Advanced Architecture Studio: Future City, Chicago Year 2137

Undergraduate / Graduate

This studio imagines the future city of Chicago two centuries after its founding, to create visions of how climate change, migration, shifting mobility patterns, and economic and demographic transformations have the potential to literally reshape urban life. Students will engage in speculative design by asking "What if: X?"-using hypothetical scenarios to test the limits of architecture and urbanism. The course takes a multi-scalar design approach, from imagining transformations in everyday objects like a cup of coffee to re-visioning infrastructure, public space, or cultural institutions, connecting personal experience with city- and region-wide systems. The studio will combine data-driven analysis, including introducing students to GIS mapping to present geospatial information, with speculative approaches inspired by science fiction in novels and films, translated into digital image making. Students will develop visual narratives that catalyze conversations about future urban conditions, with areas of focus of their choosing. The studio is complemented by a lecture series featuring future-oriented architects and designers in adjacent disciplines, introducing ways that speculative thinking can produce new conversations on modes of climate adaptation, social resilience, and emerging technologies at the city-scale.