Infosession – Tropic Future: Material Ecologies of Okinawa

Can Okinawa be a design laboratory for planetary futures? How do we grow resilient and creative on a warming planet?

The Japanese mainland is moving toward a subtropical climate, and most regions of the world have experienced excessive heat in recent years. This course investigates the material ecologies of Okinawa, a subtropical island whose cultural and architectural identity has been shaped by climate, history, and politics. Okinawa’s arts and buildings evolved under the pressures of heat, humidity, typhoons, and salt air—conditions that are no longer exceptional, but increasingly the reality of our global present. With summers growing longer and hotter each year, what lessons might be drawn from Okinawa’s centuries of adaptation to help us design for a future of rising temperatures worldwide?