in the design and delivery of built form and the built environment of the future. But I think the future of the, I don’t even want to call it a discipline because I’m not sure if it’s a discipline, the future of the domain will reside, I think in the ways in which it’s capable of responding to the most pressing questions of our time, which I see as you know, globalized urbanization, emerging climate crises, massive global refugee populations, unknown biological systems, totally emerging material kind of biological, chemical, material systems, and how urban design is able to start thinking and working on those on those questions. So one project I’m working on right now, for example, is looking at the way in which the interactions between material flows associated with food, water and energy systems might undergird a new approach to how we think about organizing cities’ built form and their extended systems. And in that discussion, one of the most difficult things that the team is looking at is questions about how the uncertainties that attend to climate change might transform the conditions for which we’re designing, you know whether a particular territory is now underwater, or whether a particular territory is about to transition into a kind of desert condition, or whether the nature of the climate behaviors that are affiliated with a certain location are about to transform to totally new patterns. I think how urban design thinking can address and operate on those scenarios of unknown flux and futures is, for me, a really interesting territory and something that is pressing globally, but maybe a frontier that I’m not sure existing urban design training is well positioned to kind of work on. And something that also demands all kinds of new expertise and awareness by those who intend to work on urban design. So for me, I think that’s where the future of urban design work will be focused is in that value of uncertainty through strategies that need to imagine multiple scenarios, so inherently non-fixed strategies or proposals for built environment, but essentially, integrating variability, uncertainty, and the capacity to change or adapt over time within particular design proposals. I think those are all characteristics that will define the work of the next era, whatever duration that actually is, whether it’s a 10 years or 100 years. I’m not sure.