2022–2023
Shaping Our World Through Air
This year’s topic is a prompt to investigate the impact that air has in our world, from the unequal way pollution affects communities to the way it shapes spatial conditions and material innovations. How can air be considered while exploring new architectural environments, structural solutions, ecological strategies, and urban policies? According to the World Health Organization’s 2022 air quality database, 99 percent of the world’s population breathes polluted air that exceeds internationally approved limits. Within this context, what are the multidisciplinary approaches that can develop a more sustainable future? How can air, a vital element that belongs to none, benefit all? Air shapes our world and knows no boundaries.
Projects
Collective Comfort: Framing the Cooling Center as a Resiliency and Educational Hub for Communities in Desert Cities
Taking Back the Air: Collective Learning, Advocacy, and Design for a Healthy Environment
Air de jeux: Protecting Children from Air Pollution by Designing Urban Environmental Installations
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?
Projects
MycoKnit: Cultivating Mycelium-Based Composites on Knitted Textiles for Large-Scale Biodegradable Architectural Structures
Soil Sisters: An Intersectoral Material Design Framework for Soil Health
Constructive Land
An Ontological Study of Structures and Their Materiality