This advanced option studio will address urban vulnerabilities and design strategies for climate adaptation for Providence and Malmö - two cities comparable in scale, location and climate vulnerability. Both are post-industrial port cities with populations between 150 and 300 thousand persons.
Course Dates: Feb 15, 2018 — May 25, 2018
Travel Dates: Mar 23, 2018 — Mar 30, 2018
Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences Alnarp
Includes airfare, accommodation, field trips, local transportation, group dinners + some meals, museum entrances, health and travel insurance.
This advanced option studio will address urban vulnerabilities and design strategies for climate adaptation for Providence and Malmö - two cities comparable in scale, location and climate vulnerability. Both are post-industrial port cities with populations between 150 and 300 thousand persons. They have experienced economic downturns and recent revivals. They are subject to rising tides and storm surges along with other climate impacts. This RISD studio will provide both cities with new perspectives in addressing resiliency in response to the environmental changes ahead. RISD students, in coordination with from students SLU Alnarp, our academic partner in this work, will work collaboratively with scientists, planners and others to think boldly about new ways to address the combined imperatives of environmental change and social justice.
The studio forms the backbone of a cross-disciplinary collaborative academic exchange addressing urban sustainability strategies between researchers at the Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences (SLU) Alnarp’s Department of Landscape Architecture, Planning and Management and RISD’s faculty in the Departments of Architecture and Landscape Architecture. With today’s urgent environmental threats we must do away with siloed ways of thinking and find new ways to span disciplinary boundaries and recognize our collective responsibility to address pressing socio-spatial urban and landscape issues. The studio is an opportunity to begin this cross-disciplinary work.
In northern Europe, Malmo and Copenhagen governmental agencies are at the forefront of sustainable urban landscape and architectural practices. On the U.S. eastern seaboard, the City of Providence’s Office of Sustainability is likewise, a leader in addressing equity, resilience and coastal climate change issues with forward-thinking planning and design. We are excited to build an international collaboration bridging academic and civic design work in Providence and the Malmo region. We will use Malmo’s Western Harbour development project, Europe’s first carbon neutral demonstration development, as one of our primary research/precedent study site for the studio. SLU’s research groups in urban vegetation and future city resiliency will provide guidance and access to current projects underway in the region including established work in the Augustenburg neighborhood and future development of Hamnen, Malmo’s outer harbor district.
Our studio work will be focused on Providence’s harbor front neighborhoods at the head of Narragansett Bay including Fox Point and Field’s Point. RISD studio participants will work closely with the City of Providence’s Sustainability Office, community activists, artists and scientists in contributing important new visions and strategic scenarios to the city’s proposed planning for increasingly frequents storms and coastal sea level rise.
The Designing Resiliency for the Urban Landscape studio follows work done in several recent RISD studios addressing a post-carbon energy future and the complex relationships between coastal and watershed ecologies, energy and transportation infrastructures. We will work specifically with some of the proposals that came out of Manuel Cordero’s studio, Infrastructural Ecologies: Resilient PVD, and may work with Providence youth, connected to DownCity Design. Travel to Copenhagen and Malmö in March will provide an opportunity to learn first-hand about multiple innovative resiliency strategies in the extended Skåne/Øresund region of Scandinavia. With knowledge gained through exchange with our Swedish partners, planners and community members from the City of Providence and our colleagues at RISD, Brown and URI, the RISD studio work will provide valuable foundational strategic scenarios for Providence’s resiliency initiatives, informing the region’s climate science research with critical design-thinking addressing social, ecological and infrastructural needs.
Researchers from SLU Alnarp will join the RISD studio for reviews and to collaborate on expanding our cross institutional exchange with a post-studio colloquium, planned for the 2018/19 academic year.
Must be a registrant in this Advanced Studio.
Have questions? The RISD Global team is available to meet for a 1:1 advising session. We can give you more information about your study options, help you figure out which program makes sense for you, and assist you with the application process.
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