The Cities We Become and Deny (2020)

Riffing on the title of N.K. Jemisin’s new book The City We Became, this studio offering of ARCU3304 explored and investigated cities as sites of dismantling and of potential becoming — bringing to the core what has been marginal (at best) and abandoned (at worst). As a result, the studio was grounded in questions of spatial justice, marginality, equity, privilege, accessibility and of the imagination as an emancipatory and liberational tool for the urban project. The studio began at a global periphery (with urban sites around the world), and moved closer to home for the final project of the term. Students began  studying global metropoles through the studio themes and how their systems and apparatuses (not just their “aesthetics”) allow us to see and to re-map the city we thought we knew. The second project will begin at the personal scale of our isolationist (pre and present) urban (and now-COVID) landscapes, moving outward to the city beyond, where students will analyse, interpret and imagine new, collective urban futures for they city they live in.