Urban Archipelago

The Urban Archipelago studio explores the future of living, working and producing at a time of rising sea levels and climate-change related spatial, social and cultural transformation. It rethinks the role of water as a foundation for the design of water-aware architectures and spaces. It investigates the spatial, social and cultural aspects of water embedded in infrastructures and buildings, in institutions and policies, in drawings, music, or writing.

The studio posits that we need new public spaces that capture water-based lifestyles where newcomers, refugees and migrants encounter citizens, and where skilled employees cross the paths of service or knowledge workers. We argue that architects and urban designers need to include water awareness into their local strategies to achieve both a balanced composition of the population and regeneration of residential areas, sustainable urban design and architecture, and to facilitate blue economic growth. Water is essential to human and non-human life through time and space. Architecture and urban design have a key role in bringing back water awareness and in developing future scenarios for living with water.

The studio prompts students from Architecture, Urbanism and Landscape Architecture to develop strategies that connect architectural objects, urban settlements, landscapes with water systems. Designing new architectures for an urban archipelago asks architects, planners, anthropologists, economists, and historians to rethink the logic of research and design through the lens of water. The Urban Archipelago course focuses on water systems and natural waterbodies as spaces of coexistence and conflicts. New scenarios and maritime mindsets are needed to better respond to the challenges posed by social, spatial and environmental transitions.

Urban Archipelago helps students develop a comprehensive toolkit, including mapping (and counter-mapping), archival research, and vertical or sectional thinking. Students are urged to critically assess, test, challenge, and propose alternative tools that can enhance knowledge production about the sites and territories they engage with.

2024/25 Q4 Course Description

In collaboration with the Netherlands Institute Morocco (NIMAR) the Urban Archipelago design studio, also through an exciting field trip, will focus on the Moroccan cities of Rabat/Salé, Tangier and Casablanca as an unique opportunity to discuss the territorial specificities and verify transnational transferability of approaches and design practices related to water. Morocco is a country at the intersection of two different bodies of water, the Atlantic Ocean and the Mediterranean Sea. Today, many cities are called to rethink the relationship between land and water. New scenarios and maritime mindsets are needed to reimagine comprehensive responses to the challenges posed by social, spatial and environmental transitions.

For more information please visit the following link: Urban Archipelago