Topics

2021–2022
Envisioning Responsible Relationships with Materiality

According to a United Nations Environment Programme report published in 2020, “natural resource extraction and processing still account for more than 90 percent of global biodiversity loss and water stress, and around half of global greenhouse gas emissions.” In a context of global environmental crisis and enduring resource inequality, it is essential to continue to reevaluate our relationship with materiality.

This year’s topic seeks to explore materiality from the micro- to the macroscale, bringing together designers and researchers from multiple disciplines in order to envision sustainable, responsible, and ethical relationships with materials and the communities that they come from. How do we shape nonexploitative networks of extraction, production, distribution, and waste? What type of social, cultural, and environmental landscapes do those new networks define? What are the roles and responsibilities of nations, corporations, communities, and individuals in shaping these networks? What are ways to limit the long-term impact on Earth of the human consumption of materials? And what material innovations—technical or in their application—present new possibilities?

2020–2021
Examining Social Justice in Urban Contexts

The built environment is defined by human-made decisions that have long-lasting impacts on our society. Today, we are in the midst of a critical conversation about how structural racial injustices, discriminatory policies, and uneven access to resources have shaped our society and our built environment for decades. Challenges like the current global health crisis reveal and amplify conditions that have always been present. These injustices and policies are manifested in both subtle and explicit ways across many areas—from housing, education, economy, and safety to public transportation, public space, health, and the environment. Governments, civic institutions, private organizations, professionals, and citizens continuously define, respond, and contest these conditions. Exploring and identifying long-term policies, immediate actions, and comprehensive plans have the potential to shape a more equitable and sustainable future.

2019–2020
Shrinking Our Agricultural Footprint

According to the World Resources Institute, agriculture currently uses almost half of the world’s vegetated land, and agriculture and related land-use change generate one-quarter of the earth’s annual greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. If we consider that the world population is expected to reach almost 10 billion by 2050, the need to think about how to increase food production in a sustainable and inclusive way while managing and reducing our agricultural footprint is a key global issue. But food is not the only outcome of agriculture. For example, biofuels, plastics, starch, and fibers can all be non-food products with an agricultural origin. Spatially, while people continue to concentrate in cities, the agricultural footprint required to serve their needs extends beyond the city limits into the hinterlands. This footprint has a direct impact on multiple systems, from the economy and transportation infrastructures to climate change, natural habitats, and wildlife biodiversity. The reduction of our agricultural footprint through policies, actions, and plans has the potential to redefine a more sustainable short- and long-term future.

2018–2019
Humanizing High Density

Humanity is undergoing the greatest mass migration in history as people across the world move into urban areas. There has been significant effort to draw attention to the estimates that as of 2009 more than half the world’s population lived in cities. This number is expected to rise to nearly 70% in approximately the next 30 years. According to a 2014 United Nations Study, 1 in 4 people live in a city of over 1 million people and importantly, nearly 1 in 8 (453 million people) live in one of 28 megacities with populations of over 10 million. The result has been a global demand for high-density structures and urban environments that support places to live, to work and to socialize.